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Some of you may be aware that I have been trying to produce cheap magazines for the Sako Finnfire P94S. The first batch I sent out weren't perfect and although most recipients were grateful for the effort, not everyone was happy and I've been trying to improve the product, going as far as buying my own 3D printer so I could turn the prototypes around quicker. Currently on the 56th iteration and the magazines both fit and function. I've improved my spring production techniques too so they're far more consistent and close to the genuine article. One of the USPs of my design is that I can produce them in different colours. I bought some bright red material to make the latest variant and went out in the field with the only 2 I've made this morning to see how it would work. Fit and cycled fine so thought I'd prove how easy it would be to find if dropped in the grass (which isn't that long, about 4 inches). I shut my eyes and gently lobbed an unloaded magazine away thinking it would stick out like a sore thumb... from the title of this post I hope you can guess what the outcome was - couldn't find it. Took an hour or so of searching and still no result so have abandoned the quest! Throwing the other one a much shorter distance with my eyes open it was relatively easy to find but not quite the shining beacon I'd have hoped for! I've also bought some bright orange plastic which will help but I won't be deliberately throwing those away if I can help it. Fortunately the material cost isn't too high, even though there's quite a bit of work to do once they're out of the printer as the FDM process isn't always that neat. The pictured one has a clear base because that's what I had loaded in the printer at the time. I've been trying different materials too - here's a small selection of the ones I've made. The bright green is ABS which is quite nice because you can polish it with acetone but as you can see from the 3rd one along from the left, it's really prone to warping and I couldn't get any to print consistently (ABS needs quite high ambient temperatures and with the recent cold weather, it's amazing I've produced anything in my unheated workshop at all, frankly). If anyone wants to buy the prototypes to have a go at fettling them to work, I'm happy to send them on (charitable donation). Most of the issues were from the ramp angle on the follower being slightly too shallow so a few minutes with a bit of sandpaper and you could have a load of spare functioning magazines. The black one (carbon fibre filled PLA) on the far right was made on a friend's printer (same model) and although it's an older variant, it does actually work. There's probably double this amount lying around including some I had made on a professional machine

Like many people on here I shoot from sticks made from B&Q garden stakes. I have a set of quads that I made and they're pretty good but difficult to move the aim point around should the quarry move slightly. A friend of mine came round to zero his rifle and bought with him a Kapita tripod system. It was extremely impressive, very well made but the price tag (£500) reflects that and it's more than I'd be prepared to spend. It's essentially a carbon fibre tripod with a ball mount on top. The ball mount supports the rifle but allows side-to-side as well as up-and-down movement. You can leave the rifle hanging off it and he demonstrated this with his Tikka T3x TAC (I think) - a heavy rifle. For those amongst us who are too cheap to spend out for something like this, I thought I'd have a go at making my own version. Having a 3D printer and a fairly good grasp of how to use the design software, I set about designing my own system. It actually took quite a lot of maths (which I enjoy) to figure out how to make it but by changing a single parameter I can remodel it into a bipod, tripod or virtually any number of legs. I also designed some ends to fit on the garden stakes and clamps to hold string to limit the spread of the legs. The whole tripod system consists of the following parts, plus M6 nuts and bolts to hold them together: 1) tripod body "hub" (3D printed) 2) screw on lid to hold ball in place and change friction (3D printed) 3) ball joint (3D printed) 4) spigot to mount to rifle (machined on my lathe from an M6 joining nut) 5) Picatinny sling adaptor with stud removed (bought from eBay - c. £5) 6) stake ends (3D printed) The Kapita system has a patented attachment method using magnets and a dedicated socket that needs to be inserted into the stock, although a Picatinny adaptor is available. I'm keen not to infringe their patent so haven't used any magnets (and frankly can't see what difference one would make). I also was not keen to drill my stock but fortunately had a spare with a Picatinny rail mounted underneath. To my surprise, it held the weight of the rifle (Sako P94S) without breaking, although there was a fair amount of flex in the system. At the time of manufacture I only had the red colour in stock but there is no reason it couldn't be printed in different colours (you can buy olive green filament, for example). The plastic used is PETG. The rod ends are really tight so don't sit quite as well as I'd like but a few minutes of fettling would make them fit better and it's trivial to change the dimensions in the CAD file (OpenSCAD, for those who are interested). Total cost of materials was under £20, including the sticks (£3.25 each), Picatinny adaptor (£5.89) and filament (£2.38). In use, the friction you can make by screwing the lid down tight isn't really enough to stop the rifle moving if you let go but it certainly lets you hold it quite still whilst moving the aim point around. Should be pretty quick to deploy in the field and the whole setup is very light. It doesn't fold up like the commercial product but then neither do my quad sticks and they're quite useful for support when walking on boggy ground