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CHA-LEE's Tale


CHA-LEE

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I was able to get some decent shooting in this weekend. There was a match scheduled for Saturday but it got canceled at the last minute due to rain. I decided to go out to the BLGC range and do some live fire practice instead. It was sprinkling rain a little but nothing crazy so I figured I would give it a go and make the trek out to the range. I am glad that I did because the weather turned out to be pretty decent and the range was dry. I went out with a couple of buddies and we setup a medium size stage and shot it a few different ways. The weather was just cold enough that you couldn’t get away with not wearing a coat and your hands would get pretty cold without gloves. Frozen finger shooting was the task of the day. I had some mixed results in my stage runs but was able to knock it out of the park a couple of times.

 

My next fiddling project is associated with the Cammer Hammer. This hammer is designed to reduce the leverage the hammer has against the slide. It basically cocks the hammer back at a leverage point just below the firing pin and only touches the base of the firing pin block when it’s fully cocked back. Last week I set it up to work in my #1 blaster so I could do some back to back testing with it verses the EGW hammer I am using now. I wanted to do some testing with it on Saturday but it was too cold and windy to do it. I need to do some back to back slow motion video of it verses the standard EGW hammer setup to see what kind of difference it will make if any. From what I can feel on the bench, when you rack the slide it cocks the hammer in a very liner fashion that feels similar to a very rounded firing pin stop setup with an EGW hammer. I really like how the rounded firing pin stop feels and shoots so maybe this Cammer Hammer setup will work even better. I am not sure if I will have time to test it out before the Area 1 match at the end of the month, so it may be a project for after that match.

 

On Sunday I attended the Pueblo USPSA match and the weather was awesome down there. This match had a bunch of crazy fast hose down shooting stages with hit factors in the 13 – 16 range. It’s not very common that we have a large field course that can produce a 13+ high hit factor, much less several different stages that can do it. Since I knew that the stages were hoser crazy I avoided “Trying” to shoot fast as that usually leads to a disaster. I instead allowed myself to shoot at whatever pace it wanted to go and it turned out really good. Through the whole match I didn’t have any shooting penalties or D zone hits. I was also able to shoot a crap ton of Alpha’s and was only down 20 B/C zone hits for the whole match. Shooting stages at chainsaw speeds is right up my alley so I didn’t have to worry much about the speed of shooting. I was able to separate my performance from others mainly by shooting way more points than everyone else while still maintaining aggressive stage times. It was a fun match, and a good test of reigning it in to get solid hits. But some of the stages felt like a waste of ammo given how easy the shots were and the excessive quantity of targets.

 

The Area 1 match is only a couple of weeks away. I still need to get some more training in before heading down to the Area 1 match. The good thing is that I am getting more and more use to the Manny sight setup. The replacement front sight in the #1 blaster is still holding up as well. Hopefully it continues to hold up through the Area 1 match so I don’t have to worry about it. I am still breaking out Fiber rods on these sights so something funky is going on that allows the fiber to break. I am not sure what to do to keep that from happening. At this point all I can do is keep feeding it fiber rods as they break out.  

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Last night I was able to attend an indoor match at the Bristolcone range. I shot the Open gun once again and it was nice to get some more Dot Gun blasting under my belt. Indexing to the dot on the draw is still not as refined as I want it to be. When I mount the gun on the target the dot is in the glass but not in the center so my first shot is delayed slightly as I refine the dot alignment before shooting. Once the shooting starts the dot stays in the center of the glass.

 

I had two penalties during the match. The first was on the classifier where I called a miss and made it up but it was a Virginia Count stage so I got an Extra Shot penalty.  It’s super hard to turn off the shot calling machine when shooting aggressively. I would rather be calling my shots and making them up subconsciously and simply eat an extra shot penalty here or there verses not making up shots. I reshot the classifier for fun and had a decent time but ended up pulling one shot low into a no shoot resulting in a Miss / No Shoot penalty. Evidently the Open gun sandbagging continues as it’s proving difficult to hook up effectively on classifiers.

