Loves2Shoot

I've tried them all and the Sordins win by a mile.

That is what I did.

Just heavy enough that I can "prep" the trigger (that is take up the trigger pretravel) on the draw without it going bang.

A happy son, wife and two more days off to enjoy them A Tormek water cooled sharpening system found it's way into the shop also

The wife and I saw it in 3D and WOW, what a visual experience. Not much of a "movie" but a very an eyegasmic experience.

A real day with a one on one with a top shooter is much different that a group class. If you have a top shooter willing to give you a one on one I can't see even considering anything else.

Exactly, people have no clue how much bringing products to market really cost or the real size of the market. I don't see how anyone without a huge pile of money could get enough ROI to make it viable with the quality of products and service that STI and SVI currently provide. Everyone and his brother want to be in the gun business but can't do the real math and that is why they come and go so regularly. I imagine once the patents run out, their will be some folks who try it, but they will have a very tough task if they want to make it a serious business that actually makes enough money to stay in business and not just a hobby. PS. Kimber used the BL M5 design for a hi-cap polymer frame pistol, but they don't seem to have a bunch of traction at the 1kish price range.

From these post, I think a lot of people do not understand the cost of doing business and that copying an established product might be a good way to waste a lot of money IMO.

We have some videos on our site that you could take a look at.

Well, they only have one plant in North America that dose the coating, and they say they own the right to the process they use, so they might be similar, but they tell me they are not the same. A lot of the similar coatings are applied at temperatures too high for gun parts.

IonBond's DiamondBLACK (DLC or Tribicote) is a proprietary process, and there is only one place that does it in North America currently. They are not taking "collections of parts" to coat. The preparation process is very specific and only done on gun parts by people who know the parts and their function. Thanks for the kind words guys, and we appreciate the business. So are the other people offering DLC just reselling it? Because there are a bunch of folks coating things with diamond like carbon. Or is it just a slightly different process than the other guys? I'm sure there are similar coatings, but from what they have told me their process is proprietary. We have a IonBond facility that coats knives for the "big boys" here in Bend and I'm told the cost of locating a machine is in the millions of dollars range, so it isn't something you can do unless you do a LOT of coatings. They TiN coat slot machines here also. I got lucky, and they coat my parts with the CRC coating they use on the knives, but all the DiamondBLACK is done in Greensboro. DLC is a common term for the type of coating, the DiamondBLACK (Tribicote 40/41) is their version of it. There are many people who use the coating and call it different names also. I can't list the names of large manufactures who use it, but they do a lot of coating on gun parts, but you would know all the big names. They have many level of other PVD coatings that they also do for manufacturers.

Really??!? haha, I've always had this 'problem' and I've never thought of it as an issue until recently with my dive into this sport. I think it something that everyone has had to deal with, just trying to figure out my way around it. to explain a different way....look at a light fixture across the room, close one eye and give the light fixture a thumbs up, putting ur thumb over the light. now switch eyes. see how your thumb "appears to move" b.c than angle from the other eye is different from eye to thumb to fixture. thats my problem when both are open, i see both thumbs at the same time when focused at the longer range item. when focus is brought to the thumb, a single thumb is in focux but two fuzzy light fixtures are present in the background (again bc of the angles from each eye and across the thumb). hope that clears it up and maybe even helps the rest of you give me some insight and help in my progress. You are not alone. I've tried everything most folks have suggested, I just don't have a real dominant eye, and the off eye picks up the side of the blade (my theory is it has more surface area thus that eye gets the image input to my brain) I can force seeing a single sight picture, but not under the stresses of a match. I've tried every trick, spent too much time and $$$ with the eye doctor and different glasses, and now I just frost a spot on my left eye that blocks the blade of the front sight so I can't focus there with the off eye. I find I shoot more accurately and faster with only one clear sight picture and don't feel I lose anything blocking out the sight from my off eye. Jacks description of binocular vision describes very well how I see the world, and once you understand that you may or not be able to change it, I think helps, because you can move on and accept it and find some thing that works for you. People who can see one sight picture may not be able to understand that for some folks it just doesn't work, and not because they aren't willing to work at it. Good luck!

IonBond's DiamondBLACK (DLC or Tribicote) is a proprietary process, and there is only one place that does it in North America currently. They are not taking "collections of parts" to coat. The preparation process is very specific and only done on gun parts by people who know the parts and their function. Thanks for the kind words guys, and we appreciate the business.

