MemphisMechanic

If that is accurate at 25yd and it makes power factor comfortably (2 X S.D. for safety at major matches = roughly 20 fps above the minimum for PF over a chrono) ... run with it. However. If you just feel like tinkering... First thing I look at is OAL. Take a caliper to your rounds and see how much they vary. If I target 1.130" I often see 1.1.27"-1.135" come out of my 650 with mixed headstamps. You can load all of your test ammo in matching headstamps cases to further increase consistency - it'll shrink your OAL variation and also remove changes in volume due to different wall thicknesses. If you get a good SD with that, but it opens up with mixed brass, then you know your powder measure and handle-rowing technique are doing their job. Keep using mixed brass with confidence at local matches, and if you decide you care, go with a single headstamp at majors. (Most of us production shooters don't bother. I switch to Federal primers for majors instead of my usual CCIs, and keep rocking mixed brass)

Some of you people make this way too complicated. Fill the press with all of your components. Flip casefeeder on and let it fill. Add primers. Top off powder. Cycle the handle twice, fully. This will result in a sized case in station two, below the powder measure on most of our presses. Pop that case out so you can see the priming wheel and station under station 2. Move the shellplate up about 1/2" by pulling the handle down a bit so that the priming wheel can spin freely. Manually pull on the arm that ratchets the primer wheel, until you see a primer roll into place. Unless you have done something strange, this will be six pulls with your fingertip, accompanied by ratcheting 'clicks'. Release pressure on the roller handle and reinsert the case in station 2. Push up on the handle to prime that case. Proceed as normal, loading ammo until you're finished. If you really know what you're doing, you will never ever have a primer make a trip down the ski jump. A small box of sized but not primed cases, and another of brass fresh out of the tumbler, are key to this: a .380 case just ran through your sizing die and you caught it because it resized effortlessly? Pitch it and replace it at station 2 with resized 9mm brass, then press a primer into it. Etc etc.

Definitely plan to respring the gun. As the others have said, a midrange or lower end load under a 115gr or lighter bullet is probably going to meet your needs. The keys are cycling the gun reliably and attaining sufficient accuracy. Many powders get fairly filthy at the bottom end of their charge weight - they don't burnt as cleanly / totally and leave significant fouling behind. Something to keep in mind. Using a very fast powder will help with this. Since their max load barely makes minor, 115 or so PF is closer to the book range than, say, trying to use Power Pistol or HS-6 for this task.

I'm asking if the reamer a local has - the one I used to throat the APEX match barrel in my M&P in about 4 minutes - would work.

I'm 36 and still have that issue. Dryfire for 20 mins means serious soreness the next day. Being a mechanic on heavy equipment (cranes, dozers, bucket trucks) for 10 years takes a toll on you. My strong wrist and offhand elbow are nearly always damaged to some extent. The more frequently I dryfire, as long as I was careful not to overdo it as I built up to regularly doing it...the less it bothers me and takes me beyond, er, baseline injury level.

Most of us who saw the need to spend $$$ on the apex barrel were seeing 6-8" groups at 25 yards with heavier bullets, or larger. I was. Now it's a 2" gun with the same ammo. It always did much better with 115gr ammo - that hasn't changed much. But 135 and 147 grain rounds actually land where I'm trying to put them. If my gun had shot a 2" group with my competition loads (heavy bullets at 133pf) I'd never have spent $200 on a barrel.

You'll see the "plunk test" or "spin test" mentioned in lots of posts here. They amount to the same thing. Crank out a few dummy rounds (no powder, no primer, everything else fully completed) and drop them into the chamber on your gun's barrel. If they drop in cleanly and spin freely, they're not long enough that they're wedged in the lands of the barrel - stuck in the rifling, in layman's terms. If you load longer than your gun's chamber, you'll be driving the bullet into the lands or pressing it farther back into the case each time the gun feeds a new round. Sometimes this feeds okay, but it's never the safest or most reliable way to proceed.

231 is a slower burning powder than 320. At the same power factor, it'll always have a bit more snap to it than 320 while backing the same bullet.

Do the Lim / Lim Pro / Stock 3 barrels take a reamer smoothly? Apprently the Stock 2's hardened barrel needs special treatment... but will an ordinary manson reamer do the job on the rest of the Tanfo line?

When I see round counts of 10k+ on other gun forums, I usually divide the stated number of rounds through their gun by 10. Men like to brag. We all know our casual shooting buddies are slightly... optimistic... about skillsets and such. Your average visitor to a static range probably shoots 500-5,000 rounds a year in total. Here on Enos, I assume it's closer to 2:1 or perhaps even 1:1. When I say my M&P 9L production gun has 30k through it, that's because it's eaten 10 3,000-round cases of bullets that got fed to my Dillon in order to produce match ammo. Actual round count is probably a good bit higher - I count the rounds I can say for certain have been fed to the gun, instead of doubling the "maybes" and adding those to the tally to impress people on the Internet.

