MemphisMechanic

I'm only a size L glove, but I went with a Tanfo over a CZ specifically because the Tanfo fills my hands fully and perfectly. The CZ doesn't. Even though I can shoot it just fine, it doesn't feel inherently matched to my hands the way the Tanfoglio large frame guns do.

Good question. (Also, which press is your CCI-primed ammo loaded on?) My gun is fitted with the PD firing pin spring. If I can't figure it out, perhaps I'll try the E.G. Light firing pin spring. ARy keeps hammering on primer depth being the problem, but I think he's off base: You can't hit a primer more than a dozen times and fail to set it off it that's only happening because it's a good primer which is a few thousandths high. Those almost always light on hit #2. I believe that for whatever reason, my gun doesn't have the firing pin force that it should. I finally will have time to tear it down and take a look tonight.

You sincerely think everyone should sell their Tanfoglios? Because if it were that finicky of a firearm - it won't eat ammo loaded on perhaps the most popular press used by USPSA shooters - most of us would have. (I'm willing to be a lot of Tanfo shooters have their guns running just fine off of an XL650 diet, I just need to figure my issue out.) I have more faith in my ability to troubleshoot this thing than that. I'd go back to a factory hammer spring and the 8.5# trigger that came with it before I'd deal with hand priming or buy a $2k reloading press just to feed one picky gun.

I'm planning to try both a 14# Wolff spring, and the EG Medium spring in the future. I'll be ordering those from P.D. when firing pin is available. Thats assuming that adjusting my press or firing pin block doesn't fix my problem.

For 9mm pistol with one shot and a U die I do the following. Spray the bottom of a small Tupperware sandwich container for about 1-2 seconds. Fill it halfway with brass (50ish pieces) stir it around, and dump it into the casefeeder. This method keeps you from directly spraying the cases - so you aren't getting lube inside every case that was mouth-upward. Do this twice each time you refill the primer tube with and you'll never run the casefeeder dry. Takes less than 30 seconds. Load your ammo. Gauge it and box it up, as is. No need to clean or tumble or anything.

My advice would be to take both bullets and load them nice and long as dummies (no primer, no powder) at a length like 1.140" or 1.150" and send them to Grams along with your barrel. That should enable you to load virtually anything to 1.130" afterward. Inexperienced reloaders don't realize that overall length (OAL) isn't what matters. It matters where the shoulder (or ogive) of the bullet hits the rifling just ahead of the chamber. The tip is sticking down the open center of the barrel and isn't a factor. Also yes, you were right. Glocks come with really long & loose chambers from the factory - that's part of their reputation for eating anything. My Tanfo barrel is now similar to my G34's in that respect, thanks to Grams. Highly recommended.

Plunk test as advised: Field strip, drop a round in the barrel, and see if it'll spin freely then fall out without assistance. If it doesn't, that ammo is too long for that barrel. Not spinning freely = your bullet is stuck in the rifling. Load a few dummies up to the length you want, and send the barrel to Grams Engineering. For $29 plus a total of five days without the gun, mine will now let me load to long sloppy Glock tolerances. (If it's short enough to cram in the magazine, my Tanfo will eat it!)

Does this only occur when dryfiring with empty mags? On the K9 and CDNN mags, I can misalign the follower up between the feed lips and they'll stick in the gun when inserted with the slide closed. The follower binds to the side of the slide stop's tab, instead of pushing upward on the bottom of it. If you load a dummy round (or live one) and they magically begin dropping free, that's your issue. You can't duplicate this issue with live fire at all. Rock the follower forward and downward at the front and that fixes the issue I'm describing as well.

If your local matches actually have paid target resetters? I'm moving. (I know the EHC had them. I'm talking about local weekly matches.)

Sticking to powders suitable for 124 and 147 and assuming coated bullets: WST is a good one. Soft. Average cleanliness and smoke in muzzle blast behind coated. Nobel Sport Prima V may be my new favorite and is very cheap through powder valley. Leaves gun spotless. Average smoke. Very soft recoil. N320 is good but quite expensive. Leaves gun spotless. Soft recoil. Light smoke. Titegroup works, but is very smoky and leaves the gun with hard to clean baked on carbon deposits. Somewhat soft recoil. Ramshit Competition is soft and average smoke. Doesn't burn consistently in my guns loaded on a 650 and has been relegated to practice ammo. Very dirty gun afterward. (Anything slower burning that this group is not listed because I don't use it for light competition loads. 231, HS-6, WSF, and bullseye all have a pinch more recoil than the listed powders.)

Compressing? Not even close. Prima V isn't a high volume powder. Plenty of room left in the case.

Then you need to get out to remote locations with really good USPSA matches and shoot more! They're supposed to get dirty.

It is unlikely that the OAL change will affect your accuracy noticeably at USPSA distances (0-75 ft) Worst case, if it turns out that it does? Your old ammo becomes the 'practice ammo' stockpile and you just load new stuff for matches.

