Here’s a fun gift item from Vat19.com — a bottle opener made from de-milled .50 BMG cartridges. These .50 Caliber Bottle Openers are made by hand in the USA by a group that donates at least 15% of its profits to helping wounded soldiers via the Travis Manion Foundation.
The price is $14.99. Considering the simple design, we bet many of our readers could make their own bottle opener using an old cartridge, a Dremel tool, and a file. If that’s too much work, you can order the .50 Cal bottle opener from Vat19.com. This item has been so popular that it is currently sold out, but Vat19.com is expecting to receive more inventory on December 19th — right before Christmas.
Here’s an interesting invention from Ballistics Research, a Georgia-based security company that specializes in projectile barrier and containment systems. Ballistics Research has come up with a Interlocking Protection System (3-D IPS) that uses interlocking composite blocks — similar to giant Lego blocks — that will stop rounds up to .50 BMG. Two layers of blocks will even contain a 23mm cannon round. The Anti-Armor Ballistics Composite (AABC) blocks are lighter than concrete or other building materials, and they withstand repeated fire much better than old-fashioned sandbag stacks. Ballistics Research claims that its AABC composite is “the only material in existence that actually gains strength with incoming rounds.”
Most conventional protection units available to the military and corporate worlds (like sandbags or concrete) are non-portable, or they degrade rapidly under sustained fire. Ballistics Research’s AABC™ material actually becomes stronger with multiple hits. In fact, each of the 3-D IPS blocks is capable of absorbing thousands of rounds of machine gun fire without failure.
Video Shows Effectiveness of 3-D IPS System
The Video below shows a 3-D IPS Block wall being tested first with a full-auto 5.56×45 M16, next an M60 machine gun firing 7.62×51 rounds, and finally a “Ma Deuce” shooting .50 Cal API M2HB Armor Piercing Rounds. This is all done at very close range. The AABC material soaks up ALL the projectiles. Very impressive indeed….
While 3-D IPS block installations are designed primarily for military compounds, or commercial sites (such as power plants) where high security is required. However, they can be used in any location where secure protection from high-velocity projectiles is required. For example, 3-D IPS blocks could be used for a down-range storage building on a shooting range. For more information, visit BallisticsResearch.com, call (678) 679-1973 or email: wayne@ballisticsresearch.com.
As posted in the Calguns.net a while back, there was a nasty out-of-battery firing incident involving a BOHICA Arms .510 DTC AR15 upper. The cause of the out-of-battery firing is not certain but it appears that the ammo was not sized properly and the firing pin may have been stuck in the extended position. As a result, the round went off before the bolt was closed with the lugs seated. In the process, the bolt handle broke off, as the bolt retracted violently, actually ending up outside the bolt raceway.
The shooter was badly injured, with multiple broken bones and ligament damage to his left hand and tissue damage to his right hand. The shooter was holding the rifle with his left hand near the front of the chamber where a gas vent was located. Gas and shrapnel existed the vent hole causing the severe injuries to the left hand.
From range reports, it appears that the shooter had been struggling to chamber previous rounds, and was having trouble closing the bolt. After talking with one of the rangemasters, a poster on AR15.com reported: “The guy was using new reloads that weren’t exactly fitting well into his chamber. [The shooter] was slamming the bolt handle with his palm trying to get the cases to lock in. The guy was also slamming the bolt forward full force from the rearmost position back and forth trying to ram the cases into chamber in an attempt to squeeze the rounds in so the bolt could close. Finally, on one of the attempts … the possibly stuck firing pin rams into the primer and explodes the round when he slams the bolt forward (zero lug engagement hence the KB) and shooter puts himself into a world of hurt.”
Lessons Learned — Don’t Try to Force Oversize Ammo into a Chamber
By all reports, the shooter’s ammo wasn’t fitting his chamber properly. In an effort to force the ammo into the chamber, he worked the bolt with excessive force. That MAY have caused the firing pin to extend or the hammer to fall without the trigger being pulled. One theory is that the trigger system may have been modified, allowing the hammer to fall from the force of slamming the bolt forward. Others have speculated that the firing pin may have failed to retract because the bolt handle was over-torqued — a safety issue listed in the BOHICA manual.
Whatever caused the out-of-battery firing, it appears that improperly-sized ammo (or a poorly-cut chamber) was the root cause of the problems. If you go to a range and find your bolt does not close easily over the ammo — STOP SHOOTING — don’t try to force the issue. Disaster may result. To paraphrase Johnnie Cochran: “If the ammo doesn’t fit, it’s time to quit”.
