MemphisMechanic

To be totally honest, if you haven't shot a group at 20+ yards most of us are going to discount your "accuracy is good" statement. Shooting a group of any kind at seven yards is largely irrelevant: My M&P's factory barrel used to shoot just fine at that distance. Only when you backed the target out to 25yds did you see the gun wouldn't shoot a group smaller than ten inches with ANY load using heavier bullets.

To be perfectly frank, I believe the goal of the APEX barrel was to address guns like my own. ...Guns which shot 8" groups (or larger) at 25yds with their factory barrels and heavy bullets... My 135gr load dropped from a group size of about 10 inches, down to a hair over two inches.

I use everything the Ben Stoeger shop sells except I'm using the $40 shooters connection belt ... because I already had it. Blade Tech holster body for Stock 3 on the fully awesome BOSS hanger. Ghost pouches? Yes. B fan of these over my old CRSpeeds. If you decide to play with a Glock or M&P or CZ you don't need to make any changes to your mag carriers. They're also tough enough to fall into when empty without damage (don't ask.) And trust me: choose the Henning basepads over the shockbottles. The front edge of the basepads being beveled to match the magazine body rather than the angle of the gun's grip is a huge ergonomic improvement. I'm still shocked that it actually makes a difference, let alone a huge one. They are down to almost $16 each when ordered in a 6-pack from Henning's website, so they are also surprisingly the cheapest option.

Regarding your issue with the front sight doing weird things when you transition... Are you shooting both eyes open as your phrasing seems to suggest? If so, experiment with a piece of scotch tape or a smear of chap stick rubbed on the weak eye's lens to see if it's an eye dominance issue.

Because if your standard deviation is good (less than 10 is in this ballpark for me) then you can load to 870 FPS with a 147gr bullet if you're looking for your "minimum to make power factor safely. 850fps + 10 + 10 = 870 FPS That puts you at 127.8 PF - with very consistent ammo, you're correct sir, you have enough cushion to be statistically quite safe. However most of us don't shoot 132-135 PF ammo because we want the cushion, it's just the reason you see repeated online. The gun runs more crisply with a few extra FPS behind the slide's cycling, your split times are freaking identical with a buttery soft 135-147 grain bullet already, and it tends to be more accurate ammo with heavy 9mm bullets. (Although higher PF ammo being more accurate is anything but a universal rule. You always have to develop your own load for your gun.)

I only suggested retaining the factory hammer spring because he mentioned nightstand (home defense) duty. Personally, I won't lower the spring rate on a striker or hammer in a 'will need to go bang to save my life' gun. Especially since I have a gun with a 14lb PD spring right now that isn't popping the primers used in CCI/Speer (Gold Dot hollowpoint) ammo because it needs more polishing or other work.

As the others said, try loading them hot before anything else. I've run into several guns that wouldn't shoot 147s accurately until they were quite a bit hotter than you'd want to shoot them in USPSA or IDPA. It sucks, because you bought them to shoot marshmallow-soft ammo in matches and it probably means you'll have to shoot them through other guns, but at least you have an answer.

Dont worry about an OAL variation of less than ten thousandths, as long as your gun shoots it accurately. Which it should. Personally I load dummies and find what my gun will pass the plunk test with, given that bullet's profile. Once I have that information I'll set my press up so that my longest round is .005" shorter than that length. So I'll load to 1.135 for a gun that will take a bullet out to 1.140 (which means at 1.140 it'll fall into the chamber, spin freely, and fall back out.) The variation I'll see is typically 1.128" to 1.135" in that situation. Sometimes they'll dip down to 1.125" and that doesn't concern me either. I'll go chrono it, shoot it for groups to make sure it'll shoot minute-of-upper-A-zone at 15 yards, and call it good. (If it isn't accurate enough, I'll change powder charge and/or try a shorter OAL to find something the gun shoots tight groups with.)

I've never loaded with stick. Only the popular ball and flake powders. So at some point soon I'll convert to the LnL measure and probably be happier too.

Since a "very good grip" tends to be as high as possible, which means on some guns you don't consistently hit the grip safety, I'd certainly say that it isn't a universal opinion.

We can handle that via text

What Sage said. Every Lee die is generally superior to it's Dillon counterpart. Eventually you'll end up with a mixture of dies (An EGW U-die and a Redding micrometer seater and a Lee Factory Crimp are a rather popular combination as just one example out of many possibilities) I'm back to all-Lee at the moment. And it works great.

If you lighten all of the other springs but leave the hammer spring stock (which I would for a defensive gun!) ... I'd expect 8-9 DA and 5ish SA, yes. The hammer spring has a huge effect on your DA pull so that will stay rather high, but hammer spring isn't a massive factor in SA. That's more a function of the geometry of your sear and hammer hooks. My Stock III (with a somewhat heavy 14lb hammer spring) marginally shiny but full polish, Titan hammer, and BOLO disconnector, is 7.75 / 3.75 lbs That 7.75 is vastly more shootable than the stock 10.5 was, simply because the trigger is now smooth as glass with no grit. Instead of multiple jerky stops and starts, you get a trigger rolling smoothly back into the gun.

I've heard good things about the Innov8 shoes, but I love the way Adias's fit my feet. I'm a 10.5 E (wide) and wear an 11 in the above shoes.

I sure hope you mean Saturday, unless you're showing up really early for our match!

...boom. http://www.doublealpha.biz/hornady-lnl-powder-funnel

These guns are highly individual creatures. That's for sure. I think people who haven't tested and tuned one might certainly say that it "shouldn't work." A lot of your gun's reliability will come from your diligence and patience when it comes to polishing everything like crazy. I didn't go far enough in the first pass and my gun isn't reliable with CCIs and a 13lb spring - a combination that should work. I'll be going back in soon and polishing everything much more aggressively.

See? Now *that* was useful information! Glad I asked. DAA expander, it shall be. No need to convince me of the merits of polishing it, either. My Dillon already looks like a mirror, which was worth it just to have it stop sticking in my brass when pulling the shellplate back down.

How's my parts list look? Missing anything or did I get it all?

Store credit is totally what I'd want! I want to order a couple more recoil spring weights and their sexy new firing pin and I heard a rumor about another secret P.D. part in development that I really want to play around with...

Damn! One week after my $300 order. Just my luck...

You can obsess over this... Or go shoot groups with your ammo. If it's accurate at 20-25yds and makes power factor? Then whittling down your SD with hours spent in the reloading room is going to make your OCD feel better. But it won't make you shoot any better.

Is any powder slipping out of the cases when you index to the next station? Is your powder measure kept at least half full?

I think most of us have seen no need to spend that kind of money on a Dillon scale. I've use a cheap digital Lyman scale for 8 years and it's never let me down. Side note: no matter the brand of scale, I drop five or ten cases worth of powder on the scale and take an average. Much more precise. Your powder measure won't drop exactly precisely the same amount of powder on each cycle of the press, and I trust the scale more, with a bit more weight on it, as well.

.http://www.markvii-loading.com/Mark-7-1050-LTE-Autodrive-_p_309.html No bullet feeder included. Only one speed (fixed rounds per hour) Smaller android tablet Weaker motor Those seem like the key differences.