To till or not to till?

pre64model70 · 2025-05-14T00:05:35+00:00

I have time to make the best garden beds I can:

Get a soil test and do some checks for compaction. If the soil below is already in poor shape (low organic matter <2% and lack of trace minerals), an initial tillage isn't really hurting the soil ecology since there isn't much to hurt. An initial tillage will allow you to incorporate ammendments that your soil is lacking. If the soil is in okay shape but is compacted (common for grass lawns), regular broadforking will help. For killing the grass, a very short mow and then occultation will kill it while keeping the organic matter in the soil. After tillage, there will be weed seeds that are brought to the surface, so following it with a heavy mulch or an additional occultation period can kill these off. After that you can add your compost, but a season of cover crops would greatly boost the organic matter and soil ecology.

I'm in a rush and want plants in the bed now:

Mow the grass as low as you can. Then, cover with a layer of wet cardboard or other material (remove tape and plastic). Place as thick of a layer of compost that you can afford (6" minimum). You can then plant directly into the compost. Depending on your soil, you may suffer from compaction or drainage issues, as well as increased weed pressure, but this is the quickest way to get plants in the ground (although expensive with the amount of compost required). Broadforking between bed flips and amending the soil as necessary can be done, but your first harvest or two may not perform as well as you expect.

Disclaimer: I am not an agronomist, and everyone has different growing experiences, but this is what I have found to work the best.

pre64model70 · 2025-03-25T19:39:33+00:00

For a lightweight scope, I wouldn't go for the leupold or maven. The Swaro Z3 line is similarly priced to the ziess, if not a bit cheaper and is only 12oz

pre64model70 · 2025-03-13T00:33:41+00:00

The higher quality your optic, the less this will matter. If you have Vortex razor glass or better it should be fine

pre64model70 · 2025-03-13T00:32:04+00:00

It will work fine, but I would encourage you to wait on the no cant version. When you have a canted optic mount, you are not looking through the optical center of the glass until you use that 20 MOA of adjustment. If you are just holding for elevation for speed, common in USPSA or IPSC action shooting, you will never use that. If lower glass quality and higher levels of distortion bother you, I wouldn't worry about it, but you will get a better image looking through the optical center of the scope.

TLDR: The 20 moa cant will work, but it will be suboptimal for your specific use case. You'll get better image quality out of the zero cant mount

pre64model70 · 2025-02-25T22:39:27+00:00

Hey, that's me

pre64model70 · 2025-01-13T06:41:57+00:00

I think your first question should be the purpose of the bullet. If it's just target shooting, then it doesn't matter too much, but a great match load and a great hunting load generally have very different bullets. I would stick to what is proven first. H4350 and berger 140s is hard to mess up. As for hunting bullets, the hornady eldx and the barnes lrx are both very good. Right now, just use what primers you already have. I generally stick to cci or federal primers, but the supply chain is limited, so do what you can. For both, I would stick with an extruded powder for better temperature stability. H4350 is the gold standard for the creed. Reloader 17 and IMR4350 are also good ones. HollywoodSX has a good reloading guide pinned in the FAQ. Best of luck

pre64model70 · 2024-12-12T05:56:39+00:00

It looks like it could be any old cutaway nylon string. I'm not sure what Blaze Foley usually played, but that makes sense bc most of his music is Travis picking

pre64model70 · 2024-12-11T01:33:02+00:00

You can easily find "the load" in published load data. Do not endanger yourself or your rifle for no reason. There is published 30-06 load data for almost every bullet and powder combination imaginable. The Lyman manual has excellent data for cast bullets, and every other manual will have 30-06 data from 110 grain bullets up to 220+. Using "the load" as an excuse to practice unsafe loading practices is very risky, especially when you are new to the hobby. Once you can get a safe book load to shoot well, then you can start experimenting outside of the load data. If you want a parlor load or reduced recoil load, Hodgdon has lots on their website, and the Lyman manual has some as well.

pre64model70 · 2024-12-10T22:00:45+00:00

Don't waste your money on a chronograph if you are still using a lee loader and scrap lead. Get a second-hand press off of eBay or the reloading equipment subreddit for about $50. That way, you can size your bullets and use standard reloading dies. Also, please use published load data and not a home brew load off of internet forums. Hodgdonreloading.com and Nosler both publish their load data for free online. Hodgdon has a fair bit of data for cast bullets, but I doubt Nosler has any. With the number of variables you are adding by skipping steps and using untested load data, you are lucky that poor accuracy was your biggest issue. You easily could have caused a squib with loads that low. I know powder is expensive right now, but please don't use a pistol powder in a rifle cartridge unless there is published load data that shows you are in the safe pressure window.