Thanks for your service!

With the closing of IonBond's custom shop, we have been working at handling the custom work and finding other dealers nation wide that are interested in doing the processing also. I should have a few more "dealers" ready by the end of the year, as it is part of my to do list for our Christmas break, but for now, we are it.

That makes 2 of us Scott. Hope your powder showed up safely. I use UPS exclusively now, Fed Ex is barely a step above USPS. Yep, nice and dry, when it thaws out, maybe I can burn some of it I think the UPS versus FedEx depends a lot on the hub that services you. We are fortunate to have good folks working at both here.

Your gunsmith should read the ATF regs again. A serialized modern pistol frame is not a machine part, regardless of what is attached to it. We send customers prepaid labels if they want them, as many service desk people do not know their own policies, and this can be helpful, as they can have the shipping center call me if they have an issue. We do a lot of shipping and so we do get the occasional call that a ill informed service desk person is giving a customer a hard time, and I have no issues with getting their name and escalating it to someone who cares about keeping our business. A nonlicensee may ship a firearm by a common or contract carrier to a resident of his or her own State or to a licensee in any State. A common or contract carrier must be used to ship a handgun. In addition, Federal law requires that the carrier be notified that the shipment contains a firearm and prohibits common or contract carriers from requiring or causing any label to be placed on any package indicating that it contains a firearm. [18 U.S.C. 922(a)(2)(A), 922(a) (3), 922(a)(5) and 922(e), 27 CFR 478.31 and 478.30] From what our local shipping center has told me, the statement is between you and the counter person. I will not use the USPS to ship a firearm, period.

IMO the only time to look for holes in the targets are when they are scoring the stage, or if you are shooting some weird position where you are point shooting targets and the gun is not in front of your face (I find this works in IDPA where you must use cover or shoot really weird positions.)

My last post in the thread, but the reason I posted here was because I have have seen too many friends (myself included when I started) let the whole classification thing get in their head and hold them back. If/when you come to the conclusion that Chills did, that distraction/pressure is gone and you can focus on the shooting.

Correct, but if you are the winner of a class, you are shooting better than most of the shooters in the next class generally. If you shoot every stage at 50% I would guess you to be more like 7-10% higher in overall finish because the match winner won't win all the stages.

If all you care about is what percent the top shooter in the class scored then you say the represents an accurate percentage in their class via classification and the results "should be expected" that is contrary to the data. It shows it should "not be expected" and that if you finish at the top of your class (as Paul stated) your classification has does not represent you skill level and it is time for you to move up to be grouped with like skilled shooters. I was illustrating (using the data you presented) that to find the sandbaggers, just look at the top, and they are performing 10% or more above the standard of the shooters in that class and this has been common for as long as I have been shooting. Since you stated you don't care about that data, then you will see what you see, but it may not mean what you think it means.

I'm certainly open to seeing your data and your conclusions. data here one stage from limited nats. You can use most any stage, I just clicked one at random. repeat All you have to do to see the classifier percentages don't work at a match with the top shooters is to look at the stage scores, only a handful of shooters will shoot above 95% (GM) score with over 30 GM's in attendance, and if you average the top 10% of the scores you will see the pattern continue, that same 10-20% upward skew. When very few shooters in the class can shoot a score inside their classification percentage, what does that mean to you? I've cited my conclusion several times already. They are not comparable percentages.

Correct. I'm not saying the system is broke, but as you said big match percentage are not an apples to apples comparison to classifier percentages. I should clarify that by sandbaggers, I only mean people who the classification does not represent their skill, why is a case by case situational. My first Nats I was C Class practiced hard and was beat hugely my a dude named Mike Seeklander (he might have even been in the top 16.) I quickly realized all the winners below GM were a class or two under-classified.

That is the best effect of caring about classification

Scott, that's a lovely concept --- but we're now seeing classifiers that have originated in area matches and Nationals. On quite a few of those the HHF is equivalent to the HHF shot at the match of origination --- not some blend of various shooters high scores averaged together.... See P Pres post, he did his research and saw from previous years where he had to finish to win, in A Class. It has been pretty consistent since I began shooting Nats is consistent even if they are pulling the stages from other places these days.