Monthly Archives: May 2010

Say hello to Sophie.

Posted by TD on May 11, 2010 5 comments

One of the many back-burner “someday” projects I’ve finally had a chance to pursue is a high-grade scoped bolt-action .22. This one has actually been sitting in the back of my mind fully-formed for a good four or five years, just waiting for the right time.

The time finally came. CZ announced they were phasing out the 452 rimfire series in favor of a revised model 455, starting with the American model this year. Other variants will make the 452 -> 455 switch next year. The revamped model adds a switch-barrel feature (which I wouldn’t use) but deletes the second bolt lug (which I definitely want). And since I had my heart set the American model, now’s the time. It also helped that my friend ernunnos finally went ahead and bought the CZ 452 FS he’s been wanting.

A little looking around revealed that Cabela’s was closing out 452 Americans for $399. After a quick phone call to confirm that they still had guns in stock, I hopped in the car and headed to the Cabela’s in Dundee. The helpful clerk even let me look at the three different guns they had in stock so I could pick out the best wood. Here’s what I got, nice Turkish walnut with some pretty, flowing grain and a bit of fiddleback. The pics flat-out suck, and I apologize. It’s overcast today so I had to use flash, hence the glare. Also, I’m a shitty photographer. But you guys know that by now. Trust me when I say it looks better in person.

stock right sidestock left side

The scope choice was, for me, a non-choice: Leupold’s 2-7x Rimfire Special is the only way to fly. Well, they were called Rimfire Specials for years and years, but at some point fairly recently Leupold rebranded this model as a VX-I Rimfire. I’m still calling it a Rimfire Special. It’s a neat, tidy scope that looks proportional on a .22 and offers very good optics at a reasonable price. It’s almost identical to the 2-7x Ultralight, but with friction instead of click adjustments, a lower grade of lens coatings, parallax set to 60 yards, and 1/3 knocked off the price.

Scope rings, too, were an obvious choice: I’ve been a big fan of Talleys for years. This particular set, though, is a special, almost secret thing, because they were color casehardened by Doug Turnbull himself. You will not find these on Talley’s website or listed in their catalog, but if you call them up and ask nicely, they might have a set for you. They are not cheap; the color casehardening adds a full $100 premium to the regular price, but to me it’s money well spent.

Talley rings

Here’s the scope secured in the Talleys. I like the bit of contrast provided by the color casehardening against the blued rifle and scope. These are medium-height fixed rings, and they’re the perfect height. The bolt handle clearance is just enough for easy cycling.

scoped CZbolt clearance

Total weight is just under 7 1/4 lbs, which is light enough to be handy but substantial enough to be a reasonable understudy for a full-size centerfire rifle. The CZ factory test target shows 4 rounds touching with a “flyer” about 1/4″ away, fired at 50 meters. I’ll be headed out to the range soon to see what it can do in my hands.

My girlfriend, who named my AR Vera, decided that this rifle’s name is Sophie. It’s fitting; an elegant name for an elegant rifle.

I should have done this years ago.

Posted by TD on May 3, 2010 3 comments

For the last 15 years I’ve gone through a succession of cheap inkjet printers, mostly HP with one or two Canons thrown in. They were at best “alright”, with the early ones being slow and heavy but solid and well-made. With commoditization and relentless competition, printer makers raced each other downward both in price and quality. My last two printers were “free”, bundled with PC purchases, and worth every penny I paid for them.

The hardware was all flimsy plastic, ink cartridges seemed to get both shorter-lived and harder to refill, drivers grew ridiculously bloated and flaky, and reliability just flat-out sucked. None of them had network support, either, so I ended up either sneakernetting files to the machine attached to the printer or futzing around with host-based printer sharing setups.

All along I’ve wanted to do it the right way and get a “real” printer, a networked laser with PostScript support. Back in the day I bought inkjets because good lasers cost as much as (or more than!) a computer, and since my printing needs are pretty light I could limp along well enough with the little light-duty ink-squirters. Still, I always had it in the back of my mind to finally get a decent printer.

Then I saw an ad from Newegg for a little Samsung ML-2851ND network laser printer, on sale for $119 with free shipping (it’s currently $149). Hell, I paid 3x that for my first HP DeskJet back in the day!

A little research turned up good reviews and, more important for me, excellent support for non-Windows platforms. Some low-end lasers use oddball proprietary print languages (like Samsung’s own SPL), which make you jump through conversion/filtering hoops if you’re using a *nix operating system. The ML-2851 does PostScript and supports the classic Unix LPD/LPR printing, so it “just works” with basically no fuss.

I ordered one up, got it three days later and plugged it into the switch. It pulled an IP address off the router and went right to work. OS X automagically found and configured the printer (I’m using the generic PostScript driver, haven’t even looked at the driver CD that came with the printer). The OpenBSD boxes only needed a very simple /etc/printcap file along the lines of:

lp|Samsung ML-2851ND PostScript network printer:
    :lp=:
    :sh:
    :rm=<IP address>:
    :lf=/var/log/lpd-errs:

My first test print from OpenBSD showed the classic UNIX “stair-step” printing phenomenon, like so:

line 1
      wraps to line 2
                     like this

This comes from a difference between DOS/Windows machines, which use both a carriage return character and a line feed character to indicate a new line (CR+LF), and *real* computers, which only use a line feed (LF). The Unix box was sending LFs to move down a line, but not CRs to move back to the left margin, hence the stair-step effect. Fortunately, Samsung includes an option in the printer settings to switch between the two newline styles.

So far I’m pretty impressed with this little printer. Administration is done via a simple and very thorough Web-based control panel; it supports almost every printing protocol on the planet (still use EtherTalk? you’re in luck!), you have fine-grained control over individual printing protocols and security settings… Basically, everything I’d want is in there. The only thing missing is a way of changing settings directly on the printer itself; there’s no display or control buttons on the printer aside from the usual idiot lights and the “I put more paper in, please start printing again” button.

Print quality is very nice, speed’s great, duplexing is supported, and it idles at 8 watts yet warms up in just a few seconds. I haven’t owned it long enough to comment on long-term durability, but so far I think it offers a helluva lot more value for the dollar than my “free” inkjets ever did.