 

The second penalty was a miss on the final stage of the match. The start of the stage had me engaging 22 rounds worth of targets at a rage blasting pace. I started the stage with 28 rounds in the gun so I knew I had more than enough rounds finish the array with plenty of make up shots if needed. But my Limited 20 round count brain was struggling with it. I had a few make up shots at the start of the array and then I was worried about running out of ammo for some retarded reason. I called the last shot in the array a miss but didn’t make it up because I didn’t think I had any more bullets in the magazine even though I did. It seems like a really novice mistake to make, but shooting beyond 20 rounds from a single magazine feels very abnormal to me. I don’t want to give away the higher capacity advantage in Open, but I also don’t want to be distracted by it either. I think the next match I shoot with the Open gun I will stick to the 140mm magazines that hold 23 rounds each and that will keep my stage plans within my Limited division round count comfort zone.  Shooting the Open gun is fun, but I don’t want it to circumvent my Limited shooting by thinking I have more rounds in the magazines than I really do in Limited.

 

Overall it was fun and once again a learning experience shooting the open gun. It’s going to take a lot of shooting it before I can wield it with the same effectiveness as my Limited gun. I can live with having a slightly circumvented performance while shooting it now as its serving the main purpose of being able to see sights indoors. The good thing is that it has been running very reliably. It’s nice to have an Open gun that simply works with no drama when you want to use it.

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The weather was AWESOME this past weekend. We had mid to high 70 degree weather on both Saturday and Sunday.  On Saturday it was my match to run at HPPS. We setup 6 fun stages to shoot and it was as usually a very busy day. I didn’t get a chance to check out any of the stages from a shooting strategy perspective before the start of the match. I also didn’t get much sleep the night before so I was in a pretty worn out physical condition. This produced to a lack luster match performance where I felt like I couldn’t get a groove going. I was consistent enough to end up with a decent overall finish, but it was far from what I would consider a solid performance. As always, running a match and expecting to perform well at the same time simply can’t happen.

 

On Sunday I attended the Weld county range. I felt like I was in the same worn out state for this match and my performance showed the longer the match went. By the time I got to the 4th stage in the match, which was the classifier, I was over it. This classifier was two strings with some strong and weak hand shooting. On the first string I missed my grip and couldn’t reach my mag release button on the reload so I wasted time shifting my grip to reach it and then proceeded to spray lead down range in an uncoordinated fury of blasting. This crappy shooting repeated on the second string and I racked up 3 misses all together. I gave the match away on this stage along because I was mentally over it. The last stage of the match I was so mentally unfocused that I couldn’t settle on a stage plan. I changed my stage plan three times before shooting the stage and never put in the effort to program it effectively. I got my hits but it wasn’t pretty.

 

On the long drive home I started to think about this situation and realized that I have never really performed all that well at the Weld match the day after running my match. I think it’s because I am still in a physically and mentally drained state on Sunday after running my match the day before. To eliminate this frustration I may need to take the day off from matches the day after I run a match. I could have gone out to practice instead and gotten more out of it than being stuck at another match and sucking all day.

 

The good news from this weekend is that I got a 0.070 wide front sight setup on my #2 Limited blaster. I couldn’t use the Manny Mini Dot sight on this gun because that sight only comes in a 0.180 height and this gun requires a 0.160 height. I took a Dawson front sight and trimmed it down to 0.070 in width. I was able to verify the sight in on Saturday so it should be ready to rumble. I need to do some shooting with it to see how it works as there is a little more iron above the fiber verses the Manny Mini Dot setup. Hopefully the weather holds out for this coming weekend so I can test it out in live fire practice.  

