So, I bought a Mossberg 500, and decided that I could not just leave the thing alone. I bought it in a configuration that would facilitate me leaving it alone: it had a railed fore-end, a pistol grip with a telescoping stock, an extended magazine, and ghost ring sights. But, being the mall ninja that I am, I had to dress up my little princess. The things that caught my attention were made by ATI: the Talon 5-sided Fore-end and the Halo Heat Shield. So here is my quick evaluation of each; by LaserLyte: the Kryptonite Center-mass green laser sight; and by FAB defense (via the Mako Group): the Instinctive Pointing Foregrip and the Grip Position Support/Handstop. I am posting threads for quick evaluations of each.
The ATI Talon 5-sided Fore-end.
Anything with rails is fun. The more rails, the more fun… even when having more rails actually prevents you from using any of the rails! This, at least, is the philosophy of ATI.
The ATI Talon 5-sided fore-end has, as the name implies, places for 5 different Picatinny rails, each up to 8 inches long, 45 degrees from one another. This equates to 40 inches of real estate for all the plastic do-dads and thing-a-mabobs that the most well-read Call-of-Duty-playing mall ninja can think up. Except that it can’t. The Picatinny rails do not come with the fore-end. You buy them separately, and they slide each onto a smaller rail (I’ll call them ATI rails, to distinguish them from Picatinny style rails) that is integral on the fore-end. There are 8” and 2” Picatinny rails of this variety. The Picatinny rails tend to fit things onto them only if the adjacent ATI rails are not occupied by a Picatinny rail. This means that the 40-inch mega-capacity is really only a mere 24”, only two feet, of usable space to put crap that you probably don’t need, but desperately want. The 8” rails are attached by two screws, each one fits into one of 16 threaded matching holes drilled through the ATI rails. Technically, I guess one could actually fudge around the position of the 8-inch rails, and get some extra 2-inch rails to extend the total railage to 30 inches. But I wasn’t going to do that. I got three 8” rails, and that is more than enough for me on this particular fore-end. But if you are more into rails than rail-mounted accessories, you could do the 8”+2” setup on all five sides, and then you’d have 50”, that is four-foot-two-inches, of rail real estate.
So what did I put on all this space? I put a Mako/FAB Defense Instinctive Pointing Foregrip on the lower rail, and a Mako/FAB Defense Grip Position Support/Handstop on the left rail. I am hoping to eventually put on a Surefire X300 on the right rail, but I am not made of money, so that will have to wait. I would have put on my LaserLyte Kryptonite Center-Mass green laser, but problems arose that made that inadvisable.
Installation of the fore-end onto the fore-end tube was rather easy. But there are some issues. The first is not ATI’s fault, but Mossberg’s. The original plastic fore-ends are heated when they are installed, making them shrink a tiny bit, fitting very tight onto the tube. Also, the threaded “nut” requires either a proprietary tool (which is available through ATI), or some sort of thick, flat piece of metal. The finish on my Mossberg’s fore-end pieces seemed to be marred simply by sneezing on it too hard (again, not ATI’s fault). So care should be taken if you chose to replace your fore-end. It is best if you use a pair of tongue-and-groove pliers to hold the plastic fore-end when you remove the nut, it is far easier. Also, one should have a piece of 1” PVC pipe, or some comparable piece of soft, long material to help push the fore-end tube out of the original plastic fore-end.
The Talon 5-sided Fore-end comes with plastic adapters for three different makes of shotguns; the Remington 870, the Mossberg 500, and the Winchester 1300. The adapters affix simply, and the whole assemblage fits onto the tube perfectly. But that is where the perfection ends. When I attempted to Put the barrel back on, I noticed that the chamber end of the muzzle was too thick to accommodate the thick plastic of the fore-end’s adapters. I had to “customize” it. This was done with a Dremel tool. [a little-known fact: The Dremel tool was invented by God Himself, and given to Moses on Mount Sinai, so that Moses could shave down the edges of the 10 commandments just enough to fit them snuggly into the Ark of the Covenant.] The customization resulted in the top of the rear adapter being split lengthwise. After I got the barrel on, I attempted to rack the slide, only to find it difficult because now the front adapter was too thick on the top. Thank God for the Dremel tool.
