Kolpin rifle rest rubber melting

[Wapiti]

Any of you blokes with SxS buggies or quads might be using these rifle grips. The issue I have with them is that after maybe a year of being installed, and even kept in the shade, the rubber starts to go sticky and comes off on everything. Then it starts to separate from the poly base frame underneath.
I've replaced too many of these things of different brands, all Chinese made and haven't found a better alternative.
I'd already repaired the ones that were really bad, but here's a shot of one up top that I stick a big brushcutter in to knock over pine regrowth, which is starting to deteriorate.

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Before they completely sh*t themselves, you can grab some large heatshrink and cover them at the first sign of the rubber starting to go off. As said, it happens to me before a year is out but if you are pulling rifles in and out daily as is usual here, the moulded rubber in the ribs and grabs starts to tear pretty quickly.
If you cover the grips with this heatshrink, in my cases 50/25 will do all types, the shape it forms to around the grips over the high spots and valleys holds the heatshrink on permanently and it does not degrade.
50/25 means the heatshrink is initially 50mm i/d, and when heated with a hot-air gun shrinks to 25mm i/d.

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I use these rifle holders not just for rifles, a SxS running around has to have certain things on it always not just for hunting but many other jobs, and the grips really deteriorate fast when exposed to the sun. Up top here is a long hoe and a camp shovel. Actually these might now be extinct, Australian-made Cyclone tools.

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Heatshrink is easy to get sent to your door off industrial supplies, I buy it by the metre from Ebay in many sizes. It's good to fix and protect things, not just to cover wire. Might give the handy ones of you that get out a bit, an idea.

[Die Judicii]

LOL,,,,,,
I've just finished doing some tonite,,, and after the evening meal I turn the computer on to find this post of yours.
Now,,,,, who is watching who here ?

I've also been very busy the last few days doing half a dozen little mods and additions to my rig "Camilla"

[Wapiti]

Always trying to innovate and sort stuff out eh!

[Wapiti]

Actually, heatshrink has a heap of other really great uses...

[Fester]

Are recoil pad companies like Limbsaver still using the self dissintergrating rubber and just lying to blame us using chemicals to cause it?

I know they are soft and great to use, not so great to keep buying more if they don't change their Chinese sourced rubber compounds.

My Beretta shotty also went bad.
I paid for another to get the fit, and use silicon spray on the pads that are prone to it, to see if that maintaines them.

[Wapiti]

Not sure, I know all the R3 recoil pads Remington got made by Limbsaver also turned into a black, sticky goo even hiding in safes in the dark.
I had a few of those... POS.

Another thing that sh*ts itself with these rifle rests/gun grabs is the pathetic skimpy rubber stretch band that is supposed to hold the guns in or stop them leaping out when you hit a bump.
These chinesium things look great for a few months, but then start to go off in a strange way and you come back and they are lying in bits on the floor of the buggy. Or snaps and your Swarovski lands upside down on the only big rock in the paddock.

A way around it is to cut big rubber bands from a large 4WD inner tube, like the kind you find in the 750/16 split rims in poverty-pack Landcruiser utes.
Cut then about 25mm wide with good scissors and loop them the way I have them in the above pics I posted, or feel free to do it some other way.

If you drop in to a good friendly tyre place, they will give you whatever is in the bin. But remember, smaller diameter tubes will be too short.
Farms always have a selection of tubes, because a lot of times tyres get cuts too big to plug, and quad bike tyres don't take internal Rema radial patches very well.
And avoid the crap Chinese-made tubes, because in the light they will just self-destruct as all Chinese stuff is designed to do.

[Die Judicii]

Dunno bout you blokes,,,,,,, but I've long ago had an absolute gut full of all the CHINESE SH!T that we are virtually forced to endure.

[Wapiti]

Having had to oversee from a QA perspective some huge fabrication projects in Northern China, like the Monadelphous Wiggins Island Coal terminal and WA Iron ore terminals, I know the Chinese can do a pretty fair job but only with constant scrutiny for everything. If given the quality specs and they are overseen from materials procurement to manufacture, qualifications of basic elements in steel, even paint to personnel to procedures down to the very grain of material, OK.
But it is a national sport for the CCP owned industries to cut corners and rip us off in any way possible.
We were offered anything in our dreams by shady people, and I mean anything, to distract us.
Even getting your door knocked on at 10pm with unbelievable distractions of have them waiting for you when you return to your hotel. How many ex-pats did I see falling for having the most complex blackmail stunts that had them stuffed.

