Hiya there. Y-man again. Sorry I have been away for so long. I have been very busy and have been away from access to the internet for some time now. Sadly, I have been away from my beloved shotgun too!

Well, I’ve been back for a few weeks now and have done some further modifications to my Mossberg 500A.

All these modifications have been done mainly during this period because my country is going to have elections next year. The politicians have started stock-piling arms and ammo: these they will use to arm private “armies”(more like gangs!) which will be used to intimidate the public and the electoral bodies, and who will be used to fight other groups of thugs, as well as assassinations of rivals. All this is not very open, but it happens. It is not as if there will be running battles in the streets, but the period is normally one of heightened tension. There will be some robberies, shoot-outs, some attacks, assassinations (Some as gruesome as pouring acid down the throat of a political rival…)

So, because of this tension, even 12ga ammo (Even birdshot) has become so scarce and hard to find. Prices have gone up for the few packs one can get around: as much as $60 for a pack of 25 12ga Birdshot shells now! And even this is difficult to come by nowadays. So, I haven’t been doing a whole lot of shooting, but just sitting at home almost each day after work: cleaning that shotgun (That shotgun is spotless now!), thinking up new improvements to the firearm, and to my ammunition. (Of course: I do NOT load my firearm when doing these activities: safety FIRST!)

First, I decided to stop bothering with all those exotic sight “systems” I have been toying with. So I used a Truglo sight, like this one:

and basically JB-Welded it to my front muzzle area as a good front sight. I have had a bead before, which did not work for me, and had tried several options which also had not worked.

This one looks good.

I realized that a lot of the issues I was having with lack of accuracy with my shotgun had to do with either not having a rear sight at all, or having one that was not just good enough.

Check out my BAD day at the range here…

So I worked on the idea of fixing a rear sight on the heatshield. I welded a nut on it, gauging the elevation and direction all by hand and one eye closed 🙂

Then I glued unto this nut two bits of green light-gathering plastic from a Turkey sight I had discarded a while ago. See new aligned sight picture here:

Well, now: I have my rear and front sights ready: notice how in the sight picture the front red dot can be seen between the rear green dots?

I went to the range today and my sights work! Still needing some “polishing”, but at least, I’m putting “lead on the head”(This is a 1-foot “target” at 25 yards, free-hand shooting. Using 11 of my home-made slugs.)

For the sake of nostalgia, I gathered and collated videos of my progress in shooting over the last three years, which you can see here…

I have also radically improved my home-fabricated slugs, with a lot of progress with my home-made slug designs and casting. Check out my latest work here…The inspiration is the “LYMAN” type slugs. Note how I had to fabricate my mold?

I know these are not new things: and most people in America and some parts of Europe take them for granted, but consider that I am working with crude basic tools, and having to fabricate many things from scratch.

“Life should be a hoot! Blow your horn!”

Many thanks, y’all!