Same here so you might find this handy.
https://www.harborfreight.com/1-in-x-10-ft-self-bonding-super-tape-61414.html
Not quite as good as some of the more expensive rescue silicone tapes, but usually good enough.
Some people have a knack for it. A similar one is getting seat belt buckles half or fully reversed on the belt. Usually takes me at least 1 set of vise grips to get the belt folded and force fed back through the buckle slots, but somehow a person managed to twist it in the course of being a passenger.
Ive run a duffle-bag strap as a sling in a pinch. It sucked compared to a decent sling- but worked.
From the last two weeks. Not slingage but things in general—
Notes from the last two weeks of Patrol Rifle:
I don’t remember what brand this rifle was but I sure gave it points for having a pinned gas block (instead of just set-screwed. But for some reason the gas tube pin was backing out. I pushed it back in and staked it with an automatic centerpunch.
This seemed an insecure way to attach a single-point sling, in fact is was brought to me because to the shooter it was a mystery piece rattling around on the buffer tube. In our classes, single-points seem to be at the end of their popularity.
I really, really don’t like unnecessary sharp edges. This flash hider has plenty. Should we be handling the gun by the FH, not really, but when guys are moving and shooting and who knows what, why have skin rippers.
One of the venues we use has new V-Tac barriers, blow molded from what I would say is polyethylene—very low melting point. SAW gunners (not part of our program!) rest their barrel on the ledge and push up against the barrier with the gas block. Interesting results.
Candidate for the makes-the-least-sense muzzle device—a fake suppressor. Not a fake one, really, but a “training” suppressor. Oh, this agency has the real ones…… I guess they are worried about wearing them out maybe…? Or letting them out? In this particular state the legislation regarding police and suppressors is very constipated. For police use they are restricted to (something like) “special applications”. In other words, “patrol” can’t have them. I think the agency might have been worried about running afoul of state law if someone were to come along and say “training is not a special application”. In training—fire thousands of rounds with a “not” suppressor. One the street—fire one or two rounds in extremis and have no idea what the POI will be, have no idea if the gun is going to function right with it, and do not be expecting gas-in-the-face. In training, fire thousands of rounds and risk hearing damage so you can be real quiet IF you fire the rifle in a situation.
I am the brake Nazi. We are getting fewer and fewer brakes in class but this week had no fewer than five. Four, I was able to change out for A1 flash hiders, which I buy out of my own pocket and give to students. The fifth was pinned and welded so he got to use one of my shrouds all week.
This was interesting. This guy was in last week’s class (and slipped through the Brake Nazi’s net, but not this week!) On the last day we got rained on and rained out, and he did not get a chance between last week and Monday this week to maintain his rifle. Verdigris went on a rampage.
The photographs displayed are indeed disturbing !
I could see 20’ of webbing in 1990 - but with so many good slings available cheap this century, that’s steroid-level STOOPID these days!
Back to slings, I’ve been liking these two, although one all-time fave is the V-Tac.
From Finland, worth a look if and when they are back in stock: https://www.varusteleka.com/en/product/sarma-tst-2p-rk-quick-adjust-rifle-sling/59724[/url---------------------
Also, we had one barrel that was keyholing. It took the erosion gage all the way from the front and the back. This is a .220 rod. No one’s fault, just a well-shot gun. The problem is that being a piston gun it has to have that brand of piston barrel and it might be better for the guy to just get a “standard” top end but then he has to replace the carrier too. Not sure but it might have been a SIG-- these things come to me in a rush sometimes. I wanted to borescope it but never got the chance.
Speaking of SIG there were two in class for sure; both had that abomitable setup where the the hammer pin can only be the hammer pin (center detent groove only) and the trigger pin can only be the trigger pin (single outboard groove only; have seen one now with two outboard grooves but still no central groove). Even worse, there was one or two non-SIG guns that had this same setup. Kidding no, I have seen a SIG come from the factory with these pins pre-switched for you malfunctioning convenience. Talked to my friend at SIG and he said, “no idea why”. I could see him over the phone rolling his eyes.
Is the brake with your shroud a BCM comp?
Can you imagine the headaches the 1907 slings must have given Drill Sergeants/Instructors?
Andy
I believe it is a BCM. Of some brakes I’ve heard guys say “but they aren’t as bad as some others”. I’ll grant you that some are only awful while most are bloody awful but the distinction is pretty hard to make most times. If the product is designed with a blast face or two or three, with pass-through holes desiged to redirect blast in any direction other that the bore axis, the Brake Nazi is coming for a visit, but with a solution.
I did not mean to detour my own sling thread into a brake thread, so:
Perhaps three times this summer at class and once at a match, I spotted guys whose sling end was about to pull through a buckle as in the pic below and drop the gun. When I can’t have a couple inches of material there, I will often heat a nail and burn a hole through it close to the end. Then I put a zip ties through there or even just a stub of para cord that with the help of a little torch from the cigar store, becomes a rivet.
Does doubling the strap back though the buckle normally work when there is enough strap to do it? I know this isn’t a sling but the principle is the same.
Andy
Yes. (Pardon me, back to minding my own business.)
In addition to the yes from Disciple, a not uncommon issue will be the webbing thickness stacking up to make the last pass through the buckle slot difficult to impossible.
After buying/trying about every sling out there over the years, one of my favorites is the Ferro Concepts sling.
It adjusts easily and does the sling role quite well for me.
Yes, that works. Just back from our first class of 2023, will post some pics and comments soon.
Things that came my way this week as Armorer in a Patrol Rifle class.
Dear manufacturers: why do you use straight pins when you know it’s inferior? Is that twenty-seven cents per gun you save really worth it? You know darn well (I would think) that with straight pins, the difference between “so loose it falls out in the box on the way to the dealer” and “so tight we almost broke it getting it and you will never get it out” is less than half a thousandth. With a tapered pin as originally designed, that half-thou would be, the tapered pin goes in another .020 shallower or deeper.
