A novel my wife was reading tonight revealed a new type of never-before-seen niche-gun.
As she read, my wife kept asking "This isn't even possible, is it?"
Her questions then turned into exclamations of "Why would ANYONE want do to ANYTHING like THAT?!?!?!"
I realize this is ficiton.
I know it's just a novel.
But man......
......Well, you'll see.........
The novel is "Iron Orchid" by Stuart Woods.
I'll summarize quite a bit, and quote only the really, really good parts.
A character needs a rifle for a 100-yard assassination attempt. Only he can't buy a rifle or steal one or nab one for some reason.
Instead, he decides to go the supersecret homemade master gunsmith route.
He's got a "virtually unused Walker PPK-S" .380 in stainless steel.
He's also got a "Douglas .380 rifle barrel" from an earlier purchase.
So, he "cut down the rifle barrel to sixteen inches" and also "built a six-inch silencer to add to that."
He also "replaced the pistol's grip panel with an L-shaped piece of flat aluminum plating that came over the top of the gun."
He makes a "foldking stock" out of one-inch alloy that was "fixed to the plating by a single screw" so he could assemble and disassemble the whole thing "using a dime for a screwdriver."
Now, I can't figure why our supersecret homemade master gunsmith would ever be caught dead without a screwdriver or a Leatherman on his person.
But maybe using the dime for the screw driver is just part of the overall supersecret homemade master gunsmith "tacticool factor?"
He then puts a "6X18 Leupold zoom scope" on the little piece of the aluminum L that goes over the top of the gun, and replaces the regular barrel with the sixteen inch barrel with the six-inch silencer.
Dang....I forgot to ask Leupold for the zoom feature when I got my scope.
And finally, he carves an eight-inch wooden handguard and affixes it to the barrel.
Voila! He's created the supersecret homemade master gunsmith ersatz field-expedient sniper pistol-rifle.
To further enhance its performance, he handloads special ammo, using a "115 grain, pointed, lead-tipped bullet and cartridge packed with five grains of Unique powder."
Not only has he created the ersatz field-expedient sniper pistol-rifle, our supersecret homemade master gunsmith also has the arcane knowledge to push the .380 far beyond the "never exceed" loads for Unique listed in my reloading manual.
Of course, our supersecret homemade master gunsmith then has to sight in his ersatz field-expedient sniper pistol-rifle, which is another great scene.
He finds an isolated oak tree with a knot on the trunk about 8-inches in diameter.
He steps off 100 yards, and practices assembling and disassembling his sniper pistol-rifle.
Then, he gets serious.
First shot is a foot low and barely touches the right side of the trunk. "Part of that must be the trigger pull, he thought."
Second shot is also a foot low, but only six inches right.
He makes elevation adjustments and makes TWO CLICKS of windage adjustments and hits the bottom of the knot and "a little left."
Two more adjustments, and then he shoots a three-round group with all holes touching into the center of that knot on the oak tree. I suppose the Leupold zoom scope makes it easy to see .380 holes in dark wood at 100 yards.
And talk about MOA..... ...He's almost as good as some of the shooters who post on THR to tell us all about how they can shoot .25 MOA groups from standing with that old Mauser they accurized, or while bump-firing their FAL at 300 yards.
Finally, after confirming his sights, the supersecret homemade master gunsmith stretches his legs, inserts a new magazine (And the author DOES correctly use "magazine" instead of "clip) and tries a group "from an unbraced standing position."
His first shots are wide, but he manages to walk them in to the center, until the knot on the oak tree becomes just "a crater."
Dang.......That made me dizzy just keyboarding it all.
And I realize it's fiction. But wow.....just wow.
And I can't help but wonder how much it might cost me to make my very own .380 ersatz, field-expedient sniper pistol-rifle with a one-piece aluminum grip/scope mount that I could get sub-MOA groups at 100 yards with, using my Leupold zoom scope? Of course, I'd have to do my own super-deadly 115 grain lead-tipped reloads with 5 grains of Uniqe to get it to perform up to is lethal potential.
I'd probably start off with this pistol as the base, as shown in an earlier THR thread.
http://www.gunbroker.com/Auction/ViewItem.asp?Item=49207295
As she read, my wife kept asking "This isn't even possible, is it?"