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This week I have been reloading a bunch of ammo on my trusty Dillon XL650 and it finally broke the plastic indexing ring due to a jammed up primer. I have had this press since 2008 and this is the first time I have broken an indexing ring. I don’t know how much ammo I have loaded on this press since 2008 but it has to be in the 300K – 400K range. Since I got it I have never taken it all the way down to clean or inspect it for issues. Since replacing the indexing ring requires that you take it all apart I used that opportunity to give it a complete disassembly, cleaning, adjustment and lube. With the indexing ring replaced and everything reworked it is running like a champ again.

 

It’s amazing to me how long this Dillon press has run with very few failures. I have had broken or worn out springs here or there. But all it usually needs is more lube when and where needed and it simply runs and runs and runs. I know that a lot of people are on the Dillon 1050 band wagon, but I find it hard to beat the functionality and reliability of this XL650. It has paid for itself many times over by now and looks like it will continue to chug along for many years to come. I wonder how many Dillon presses have over 1 million rounds of them?  It seems totally possible given the current condition of my press being several hundred thousand in. Hopefully this press keeps chugging along so it can reach that 1 million round mark. Maybe I should start keeping track of how much ammo I reload on it? Or pay it no mind and simply keep enjoying its seemingly endless reliability.

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Interesting. I bought my 650 in 2008 as well, and broke my first indexing ring this January. My round count overall is much lower though - probably between 50 and 75k.

 

Did the same thing you did: detail stripped and cleaned the press.

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On 3/23/2017 at 10:01 AM, CHA-LEE said:

This week I have been reloading a bunch of ammo on my trusty Dillon XL650 and it finally broke the plastic indexing ring due to a jammed up primer. I have had this press since 2008 and this is the first time I have broken an indexing ring. I don’t know how much ammo I have loaded on this press since 2008 but it has to be in the 300K – 400K range. Since I got it I have never taken it all the way down to clean or inspect it for issues. Since replacing the indexing ring requires that you take it all apart I used that opportunity to give it a complete disassembly, cleaning, adjustment and lube. With the indexing ring replaced and everything reworked it is running like a champ again.

 

It’s amazing to me how long this Dillon press has run with very few failures. I have had broken or worn out springs here or there. But all it usually needs is more lube when and where needed and it simply runs and runs and runs. I know that a lot of people are on the Dillon 1050 band wagon, but I find it hard to beat the functionality and reliability of this XL650. It has paid for itself many times over by now and looks like it will continue to chug along for many years to come. I wonder how many Dillon presses have over 1 million rounds of them?  It seems totally possible given the current condition of my press being several hundred thousand in. Hopefully this press keeps chugging along so it can reach that 1 million round mark. Maybe I should start keeping track of how much ammo I reload on it? Or pay it no mind and simply keep enjoying its seemingly endless reliability.

 

Agreed, I got a Mr Bullet Feeder for Christmas (thanks to the wife) and I can't imagine a 1050 giving me anything more than I have. Maybe if I loaded rifle (which I don't) or had a need for a primer pocket swager (which I don't). I have no idea how many rounds I've loaded and like you I've replaced a few springs and E-clips until I changed to a U die. I can load up for a match in an hour or less. I'm in the "pay it no mind and simply keep enjoying its seemingly endless reliability" camp. (now I've probably jinxed myself:blink:)

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This past weekend I was able to attend a local USPSA match on Saturday at the Aurora Gun Club. The weather was threatening to rain but it turned out to be really nice. I didn’t have that good of a match as I had a few mental and execution mistakes. I got to the range later than I wanted to and had to do a hurried walkthrough of the stages. This bit me in the ass on one stage because the procedure had us engaging each paper target with 3 rounds instead of the normal 2. In the morning I programmed the stage with only 2 hits per target and even though I found out it needed 3 hits per target when our squad got to the stage I failed to program it properly. This lead to starting off the stage by engaging targets with only two hits each then having to go back to several targets to engage them with a third hit. It was a super novice mistake that I was surprised that I made, but it makes sense if I program the stage early on with only 2 hits on the targets. I shot the stage again for fun to see how it would turn out and I ended up running it almost 3 seconds faster. So I gave away quite a bit of time screwing around with the wrong stage plan. The rest of the match was ok but nothing special.

