Archive for December 19th, 2011
2011 ornaments
Got word that the 2011 ornaments I cut at Metrix finally made it; priority mail seems to take a week or so to make it halfway across the nation. The wheel ornament I put several hours of design into (mostly due to my lack of expertise with the tool); the original image it’s based on was interesting to me, so I made it in acrylic. I used yellow and black china pencils to fill in the engraving. The two snowflake ornaments were chosen for ease of cutting and, the second time around, strength. The first version I cut was too delicate, and broke being removed from the scrap material. I ended up spending about as much time finding snowflakes, watching them break, and trying again as I would have designing something that would work from the get-go. The parametric snowflake tools were all lame; if I was going to do flakes again, I’d try to find something like the parametric box maker. Next year, I’ll start earlier and try to find a unified theme. Maybe.
Red dot optics
Because it seems to come up so often, I’ve decided to write down my thoughts on red dot optics so I can just point people somewhere.
- Every gun you have without a red dot is less useful than it could be.
- Stop buying junk optics; buy once, cry once.
- Buy the right optic for your needs.
The red dot optic you should buy for any firearm going in harm’s way is an Aimpoint: the H1 or the ML3 (or the night vision versions thereof). Multi-year battery life means you turn it on, sight it in, and forget it. For plinking, the Primary Arms Micro Dot in one of its mounting options is what you need. Yes, you can spend less, but that way leads to tears. Both Aimpoint and Primary Arms have excellent customer service.
Why am I hating on all the other options? I’m not, I just don’t like them as much as the H1 or ML3; the Burris FASTFIRE is pretty nice, but I don’t dig the hard-to-use adjustments.
