Here's an M-4 picture

[DonP]

"Show Rats"

Any of you that also have the addiction of working on old cars know what a "Show Rat" is.

Show Rats are the cars that only live in heated garages and travel to shows in a covered trailers and never seee the real road. They are never driven the way they were designed and they have about as much personality as Great Grandpa's polished badminton trophy on the fireplace mantle. It seems that shooting sports has the equivalent.

I'm not saying we shouldn't take good care of our equipment and give it the care it deserves or that you can't be a great shooter and still have a show quality rifle.

I'm just a little cynical about all the guys at the range with a full boat AR-15 or M-Forgery, Harris Bipod adapter, high end scope, special fluted barrel, ten or more 40 round mags in their camo bandoleers and still can't hit COM at 50 yards. Then they seem more focused on polishing the rifle after running one or two mags through it than trying to center their POI.

I had one of them shooting at the station next to me at an outdoor range come over to ask "what" was I using to make my beat up old AR shoot COM! The idea of "practice not polish" never occurred to him.

Too many Show Rats at the range and we need more riflemen and women (Rifle-people) like the owner of the rifle at the top of the thread?

OK, semi rant mode off.

Here's to every trooper that's out there on the line with a beat up old A-2 or M-4 and knows how to use it the way Gene Stoner intended it to be used. Salud!

Don P.

 

[uglygun]

posted by dZ
the expedient military rifle camo jobs of late look like a couple o cans of flat krylon and some fern friskets. I gather wear and tear on the finish is not an issue

One of the widely used products is "bowflage" which is removable, nice in the fact that it isn't permanent and because if you decide to change patterns you won't have an accumulation of paint over time leading to a thick buildup on the rifle.

Here's a pic of two of my bowflage'd rifles, the one with more green in the pattern is my AR10 and the one primarily in brown is my AR15.

The stuff does tend to wear a bit though, it's not like Krylon at all which is an epoxy based paint. The Bowflage can actually be scraped off with a fingernail and it has a sort of chaulky feel to it until it does wear down a bit from handling and regular use.


I painted my rifles because I'm a Ca. resident and when I'm out shooting, well, I'd just rather not have people readily identifying my rifles from a distance because of the distinctive outline, if I'm not shooting/blasting up the place(usually I'm not) then they hardly know the difference between if I've got a bolt action rifle or something like a Mini-14. If they want to know what I've got, they will have to get within about 35 yards or so before they can make out a bit more of the rifle's outline and by then I should know that I've gotten somebody's interest and shift my attention to whatever it is that has got them so curious.

posted by DonP
I'm just a little cynical about all the guys at the range with a full boat AR-15 or M-Forgery, Harris Bipod adapter, high end scope, special fluted barrel, ten or more 40 round mags in their camo bandoleers and still can't hit COM at 50 yards. Then they seem more focused on polishing the rifle after running one or two mags through it than trying to center their POI.

Hey, I'm there with ya. The thing that gets me is how a lot of them don't understand the concept of Point Blank Range and how to set a zero inorder to maximize their point blank range.

 

[dZ]

SPR:

 

[dZ]

side view:

 

[dZ]

does bowflage come in lime green?

 

[uglygun]

Yeah, actually it kinda does. There is a light green color and a dark green color. Depending on how you apply them, the lighter color being sorta transparent, the greens can kinda change colors a bit and it can also get kinda funky as the surface colors wear through and expose colors underneath(remember, it's removable and not super durable).


Here's a close up of my AR10's receiver area where you can see some of the colors coming together,

 

[JIH]

Where's a good place to get this "bowflage" stuff? How long does it last? How much of a can is used per application? Is it all in woodland camo or is there other camo available?

Sorry to bother with questions, but wasn't getting good results on Yahoo searches.

 

[uglygun]

It comes in little cans(about the size of the small "testors" modeling paint cans), isn't very cheap(3 bucks per can I believe), and it's not all that durable. A 3 color pattern, requiring 3 seperate cans, will likely be enough to do 2 rifles maybe 3 of them depending on how you lay on the color.

I guess such is the price one pays when they want to have the an easily removable finish.

Colors are pretty broad, 2-3 greens, 2 browns(sand and earth red), black, white, and one or two greys.

The pattern is up to the person layin the paint.