EmptorMaven

Streamlight’s TLR weapon lights have long been popular handgun accessories. Indeed, a tactical gun should always be carried with a light source, and strapping a flashlight right to the gun makes sure you’ll never be armed but unable to positively identify a threat due to darkness.

I’ve raved before about the utility of laser sights, so I thought when manufacturers started combining lights with lasers it would be a synergistic win.

The problem is that Streamlight and its competitors all went about this by tacking laser sights onto the bottom of their weapon lights. This is less than ideal because the light is already mounted under the barrel, so the laser ends up almost 2.5 inches from the bore of the gun it’s supposed to sight.

Granted, if you follow my instructions to always sight a laser parallel to the bore this just means that the bullet will hit 2.5″ above the laser at point-blank range, and that the Point-of-Impact (POI) will gradually converge on the laser before crossing below it. But I’m afraid many people are still tempted to zero their lasers for a specific range — say, 21 feet for a defensive handgun — and in that case the distance between bore and laser can cause very bad POI shifts for any other distance.

The following chart shows the Point of Impact relative to the laser for a bullet fired from the gun shown above. If the laser is sighted parallel to the bore then POI is within 2.5″ of the laser out to 50 yards. However if the laser was zeroed to match POI at 7 yards you can see that it is way off for longer ranges. For example, on a 30-yard target the bullet will already strike 10 inches below the laser indicator, and it goes rapidly downhill from there!

I wanted to do some significant regrading of my lot. I calculated I would need about 700 cubic yards of additional earth to achieve my desired landscape. But going out and contracting for a company to haul and spread that amount of dirt would have run into the five figures.

Not only did I not have the budget for that, but I know that there are a lot of construction projects where contractors are paying sites to take dirt that they excavate. If you put out the word and wait long enough eventually you can make a mutually beneficial connection. One contractor pointed me to the information-age solution: DirtFill.com, an exchange where people trying to get rid of dirt can find others looking to take it.

I put a listing up there two months ago. Last week I got a call from a contractor who had done major excavations on a project just a few miles from me. I drove out to look at the dirt and found mounds of beautiful, clean fill. Their foreman followed me back to my site to look at the feasibility of disposing it. Two days later they drove a John Deere 410E into my back yard to spread and level the dirt as two tri-axles ran back and forth all day for the next three days.

My only expense was tipping the tractor operator to rip up some stumps and grade it just the way I wanted it. It was a win for them too because the next closest places for dumping were not only at least twice as far but were also charging to take fill.