Now that full customization has been performed, I was able to reaffix the barrel back to the receiver. Then came another emanation of the less-than-perfect fit. Where the original plastic fore-end has very little room between its lateral sides and the barrel, the ATI Talon has flared upper edges. This allows the fore-end to rotate more freely around the magazine tube than when the original fore-end was in place. The fore-end guides that connect the fore-end to the action are pinned in, but have a little play in each direction to allow installation. This play is expressed so strongly in the ATI Talon 5-Sided Fore-end (at least on my particular shotgun) that it is inadvisable to put a laser-aiming devise on the fore-end as the orientation relative to the barrel will change fairly dramatically. This may be resultant from my customization, but that was itself required for the fore-end to work at all.
When I went to the range, I noticed that the lack of snugness along the sides of the barrel allowed for and interesting phenomenon: in the circumstances of a lose grip, the recoil moves the fore-end back slightly, exposing the brass of the shell. This is easily prevented by a competent grip on the fore-end. But in the circumstance of an injured hand or forearm, this would be harder to keep from happening.
As far as doing the job of a fore-end, allowing the user to cycle the action, the ATI Talon 5-Sided Fore-end performs the job. But it takes a lot of material to do that job. A single 8” rail with the two mounting screws weighs 2.2 ounces. The three rails, mounting screws and the fore-end together weigh 14.8 ounces, about twice what the original fore-end weighed. Along with my plastic affixes, the entire fore-end assemblage weighed 17.4 ounces, a little over a pound.
There is nothing other than the handstop that cannot be put on the original fore-end. It is heavier and it is a much thicker piece of hardware than the original equipment as well. On top of that, there are the problems of fit. All these things incited a bit of buyer’s remorse after I finally got to use the Talon fore-end. But that only happens when I am not looking at the shotgun. One should not completely overlook aesthetics. The Talon is a very mean looking item, and if you can get a more snug fit on the gun, you may be able to get a laser sight to consistently aim, and attach something more to this Mecca for rail-mounted devise. Paired with the Halo Heat Shield, a Mossberg 500 ends up looking like some sort of gun that you might pick up in a Gears of War game. But, paired with the ATI Halo Heat Shield, you now have an extra pound and a half of more-or-less useless stuff.
Like the Halo Heat Shield, this ATI product gets two thumbs up, as well as the eight remaining finger as bonus points, when it comes to presentation. It helps the shotgun look like it was designed for the Master Chief specifically to destroy endless waves of Flood. Unfortunately, Halo is a video game, the Master Chief is a fictional character, and the Flood is a space-age adaptation of the old Voodoo-inspired horror-movie zombie (which doesn’t exist). In that light, the Talon 5-sided Fore-end is a fairly weight expensive bit of window dressing that does not add a whole hell-of-a-lot of functionality to the shotgun. If functionality is your main goal, I suggest you explore your options before buying. If killer looks are your goal, then buy! Buy! Buy!
The ATI Talon 5-sided Fore-end.
Anything with rails is fun. The more rails, the more fun… even when having more rails actually prevents you from using any of the rails! This, at least, is the philosophy of ATI.
The ATI Talon 5-sided fore-end has, as the name implies, places for 5 different Picatinny rails, each up to 8 inches long, 45 degrees from one another. This equates to 40 inches of real estate for all the plastic do-dads and thing-a-mabobs that the most well-read Call-of-Duty-playing mall ninja can think up. Except that it can’t. The Picatinny rails do not come with the fore-end. You buy them separately, and they slide each onto a smaller rail (I’ll call them ATI rails, to distinguish them from Picatinny style rails) that is integral on the fore-end. There are 8” and 2” Picatinny rails of this variety. The Picatinny rails tend to fit things onto them only if the adjacent ATI rails are not occupied by a Picatinny rail. This means that the 40-inch mega-capacity is really only a mere 24”, only two feet, of usable space to put crap that you probably don’t need, but desperately want. The 8” rails are attached by two screws, each one fits into one of 16 threaded matching holes drilled through the ATI rails. Technically, I guess one could actually fudge around the position of the 8-inch rails, and get some extra 2-inch rails to extend the total railage to 30 inches. But I wasn’t going to do that. I got three 8” rails, and that is more than enough for me on this particular fore-end. But if you are more into rails than rail-mounted accessories, you could do the 8”+2” setup on all five sides, and then you’d have 50”, that is four-foot-two-inches, of rail real estate.
So what did I put on all this space? I put a Mako/FAB Defense Instinctive Pointing Foregrip on the lower rail, and a Mako/FAB Defense Grip Position Support/Handstop on the left rail. I am hoping to eventually put on a Surefire X300 on the right rail, but I am not made of money, so that will have to wait. I would have put on my LaserLyte Kryptonite Center-Mass green laser, but problems arose that made that inadvisable.
