RichardR

I built a CVA kit Colt 1861 Navy back in the late 1980's, I still have it & I still love shooting it, when I take it to a public range everyone see's this huge hog-leg belching out smoke and comes over & asks to try it out, it's probably converted a dozen or more folks to BP shooting over the years. I remember being surprised by how inaccurate it seemed to be my first range trip with it, then just all of the sudden I either learned how to hold/sight it properly or something because all of my rounds started going exactly where I wanted them too, shooting it became "instinctive" I guess is the best word to describe it. Anyway I've had mine seemingly forever, even after all of these years it is still great fun to shoot, they are very interesting from a historical aspect, they are a tad difficult to master all of the little nuances of loading and shooting them & they are hard to clean but definately worth the effort IMHO.

.303 surplus hits in waves, so you have to buy it up in bulk when it's availible, it's dried up at the moment but plenty of other countries are sitting on millions of tons of surplus still, Turkish is usually pretty good, India & Pakistani is ok, WWII Brit surplus is hit or miss (depends how it was stored) of course Winchester White Box (WWB) is always good stuff, a bit pricey per round compared to surplus but the cases can be reloaded easier/more times, a set of carbide dies is a cheap investment for such a great caliber.

Meh matters to me not, plenty of surplus rifles to go around, most will be kept as collector peices, others will be shot until the day they fall apart, some will be modernized/sporterized/customized, so IMHO it is not the end of the world for some rails & a sliding stock to be put on some of them, so long as they are enjoyed, that is all that matters to me.

I'vd had mixed results from Century, some have been fantastic rifles right out of the box, but some had needed some work on my end, mostly straightening canted sights &/or gas blocks, minor fit & finishing stuff etc. I personally have no qualms buying Century firearms, you just have to remember that they are not a firearm manufacturer per-say, they import de-milled foriegn military surplus arms & then rebuild them using American made recievers & other assorted parts. Sometimes their quality control on individual rifles isn't the best, but generally it doesn't take much work on my end to get them up & running properly, at least that's been my experience.

Range reports?

Agreed, many of our "weapon laws" in this country are because of Hollywood portraying those weapons as much more dangerous than they actually are. Take switchblade knives for instance, which are no more dangerous than any other folding or fixed bladed knife, but Hollywood put them in the hands of villians & wallah, public outcry against these now evil knives became feel-good legislation. Same with Japanese throwing stars, in which no-one has ever been killed with a throwing star, except in Hollywood movies which they are of course deadly when tossed at someone, however in real-life they are no more dangerous than any other dart, which are also thrown pointy-ended thingies, "you'll put an eye out" is about as serious an injury as you could deliver with one, which oddly enough is exactly the sort of injury you can cause by throwing just about anything else, like say a small rock for instance. Same with "machine guns" once again Hollywood portrayed real-life villians like Machinegun Kelly, Babyface Nelson, Bonnie & Clyde, Al Capone, etc gunning down folks left/right with endless streams of bullets, you know, the same Hollywood that produced westerns in which revolvers never needed to be reloaded .... ever, you'd never had seen any public outcry if the villian(s) was/were having to constantly reload their weapon every 3 seconds of the movie like if in real-life. Suppressors .... again Hollywood portrayed them as "assassin tools" that have absolutely no legitimate use, the only time movie go'ers (ie the majority of the American people) ever saw one was when someone in the film was being murdered. Can these items be miss-used? absolutely, but so can pretty much anything, I almost hate to say this publically but a madman could cause so much more carnage with a can of gasoline & a match (tens of millions of dollars worth) than they ever could with a "suppressed switchblade machingun that shoots throwing stars" if they so desired to do so.

"Nothing to see here citizen, move along ..."

My BS meter must be broken, because it keeps registering off the chart every time this administration issues a statement on anything/everything. I just hope I get a window seat ...

Well there is no doubt that Biden is an idiot & no-one should ever take him seriously on any issue, let alone really important ones. I do really like 00 Buck though, IMHO it's about as nasty as nasty gets w/out having to get a tax stamp.

Well keep in mind that a target being shot with a single shell of 00 (9 pellets, .33 cal each) is sort of the same as if it were being "instantanously" lit up by three, 3 round bursts out of a full auto Skorpian vz61 submachine gun, only without the stringing or time inbetween bursts. That is what makes 00 buck so increadibly effective for CQB, it is not the imagined "impossible to miss" wide shot pattern. So essentially a 12g tactical pump with an 8+1 magazine tube loaded with 00 buck means that you're capable of sending 81 (eighty-one!) .33 cal projectiles down-range before having to reload. I don't see any downside there.

