The Hobbit Hole XXXIV - But better than rain or rippling streams...

[RosieCotton]

Sounds very cool! Definitely get pictures of it!

I’m doing big scary things to my music library as a means of further procrastination where writing/transcribing is concerned. If you hear the sound of wailing coming from the general vicinity of Western Washington, it probably means I messed it up.

[Overtaxed]

Miss Cat is wandering around...looking for cat-sized mohaire throws I think.

[RosieCotton]

As if she wasn’t spoiled rotten enough before. ;-)

Halvah is busy kneading and shedding on my black coat. Why I thought it was a good idea to get a black coat, I have no idea.

[osagebowman]

Just got back from our sojourn to pinetreeplaza (wondering why it’s called that - no plaza and no pine trees). Listening to traffic reports, guess thegame has I-70 & I-435 all flummoxed up.

[Overtaxed]

Spoiled? My cat? :)

She settled for snuggling between a cheap blanket from Roses and a cheap comforter from Walmart.

[Overtaxed]

Well I'm glad I don't have to go out in that mess...I put off the potting soil/ grocery store run off 'til tomorrow.

[Lucius Cornelius Sulla]

Since you like him you might like to visit him more and talk about your family history. He is a living connection to your past, and is not going to be around forever. Also, in my experience, older folks LOVE visiting with their descendants.

[Lucius Cornelius Sulla]

Remember, Battlestar Galactica Razor, Sci-Fi Channel at 9PM. Will be a thread, I think!

[RosieCotton]

Woo-hoo! I’ll have to figure out some way of seeing it at some point...

[RosieCotton]

Probably a wise move. I went out just long enough to buy a book, and it’s amazingly crowded out there. :-\ I decided I could wait even for groceries, though I did get my book.

I don’t do crowds.

[Overtaxed]

Think I’ll do my grocery run tomorrow...if I feel like it.

Does anybody put spider plants in planter boxes? I’m running out of pots and I’ve got spider plants to divide.

[JenB]

Yeah, we plan to get up there when we can. I just always thought of him as “all that way far away in Iowa” and when I moved here, forgot that it was only 2 1/2 hours away.

He is amazingly active and independent so hopefully he will be around long enough to see his great-great-grandkids. He was in the Army in the Pacific during WW2 but I don’t think he saw too much fighting. That’s the only time he’s been out of Iowa since he moved here from Missouri in the 20s.

[Lucius Cornelius Sulla]

I’m no expert, but I don’t think most of the guys in the Pacific were in offices. It may be that he doeasn’t want to talk about it, but he certainly saw a lot of interesting things.

[JenB]

I think he may have been mostly involved in base construction but I’m not sure.

[Lucius Cornelius Sulla]

I thought that most construction over there was done by the ‘civilian battalions(?) ‘sea-bees’, but I guess that the army had to pitch in too!

[RosieCotton]

I think spider plants are pretty happy just about anywhere, no?

Haven’t done much writing today, but at least the transcription is caught up. Can finish tomorrow.

[Overtaxed]

Instead of cleaning up I seemed to have cluttered up thesunroom so bad that you can't walk through it anymore. I did manage to sort through some junk mail.

[Lucius Cornelius Sulla]

Well Battlestar Galactica Razor DVD will be released 12-04-07. Not a comedy!

[300winmag]

This weeks "Saturday Night Gun Pron (tm)" continues with the Mossberg 590 project. It's getting closer to completion, but every step forward brings a new question, such as, "is this really the direction I intended?"

First, the easy stuff, all of which is at the back of the shotgun. Here we see the Magpul M16 customizable grip, and the Midwest Industries adapters for pushbutton swivels for the M4 stock.

Due to the already long length-of-pull, I couldn't use the extended grip backstrap. Still, it seems to have a more comfortable shape. Also, although it doesn't apply to the Mossberg, Magpul redesigned the rubber base of the pistol grip storage compartment, allowing five rounds of 5.56mm to be stored there, rather than just three.

The rear swivel adapter goes through the horizontal slot in the back of the stock, and can be set up for either right or left handed use. The front adapter is quite ingenious, in that it's ambidextrous, slips on over the action tube when the stock is removed, and securely locks the round action tube nut in place. Even if you use plenty of Loctite and a special stock spanner, both of which I have, proper procedure requires the nut to be staked in place. This split adapter does just as good as staking, in my opinion, and provides a handy location for a single-point sling.

The grip and the sling swivels were easy. I received a bit more of a surprise when it came to installing a sight. The new straight-line stock configuration means the shooter's head is naturally higher up on the stock. Most sporting guns have a downward pitch on the stock so the eye lines up naturally with the low-mounted sights. Well, as with the M16, the sights now have to be mounted much higher.

I used a "surplus" Docter mini red-dot sight from a project that I have put on the back burner. Mounting it on that small piece of M1913 rail made it so low I couldn't even find the red dot.

Brownell's to the rescue, with a couple of $13 "extenders" that raised things 3/4 of an inch. Because the Docter is so small and short, I only needed one, as this shows. But I had the hunch two might be better.

Everything worked, but I wasn't happy with the looks. I decided to put the second extender on the rail, just for cosmetic purposes.

About then, I discovered that the two extenders cannot be butted together and have all the mounting screws line up. Each has a full-width "island" at each end, and I'd have to machine away half from each one so things would line up. Using a disk grinder and a surface plate, I spent a pleasant hour fitting the two extenders together until the fit as a single item.

I just had to exercise some patience, and a bit of water to cool the aluminum. It got too hot to hold after a couple of seconds of grinding otherwise. When I was done, the dimensions were correct, and the fit was almost airtight.

I could now put both extenders on a rail, and they would join up perfectly, enabling them to act as if there were one single piece.

So now things look a lot better, but I'm still not too happy with the tiny Docter sight sitting on a little platform high in the air.

So I will ponder about using some other sight that is bigger, and can fit the shotgun without the ad-libbed modifications I made. I may use the original long cantilever, even if I have to cut off some of the excess. But that's another installment for the future in the continuing series, "As the Mossberg Turns". I still have to come up with, perhaps, a new sling system, and some accessory shell carrier.

For some quick-and-dirty bolt-on accessories, this is becoming a major undertaking.

[ExGeeEye]

Sea-bees were and continue to be the Construction Battalions of the US Navy. They are sailors who don't work on ships :)