Photos by Wildcard, originally posted on Calguns.net.
Cabelas.com and LaserLyte have teamed up to produce compact laser bore-sighters that fit inside your firearm’s chamber. The laser is housed in a brass assembly machined to duplicate an actual cartridge. To activate the laser, simply place the bore-sighter in the rifle’s chamber and close the bolt. There are two core units, the Laserlyte Cabela’s Premium .223 (collimated lens $99.00) and the Pro .223 (standard lens $69.99). Both the Premium and Pro bore-sighters fit a .223 Rem, but they can be adapted to other chamberings by adding a caliber-specific sleeve over the .223 core unit. In addition, LaserLyte makes separate in-chamber bore-sighters for the 17HMR and 50 BMG.
Adapt Basic Unit to other Calibers with SAAMI Sleeves
Both the Premium and the Professional .223 Boresighters can be used for a variety of chamberings by fitting additional caliber-specific sleeves (sold separately). Each sleeve is precision-machined from brass to SAAMI specs. Available chamber sleeve calibers include:
Bore-Sighting the Old-Fashion Way
We are not big fans of laser bore-sighters, as we think they are unnecessary for most situations — at least with conventional bolt-action rifles. Visual bore-sighting is not difficult. Set up your gun securely on bags, remove your bolt and set up a 50-yard target with a large bright orange or black center circle. Look through the back of the action and you should be able to sight down the bore with your own eyes just fine. In fact it may be easier to bore-sight the “old-fashioned way” rather that try to see a laser in bright sunlight at 50 or 100 yards.
When a Laser Bore-Sighter is Valuable
There are instances when having a laser bore-sighter can save time, such as when setting up a chronograph. Also, with many semiautos and lever guns, it is difficult to sight down the bore because of the action design. Without using mirrors, it’s hard to visually bore-sight an M1 Garand, for example. Likewise, it can be difficult to bore-sight an AR15, because the stock and buffer is in line with the bore. For these rifle types, a laser bore-sighter is a valuable tool.
In-Chamber Laser Should Be Safer
We like the new LaserLyte design because it fits in the chamber, rather than in the bore. In-Chamber laser bore-sighters are also made by Aimshot, Firefield, and SightMark, in a variety of sizes. With muzzle-entry laser bore-sighters, you could have a nasty accident if you forget to remove the device. There is always the chance you could chamber and fire a round with the muzzle-entry bore-sighter still in place. Instant Kaboom. That has happened more than once. The new LaserLyte/Cabela’s bore-sighter fills your chamber, so there is no possibility you could chamber a loaded round with the bore-sighter in place. That’s an important safety advantage. The LaserLyte K-50 in-chamber bore-sighter is shown in the video below.
Ransom recently introduced the Ransom Rifle Master ‘SL Mega Rest’, a large, modular rest system for FSCA, NBRSA, and IBS shooters and other shooting disciplines that allow a rest system. We persuaded accomplished NBRSA point blank and long range shooter John Crawford to check out this system and share his experiences. This article is Part One of a two-part series.
Ransom’s SL Mega Rest: Part One (First Impressions) by John Crawford
Upon receiving the Ransom SL Mega Rest, the first thing I noticed was how well the rest was packaged. There were two boxes, a large box holding the two base plates and a small box holding all of the small parts for the rest. The large box is double-walled, cardboard construction. It held up well to the rigors of shipping, keeping the two rest halves, each in their own inner box, in perfect shape.
Unpacking the Ransom SL Mega Rest one could not help but notice the weight of each half and their very attractive, black, Rhino coating. [Rhino coating is a heavy, extremely durable and tough, textured polyurethane coating commonly sprayed in the bed area of pickup trucks to protect the bed from damage.] Unpacking the small parts, which were all packaged separately for protection, gave me a good chance to note their excellent fit and finish. The small parts are made of steel and have a black oxide finish, including the ½:20-threaded legs which have nicely knurled knobs and lock rings. The black oxide finish compliments the bases.
Front Section
The front base and post, used exclusively for elevation adjustment, are well built and have some very nice features. The post, which is 1.25″ in diameter, has a keyway and key in the front to keep it from turning, and the lockdown bolt has a carbide ball in the end to lock the post in place. The mariner’s wheel has a cogged rubber belt on the outside (fits into a groove) and makes adjusting height easy and comfortable without hand slippage. The post assembly can be located, front-to-rear, in one inch increments, to provide a center-of-front-rest-base-to-center-of-rear-rest-base distance of from 24″ to 32″, thus accommodating an 8″ difference in stock length.
