Neanderpundit

Several of the folks I’ve worked with in other divisions of the same company have expressed interest in my abilities, so they’ve offered me the gig, and we’ll make final arrangements on Monday.

To all the people who kept me in their thoughts and prayers, to all the people who came here asking for qualifications, or mailed me, to Kim and Jay and others who linked on their blog, to those people who gave a shit?

You are the best. I cannot express to you how nice it was- not only by my colleagues, but by you, my friends, to feel wanted.

May God bless and keep you all, and reward you with friends as loyal as you’ve been to me.

“A pistol is what you use to get back to your rifle”–Clint Smith

I have a winchester 94, and I love it big time. But I used to be unable to shoot it, and i was ashamed of this. And then I figured out why.

here’s a standard 94 carbine. See the sight radius?

The distance between the rear sight and the front is teeny, less than half the overall length of the rifle. Like a handgun, the barrel will do an acceptable job of getting the bullet going downrange, but it will only go where we point it.

Firearm designers try to make the visible sight picture make sense. IN other words, the front sight is sized to make it easily visible in the rear sight- if the front blade doesn’t fit the rear notch when you sight, you have to try to get the front blade centered in the rear, and that can be a HUGE deal. If your front blade is .050″ thick(apparent thickness), and your back notch is .100 wide, the front blade can be in the middle, on the left, or on the right. The .025 “slop” can translate into several inches at 25 yards. At 300 yards it is a distance of several feet.

Here is what I put on my WInchester:

The Williams peep sight fits easily on the Winchester, moves the sight radius back a great deal further, and narrows that gap. Additionally, there is no interference with the slide or ejection.

At the long end of this is the tang sight. You may hsve looked at these and said to yourself “why the hell would someone put that on a rifle?” Accuracy is the answer. The further back that back sight is, the more sight radius, the more accurate you can be.

This has long been true of military rifles as well; when the Springfield Armory began making the 1903, it had the rear sight mounted on the back of the barrel. Here’s the evolution of these fine rifles:

At the top, the O3 and O3A1, you can see the shorter sight radius. At the bottom, the much loved and sought after 03A3. These rifles were much easier to shoot accurately, and it showed. Springfield couldn’t produce these fast enough, so they turned to the brits- Several manufacturers, under license form Enfield, made the Enfield 1917.

This looong rifle, with the very accurately cut two-groove barrel, and rearward mounted sight, was what they gave Alvin York. He knew what to do with it, too.

My own personal favorite rifle, the K31, has a pretty substantial sight radius, and I can shoot it just fine with iron sights. While I prefer to use a scope, I am happy that I have a rifle I can shoot at long distances and still hit the target, even with my ancient eyes.

And last year, I got addicted to “My name is Earl”. Then, alone in a hotel, nothing else to do, I developed an addiction to “House”. Now, the payoff episode is about to air, and if they don’t settle this bullshit with Tritter this episode I think I’m gonna shoot my TV.