I'm not using the #550 magnums yet. I have a few K of the CCI 500 standard small pistol primers that I'm working with. It might not be primer depth, ARy. Not when I can literally - not exaggerating - strike one two dozen times with the Stock 3 in DA (next time I'll also try cocking the hammer) and immediately light that round with an M&P with a factory striker spring. Worst case, I go up to the stiffer Wolff 14lb or try an E.G. medium spring in order to light the magnum primers down the road. I'm highly curious to see what kind of difference the PD heavy firing pin will make - you better believe that. I have a number of steps to go through to diagnose. See if I can seat primers deeper. Check FPB fit. Or shoot without it. We'll see.

150gr Bayou SWC (actually 147gr) 3.0gr Prima V 1.115" OAL CCI #500 primer 5" poly rifled barrel (Tanfoglio Stock 3) 50 degrees F 910,891,904,882,913,909,875,917,918,876 899.5 avg FPS (132.2 PF) 16.93 SD

Chrono results. I tried two different OALs: 150gr Bayou SWC (weigh 147gr) 3.0gr Prima V CCI #500 primer 1.165" OAL 5" poly-rifled barrel (Tanfoglio Stock 3) 50 degrees farenheit 897,877,915,877,900,881,891,890 873,883,883,888,889,880,883,902 888.6875 FPS avg. 130.6 PF 10.98 SD 38 FPS ES

Okay. I switched to Solo1000 because it was "clean and soft" back in the day. Fairly soft?yes. Smoky when shot. But gun still filthy when shot. I switched to WST. Same thing. Switched to Ramshot Comp. Same thing. So I've stopped listening when the internet guys proclaim "this is so much cleaner than N320!!" But honestly? Holy jelly, this stuff burns clean. It is as smoky as clays/WST/Solo1000 as far as what comes out of the muzzle behind a coated bullet. But the gun? This is after 250 rounds at an indoor range with a 150gr Bayou bullet: Regarding recoil impulse, well my baseline is 5,000 rounds of 135gr with WST and Ramshot Comp under them, and I'd say I'm now 5-10% softer. You can tell the difference when firing into the berm feeling only the recoil impulse, but you'd never notice it when running drills or during a match. (I also switched from 135s to a 147grain bullet so this is already an apple-to-oranges scenario.) Its clean. It's consistent. It's soft. I'm happy.

Regarding my pull weights? Just the parts I've listed and a lot of polishing. Everything in the gun is fresh-dipped chrome now.

Yes, they were. It just doesn't light CCI consistently as is, in DA. Remember that the hammer doesn't cock back as far as in single-action so you lose some force. I've been compensating by finding ten rounds or so which have a primer positively buried down in the brass well below flush, marking them with a sharpie, and loading those last in all of my 11-round 'starter' magazines. There are two things I need to look at: 1. Is it an issue with my press? I've loaded probably 20,000 round on my 650 with two cleanings of the priming system total. It may be due for some inspection and maintenance. 2. Do I need to check the fit of the firing-pin block? I didn't see any peening on a quick check at the range. Will look harder at the pin & block soon. And I'll be pulling the block out and testing the gun without it if I can't find a clear-cut cause, and testing it in live fire that way.

Old toothbrush and brake parts cleaner here.

And please for the love of god, clearance the right side grip for the roll pin of an ambi safety, so that it doesn't have to be removed in order to detail strip the gun!

They're coming up regularly on GunBroker these days, so that indicates that any dealer (who genuinely wants to help) should be able to chase one down without too much trouble.

The Henning grips on my Stock 3 literally drop right on and the screws start effortlessly. For the record.

Teething issues continue... New load is a Bayou 150gr SWC over 3.0gr of Prima V, and the powder was a huge winner. Soft, and even cleaner than N-320. Here she is after 250 rounds. You can still see a clean barrel hood and most of the innards are still shiny: The bad: multiple rounds going click instead of bang. Most fired on a second DA stroke, but four rounds could not be ignited by the Tanfo, even when ejected and run back through the gun after a dozen or more DA hits. ...And an M&P set all of them off on the first hit. So I'm looking at the firing pin block, needless to say. Perhaps I didn't fit it sufficiently and things are still dragging. I know it isn't ammo related: an M&P with a far shorter chamber ate it, my barrel has been reamed, and all of this ammo was chamber-checked in the S3 before firing it. At least I'm finally starting to get the hang of the DA/SA gun. Here's the dot torture drill (I'd never tried this version before) target that I ran at five yards flat out. A few shots got shanked rather badly but it feels like home at last. No more do I feel like an M&P or G34 would have improved my score. But shooting with time pressure? That's exciting when 10-15% of your rounds go click instead of bang...

In IPSC, unlike USPSA, you aren't permitted to do any internal polishing and you must use factory parts - off of your gun or a similar production-legal factory model. Things are more restrictive internationally. You're also required to have a 5 pound pull for your initial shot... which is why Glocks are much less popular over there. Striker guns are 5+ for every shot. A CZ or Tanfoglio is likely to be down around 2 pounds in SA, if it's 5.5lbs in DA.