MemphisMechanic

A clean smooth draw and a clean smooth fumble-free reload are very helpful things to learn. Lots of videos on each on YouTube from top USPSA guys if you search, so you can work on building a good technique you won't have to un-learn later on. I'd also suggest learning to aim at a dryfire target or two, turn and move across the room (as if around an unseen wall) and acquiring an aim at another target smoothly. That is - without either pointing the gun up high in the air like a 70s TV cop, or swinging it down at your own feet and legs like a typical new shooter. Tuck it back against your chest when moving but keep the muzzle roughly horizontal and aimed downrange. Swinging the gun straight down or straight up into the sky, and breaking the 180 when you have to turn around and back out of a tight shooting position? Those are the most common huge mistakes novices make. And obviously, make it a habit to keep your finger off the trigger unless you're actively firing a shot. 50% of out new shooters think they do that religiously. They're surprised when I video them moving and loading with it on the trigger.

If your gun doesn't eat those Winchesters like candy with the block removed, I'll be stunned. Looks good. Thanks for measuring before and after. I can now say for certain that the shimmed primer ram does help!

Oh good! Let me know if they actually do go in deeper. Mine look deeper than I remember without shimming the ram, but I didn't measure any before making the change. Let us know what you find.

If you have access to them, Winchester primers on a 650 with a shimmed primer system are a pretty solid option. Despite it's mediocre non-adjustable priming system, I consistently get them below .004" with this press. They run in my gun with a 13lb spring. They should definitely run in yours (with no FPB) with a 15.5. That is, if you load them and drive them deeply home. Factory ammo with Winchesters doesn't count, because factory primers aren't deep enough - most of the time they're barely flush.

Are your magazines numbered? If not, do that. If it happens with only one magazine...

Do they pass the plunk and spin test when dropped directly into your bare barrel?

The simple version: I'm pretty sure this is your first time tuning a hammer-fired gun. Everything you're upgrading in the gun reduces how hard it strikes. So you must help the gun out with: 1. Internals that have been polished and fitted perfectly so that you lose as little force as possible. 2. You have to run better ammo than you loaded for a striker gun. Ammo which fits your barrel well and plunks/spins freely. Ammo which has primers buried fully into the bottom of the primer pocket.

Usually the error you see at 10yds is (roughly) tripled at 25.

Can we get another company pulling Tanfos into the USA already?

I'm of the opinion that at locals, there's nothing wrong with scoring behind the shooter as the stage is still being shot, if layout permits that safely. But when we do it? If you shot anything that's a Delta or worse you'll get to see that target before we tape it. I see no problem with that as the guy running the nook or the timer, or the guy pulling the trigger. At a major, I want an RO-led tour of every hole I punched given how much $$$ I paid to shoot that match. Or I want to be told that they'll be scoring ahead so that a friend can walk with the scorekeeper. Either one of those is fine with me.

Bumping this up to the top of the "recent activity" feed for you! That's all the help I can offer from Tennessee.

The lack of polishing is probably contributing to your light strike issues. A little bit. Everything in that gun needs about three solid hours of being dremeled to an absolute mirror shine if you want to run all of these lightweight springs, and still expect the hammer to strike with a decent amount of force. The pins and spring holes and hammer strut and all those other surfaces that move when the hammer is released. It'll also lower your trigger weights. But it's mostly worth doing for reliability.

Correct - the surface that's visible on the underside of the slide when it's assembled. EDIT: I assume that's the Xtreme block you'll be working on... I thought you said you polished this gun's internals? Then the sides and the surface you're about to sand down should look like they were freshly dipped in wet chrome, along with the hole in the slide it drops into. (And every pin and hole and trigger part in the frame of your gun, too.)

In addition to the above, the BOSS was the original, and Springer copied it. I like supporting the innovator when I can.

