Which gun do you take with you when you go out to check the feeders and watering troughs...?
Which gun do you take with you if you're going on a walk in the woods, but might spot a varmint or in-season game...?
Which gun do you grab if there's noise in the chicken-coop, and it's 3 a.m....?
Which gun do you grab if there are a couple unknown 2-legs milling around your barn...?
Which gun do you grab if you just want to go back to the range behind the house, and plink at the 100 yard gong...?
The above six scenarios gave me an excuse to have six different firearms (I know, an 'arsenal' ), but it would be nice to just keep ONE gun loaded and handy for most of those duties. Thus started the quest for my 'Ranch Rifle' of sorts, only my Ruger rifle of the same name was not a candidate, because I don't want to wear hearing protectors every time I go outside and might shoot. ALSO, I wanted to be able to shoot a possum scurrying around the chicken coop, or a coyote darting off into the night, but the ungainly and expensive notion of a "Night-Vision-Equipped-AR-15" was NOT a gun I was going to tote when I had to carry a bale of hay to the feeder, and would NOT want to shoot at night, without hearing protectors, unless it had a suppressor, adding more cost, and more legalities (even if I actually OWNED such a firearm, there's no way I'd want to leave a suppressed firearm with a $3,000 night-vision setup on it just on a hook behind the back door, if you get my drift...).
Thus was born the concept of creating a 'Night Scout' rifle - kind of a 'ranch' version of Jeff Cooper's concept, set up for day or night use.
I was very happy with the (link) Marlin "Night Scout" rifle I made a few months ago, especially after firing THIS 50-yard group - AT MIDNIGHT, with NO moonlight whatsoever.
...but of course after having one in .357 Mag, I happened to fire a 16" .45 Colt with Cowboy Loads in it, and realized how quiet they were, certainly on a par with the .38 Specials out of the Marlin.
So, naturally I had to make me a Rossi .45 Colt "Night Scout"...!
The scope-mount options for the Rossi are limited, vs. the Marlin, but since I was using a Holographic sight, position and eye-relief are not at all critical. I had a B-Square 'no-gunsmithing' mount I wasn't using, which has the added 'advantage' that you can take it off quickly and make the gun look all 'normal' again (I'm not sure why I would particularly want to do that, mind you, but it is important to some folks).
For the light-mount, I wanted either something quick-detachable (because the light is something I may want to remove sometimes, for instance hunting with a light is illegal where I live). So, I thought about a 'scalloped' version of the PVC-mount I used on the Marlin, but found an unused 'weaver scope base' that just happened to have the same radius concavity on the underside as the radius of the .45 Colt magazine tube. After considering sweat-soldering, I realized that wasn't a good idea since the base was aluminum, and I considered 'dimpling' the magazine tube and putting flat-head screws in it, but that would require drilling holes in the tube, and risking cartridge-hang-up even if I polished and filled afterwards. So, I turned to J-B Weld, and just 'glued' it. The LIGHT comes off just as fast as you can turn the two knurled 30mm scope-ring screws..!
The forend already bears scars from my previous Bubba-smithing of the forarm band when I mounted a sling swivel stud in it. Every time I do that I have two problems - I seem never to get the stud centered, so it cants off to the right or left, and I never can get the darned thing on without opening up the hole in the wood a bit. This particular one was worse, in that the wood was swollen so tight I had to rasp it down to even get the band off and gun apart. For some reason now, the forend won't absorb any stain (or at least the stain I had). Anyway, it looks light on the tip due to that, but it's important to note that I would NOT have had to do any reshaping of it to do this particular magazine-tube 'rail' project. Other forearms could be even thicker, and might hit it and thus need slimming on the tip part.
Anyway, Here's the Pics:
The Rossi with just the rail:
Rail Close-ups:
The Coast (link) LED-Lenser (Model P-7) 190-lumen light
(One nice thing about the LED-Lenser is that the first button-push gives you bright 190-lumen light, then the next button-push gives you a dim, battery-saving, non-blinding, light option. The scope rings hold the 'focus' ring in 'spotlight' mode.)
(One thing - I should have got the black one):
Sights:
- Burris Fastfire-II - http://www.burrisoptics.com/fastfire.html
LaserMax UniMax Rail-mount Pistol Laser - http://www.lasermax.com/product.php?id=104
B-Square Rossi Puma quick-detach mount - http://secure.armorholdings.com/b-squar ... ifles.html
I switched the Burris mount screw so the knob was on the left, keeping the ejection (& iron-sight) area uncluttered:
View through Sights (laser dot is brighter center part, co-incident with Holo-dot):
Gun with only the Sights:
Gun with Sights & Light:
Here's the Marlin for comparison:
The three-shot group which follows was shot at 50 yards - nothing all that exciting, even for a 'levergun' - - - BUT WAS SHOT IN PITCH BLACK CONDITIONS AT MIDNIGHT... Sure, a gizmo-equipped $2,000 AR-15 Shorty with night-vision CAN do that or better - but with blinding muzzle flash, deafening muzzle blast (unless you actually want to wear hearing protectors whenever you go out to check your livestock), and four or five times the cost. Hopefully, I can 'hit the quarter' next time I shoot in the dark...
The one modification I've made since the project was to put on one of StevesGunz "safety delete" buttons (http://store.stevesgunz.com/index.php?m ... ducts_id=4); only took about 5 minutes to install.