 

The Clear Creek outdoor match got canceled on Sunday so I used the time to fit the Cammer Hammer to my Open gun. I was able to head out to the range to get some live fire testing done with the Cammer Hammer setup. Since the slide has more leverage against the hammer I started out with a 25lb hammer spring and used Slow Motion video to see how it was working. I did a bunch of Recoil and Hammer spring testing while leveraging the video to optimize the setup. I settled on a 7lb recoil spring with a 23lb hammer spring. This setup produced the best overall balance in reducing muzzle tip up, slide velocity, and muzzle dip after the slide closes. The dot would track fairly smoothly up and down within the glass and only move about half the height of the glass. This is about the same magnitude of dot movement as my EGW hammer setup but the dot was a lot smoother with the Cammer Hammer. I think this is because I can get a lot more refined control over the slide velocity leveraging the Cammer Hammer along with heavier hammer springs. My EGW hammer spring setup was an 8lb recoil and a 17lb hammer.

 

Since I got the Open gun tuned up to work with the Cammer Hammer I figured I would attend the CGC Indoor match Sunday evening. I also used the Eggleston 115gr bullets for this match and they worked great. They are super accurate and produce zero smoke just like the jacketed bullets. I shot the match fairly aggressive since the dot was a lot smoother. I had two misses for the match. The first miss was on an over the top only swinging target. I tried engaging it with two shots in one pass and called the second shot very marginal but it ended up being a miss. I can live with that miss because I knew I was pushing the limits. The second miss was on a partial hard cover target that I was engaging very aggressively. The streak of the dot was the height of the available target and the second sot must have gone over the top as there was only one hit on the target. It sucks to have an uncalled miss like that but it’s part of the learning curve which I know I need more experience with. It sucks to give up two misses in a match but it was awesome to be able to see a dot indoors. I may not shoot the Open gun as good as my Limited gun but it’s a hell of a lot more fun to shoot Open indoors verses Limited.

 

Now its time to get all of my guns and gear cleaned up and reworked for the Area 1 match. I am heading out to St. George Utah on Tuesday afternoon. I will be ROing the Wed/Thur shooting schedule then shooting the weekend schedule. I am looking forward to attending this match. We will see how it goes.  

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The adventure of the Area 1 match is now over. Match Director Ken Nelson asked if I could help RO the early schedule since I was shooting the weekend schedule and I jumped at the opportunity. Ken Nelson is well known for running HUGE matches successfully and getting a chance to learn from his match management process was an opportunity that I didn’t want to pass up. I was assigned as the CRO for stage 17 and helping me was my friend Jeremy Dunn. This stage had a fairly simply layout without any complex movers or shooting positions. This stage was actually only one of a few stages that had some aggressive hosing. The rest of the match was a fairly complex aiming contest. We ran all of the Wed/Thurs squads through our stage and it was fun seeing how everyone tackled the stage.

 

Since I drove to the match and was part of the match staff I was on a mission to pick up as much brass as I could while at the range. The crummy weather starting on Thursday evening and Friday kept me from brassing the whole time but I was able to capture 2.5 five gallon buckets worth of brass which was an ok haul. If the weather was decent the whole time I could have easily picked up more brass.

 

After we finished ROing our final squad on Thursday we finally had time to walk the stages. The wind started to pick up while we were looking at the final few stages. By the time we were finished looking at the last stage the wind was crazy blowing dust everywhere and starting to tear up stages. We got out of the range just in time as the rain started to come not to long after that. We had to go back to the range early Friday morning and help the weekend schedule RO’s rebuild their stages and get them setup exactly the same as they were before.  Luckily only one stage had to get thrown out because it couldn’t be restored to its original configuration. It sucked to lose a stage in the match, but I was honestly surprised that only that one stage was lost. The wind out there was super bad and I am surprised that more stages didn’t have their props take flight and end up in the next county.