The Ransom SL Mega Rest’s elevation rest top is a modular system. The base for the rest top broke tradition and has two bolts, side by side, to hold it to the post, a welcome change from having a single bolt to hold the top on. With two bolts you reduce the stress when putting a heavy rifle on the rest. The front post is mounted to a plate that bolts down to the rest base. The rest base has a series of tapped holes that allows one to adjust the front rest location, front-to-rear, to fit different stock lengths.
Rear Section
The rear rest, used exclusively for windage adjustment, has the rest top holder bolted in place. As a modular system, you can put the elevation rest top bag holder or windage top bag holder in either the front or rear rest as needed. You could also have a few different elevation rest tops or windage tops for different rifles. Both front and rear rests have a bubble level.
The Ransom SL Mega Rest’s windage top and bag holder are also modular. You can put the windage top and bag holder, or just the bag holder, in either the front or rear rest by removing four thumb screws and changing the tops. You can buy different width rest tops and swap them out in a few minutes, a nice feature for different stock length and width configurations. The windage top has a dovetail fit with a center bolt to hold the top in place and has no perceivable side play or movement, nice and tight and the windage adjusts easily.
The forearm stop is well thought out and fully adjustable for height and length to accommodate different front bag heights and stock lengths/positions. It can be adjusted forward about 4″ and, in height, from 1-1/2″ to 3-1/2″. It easily adjusts with two thumb screws.
83 pounds of Steel Solidity
The bridge plate between the front and rear rests is also black Rhino-coated, matching the bases. There are four dowel pins in the bridge plate for alignment and six 5/16-18 bolts that securely hold the bridge plate in place. The rest can be shot with the bridge plate in place, as a one-piece rest system, or the bridge plate can be removed, making it a two-piece rest system.
The rear rest with windage top weighs 38 pounds and the front rest weighs 45 pounds, for a total weight of 83 pounds. This is without sand bags or sand. Overall the all-steel-construction, Ransom SL Mega Rest is well thought out, nicely finished, and made to the standards and quality you would expect from the Ransom Company. The MSRP for the whole unit (everything except sand bags) is $1,330.00. This includes front heavy bag plate, and rear windage-adjustable bag plate. Additional plates (for different sized bags) start at about $90.00. Next step is to fill my sand bags and do some field testing. We’ll cover that in Part Two of this review, later this spring.
Now here’s something for the serious reloader — powder by the pallet. Looking to stock up on powder for your .50 cal or .338 Lapua Magnum? Here’s a deal for you big boomer shooters out there. You can’t beat the price: $3.85 per pound. But here’s the catch — you have to buy at least one full pallet.
Ballistic Solutions, Inc. is selling bulk pallets of milspec smokeless powder for .50 caliber reloaders. The $3.85/lb pallet price is 60% off the average retail price for comparable powders, such as Hodgdon H870. The powder, demilled by a military contractor, is palletted and ready for shipping. Quantities still available are:
665 lbs of WC867 (95 lbs. per barrel) (6 barrels per pallet); weight per pallet is 570 lbs.
44,383 lbs of WC872 (two 30-lb bags per box, with 36 DOT-approved boxes per pallet); weight per pallet is 2,160 lbs.
These particular powders have multiple applications. The burn charts show them to be ideal for .50-caliber reloading, as they are in the same range as H860, H870, 5010 & 50 BMG (872 is replacing 5010 by many reloaders.) The powders can be loaded in cartridges as small as .338 Lapua Magnum.
We can’t think of anyone who really needs this much powder, but perhaps a shooting club or .50 BMG shooters’ association might be interested in a group buy. This bulk powder could be ideal for someone planning to start an ammo-loading business. It is 1.3 tag-listed and legal for export.
The mil-surp powder, originally manufactured for Winchester by St. Marks, was vacuum-extracted by automated machines. Marc Coury of Ballistic Solutions told us: “This is super-clean powder with no contaminants and no moisture as is common with other pull-down methods, so the powder does not need to be filtered.” Ballistics Solutions’ price, for the remaining powder inventories, is $3.85 per pound with a minimum order of one pallet. The cost does not include shipping. Call (949) 645-3815 or email marc@ballisticsolutionsinc.com to order.
To celebrate 10 years of AR-50A1 production, ArmaLite offers a new, Limited Edition of its metal-stocked .50-caliber rifle with bundled hardware including scope mount, scope rails, bipod, and monopod.