I don’t like mentioning brands because anyone, any brand, can make a mistake. But this company has been chronic about this since they started making their “AR-556” model.
Dear manufacturers: At this point we all know all about staking and carrier key screws. Why not spend (again) another twenty-seven cents and use US-made screws and…… obviously you have a staking setup of some kind. Why not adjust your stakes from “ersatz” to “actually effective”? Brand “R” again, and again, chronic.
The stuck cartridge was unrelated—a case that had somehow become so deformed it was a press-fit into the bolt face recess. Unrelated to gun, I believe.
When people who don’t run guns, make guns. I don’t think this is a characteristic that is necessarily brand-specific (although this is the same rifle as above), but—it is a charging handle that has some downward wobble bumping into the front of a stock slider, giving some shooters the feeling that they have cycled the bolt all the way to the rear when in fact it is far from it (depending upon stock slider position). Result— no round chambered and probably a bolt-over-base malfunction. Top round becomes deformed and then, when the remedy is attempted, it becomes stuck as hell.
Nothing wrong (in my opinion) with fixing this by chamfering the top front of the slider and even the bottom of the charging handle.
The value in being Armorer: you see that which has heretofore been thought impossible.
“I’m getting stovepipes, several per mag”. Weak spring under the extractor or ejector, I figured. Extractor had a D-ring so look at the ejector: press it in with something to test the strength of the spring. This one was weak and mushy, and the spring came out in multiple pieces! I’ve sure seen weak ones but never like this, virtually “shattered”. It’s a wonder it worked at all! DPMS.
BTW, if this was you and you were in the middle of nowhere with no replacement, your selector detent spring is the same part. Swaparoo may leave you with lighter efforts on the selector but at least you’ll have a functioning ejector.
“Don’t shoot these unless you absolutely have to”:
Steel from 2017 holding up well, 9/16 AR500 steel.
There is a lot to take in with that post, thanks for sharing it. Classes are always great for not only pushing yourself and your abilities but realizing fail points from others. I will say good on the people that took the class, now they have more knowledge then they did before, and it failed in a classroom environment where it didn’t end up with them causing more harm then good. I think this just echoes what this forum has been about since I started lurking here which is quality information from people who not only care, but take practical experience and try to relay that to others.
Patrol Rifle classes are now over for the 2025 season. Brakes continue to show up in class even though in the class info they are clearly prohibido, but it seems that often, individual officers don’t get the memo or don’t read it. Sometimes they just don’t know a brake from a flash hider-- no one is born knowing these things and some of our guys come in pretty new or completely new to the rifle. We work around it by replacing it with an A1 flash hider, or put a shroud on it if it’s pinned and welded, and if no shroud is available, put the guy at the end of the line so he’s only irritating / endangering / diminishing the class experience of one or two students instead of two or four. We ask the student to bring something else for the rest of the class. It doesn’t get enforced to the level I would like to see, I mean, how ya gonna kick a guy out because he didn’t get the memo or understand what a brake is…? And yet on another level it could be seen as reaffirming the myth that brakes are cool and make you a great shooter. And that they aren’t a hazard to your fellow shooter / teammates / family, etc. They are.
Last two classes, we hit a 7.5" barrel harmonic I guess, and had three in one class. We hardly ever see them and there is so much to un-recommend them and yet in another coincidental harmonic of circumstances, all three shooters shot them well and shocking, to me, none of them had function issues. That is kinda rare in my thankfully limited experience. Also in the last two classes, three or four 11.5’s. Last class of the year, a guy with a 20" gun (also not very common in class these days) happened to be bracketed on the line with an 11.5 on each side. The 20" sounded almost suppressed by comparison. They are so… damned… loud. And they have that weird thing where they make a great big flash about 50% of the time, randomly. And of course the “flashy” shots are much louder yet, as the flash makes its own noise in addition to the extreme report of the rifle.
I re-rigged several slings at a bout the usual rate, maybe 2-5 per class. The MagPul slings with the sliding adjuster show up quite a bit, but are rarely set up right. Two last week were set up in such a way that the range of adjustment was about 1.5", because the slider was blocked. I usually completely remove the separate piece at the end and return it to the student, it is superfluous in my opinion, other than that I think they are good slings.
Our classes would be seen by some as being overly basic and slow. You could say we discourage shooting at a rate at which you can’t make the hits. If you can, okeedokee but we’re not pressuring anyone to see how fast they can pull the trigger. Hits are emphasized; speed takes second place but the qual is on the clock, not overly generous but enough time to get the hits if you have absorbed the instruction. There is no shooting for sound effects like I see so much of on YT. Nothing against people who can shoot 4-5 a second and get the hits but we want to see the hits first and foremost. Suppressive fire is kinda generally discouraged in law enforcement, I think…
Most rifles in our classes are rather pedestrian although we got some outfits that are more well-heeled and have more expensive and elaborate gear (usually federal). Plus the guys that can rock their personal gun on duty, they range from mild to wild.
There is some movement after Day One, and some unconventional positions.
I regret that I didn’t get any pics of our steel this year but I know it’s still good and has plenty of life left in it.
I’m bringing this rig to one of your classes!! 
You are pre-barred from our classes! 
One thing I was pleased to find last week. A NIB Saint was being offered for sale from one student to the other, after I had told the potential buyer the day before (upon being asked for suggestions) that I was not super-impressed by Saints. Well I gave this one a once over and was able to give it a clean bill of health. First one I’ve seen with a true 5.56 chamber. It had an O-ring under the extractor, staking was good, and FCG was perfect.
That’s the trick with springfield. The don’t build the same gun twice!!
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