 

I was scheduled to shoot the PM/AM/PM schedule on the weekend and that proved to be very lucky for me. The AM people on Friday had to shoot in rainy and muddy conditions with bagged targets. By the time the PM schedule started the rain had stopped but it was still heavily overcast and muddy. My squad started on Stage 18 and we shot all of the “Outside” berm stages which were a lot less muddy than the “inside” berms. Stage 18 was a box to box shooting position stage with a bunch of hard aiming. Shooting in these heavy overcast conditions wasn’t the best and it got worse when my fiber broke out of my front sight after the first shot. Shooting 25 yard mini poppers and no shoot partials without being able to focus on the front sight because the fiber is gone sucked as I was simply “Hoping” hits onto the targets. This is not how I wanted to start the match, but I eventually got my hits and didn’t rack up any penalties. The slower than normal shooting and a crap ton of make up shots were needed through that day. Cold hands mixed with crappy lighting made for substandard shooting. We finished the day on the stage that I was ROing (Stage 17) and by then the lighting was halfway decent and it had warmed up enough that I could feel my hands. I shot the stage fairly aggressive and had solid hits until I was engaging the back left open target. I was shooting at the open paper target while trying to look at the two middle steel to make sure they were both falling. This resulted in a Delta Miss on the open paper target. Luckily that was the only miss of the day on paper.

 

On Day 2 we started on stage 6 which was a retreating stage. Since we were on the AM schedule the lighting in the morning was once again pretty crappy and I was back to missing steel like crazy and racked up 4 Deltas. I hate it when I can’t see my sights effectively and am forced to shoot off of the fiber only. The only saving grace is that I didn’t have any misses. After that stage the sun came up and the lighting and weather was good but some targets were still in shadows causing me some havoc. I got super lucky at the end of Stage 3 because I bumped my mag release on the last shot and my mag fell free right after the last shot. That could have been a disaster if I needed to engage more targets. I finished the day with fairly solid stage runs and managed to hit all of the targets without racking up any more shooting penalties.

 

The last day we shot the PM schedule and the weather was awesome. We started on the infamous “Prone Stage”. This stage had an option of hanging off the side of a wall at the end or going prone to engage the same targets. You need to engage 3 no shoot partial targets at a healthy distance from either position so it wasn’t a slam dunk on deciding on which plan to use. Initially I was sold on going prone then at the last minute I switched my plan to hang off of the wall. Before we started shooting our whole squad was trying out the hanging off the wall method and one of the guys fell down and broke his wrist. We had to call for a match medic and get him transported to the ER to get it taken care of. That was a super bummer to see happen and it all could have been avoided with better stage design to eliminate the hanging on the wall as an option. This is a shooting sport not an acrobatics contest. I shot the stage using the hanging on the wall plan because it was faster than going prone and getting back up from the prone position. I ended up with a miss on one of the targets I engaged while hanging on the wall. That wasn’t much of a surprise because there wasn’t much support in managing recoil while hanging off of that wall and the sights were all over the place while shooting.

 

I kept pushing through the final stages and my squad was running out of steam. There were a couple of stages at the end where I had to set and paint my own steel right before shooting the stage. Or tape all of my own targets right before shooting the stage. I tried to blow this off but it got me increasingly more pissed off and it reflected in my shooting. I racked up 2 more completely stupid misses on the final few standards style stages because I was fuming pissed that my squad had turned into a bunch of lazy asses. It’s not very often that I let that stuff get to me, but it got me really pissed off this time around. I do my best to bust my hump in resetting the stage for others when it’s not my turn to shoot. Common courtesy should come into play with the rest of the squad. Somehow it failed at the end of this match. Oh well, it is what it is.