Her questions then turned into exclamations of "Why would ANYONE want do to ANYTHING like THAT?!?!?!"
I realize this is ficiton.
I know it's just a novel.
But man......
......Well, you'll see.........The novel is "Iron Orchid" by Stuart Woods.
I'll summarize quite a bit, and quote only the really, really good parts.
A character needs a rifle for a 100-yard assassination attempt. Only he can't buy a rifle or steal one or nab one for some reason.
Instead, he decides to go the supersecret homemade master gunsmith route.
He's got a "virtually unused Walker PPK-S" .380 in stainless steel.
He's also got a "Douglas .380 rifle barrel" from an earlier purchase.
So, he "cut down the rifle barrel to sixteen inches" and also "built a six-inch silencer to add to that."
He also "replaced the pistol's grip panel with an L-shaped piece of flat aluminum plating that came over the top of the gun."
He makes a "foldking stock" out of one-inch alloy that was "fixed to the plating by a single screw" so he could assemble and disassemble the whole thing "using a dime for a screwdriver."
Now, I can't figure why our supersecret homemade master gunsmith would ever be caught dead without a screwdriver or a Leatherman on his person.
But maybe using the dime for the screw driver is just part of the overall supersecret homemade master gunsmith "tacticool factor?"
He then puts a "6X18 Leupold zoom scope" on the little piece of the aluminum L that goes over the top of the gun, and replaces the regular barrel with the sixteen inch barrel with the six-inch silencer.
Dang....I forgot to ask Leupold for the zoom feature when I got my scope.
And finally, he carves an eight-inch wooden handguard and affixes it to the barrel.
Voila! He's created the supersecret homemade master gunsmith ersatz field-expedient sniper pistol-rifle.
To further enhance its performance, he handloads special ammo, using a "115 grain, pointed, lead-tipped bullet and cartridge packed with five grains of Unique powder."
Not only has he created the ersatz field-expedient sniper pistol-rifle, our supersecret homemade master gunsmith also has the arcane knowledge to push the .380 far beyond the "never exceed" loads for Unique listed in my reloading manual.
Of course, our supersecret homemade master gunsmith then has to sight in his ersatz field-expedient sniper pistol-rifle, which is another great scene.
He finds an isolated oak tree with a knot on the trunk about 8-inches in diameter.
He steps off 100 yards, and practices assembling and disassembling his sniper pistol-rifle.
Then, he gets serious.
First shot is a foot low and barely touches the right side of the trunk. "Part of that must be the trigger pull, he thought."
Second shot is also a foot low, but only six inches right.
He makes elevation adjustments and makes TWO CLICKS of windage adjustments and hits the bottom of the knot and "a little left."
Two more adjustments, and then he shoots a three-round group with all holes touching into the center of that knot on the oak tree. I suppose the Leupold zoom scope makes it easy to see .380 holes in dark wood at 100 yards.
And talk about MOA.....
...He's almost as good as some of the shooters who post on THR to tell us all about how they can shoot .25 MOA groups from standing with that old Mauser they accurized, or while bump-firing their FAL at 300 yards.Finally, after confirming his sights, the supersecret homemade master gunsmith stretches his legs, inserts a new magazine (And the author DOES correctly use "magazine" instead of "clip) and tries a group "from an unbraced standing position."
His first shots are wide, but he manages to walk them in to the center, until the knot on the oak tree becomes just "a crater."
Dang.......That made me dizzy just keyboarding it all.
And I realize it's fiction. But wow.....just wow.
And I can't help but wonder how much it might cost me to make my very own .380 ersatz, field-expedient sniper pistol-rifle with a one-piece aluminum grip/scope mount that I could get sub-MOA groups at 100 yards with, using my Leupold zoom scope? Of course, I'd have to do my own super-deadly 115 grain lead-tipped reloads with 5 grains of Uniqe to get it to perform up to is lethal potential.
I'd probably start off with this pistol as the base, as shown in an earlier THR thread.
http://www.gunbroker.com/Auction/ViewItem.asp?Item=49207295
