Interesting or unique tools out there?

RBHarter

West Central AR
I did a whole thing making a demooner .

 

Mowgli Terry

Active Member
How do you find estate sales of gun related items?
Being at the right place at the right time: Most recently one estate was liquidated through our rifle club. Other times I have run up on items that came to me from a yard sales. I'm fairly active in our club. Basically, it's like word of mouth advertising. I suppose my basic answer is being out there looking.

Basically, there is a large component of luck involved. For example, just on a whim, dropped by a store that made reloaded ammunition. There was a large pile of reloading gear in the show room. Asking the price, the owner said make an offer. I seriously low balled the guy. To which he replied "sold." The pile included a RC and 550. That was pure blind luck, Other times I have found bargains in pawn shops. It's a crap shoot.
 

KeithB

Resident Half Fast Machinist
I have a way to narrow down the search but it might come off as political and I don't want to cause the admin folks any extra work so I won't make a public post about how I'm doing it.
 

KeithB

Resident Half Fast Machinist
3D printing of metal parts is now an established method to make small parts, especially for low volume runs.

Something else for traditionalists to hate while they complain about high prices!
 

RBHarter

West Central AR
The new runs of 1917 S&Ws were $1200 blue/walnut . I have to conceed that my 74' Ruger has a long gravely trigger compared to the 1918 built Smith ....the 1947 M10 for that matter . Neither shot much and the Ruger shot a lot .

I don't know how much $39 1918 is worth in 2022 , it might be 1200 ....
 

Ian

Notorious member
There was a NZ company as I recall that was 3-D printing complete titanium high powered rifle silencers a few years ago. Being a non-regulated item in Kiwi Country, these things are considered disposable and Nylon printed .22 rimfire cans are a hardware store item that you just throw away and buy another for $10 when it plugs up with lead, wax, and carbon. Anyway, this company was trying to establish importation to the United States market through Canada, not sure if it worked out or not. Our import laws forbid class 3 firearms but NAFTA gets around that somehow. Pretty cool that all the complex baffles, ports, clips, and outer tube could be built up with basically a CNC wire-feed TiG welder to create a one piece silencer capable of withstanding very high pressures with no internal leaks and no unnecessary weight from spacers. Additive manufacturing I think IS the wave of the future, even if some subtractive finishing techniques may still be necessary for threads or precision surfaces.
 

Ian

Notorious member
Well, there's the excise taxes and army of corporate lawyers and accountants on the payroll, plus unemployment, corporate taxes, and social security etc etc that they didn't have to have back then or wasn't nearly as high. Manufacturing costs may be lower, but the cost of doing business in the land of the "American Dream" is altogether no telling how much higher than it used to be and is in fact so prohibitive now that it's a miracle ANYTHING is able to be produced here anymore.