Whatever method you choose, make sure you leave enough pretravel in there to assure that the tab sticking up on the top of the trigger bare moves forward far enough that it isn't lifting the striker block / safety at all. That safety is mandatory to assure that an M&P or Glock is proofed against discharging a round if it is dropped or struck hard. If an impact causes the sear to let the striker go... The only thing stopping it from hitting the back of the cartridge in the chamber is that firing pin block. I'm telling you this because I've seen several M&Ps with various FSS or homebrew triggers that weren't checked for this.

There is. But crushing a gun a few dozens times a day and doing a half hour of dryfire practice with that same extreme grip pressure builds those muscles too. I'm just saying that I spend all of my time squeezing a pistol grip to get my forearms stronger, versus squeezing a spring widget.

I've been working hard on crushing the gun with the weak hand and letting my dominant hand relax. Leaving it loose all the time makes that same relaxed grip automatic when you're faced with an array of 1 yard targets to shred. You know, the ones you tense up on and get trigger freeze while shooting? And my grip exercise has been... A dummy gun. We have a 7 year old running loose in my house, so while I routinely dryfire a few nights a week after he's in bed, the dummy gun offers the change to teach gun safety to him AND to pick a gun up a dozen times a day until the ultra-tight weak hand hold has become natural. I don't see the point in spending time squeezing a coil spring to build grip strength in my weak hand when I can do it by gripping a pistol. I want that super tight weak hand to become a habit and I want to make it stronger. So I pick up a pistol and grip it as often as it occurs to me. This is the same way I retrained myself to use the thumbs-forward grip when I first began shooting matches as that "floppy & low grip" guy. Pick up a gun three dozen times a day, correctly, until it becomes habitual. Then begin to do it as fast as you can.

I assume you had covered the surface in sharpie so that you could see where metal-to-metal contact was rubbing it off, and you'd know where to file. Which means you're referring to the circled surface when you say "under the wing"... correct?

The plunk test in your chamber? It depends GREATLY upon the profile of the bullet. An M&P of mine won't take a 135 gr RNL past 1.105" ... but eats 1.170" 124gr FMJs like candy. Does the stock 3 have a hardened barrel like the 2? It doesn't need to be hard chromed to be reamer-proof. The factory barrel in an XD-m and an M&P both laugh at a standard reamer as it is slowly dulled without making a scratch.

.http://www.brianenos.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=234904

For Production? The Stock 2 or the Stock 3. Pick your poison. They're all DA/SA with a safety you won't be using, and without a decocker (have to manually hammer-down at LAMR).

I basically run the BOSS kit, minus that specific belt. A cluster of "bullets out" ghost pouches and the Bladetech/BOSS hanger ordered from BSPS. It's terrific gear. Worth the $$$. Switching to bullets-facing-out takes about three weeks of diligent dryfire to truly own, but rocks for production. I've shot a lot of IDPA too. Until 2016, I shot four times as much of it as USPSA. Most IDPA shooters flat out suck at burning down close, wide-open targets with any kind of speed. With a hard grip on the gun and a few month's worth of practice, you can hit the -0 as fast as you can work the trigger at 2-6 yard distances. Set out five targets (the most you'd engage with one mag in Production if you have a choice) and shoot them static and moving inside of five yards. You'll be susprised just how much faster you can go if you let yourself try. And how little sight picture you need, along with just how misaligned those sights can be and still result in an A hit.

You need more creative lefties. Do I need to make a video?Aim the muzzle about 20 degrees below horizontal and angled off to the right about 30 degrees. Gun laying almost on its side. Then grip the slide from underneath the dustcover with the index finger and thumb to "pinch rack" it at the right speed. Presto. The round flips up cleanly to be caught and only a slight bit of effort is required to avoid sweeping yourself - make sure your right hand comes around the right side of the gun to catch the flipped round, instead of passing around the front of the gun. Same thing a righty has a responsibility to learn to do if they want to catch ejected rounds. I always ALWAYS show clear after doing so, since no RO ever expects this move from a lefty, and there's not much chance they'll see the chamber is empty. I'm also the "rack 2-3 additional times before hammer down" guy. I'll flip & catch if I can do that safely. If I can't for some reason, I roll the gun so the right side is facing straight down and rack the gun overhand just behind the muzzle, slowly, so the round drops at my toes. THAT is a move righties have problems replicating. Using either of these techniques, my weak hand is well clear of the ejection port the entire time. Personally, that's what I want to ensure I avoid doing.