But we buy this sh*t, because it looks great, the marketing in action by the rip-off merchants here with profit only as the goal, and how do we know till a few days later the product is made of inadequate materials?
I recently purchased a scope from a new namebrand, it was mercillessly thrashed in shooting media, SSAA, Sporting Shooter, online, pushed because of the advertising dollar, and it didn't take 5 minutes once it was mounted on a rifle to see it was optically f**ken compromising.
Nothing's going to change, because we just fall for the lies and the deliberate cost-cutting. I have.

[Wapiti]

This is the example of using inner-tube offcuts to stop the rifles falling out, or jumping out.
Sure I have my rifles upright because they come out quick and store without taking up any room like this, I like this SxS because it is a 3-seater and doesn't have the ridiculous useless centre-consoles that nothing fits in.
Same would apply having them horizontal.

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[Fester]

I also keep inner tubes for rubber repair, odd jobs and strong, lasting rubber bands.
The last bag of paper shop rubber bands must have gone chi_k as they last no time at all.
Old ones could just be reused for ages.

Sad if the silicon doesn't stop the recoil pads from melting, as I got my smith to do both of my CZ rimfires, as I hated the plastic butt plates and don't want a belt sander in the garage, a nosey neighbour will see if I set it up in the back yard.

I pulled out an eBay electronic battery tester and the black plastic has done the same, gone sticky after a couple of years.
I am sure it was just plastic rather then some cheapo grippy rubber, sure is grippy now.

I notice not a word is said by our leaders about all the suburban house fires, we never had so many before all the Chinese rubbish started going up in flames.

Too late for us, and nothing will be cheap anymore with the recession following this fuel thing, but I browsed through the K-Mart mens section, and found some T-shirts that looked OK in size with sleeves going lower than my shoulders.
Had a few washes now and still holding up so someone must have seen a market.

[Wapiti]

On the Chinese issue, we finished the day with another tool failure.
The wife and I went for a spin to get a deer for a batch of jerky and Biltong, and we had the deer hanging off the buggy rack. We do all the dressing and major cuts there and take the sections back to bone out properly at the house.
When I went to clean off the brand new Fiskars cutters that I use to cut off the feet below the calf muscle - have to give them a wash and oil afterwards or they'll rust - I noticed these chips off the cutting edge.
The old cutters that have lasted me doing this for 30 years were a few pairs of the old ones made in Finland, and FFS now they are made in China and NEVER chipped or deformed no matter how thick the bones were I ever cut. They just wore out from being sharpened.
The Chinese POS they now make, failed cutting two thin, freshly killed fallow deer's tibias. F*cking hopeless.

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I had recommended Fiscars for this job to others because once upon a time they were made properly, do not be disappointed by buying sh*t that costs $75+ and is made by incompetents in China and sold by thieves here at European-quality prices.

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[Fester]

Fiskars too, that sucks.
Could be why the secetors were not exy.

Whatever steel they use in the X27 splitting axe head is nearly indestructible. I have never even sharpened it.
If fresh Sydney redgum can't be split, I pull out the Fiskars Maul.
It is more like a normal forged steel, and I have touched it up a few times.

The Hookeroon log hook is a must and saves my bad back.

I hate to hear about brands like that going bad. The prices jumped after I got my tools, so was lucky there.

[Fester]

I noticed the pattern at Bunnings after they took out 90% of the small shops and opposition.

First they stopped stocking low-moving, but essential stuff, then within a few years, the shops were stocked with about 80% Chinese products.
It's all about prices and sales.

[Die Judicii]

I noticed the pattern at Bunnings after they took out 90% of the small shops and opposition.

First they stopped stocking low-moving, but essential stuff, then within a few years, the shops were stocked with about 80% Chinese products.
It's all about prices and sales.

You are obviously giving them "benefit of doubt" Mate.

Hadda been me I wouldv'e said,, 99.98 %

For tool steel to chip like the pic supplied by Wapiti,,,, I'd go so far as to say caused by yet another short cut.

Hardened,,,,, but skipped the tempering process.