Tonya the Tantal has evokes familiar feelings.
I am most reminded of my very first rifle.
A Mini-14. A 181 series, if I recall correctly.
I chose it because it had a Choate combination flash-hider/front-sight/bayonet lug already mounted and a pistol-gripped folding stock. Not the same stock as Skeezer and FuzzyGeff got from Choate.
The Tantal has the same basic feel to it.
Similar weights too, my Mini was tubby.
I'm a bit amused because my goal with the Mini was to get as close to my dream girl as I could; a Galil.
Galil's then, as now, were ridiculously expensive.
Well I've finally gotten a Galil equivalent here. .22ish caliber, bipod, folding stock, based on an AK...
Odd that I kept circling this drain and finding the Galilesque.
I have one of the early Mini-14 stainless that came with the 10:1 twist rifling. It shot great with the frangible 50 gr and 52 gr bullets but anything heavier was all over the place and 62 gr and heavier would keyhole. I swapped out the barrel with a 8:1 twist and it is a sweet sub-moa shooter now.
ReplyDeleteMy Mini had the 1:10 as well. Hated the M855 we got at the gun show.
DeleteThe zero wandered between range sessions too. In hindsight, I think it was the Choate muzzle device shifting around with heating and cooling cycles. We abused our Mini's... Might have even burnt out the barrel doing gratuitous mag dumps too.
I didn't get the Choate stock for my Mini-14, I got the Ram-Line. It is still on there... Although the Mini-14 hasn't been outside the house in over 10 years. Hard to believe the 1994 AWB has been sunset for almost 14 years now.
ReplyDelete