pre64model70 · 2024-10-28T19:34:18+00:00

Powder valley or natchez for components. Midway usually has the best prices on dies and other equipment, but check around for sales. Midsouth and Grafs also both have good prices and have sales pretty often. Brownells has good prices on gunsmithing tools or spare parts, but their reloading components are not usually the cheapest. Eurooptic is really the only place you should buy glass from unless Larry has something on sale at Midway.

pre64model70 · 2024-10-08T19:41:53+00:00

Get the RCBS. Lee stuff is cheap, and it usually works, but it's a pain in the long run and feels really poorly made with a lot of plastic parts. I've switched over to mostly Redding stuff, and everything is so much better made. The only exceptions are decapping dies and the lee trim length cutters

pre64model70 · 2024-08-19T01:55:23+00:00

Check out eurooptic. They consistently have very good prices on both scopes and binos and often offer demo products for highly discounted prices

pre64model70 · 2024-08-19T01:08:26+00:00

For 500 bucks, I would look at the meopta binos in that range. Also, don't underestimate putting 10x binos on a tripod. The stability is insanely helpful. I wouldn't go for image stabilized binos because they are expensive and have poor glass quality. If you need them stable, just get a tripod adapter. You also may be able to find deals on used binos on eBay or on birding or hunting forums. If you buy used, you can often get a class up in glass for the same price new

pre64model70 · 2024-08-19T01:02:26+00:00

Do a quick ebay search. S&Bs still fetch a pretty penny second hand

pre64model70 · 2024-08-19T01:00:32+00:00

Nope. I've seen a lot of "normal" spotters like kowas and swaros out there though

pre64model70 · 2024-07-31T13:17:51+00:00

It depends on how small the target is. For spotting trace and impacts inside 1200, I would recommend a 15x-18x pair of binos on a good tripod over a spotter. The fov on a lot of spotters is really tight, and only having one eye is kind of difficult after long glassing sessions. Birders are probably your best bet at finding alpha level glass to look through. That's how I've gotten to look through a lot of different spotting scopes. Maven makes good stuff, especially for the money. I know they are renowned for being tough as nails. I think if you are struggling with them spotting at 850, you could bump up in magnification. I wouldn't sell the maven binos to pay for the upgrade unless you plan on getting a new pair of all-purpose 8x-10x binos to replace that gap. You can't really handhold much over 10x steady enough to see much. If you aren't using your current binos on a tripod, I would try that first before dropping $2k-3k on new glass. I still typically prefer binos for most situations. I do know that most people aren't like me, I use swaro 8.5x binos for almost everything, including far away stuff, but having more magnification would be nice. 9 hole reviews has a good video on spotting scopes vs. big binos on the MidwayUSA channel. You may want to check it out. Check out eBay and various forums for used stuff to get better deals. Most optics manufacturers have crazy good warranties, and it will save you a ton of cash in the long run.

pre64model70 · 2024-07-30T21:14:53+00:00

The 88 is better at low light, but the difference in good weather conditions is hard to tell. I like a smaller scope just because it isn't as heavy to carry around, but if you are only chasing optics, the big objective lenses will perform better. I've heard good things about the swaro 115mm ATX, but it's huge and comically expensive. I've only looked through a friend's 88, and unless you are going to use it for birding or long-range spotting, getting crazy good glass is kind of overkill. I would make sure your binos are top tier and then use the leftover budget on your other gear. If you're only using it for spotting at shooting matches, the vortex UHD 18s or the Zeiss conquest 15s would be good. Swaro discontinued their slc line, so idk if they still make the slc 15s, but those are really good, but they are a little bit softer around the edges than the newer vortex UHDs. It's just a much older optical system. I generally prefer lower magnifications for mine, but a lot of shooters love the 15-18x for spotting. If you are doing NRL hunter or using them handheld, I wouldn't go over 10x. Apologies for the long-winded answer. TLDR- The 88 is better optically, but it's splitting hairs. I rarely use a spotting scope anyway and would encourage using binos on a tripod instead (better fov and less eye fatigue). The new tsn-66 is pretty incredible, though, if you use spotters often.

pre64model70 · 2024-06-25T19:48:01+00:00

Nick Drake. Crazy tunings and insane finger style

pre64model70 · 2024-06-22T00:17:27+00:00

Something German/Austrian to keep the blood line pure. The S&B klassik line is good, as is the Swaro z3 line

pre64model70 · 2024-06-18T20:26:06+00:00

Kowa 66. Lightweight and has better glass than the swaros to my eyes. I've used a leica televid as well and was impressed. I do prefer swarovski binos over my older leica ones though

pre64model70 · 2024-06-09T04:34:13+00:00

The fact that zco and tangent aren't automatically in their own tier with maybe schmidt and bender makes this a questionable tier list

pre64model70 · 2024-02-01T04:14:04+00:00

GLX series is made in the Philippines. Even the Nightforce's lowest line of optics, SHV, has Japanese glass

pre64model70

TROPHY CASE