Sok it to me, Baby! The weird and wonderful Sokolovsky Automaster

The Sokolovsky Automaster was promoted, shortly before its entry into production, as the “Rolls Royce of .45 Auto Pistols.” The pistol was starkly beautiful in an angular, Modernist way. Indeed, the design might be called Brutalist, although we don’t think the Brutalists ever escaped from architecture into industrial design, did they? And frankly, the Sokolovsky …

Read more

Troy’s consulting arm steps in it … twice.

If the old saw that “there’s no bad publicity” is actually true, Stephen Troy’s tight little network of companies should be riding high. They make firearms and accessories, make parts for some of the biggest-name AR manufacturers, and provide relevant support services, such as training. But the company took a hit from a presumed partner …

Read more

Is This Book For Real?

We’ve been reading Tiger Tracks: The Classic Panzer Memoir by Wolfgang Faust. Republished by Sprech Media, which publishes and republishes English translations of German combat memoirs of WWII (mostly), this is a 1947 memoir by a Panzer VI Tiger driver who fought on the Eastern Front, it says here. Its German title was the Wagnerian Panzerdämmerung.  But there …

Read more

Another 3D Firearm Approach: Plastic Casting

Here’s the situation: say, you want to test a new firearm or part design, and because you’re iterating rapidly, 3D printing would be ideal. But the mechanical properties of common 3DP polymers, polylactic acid (PLA) and acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS) are insufficient, and it’s either more challenging or more expensive to print in materials with better mechanical properties, like …

Read more

Lee Williams: Down With Poly AK Mags!

Lee Williams has had it with polymer AK mags, and this is his reason: The mag blew up while sitting unattended in Lee’s safe, and the resulting chaos was waiting for him when he opened it up. I’m done with polymer AK magsPosted on April 30, 2015 by Lee Williams I had a surprise last night …

Read more

HSI’s Odd Restrictions on Agents’ Personal Weapons

There are numerous investigative agencies and armed police in our Federal government — probably more agencies than anyone can account for. The Amtrak SWAT team? Yep, it’s a thing. Criminal Investigators for the Library of Congress? They’re out there, and they’re armed, sworn 1811s like any other Special Agent. Each agency has to decide how …

Read more

Colt AR15 and M16 Serial Numbers, 1960-1972

This memo’s been around as a scanned, non-OCR’d .pdf for a long time. We’ve OCR’d the PDF, and double-checked the numbers against the original data. The PDF is here:M16 Serial Number List OCR[.pdf]. The complete text is below this editorial comment. We would add the following remarks: The first few Colt serial numbers (001-100) were …

Read more

Those Who Forget the Past, AR-15 Edition

A couple of days ago we followed a link from The Gun Feed to the Michigan-based gun blog 248 Shooters.com. (We’re guessing 248 is an MI area code? The way the Workshop Eating Plane® will have “603” in its N Number?). Anyway, the article was a short and to the point gear review of an extended or enhanced …

Read more