P30 At 1450 And Range Trip

A badly needed range trip took place yesterday.

My cousin Matt came in to visit this weekend and I took him to the range. He only has experience (quite extensive experience) with his duty pistol, with which he is quite good, so he was interested to try out a variety of pistols and I was happy to oblige.

Together we ran another 150 rounds through the P30, making it to 1450 with absolutely zero malfunctions of any kind to date. The feed ramp is now covered in black gunk but it keeps on going.

He rally enjoyed shooting my M&P 22 Compact with the Gemtech suppressor. Mirabile Dictu, Walmart had some .22LR CCI standard velocity in stock (3 round box maximum purchase). The M&P and Gemtech loved it and ran very very quietly with no issues and it was much more accurate than the Remington Thunderbolt and quieter as well.

He liked it quite a bit.

I also had quite a few other pistols for him to try: The Inglis Hi-Power, The S&W Model 29-2, The S&W M&P 9, The Glock 17, the Glock 21, the PA-63 and the 1911 and the Mauser HSC out to shoot.

Lots of ammo was turned into noise and many a steel target dropped only to be reset and dropped again.

Then back to the house for an epic cleaning of the guns (all save the P30) and then a good diner of Thanksgiving leftovers and a binge-watching of Game of Thrones.

A darn good time.

A Good Morning On The Range

Instead of our regular Friday morning meeting, I took five members of a business networking group I'm a part of to the range this morning as a get out of the office event.

A few of them had never shot before, and a couple had either as hunters and one as a more Gen2 type shooter.

In short it was a great time.

We hit the rifle range first. I let them shoot one of my ARs, the AK and the Tavor on the rifle range. That's another 100 flawless rounds through the Tavor.

Everyone thought the Tavor was very cool and one of the guys that owned an AR was very impressed with it.

One of the guys brought along a GSG MP-5 in .22. It was a blast to shoot - lots of fun, ridiculously easy to control and just a fun gun. I could ring the steel plates at 100 yards no problem. It had quite a few failures to feed, most likely due to the ersatz lead round nose budget 22s that was all he could find to shoot through it, so can't blame the gun for that.

One not so funny event happened. One of the guys had brought his deer rifles out to sight in (He's a deer season only shooter). His first rifle had some serious functioning problems due to a complete lack of lubrication. It was so dry the bolt would not close on a round. I put on some Slip2000 EWL and it functioned like a champ.

The second rifle was a different story.

He fired a round and it worked ok, but the second round he tried to fire jammed completely and could neither be fired nor extracted, so he had a live round stuck in the chamber.

The round would not come out of the chamber no matter what - prying with knives and multi-tools did nothing, nor did a rod down the barrel. It was jammed in tight. I couldn't figure out how it could be so jammed into the chamber like that.

It was a 308 Winchester round, which he swore was the caliber of the rifle.

I took a look at the markings on the barrel and guess what? It wasn't chambered in 308. The rifle was chambered in 30-06.

Be sure you check you've put the right ammo in the gun folks.

Then we headed to the pistol range and had a blast. I set up a couple plate racks, then added some poppers and supervised them shooting at them in a friendly competition as to who could knock 'em all down with 10 shots on 8 targets. They had a great time shooting.

One of the guys brought a few interesting pistols - A Walther PPX, a S&W Shield and a SiG 239.

I got to try out the Walther PPX. If you're following Tam (and if you're not, you should) you know about the Walther PPX and can see how she's putting one through its paces. Handling the PPX was interesting. While it looks blocky as heck, the grip fit my hand like a glove and the trigger was truly and impressively excellent, I'd say certainly better than a stock Glock trigger. Knocking down plates quickly with accuracy was no problem.

The Shield was also easy to shoot as was his Sig 938.

I brought along my 9mm S&W M&P, my Glock 19 and two 1911s.

The 1911s were a big hit. But they had problems clearing all 8 targets with just the 8 shots in its magazine.

After putting hundreds of rounds through the guns it was time to head back to work. Now I've got quite a few guns to clean.

Everyone had a great time at the range and agreed that it kicked the Group's golf outing's butt and that we should do it again.

MARSOC 1911s Not All They're Cracked Up To Be?

Say Uncle links to a report that during testing 4 of the Colt MARSOC 1911s had serious cracks develop after 12,000 rounds. It appears, but it is not absolutely clear from the report, that 4 of the 5 pistols live fire tested had such frame cracks.

While this is likely and hopefully just a bad batch and not a design failure of the MARSOC pistol itself, it is interesting and popcorn-worthy to read the reactions to the news:

1911 fans: 1911 is Thor's own hammer. There must be something wrong with the test, its a 19-by-god-11 and it even has 11 in the name so it is awesome to the eleventy power! Anyways Marines won't shoot 12k rounds through it, so its not a real issue and if you dare criticize or point out issues with the pistol then you are criticizing Marines, and deserve to be beaten for your un-American impertinence. Besides, It's a 1911, it's awesome and its only a secondary weapon and 12,000 rounds before a major crack is no big deal. Didn't we already say it's a 1911!

Glock fans: They shoulda bought Glocks.

S&W fans: They shoulda bought M&Ps.

H&K fans: Sollten Sie gekauft haben H&Ks! Dumkopfs!

Look, partisan preferences of your favorite pistol aside, all pistols are mechanical devices created by humans. Therefore there will always be a probability that any pistol may be less than perfect, may break before its expected service life is met, or may be from a bad batch made while the frame maker was getting over a weekend bender.

1911 Range Report and prep for GSSF match

The day began with the family going to the West Bloomfield Art Show as the temperature reached 100 degrees.

We saw lots of art on display, much of it very talented indeed, especially in the area of photography, as well as some impressive pottery pieces.

