My wife and I will be spending this Thanksgiving in Austin, Texas where our youngest of our three sons and family live, and where our eldest son and wife are expecting their first child; a little girl, our fifth grandchild. After raising three sons we learned a lot from observing […]

The story is basically me looking back over the past few years and wondering what the heck was I thinking, and how many times did I guess wrong, and how many times did I change my mind about equipment and process. I actually opened some of the cabinet doors in […]

If you aren’t aware, Real Guns now resides in Maine; 3000 miles and a never too far cry from California. It was a move of necessity, if we were to maintain and contribute to a positive firearms presence and not have our efforts narrowed by political interference. This is our […]

S&W .22 Invertonator Like most of you, not a days go by that I don’t find myself feeling the void left by the departure of the .22 RemingtonJet. Those slumping shoulders, and that near .22 rim fire performance, held the potential for a true classic cartridge. The 22 Jet was […]

Sometimes I long for the good old days, when wars were cold and the only enemy of consequence, in the words of Dr. Strangelove’s Maj. T.J. ‘King’ Kong, was those darn Rooskies. I have a hunch there is a little Russian revenge behind the availability of the Model 1895 Nagant […]

It was a little chilly at the range, and a little overcast and the 17-357 RG prototype was a little uncooperative, but all and all, the combination performed admirably. The combination was able to push a 20 grain bullet over 3,300 fps and a 25 grain bullet at slightly over […]

I arrived at a point in the project were things didn’t work and the problems and correctives actions were not obvious. I had to decide if all would end up in a box at the back of a shop cabinet or if I had enough retained enthusiasm to see it […]

Before moving on to the cartridge and load development phase of this project, I wanted to cover the converted T/C Contender, a firearm I believe is optimal for the 17-357 RG. The barrel began life as a 357 Magnum chamber, a configuration which is of no practical consequence, as the […]

This has not been a particularly fun filled project. There is an odd phenomena that occurs with skilled crafts people when they progressively miss their own commitments; first they are apologetic, then they are resigned to corrective action, then they stop answering the phone or start blaming their customer.  I […]

I was really surprised at the amount of mail I got from people who thought the 17-357 RG was just me goofing around again with a fictitious cartridge. Well, if you’ll forgive the pre fire formed shoulder, it looks a lot like the gem to the right and it is, […]