Installation of the fore-end onto the fore-end tube was rather easy. But there are some issues. The first is not ATI’s fault, but Mossberg’s. The original plastic fore-ends are heated when they are installed, making them shrink a tiny bit, fitting very tight onto the tube. Also, the threaded “nut” requires either a proprietary tool (which is available through ATI), or some sort of thick, flat piece of metal. The finish on my Mossberg’s fore-end pieces seemed to be marred simply by sneezing on it too hard (again, not ATI’s fault). So care should be taken if you chose to replace your fore-end. It is best if you use a pair of tongue-and-groove pliers to hold the plastic fore-end when you remove the nut, it is far easier. Also, one should have a piece of 1” PVC pipe, or some comparable piece of soft, long material to help push the fore-end tube out of the original plastic fore-end.
The Talon 5-sided Fore-end comes with plastic adapters for three different makes of shotguns; the Remington 870, the Mossberg 500, and the Winchester 1300. The adapters affix simply, and the whole assemblage fits onto the tube perfectly. But that is where the perfection ends. When I attempted to Put the barrel back on, I noticed that the chamber end of the muzzle was too thick to accommodate the thick plastic of the fore-end’s adapters. I had to “customize” it. This was done with a Dremel tool. [a little-known fact: The Dremel tool was invented by God Himself, and given to Moses on Mount Sinai, so that Moses could shave down the edges of the 10 commandments just enough to fit them snuggly into the Ark of the Covenant.] The customization resulted in the top of the rear adapter being split lengthwise. After I got the barrel on, I attempted to rack the slide, only to find it difficult because now the front adapter was too thick on the top. Thank God for the Dremel tool.
Now that full customization has been performed, I was able to reaffix the barrel back to the receiver. Then came another emanation of the less-than-perfect fit. Where the original plastic fore-end has very little room between its lateral sides and the barrel, the ATI Talon has flared upper edges. This allows the fore-end to rotate more freely around the magazine tube than when the original fore-end was in place. The fore-end guides that connect the fore-end to the action are pinned in, but have a little play in each direction to allow installation. This play is expressed so strongly in the ATI Talon 5-Sided Fore-end (at least on my particular shotgun) that it is inadvisable to put a laser-aiming devise on the fore-end as the orientation relative to the barrel will change fairly dramatically. This may be resultant from my customization, but that was itself required for the fore-end to work at all.
When I went to the range, I noticed that the lack of snugness along the sides of the barrel allowed for and interesting phenomenon: in the circumstances of a lose grip, the recoil moves the fore-end back slightly, exposing the brass of the shell. This is easily prevented by a competent grip on the fore-end. But in the circumstance of an injured hand or forearm, this would be harder to keep from happening.
As far as doing the job of a fore-end, allowing the user to cycle the action, the ATI Talon 5-Sided Fore-end performs the job. But it takes a lot of material to do that job. A single 8” rail with the two mounting screws weighs 2.2 ounces. The three rails, mounting screws and the fore-end together weigh 14.8 ounces, about twice what the original fore-end weighed. Along with my plastic affixes, the entire fore-end assemblage weighed 17.4 ounces, a little over a pound.
There is nothing other than the handstop that cannot be put on the original fore-end. It is heavier and it is a much thicker piece of hardware than the original equipment as well. On top of that, there are the problems of fit. All these things incited a bit of buyer’s remorse after I finally got to use the Talon fore-end. But that only happens when I am not looking at the shotgun. One should not completely overlook aesthetics. The Talon is a very mean looking item, and if you can get a more snug fit on the gun, you may be able to get a laser sight to consistently aim, and attach something more to this Mecca for rail-mounted devise. Paired with the Halo Heat Shield, a Mossberg 500 ends up looking like some sort of gun that you might pick up in a Gears of War game. But, paired with the ATI Halo Heat Shield, you now have an extra pound and a half of more-or-less useless stuff.
Like the Halo Heat Shield, this ATI product gets two thumbs up, as well as the eight remaining finger as bonus points, when it comes to presentation. It helps the shotgun look like it was designed for the Master Chief specifically to destroy endless waves of Flood. Unfortunately, Halo is a video game, the Master Chief is a fictional character, and the Flood is a space-age adaptation of the old Voodoo-inspired horror-movie zombie (which doesn’t exist). In that light, the Talon 5-sided Fore-end is a fairly weight expensive bit of window dressing that does not add a whole hell-of-a-lot of functionality to the shotgun. If functionality is your main goal, I suggest you explore your options before buying. If killer looks are your goal, then buy! Buy! Buy!
