Review of Budget Priced Milgauss

[jmb]

My $85 Milgauss arrived the other day and I'll have to say that if I didn't hang out here with all you clowns I would have been in love with it! But, I could not tear my eyes away from the humongous Submariner style crown! Why some of these rep makers insist on using Sub crowns on everything is truly beyond my comprehension. I think it must be like bands, I've always thought that whatever they have the most of laying around gets at the end of the day gets used on the budget models - at least this one had the proper band!

I was so fixated on the crown that as soon as I took some pics it immediately went into a box and I couldn't bring myself to even wear it around the house. But today I got somewhat motivated and tore it apart for some "crown reduction surgery" and it may start liking it. I removed the crown and tube, chucked the crown up in the lathe and pruned it by about half and then shaved off a corresponding amount from the tube. The tube really should have had about another .015" - .020" taken off but as it is there is only about 1 1/2 threads left for the crown to grab so I figured I'd better quit while I was ahead for a change. I have pruned a few crowns but this one received the most radical trimming so far. This crown also is a "two-piece" with a brass core with stainless "sleeve" over top, all the others I've trimmed have appeared to be solid SS. I found that after I turned it down I could pull the two apart so I secured them with a bit of epoxy and all should be OK. Sometime in the future I will need to find a proper 7mm twin-lock crown/tube assy. but this should get me by until then.

Since Lani liked my Mesquite background I decided to pull a chunk of Pecan from the pile to add variety. Pecan produces a somewhat mild and sweet smoke and is excellent for smoking honey cured hams and turkeys... Here's some pics, it looks about like all the rest so I didn't shoot very many.

Here is after the "partial crownectomy":

[Shundi]

Nice- that crown needed to go!!