 

My buddy Price was able to get all of my stage runs on video and I have uploaded them to my YouTube channel. While watching the footage I noticed that a lot of my misses on steel were to the right. I also noticed that my hits on paper were biased right as well. I measured the centering of the front sight when I got home and sure enough, the front sight has drifted to the left slightly which would create a right biased point of impact. I need to get the front sight centered again and zero of my #1 Limited blaster back to where it should be.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d_mFl1y0jz4

 

After the results were tallied I ended up 4th overall in Limited at 92% of Nils who won. I know I left at least 5% on the table with my misses on the last day and all of my other little mistakes combined. I still have a lot of work to do but it’s also nice to finish 4th out of 193 Limited shooters.

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The front sight on my #1 Limited gun was really loose after the Area 1 match. It took very little effort to knock it out with a punch. I was able to rework the dove tail to tighten its engagement to the slide and got the front sight installed again. I hopefully it holds up this time. If not I will need to install a new front sight that is fit much tighter. While replacing the front sight I gave the gun a full detailed strip and clean. I noticed that the grip screw T-Nuts were starting to crack so I replaced those proactively. I need to sight in the #1 Limited gun after all of this fiddling to get it back into action.

 

I am doing some additional slide weight testing with my #3 Limited blaster. The #3 Limited gun had a Tri Topped slide along with rib cage cuts on the front. This gun has always had a more harsh felt recoil due to the lighter slide setup verses the #1 & #2 which only have a flat top and rib cage cuts. I decided to go back to ground zero with the #3 blaster and get a new slide and barrel fit without any lightening cuts. The new slide only has a flat top cut. I am going to do some back to back live fire testing with this “Full Weight” slide setup verses my #1 that has the rib cage on the front. If it feels too heavy I am going to have some material removed from the back of the slide instead of the front to see how that works. I know that taking weight out of the back of the slide on my EAA/Tanfo guns felt better than taking weight out of the front. So it will be interesting to see if that also applies to the 2011 platform. The blaster fiddling process never stops.

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This past weekend I didn’t to do much shooting for various reasons. On Saturday I presented a Competition Pistol Training class. It is always enjoyable to present some training and see students improve their skills. But it’s also exhausting to present training all day long. I got to do a little bit of shooting at the end of the class though so that was nice. I verified that my #1 blaster was sighted in after the front sight replacement. Then I also verified the sight in of my #3 blaster after the slide replacement.

 

On Sunday I went down to Pueblo to attend their local USPSA match. The weather forecast was calling for decent temperatures but a lot of wind. The wind was in full effect that day and we spent quite a bit of time rebuilding stages or fixing things that the wind had torn up. My match was going ok until I shot the 3rd stage and right at the start my #1 blaster had a very strange failure. The front half of my barrel bushing broke off and the reverse plug and recoil spring flew out of the front of the gun. I have never experienced a failure like this or even heard of it happening to others before. I am using a Briley two piece barrel bushing that has a brass insert that engages the barrel. The base of the bushing is machined down quite a bit to fit the moveable brass insert and it sheared off at the thinnest spot in the base of the bushing.

 

Having zeroed the stage due to the gun malfunction I knew my match was done from an overall performance perspective. But I did bring my #3 blaster that had the new slide on it. I figured I would give the #3 blaster a go for the rest of the match and reshoot the third stage for fun. I started the stage again and it had a failure to feed jam on the very first target I engaged. I racked the slide to clear the jam and when the slide slammed forward the gun went BOOM. My finger was clearly out of the trigger guard during the slide racking so I know I didn’t have an AD due to that. After I cleared the gun I racked the slide again and the hammer was not staying cocked at all and following the slide every time I racked it. Something was obviously very wrong with the sear to hammer engagement on my #3 blaster. I packed up my gear and ROed the rest of the match. It was a bummer to have not one but two of my guns go belly up during a match. But I am SUPER glad that it didn’t happen the week before at the Area 1 match. All I know is that I am really good at breaking stuff.

