repurposing Archives -

Repurposing Russian Armaments

Necessity is the mother of invention and it appears the Ukrainians are doing a good job of it. They have captured a number of abandoned or semi-destroyed Russian Army tanks and armored personnel carriers. Who has not seen the videos of Ukrainian farmers towing away Russian tanks with their John Deere tractors?

Most of these vehicles are armed, in part, with the Russian PK-T machine gun. That is the tank or coaxial version of their standard PK machine gun. France 24, the French public TV network, has a story on how Ukrainian auto mechanics are re-engineering and repurposing these tank machine guns into infantry weapons. They have added a stock and bipod as well as converted the firing mechanism. You can it in the video below.

Repurposing tank machine guns for infantry use is nothing new. As Ian McCollum relates in the next video, the Finns did it extensively with captured Soviet weapons in the Winter War.

H/T Stephen Gutowski on Twitter

On November 5th, These Become Target Stands

If your neighborhood or town is like mine, you are seeing political yard signs everywhere. Some are for candidates you like, some are for those you despise. They are generally made of heavy paper or, if the candidate was really spending some money, a corrugated plastic. If you look closely at the two in the foreground, you can see the ribbing from the corrugation. These signs usually are attached to wire stands.

Now, in most places, it is illegal to take these signs before Election Day unless some schmuck puts it on your property without asking permission.

However, after the polls close on November 4th, all of these signs can have a new life as target stands. You can tack your paper targets on the face of these signs and shoot away. While they aren’t at the height of many target stands, I think they’d do just fine for rimfire stands or for just plinking.

Think of it this way – the price is right, you are cleaning up the roadsides, you are “repurposing” them, and, if you hate the candidate in question, it will give you plenty of perverse pleasure in blowing away his or her sign.

UPDATE: I’m guessing this husband of a Delaware Democratic incumbent just wanted to get an early start on gathering some target stands.