What Jake said. Memphis means 90+ degrees most of the summer with humidity I was astonished to encounter when moving here from Chicago. I'm a heavy equipment mechanic in a shop that isn't air conditioned. I easily drink a gallon a day...But even that daily exposure still had me dragging last month at our local match. Since then, I've run 6-7 miles a week during the hottest portion of the day, usually around 4 pm. The difference between my July 3rd match performance and June's match was night and day.

Belt: I've used a Shooters Connection, a CRSpeed, and a DAA Pro. If money or whatever is tight enough that you're going to wait to have one "by the end of the year" just get the SC belt now. It's not as nice as the other two (DAA Pro is my favorite currently) but it damn sure gets the job done very well at that price point. They're only $40. Stage breakdowns: First stage: Poor plan. When you stop in the middle (your second position out of three) you shoot three center rear targets as well as some unseen stuff on the left. I'd have shot the rear targets 5 yards closer, with the last magazine, from the last position, instead. You'd have fired 10 rounds from the last position instead of 4, and done so much faster than from farther back, and with better hits. I'm pretty sure that two of the targets you shot from the first position were things I'd have been shooting from the second one for the very same reason. The two on the left facing the camera right next to the wall. I can't tell if you can see them from the second spot or if the wall hides them. Tough to tell. A's through GM's sometimes take things on the move. Or shoot them from further back to avoid an entire shooting position. Don't shoot their plan. Shoot one that your skillset will allow you to cleanly execute 100% of the time. K.I.S.S.! Even GMs choose the simpler plan whenever two similar ones are worth considering. When you've been doing this just a few months you should be choosing nothing BUT the simplest plan, even if it means running a few more seconds. In this case it was even more obvious: You had to run up there anyway. Transitions: At 0:46 seconds listen to your shots on those two shoulder-to-shoulder classic targets. There's no reason you couldn't snap the gun to the second target between shots resulting in bangbangbangbang, instead of bangbang... bangbang with a half second pause. For new shooters, transitioning the gun to a fresh target more quickly is almost always some seriously low hanging fruit you want to begin plucking. You fit that mold. Splits: You shoot nearly the same split at 4 yard as you do on a 20 yard target that's 50% hardcover. That means you're either shooting too slow up close or you're shooting too fast in the back. My suspicion says you're doing better in back than you are up front - burning more time up close with slow splits than you should. Watch an experienced shooter and listen, don't look. Railing on close targets? it's pop-pop as fast as he can work the trigger. The splits then slow down in direct correlation to how distant (or how tight) the shots get. Learn from that. Practice hosing down multiple targets close and dirty - you'll be surprised how much faster you can go if you don't tense up, and learn that a pretty lousy sight picture is still in the A-zone. Draw: Watch the stationary draw at 1:02. Look at your hips. Those should be completely stationary when you draw. Only your arms will move. Not your head and not your hips. You're rolling your hip toward your hand instinctively to get it closer to your hand. What you're really doing is giving yourself a moving target to try and pluck from the holster. Move your hands as fast as you possibly can. Freeze everything else. The good: Everything. For a newcomer you're one of the better ones I've seen. You're sure you've only shot two matches? Wait... how long have you been shooting INDOOR matches and/or some IDPA stuff?

With coated bullets: 1) shorten your load with your previous crimp and what-not until they pass the plunk test. (You drop it into your disassembled gun's barrel and it spins freely). 2) Pull that bullet. Does it have a groove or ridge in it where it was being undersized / pinched by the sizing die? Back your crimp off until you're juuuust taking the bell out of the case mouth. You should barely be able to see where the mouth of the case was wrapped around the bullet when you pull one. You certainly shouldn't be able to feel a ridge there. I find these two steps result in amazingly reliable, accurate ammo with coated bullets. I also found running a Lee FCD to be totally worthless. If you leave it where the round gets properly final-sized with lead or coated bullets, it is probably under sizing your round at the same time. That can cause all manner of issues. By the time it is backed off enough to pass the above "crimp just enough to get the bell off the case mouth and get them to pass the gauge" test... the FCD isn't actually doing anything that an ordinary Dillon or RCBS crimp die doesn't do.

The easiest thing to change is the bullet weight. If you have some 124s on hand, load a few up and go shoot the gun. Lighter bullets and their correspondingly larger powder charges run the slide more quickly.

This isn't CZ specific but I switched from CR traditional bullet-forward CR Speed to "bullets out" Ghost pouches two months ago. Once the obvious learning curve was over, I wished I had gone directly these in the beginning. Smoothest draw, priced well, and bullets out really helps keep mags spaced apart yet taking up minimal space when you run six of them in production.

If you can work a punch and a hammer and have a clean place to work, you can do it yourself in about an hour. Watch the videos on Apex's YouTube channel and drop it right in yourself. The M&P is a very simple firearm to work on. I've installed APEX kits, both duty and carry, in multiple guns. It's a very simple process.