 

When I got home I replaced the Briley barrel bushing with another one that I had laying around. I feel leery about putting another two piece barrel bushing into the #1 blaster but I admittedly never even considered looking at it for structural integrity while cleaning the gun. I find it hard to believe that the failed bushing didn’t show some signs of cracking well before it failed. So I will keep an eye on this replacement one from now on.

 

I spent a little bit of time troubleshooting the hammer follow issue on the #3 blaster but still haven’t figured out what is causing it. I put a new sear and hammer in it and it still followed. So I know it’s not those parts. If I pin the trigger into the side of the trigger guard to keep it from moving at all, the hammer won’t follow no matter how much I try to recreate the failure. So this points to the trigger bow, disconnector, or leaf spring. I will do some more troubleshooting this evening and hopefully I can get the issue isolated.

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I had a gun that was giving me unexplained hammer follow for a little while. It ended up needing  a little heavier main spring. I was running a 17 lbs that had a few thousand rounds on it, went to a new 19 and it solved the problem. I had never considered that as a possibility until someone on these forums mentioned it.

 

It's a easy thing worth trying when the standard hammer follow checks come up short.

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23 minutes ago, Racinready300ex said:

I had a gun that was giving me unexplained hammer follow for a little while. It ended up needing  a little heavier main spring. I was running a 17 lbs that had a few thousand rounds on it, went to a new 19 and it solved the problem. I had never considered that as a possibility until someone on these forums mentioned it.

 

It's a easy thing worth trying when the standard hammer follow checks come up short.

 

Thanks for the suggestion. I will give it a try if I can't figure it out by replacing other things.

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9 minutes ago, CrashDodson said:

When you zero your gun with the Manny dot do you zero with the blade at the top of the notch like normal or do you zero splitting the fiber or using the top of the fiber?  

 

I zero it off of the top of the blade. But with the Manny dot the top of the dot is almost touching the top of the blade so its pretty much the same thing as zeroing off of the top of the dot.

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Has #3 been messed with or did you put that other hammer in it ever?  Maybe you left the monster mainspring in it, or something changed slightly and you forgot to switch out a part as part of the system swap?

 

Just glad I've never had to deal with the hammer follow issue before..... :lol:

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The #3 blaster has all of its original trigger group parts. The only recent change was to replace the slide and barrel. I will get it figured out this evening. I just need some time to dig into it and get it fixed.

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More slide mass making the slamming close more jarring may be the issue. The grip screws are solidly tight and this is a metal grip gun so the grip isn't moving independently from the frame.

 

When I was looking at it yesterday I noticed that the leaf spring could move laterally quite a bit and the trigger bar could move up and down quite a bit. That extra movement may be just enough to cause some trouble.

 

As I said before. I will get this figured out. I just need to set aside some time to do it this evening.

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I have seen a failure like yours, and I've thought about potential solutions. When I was shooting single stack, I considered fitting a reverse plug with a shoulder like you would use on a bull-barreled gun. Takedown would be like a bull barrel, but it could be fit so the plug applied no forward pressure to the lower lip of the bushing.

Sent from my XT1254 using Tapatalk

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On 27/03/2017 at 3:39 AM, arkadi said:

I keep the plastic tabs primers come in. Put them near the wall on reloading bench in pyramids. Very visual counter.

 

if cha-lee did that he'd need a second house just to store the empty primer trays!! especially if they are federal primers!

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I got the hammer follow issue figured out on the #3 blaster. I replaced every trigger component one at a time and tested it in between. The issue ended up being a combination of loose fitting sear/trigger leaf spring and loose trigger bow. The sear/trigger leaf spring could move latterly a couple of millimeters and the trigger bow could move up and down within its track 3 - 4 millimeters. After replacing those two parts together the issue was resolved. I also polished the breach face to make it more slippery so the failure to feed issue won't happen again. I will get some time to test it out this weekend to see if its really fixed or not. I am keeping my fingers crossed.