Abby was enthralled with an 8x10 picture of a bee on a flower and she persuaded us to buy it for her room. Funnily enough, she described it to the photographer as the bee picture and he wasn't quite sure which one it was until she brought it to him. He stated he calls it after the flower in the picture as he had taken the picture meaning to focus on the flower but the bee wouldn't leave, and since it stayed still he took the picture with it. He was impressed with her enthusiasm and even gave her a kid discount on the purchase price. Nice guy and I think he just got a customer for life.

So, tent after tent of art was set out upon the blistering concrete, with not a bit of shade to be found except within the tents themselves.

It was so hot I was inspired to artistically fry an egg on the concrete. Alas, no egg was at hand for the job.

After surviving the art show death march, we had lunch and headed home.

After experiencing so much art, I joined up with Rob and we headed to the range for a different kind of artistry, of an amateur and far more noisy sort.

The 1911, as hoped, shot very well indeed with the first eight rounds looking like this:

The new sights line up on target very nicely.

It handled 50 rounds of FMJ with no problems, ate some 50 lead semi-wadcutters reloads with aplomb, and only had some issues with the 230 gr Hydrashocks. For some reason it failed to eject the fired casing from the last round of Hydrashocks on a few magazines. It wasn't consistent and seems to have gone away by the time all 50 Hydrashoks were fired.

I then shot my Glock 19 in preparation for next week's GSSF match. I also let Rob try my Glock 17 as that is what he is going to shoot in the match. This will be my first GSSF match ever and I'm looking forward to it.

This should match should be fun. Rob was a student in one of my CPL classes and it is good to watch him improve as a shooter and challenge himself by shooting a match, and I can always stand some improvement that comes from the pressure of a match myself.

The 1911 Returns

As I blogged about before, my go-to 1911 was looking a little worn and sad. The night sights on it had gone dim, the bluing was worn, and it still had a drop-in kinda beavertail rather than a properly installed one.

So I sent it off to Robar to be redone and brought back hopefully better than even its former glory. They were having a sale on NP3+ finishes so I decided to go for it, along with new night sights and a proper beavertail.

I hoped it would return refreshed and restored from its sad state, ready to return to use.

After a reasonable wait, the result:

I can't wait to get it to the range this weekend.

The NP3+ is a really slick coating. The slide moves much easier, and magazines drop with alacrity (the magazine was also NP3+ coated as part of the job).

The new beavertail is flawlessly fitted and fills the hand perfectly, making an instinctively perfect grip a simple thing. The bump on the bottom of the beavertail makes sure it is always depressed when a grip is taken.

Oh yes, the new night sights are bright and perfect, and have a nicer appearance than the old sights.

Robar did a really, really, nice job on this refurbishment. Robar lived up to its reputation and exceeded my expectation.

My go-to 1911 looks and feels like a completely new pistol, and I expect it will shoot as nicely as it looks.

Happy 1911 Day!

On this day in history, one of the finest handguns even designed was adopted as the sidearm of the US Military.

Designed by John Moses Browning (firearms genius par excellence), it is a design that has endured over a hundred years and stood the test of time.

Since many a fine blogger is showing off their 1911s today, I figured better late evening than never.

My oldest 1911: A Colt Model 1927:

This Colt, a Model 1927 is one of 10,000 Model 1911A1s Colt manufactured for the Argentine Army. It bears the Argentine Army's inscription: Ejercito Argentino.

Argentina later manufactured their own Model 1927s under license from Colt:

This one a Sistema Colt 1927 was manufactured by DGFM-FMAP (Direccion General de Fabricaciones Militares-Fabrica Militar de Armas Portatiles) in Argentina for the Argentine Air Force and so marked. Please pardon the very non-standard grips which came with it which shall be changed back to their original grips as soon as a set are found to restore this pistol properly.

I should note I had a ridiculous time when I bought this pistol. The seller resided in New York and the New York gun dealers claimed this could not be a Curio and Relic pistol because it looked too nice. Seriously that was the reason he was given. As always gun dealers don't always know their regs. So in the face of stupid refusal, I had to have it shipped to my friendly FFL rather than my own C&R license.

You'll note that the Argentinians went metric: 11.25 mm doesn't have quite the same ring as .45 ACP, but its still a beauty.

Finally there's my go-to .45:

This 1911A1 is an Essex Arms frame and slide with a mix of Wilson Combat, Colt, and Sistema parts. Long story, but when I moved from Toronto to Michigan I wasn't allowed to import my beautiful 1927 Ejercito Argentino (Argentine Army marked) Sistema as it was "military" due to the Ejercito marking. A Sistema that was police marked or unmarked would have been just fine, go figure. Never-mind that I was allowed to import my S&W Model 29 which is certainly a far more powerful handgun but so it went. I had to strip the poor gun down, turn in the stripped receiver in Toronto and was then able to legally import the parts. Yes, I'm still annoyed all these years later.

This gun was then built by gunsmith Alan Tillman as a serviceable carry / competition gun for someone on a very meager student budget at the time, and it reflects some cosmetic compromises in exchange for more attention to accuracy and reliability. Mr. Tillman did an excellent job indeed.

I've used it in Massad Ayoob's LFI I and LFI II classes to excellent effect and it is one of my favorite carry guns. It now needs some new night sites as the current ones have dimmed down to standard irons. It could probably also use a refinishing, but it is still a rock-solid and reliable firearm.

I still need an Argentine Navy marked Sistema to round out the Argentine armed forces 1927 collection, and really would like a WWII US 1911A1, but that will take some time to save up for.

So, Happy 1911 Day and enjoy the enduring legacy of the 1911 series of pistols.

There's at least one out there to meet everyone's need and budget and no firearms collection is complete without at least one example of this excellent pistol.