The total production run for the Anniversary AR-50A1 is just fifty (50) rifles. All will have a custom, silver-black crackle powder-coated finish. The anniversary dates are laser-etched on the upper receiver. Each Anniversary AR-50 is part of a special package including an ArmaLite 30mm scope mount; Armalite +15, +30, and +50 MOA scope rails; a bipod, a monopod; 100 rounds of once-fired USGI 50 BMG brass; and a certificate of authenticity. For more information, visit Armalite.com. The base-model Armalite AR-50A1 (without the Anniversay upgrades) has an MSRP of $3,359.00.
For many firearms owners, the answer to the question “Why own a .50 BMG?” is simply “because I can.” There is also a very active group of .50 BMG shooters who compete in long-range tournaments. At the 2009 Fifty Caliber Shooters Assn. National Championships, Lee Rasmussen shot an amazing 1.9557″ 5-shot group in Heavy Gun Class, breaking Skip Talbot’s 2.600″ single-group record set in 1999. That demonstrates the remarkable accuracy possible from .50-caliber firearms.
Steyr Knocks $1300 Off Price of HS .50 and HS .460
If you’re looking to acquire a .50 BMG, and don’t want to go the custom rifle route, Steyr Arms has a deal for you this month. Steyr Arms has drastically reduced the price of its big-bore, ultra-long-range HS .50 and HS .460 rifles to $3,995 for the entire month of April — or while supplies last. This promotional sale represents a savings of nearly 25 percent off the previous $5,299 price for HS .50 and HS .460 rifles. To learn more, visit www.SteyrArms.com, or call Steyr at (205) 655-8299.
Both the Steyr HS .50 and HS .460 rifles are single-shot bolt-actions, featuring 33″ fluted, free-floated barrels fitted with large, three-chamber muzzle brakes. The modular metal chassis allows easy disassembly for cleaning and transportation. Note how the +20 MOA scope rail is attached directly to the barrel block. This prevents loss of zero when the rifle is disassembled for transport or storage.
The .460 Steyr Chambering — Bigger than the .416 Barrett
While most of you are familiar with the legendary .50 BMG chambering, you may be curious about the “.460 Steyr”. This cartridge was developed by Steyr to provide superb ultra-long-range ballistics with less recoil than the .50 BMG. Like its .50 BMG big brother, the .460 Steyr can launch bullets that stay supersonic well past 1500 meters. The .460 Steyr was designed by Horst Grillmayer (Austria) in 2002, and the projectiles were designed by Guido Wasser (Switzerland). Production of rifle and cartridge started in 2004. The .460 Steyr was a way to offer an ultra-long range, sporting/sniper rifle and cartridge in juridictions which banned 50-caliber rifles. As with the .416 Barrett cartridge, the .460 Steyr cartridge was developed by shortening and necking down the .50 BMG case; however, the .460 Steyr is longer than the 416 Barrett. Loaded ammunition for the .460 Steyr is offered by Ammo-one.com, which provided the image below.
If you’re planning on purchasing a tactical rifle soon, consider this FREE Training promotion from McMillan Firearms. Those who place an order for any McMillan TAC-series rifle will receive a FREE 2-day Marksmanship Training Course. The course is taught on McMillan’s own ranges in Arizona and covers firearms operation, maintenance, application of fire, and a basic tactical overview for civilians.
Each class is taught by McMillan instructors, experienced military and/or law enforcement operators with impressive credentials. The course is split between classroom and range time. This promo applies to all rifles in McMillan’s TAC series: Tac-308, Tac-300, Tac-338, and the mighty Tac-50.
For more information or to place an order, visit McMillanusa.com or call (623) 582-0536, M-F 7:00 am – 3:30 pm MST.
Here’s a good deal for 50-Caliber shooters. Right now MidwayUSA has 650gr (0.510 diam.) Winchester FMJ bullets on sale. You can get a bulk pack of 420 bullets for just $308.90 (roughly $.74/bullet). That’s $91.09 off the regular $399.99 price, making this a real bargain. NOTE: These are new production overrun bullets that would otherwise be loaded in U.S. military M33 ammunition. The 650-grain full metal boat tail design features a copper jacket with cannelure over a steel insert and lead core. Limited quantities are available so you may want to act soon.
Here’s an interesting invention from 
Rear Section
If you’re planning on purchasing a tactical rifle soon, consider this FREE Training promotion from McMillan Firearms. Those who place an order for any McMillan TAC-series rifle will receive a FREE 2-day Marksmanship Training Course. The course is taught on McMillan’s own ranges in Arizona and covers firearms operation, maintenance, application of fire, and a basic tactical overview for civilians.