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This weekend I hosted the local HPPS Match. As always it was a bunch of work setting up and running it but the match turned out to be a very fun and challenging. I didn’t get a chance to check out any of the stages beforehand from a competitive shooting perspective so I had to figure them all out as we got to each bay during the match. Lucky for me the stage plans were fairly easy to figure out. The challenging part for this match as a shot difficulty on some paper targets and there was a boat load of steel. I told myself to aim hard for all of the steel and it worked out great except for one stage where it got overcast. Up until the overcast stage I was shooting the steel 1 for 1 the majority of the time with only a few make up shots needed. When the overcast lighting came all I could see was the fiber in the front sight and that proved to be not enough refinement to hit some small plates on the second to last stage. I needed 4 shots to take down one plate which was painful.

 

For the match I had two misses on paper. The first was on a no shoot partial which I tried engaging weak hand only while hanging on of a wall to avoid a really awkward lean. I called the shot marginal high on the target and it ended up being a miss. The second was on the overcast stage run while engaging a hard cover partial which I called slightly high and it ended up being a miss. It sucks to have misses like this, but the good thing is that I at least called them marginal. I still need more shooting with the Manny Mini Dot setup to refine my shot calling skills to understand that these marginal called shots are in fact misses on these type of partial shots.

 

The really good thing for the match is that I was doing a great job of staying visually patient to shoot the steel one for one. I used my #1 Limited blaster for the match with the newly replaced barrel bushing and it was functioning as it should. I was able to shoot a second gun on the classifier using my Open gun and shot a 100% on it. Or that is at least what the classifier calculator says, which may be wrong. I will have to wait until tomorrow to see what it comes up as on the USPSA website. This should be my third GM classifier in Open, so I still need three more to get my GM classification. I want to get the GM classification in Open before I start shooting it full time so people don’t call me a sandbagger with a Master classification.

 

On Sunday we had a work party day to get the HPPS props reworked and build some new shelves to store the props better in our barn. We got a crap load of work done that day even though we only spent about 3 hours on it. It’s amazing how much work we can get done when there are 8 people working hard on getting stuff done.

 

After the work party, since I was already at the range, I was able to do some live fire practice. I brought all three of my Limited guns to test out. Since the #1 Limited gun is my Primary I used that as a baseline of performance and accuracy for the other two. I started with some group shooting using all three guns to verify their accuracy. The #3 needed a little tweaking as expected to get the point of impact just right. I was able to produce all rounds touching groups with all three guns. I then dry and live fired a practice stage several times as I alternated between all three guns. The #1 & #2 are in very similar physical configurations and they both felt the same while shooting. The only difference is that the #2 is using a trimmed down width Dawson front sight because it needs a .160 tall to produce the same POI. This Dawson front sight has the fiber down from the top just a little bit more than the Manny sight so I can see more of the “iron” above the fiber. This obviously makes the sight picture look a little different but it didn’t seem to affect my ability to call my shots effectively.

 

The #2 Limited blaster is the one with the new full weight slide. The feeding and hammer follow issues are now resolved and it was running flawlessly. The heavier slide did produce a different felt recoil than the other two. The recoil impulse actually felt duller than the lighter slide guns, which is to be expected. But the additional mass made it muzzle flip more and caused more muzzle bounce as the slide slammed forward. I could shoot this gun almost as good as the #1 & #2 but the muzzle bounce post shot was really distracting. This slide is 1oz heavier than my other Limited blasters so I am going to remove 1oz from it to make it the same weight. The only difference is that I am going to take the weight out of the back of the slide instead of the front. This may be a failed project but I know that I really liked taking weight out of the back of the slide on my EAA/Tanfo guns when I was shooting those. It’s worth experimenting with it on these 2011’s.

 

The good news is that all three of my Limited blasters are pretty much back in action. Sure the #3 still needs some slide weight reduction fiddling and eventual coating but it’s still fully functional. That and I can throw the old slide/barrel back on it anytime I want.  

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