It looks like your block is hitting, yes. You can either file the top of the tab down which blocks the striker: Or you can file down the head of the FPB that sticks out of the slide - the surface you see with the slide pulled off, and where the sear actually lifts it. I chose to file down the head of it, because it's easier to keep flat in my opinion. A few thousandths is the difference betwen properly fit, and junking the part. First, I'd toss it in a bin somewhere and leave it out of the gun until you get it 100% reliable. The ammo that you're feeding the gun: take a pair of calipers and measure how deeply your premiers are seated. Factory ammo is usually seated flush or very close. For a hammer-fired gun with lightened springs a flush primer is a high primer and the gun will not run on it without a spring like the EGD Medium, which is barely lighter than the stock one.

Typical for a freshly worked gun. Dont obsess over pull weight on the bench. Get it reliable and shoot it a lot. My rough guess? A heavy month of shooting and then second round of polishing and you'll be at 5.6-5.8 and 2.5 or so. Nothing helps a new gun like throwing 1,000 rounds downrange.

The 15.5 PD spring in my gun is just barely strong enough to ignite CCIs with the bolo tuned to crank my hammer back farther than yours. Several rounds of heavy polishing. And ammo with agressively pressed primers. ...In other words, I wouldn't expect your gun to run CCIs yet on ammo that plunks and spins: mine did not. Wichesters are a different issue. If the gun won't light those off, pull the firing pin block and load some ammo that has deeply DEEPLY seated primers, and is extra short so that it plunks and spins. Take that to the range and see what happens. EDIT: I was also one of the few who needed to fit (file down) the extended firing pin block with a Titan/bolo combination. Before I did, the firing pin showed visible signs of peening where it was running into the block. My gun didn't run worth a damn with the unfitted block installed.

Good choice. I shot twenty thousand of them through my M&P. Perhaps since I'm used to those in a gun half the weight of the Tanfo, I don't mind the slightly snappier nature of the 124 and like the extra zip to the slide's cycling?

Math nerd.

Stop. Do not pass go. Do not collect $200. 1. Verify function of the gun. Check for proper firing pin block operation on the bench. Then return to the range with the block totally removed and test fire it. That's what I do. I actually shot mine in local matches and such for 3 months without the block installed until I was positive I had a 100% gun, then put it back in. 2. After looking into that, get the chamber reamed by PD or by Grams. The best way I can put it is: I don't know if the fitting of your parts is an additional problem, but your ammo is 100% for certain a problem. The shoulder of the case should be locked against the forward shoulder of the chamber so that all of your firing pin force is directed into the primer. If the Bullet is catching the rifling then some of your hammer's force is being lost by driving the Bullet into the rifling until the case seats fully before you even begin to dent the primer. On the 3rd or 4th hit you've gotten the round fully chambered, and it goes off. The ammo you're feeding that gun is either causing some of your issues, or all of your issues. I'm not sure which.

If you want to run those primers and that ammo, the hammer spring choices to promise a reliable gun are the PD 15.5 or the EGD Medium. CCIs only run on a PD spring when seated on a 1050 all the way buried down in there with a 15 pound spring. If you're loading on a 650 like me, you need an absolutely absolutely perfectly setup gun in order to light them off with a 15.5 PD spring. The easiest alternative is to simply run Winchester primers and a 14 pound PD spring. Then you can throw a bolo and a Titan in your gun without doing much extra work beyond a little polishing, load them on any press in the world, and it'll run 100% if you don't have additional mechanical issues like a firing pin block that isn't fit correctly.

You're not asking me, but clay dot and Prima V are both pretty sexy under a 124.

Like @SoCalShooter69 I started with 150gr SWCs from bayou... I'm finding I'm a big fan of the way 124s run my gun and they're quite a bit cheaper and I beleive they result in marginally tighter groups. Jury is still out on that one.

If you like the holster body otherwise? Buy the BOSS hanger from the ben Stoeger pro shop without a holster body and bolt yours to it. No one deserves to use the garbage DOH blade tech hanger. Until they switch to something as stiff as the BOSS they don't have any idea how mediocre it was.

SSI Scales: http://www.shootingsportsinnovations.com/Scale-Grips_c2.htm I ran them (even hand checkered the 2.0s to get even more traction) until I got a set of Patriot Defense palmswells. Assuming I am still happy with them after a few matches, I'm selling the scales.