Sure, it's ugly.

But can it shoot?

Pine.

The new synthetic.

That's no worse looking than my last couple of stocking projects.

Come on, the guy had a sighter...what is so hard about that? He missed by over 2 MOA his first shot.

I noticed he wasn't wearing shooting glasses either...dumb.

I'll admit to not wearing glasses very often.

quote:

Originally posted by Tyler Kemp:
I'll admit to not wearing glasses very often.

I'll admit to being dumb myself. When I practice long range shooting I almost always shoot two guns at a time. This summer I was shooting a .300 RUM and a 7 STW. I shot at 822 yards, then moved up to 744. I shot the .300 first. At the shot, I felt searing pain in my right eye; tons of blood was pouring out of my face. The case was split up the side, but no sign of high pressure.

At first I thought I had loaded the wrong powder (that is why I checked the primer after the shot), but a few days later (and over $1000 in emergency room charges above my insurance) I figured out what happened:

I fed an STW case into the .300; I did this once before some years ago with no ill affects - the case simply fireformed to the dimension of the chamber. However, this case was very old and brittle and ruptured longitudinally. The faint ring around the belt gave me fair warning the case was getting old, but I ignored it. I believe the powder detonated once the case split.

Right after the shot, I took out my right contact lens, but saved it. Several days later, while being checked by my optometrist, I asked him to okay my contact lens. He mounted it some kind of optical device, chuckled, then asked me to take a look...

The lens had a huge chip on it; a clamshell shaped piece was missing from the edge. I could see this with my naked eye but I never even checked.

My optometrist said I should have been wearing shooting glasses, but my contact lens acted as a barrier and possibly saved my vision. I still have a piece of gunpowder embedded in my eye.

quote:

Originally posted by Tyler Kemp:
I'll admit to not wearing glasses very often.

I wear them every minute I am on the range. I hope you don't have to learn the hard way. I learned the easy way, I got a fragment of lead buried in my fingernail. It was so small I couldn't tell what it was until the next day when I went to work and examined it under a microscope. It hit at a shallow angle and deeply buried itself. If it had hit me in the eye it would have been a major problem. I have also been hit in the face by fragments from downrange and from other ranges.

Eye injuries are very common amongst shooters that don't wear shooting glasses, especially if they reload. A person can lose the vision in his eye just from the hot gases that are released when we have a case failure. I had a catastrophic case failure when pistol shooting with a 22 LR Ruger just about 6 months ago. It left small pieces of brass stuck in my glasses and my cheek just below the glasses.

DON'T WEAR GLASSES IF YOU DON'T VALUE YOUR EYESIGHT. Sooner or later you will lose it.

recalls to me a certain nascar 9,3x62 ...