Welcome to Amerika 2.0, where your tax dollars belong to anyone & everyone ... except to those folks who actually earned them.

Welcome to TGO

Welcome to Amerika 2.0, where everything not prohibited is compulsory.

16g? I'd just hang it on the wall as decor & not bother with refinishing or even shooting the ol'girl.

I've owned a number of various air rifles over the years, personally I think that the spring pistoned rifles are the way to go, break-barrel or under-lever, side cockers, doesn't matter, that's just personal preference, granted they have a steeper learning curve to shoot properly but once you learn how to properly shoot them you'll be a much better off-hand marksman not only with airguns in general but also with blackpowder & smokeless/modern cartridge rifles as well, at least I know shooting airguns has improved ALL OF my off-hand shooting. I am not a big fan of the ultra-light, super velocity, alloy pellets though, they do have a couple advantages, ie: their trajectory is a lot flatter than traditional lead pellets & they usually stay super-sonic from muzzle to target unlike the light/medium lead pellets, which can effect accuracy if they transition to subsonic velocities before hitting the target. But on the down-side I really don't like the super-sonic crack, my Gamo Shadow 1000's are already loud enough with heavy weight lead pellets, when I shoot the alloy pellets out of them I might as well be shooting high velocity .22LR out of them, which sort of defeats the purpose of using an airgun IMHO. I'd love to get a local airgun league going, anyone around Ripley, Halls, Covington, Henning area interested in helping to put something like that together?

She'd probably be just fine so long as you stuck to light target loads.

Why refinish it? Just take the ol'girl out as she is to fetch ya some tree rats for the stewpot.

Bleh! I'd have replaced those too, anyway the ones on both of mine are metal framed w/soft plastic guards to protect the finish & to help absorb the recoil, maybe Gamo started cheaping out on the scope stops or something.

Our enemies see an advantage with this current weak on defense administration, with our nation's economic problems & with how depleted our forces are after fighting a large, long, drawn out insurgency in Iraq & Afganistan for the last decade +. Now is a good time for them to act, especially if NK & Iran acted together.

I refuse to buy any with the new-fangled safety nozzles, I ran out of gas last year (borrowed someone elses truck, they forgot to tell me that their gauge was busted) & had to walk to a gas station, spent $24 dollars on a crappy plastic 1 gallon can w/that damn safety nozzle, walked back to the truck & that damn safety nozzle broke the first time I tried to use it. $24 dollars down the tube, where as at home I have older plastic cans with the plain yellow nozzles ranging from 1 to 2 to 5 gallons in size that have lasted 15+ years & have given me no troubles what-so ever. I gave up on metal cans after one that had rusted inside clogged the fuel sock in my truck, didn't notice that the inside of the 5 gallon Jerry can had corroded, poured the gas into the truck from it, then ended up having to drop my fuel tank to get to the fuell pump sock, was a massive hassle, switched to plastic cans w/mesh screens in spouts afterwards, no problems since other than that safety nozzle.

Gamo usually includeds "scope stops" on their rifles, or at least the ones I bought had scope stops on them.

Yup, very loud but I still have to give the loudest of the loud to the really short 6.5" barreled birdcaged 5.56 SBR's though, of course I burn through multiple 30rd magazines vs only a few rounds fired of .338L out of a 24" barrel + actual muzzle break, so maybe my ears ring longer because of the # of rounds sent down range instead of raw-decible levels. Hard to say either way without using a sound-meter to measure it, anyone know off-hand?

Eh? That's exactly what "the left" wants, they want our side to continue to canibalize ourselves, while they circle their wagons, dig in & fully support each other no matter what. The only thing Palin is guilty of is being mocked on SNL ... We really need to start hanging together, instead of constantly nit-picking ourselves into political obscurity.

At the risk of sounding repeatative, scales .. switch them up, backward, forward, half-half, 2/3, 1/3, faster, slower, faster again backwards forwards, until it's just a natural progression & your ear will pick up sweet little licks here and there, pick those out, string them together and wahlah you have a sweet sounding original solo.

Wow very sweet spikes Big! Yea the ones in the middle just oooze kewl man!