Casman

Nice list of mods and maintenance! Thanks for putting that up here. I wanted to add a second to the recommendation of re-springing you lifter; either with two Glock springs or just with the stock replacement springs from Winchester/Browning. It is the "Carrier Dog Spring" part number U111773601 in the Winchester parts catalogue. That, along with several of the other mods listed here, has pretty much cleared up that particular FTF in my SLPs.

Nealio, You are one of my new heros! I was finally able to get out and test the new K9 mag with a Grams follower and H-140 (older) base pad. It ran 23+1 one without a single bobble. New ammo loaded more easily than reloaded, but both made the 23 count and neither gave any feed problems. While I am far from using this setup in a major 3-Gun match yet, I am very happy to again have the potential of running 9mm in this pistol for the matches without a PF requirment. I'm not sure I would have even tried the new mags, after the problems I have had with the old 9mm mags, if you hadn't posted about them. Thanks very much! Have a great one. James

K9 Mags Have a look at this the link above. This is a string about the new MecGar K9 mags. I'm not sure if it will help you with the compact or not, but potentially another direction.

Cool! Thanks for the info. I'm going to pick up one of those mags tomorrow and give it a try. It would be so nice if my 9mm top end could get some real use. Happy shooting!

By the way, what OAL are you loading to?

Hey Nealio, Thanks for the post. I have tried in the past to get my 9mm top end to run for 3-gun and have always run into mag troubles of one kind or another. Your post here has me really psyched to give it another whir. It doesn't sound like it has been a problem, but you haven't noticed any hangup of the rounds below the side indents one the mags have you? Thanks for the info. James

Killer job with the vids, Doc!

Thanks Kurt! Coming from the best that really means something. Good Luck with the Pro-Am and we'll see you out at the Ozarks! James

You had a hiccup with your rifle? and still got that close? uh oh. Mr. Weakhand better keep an eye on those little scopes. Kurt was lettimg him feel good... I don't doubt it in the slightest! Turns out it wasn't nearly as close as we thought either, 94.9% of the Master.

I want to say a special Thank you! to the Firebird crew. Jim, Dan and Randy saved my bacon by fixing a hiccup I had with my rifle. In no way did they have any kind of obligation to do it but without hesitation they jumped in and got me back up and running. Those Firebird guys really do treat everyone like family. Thanks again guys! I owe you all one.

Will Do!

Aw Shucks. I gotta say; I definitely do not feel bad about coming in second to Kurt, any day or with any equipment. I can't say enough nice things about all the good information I have been given by both of the Millers when it comes to shooting. Thanks a ton to both of them! Thanks to ALL the match staff for all their hard work putting on this match. Once again, Thanks to the Marine team for helping out; it was great to see some of you guys again and to meet the new guys. Good luck with your posting, and Thank you for your service. As my first year being just a competitor I had a great time and got to shoot with some of the very best; shooters and people. Thanks for a great time Squad 10 and everyone else. Safe travels to everyone. James

Sorry, I'm not sure what WWB is; so I'm guessing I have not tried it. As for what you get if you order a tuned 140 mag; it will be based on the new K40 body with the spacer. Unfortunately, it will be the end of August before any are available. New base pads are in process and more mag bodies are on their way. James By the way, I got the new Rear sight prototypes today from Henning. They are Killer! I can't wait to start playing with them.

Ok, so I have Good News and Good News. Which do you want first? From least to greatest... The 1.145" rounds all ran just great; no hang-ups at all. Predictably, they were a tad slower with the same powder drop as the 1.125" rounds and the ES was a bit greater but not terrible. The much bigger good news is that we do have fully capable, functional, reloadable, 21+1 mags. I met Henning out at the range this afternoon and was filling him in on what I had observed so far. (It is worth noting that I have been mostly shooting new brass; don't ask bad planning on my part and I have been out of good resized brass.) As I was in the process of telling him the 20+1 worked great but that 21+1 was probably going to be difficult he was loading a mag, with freshly roll sized brass. As soon as I finished telling him about the load numbers he looked over and said, "I think I just loaded 21." He unloaded the mag on the table and sure enough 21! We tested all the mags I have and they all now take 21+1. The only notable difference is that the older base pads, that are a bit shorter, would be a tough reload; they work fine once seated but are tough to seat. The newer base pads will take 21 and reload easily. It seems that a combination to mag spring break-in and the rolled brass is enough to make it work. New brass is still very hard to get 21 loaded but roll or push through brass seems to work just great. On top of that I didn't have a single problem with the slide short stroking because of too much pressure from below. I hope that this info helps. I have been a confirmed Tanfo shooter for a few years now and this all just makes me grin ear to ear! James

True enough on both points. The bullets I have tested so far are TC-FMJ and JHP. Manufacture of the bullets is Zero. I can't say that I have noticed any difference in function between the two profiles. Initially I tested a bunch of Blazer, Remington, and Federal factory rounds as well. Today I will be testing RNFP- plated bullets by Extreme. As for the SAAMI OAL, I used the most current published load data from the powder manufactures I was testing. Those lengths were 1.125 and 1.126, which also matched what I got when I measured the factory rounds. Based on my little length trial last night I would have not worries about running 1.135" in these mags though. That will still give you a good buffer space in the mag for whatever bullet profile you prefer. James

Ok, so here is a bit of an update post loading. I started with 1.175 and worked my way down until I got a full mag to run without rounds camming and jamming. I ended up at 1.145" but I would not recommend this length as there was notable drag on the rounds still. If you want to stretch the round out in the new mags I would recommend using 1.14 as the max length. This does actually jive with the info I have on the old mags as well. To my knowledge the longest anyone is loading for the old mags is 1.25" which gives 0.045" of play. If you take the internal dimensions of the new mag and subtract the same clearance you end up at 1.14". Remember that the rounds are not always perpendicular to the diameter of the mag tube, the diagonal measure of the round has to be able to clear or you will get a round camming inside the tube and the maraca effect. I'll shoot the 1.145" OAL rounds I loaded tomorrow and let you know how it goes. Personally, I am inclined to stay at 1.125", they are running beautifully, feel great and mimic factory rounds so load development is a bit less of a guessing game. Oh yah, the load I am currently using for the 1.125" load is 0.4 grains below max to make major. I havent been in that territory for years; it kind of gives me a warm fuzzy feeling. Have a good one. James

Hey Artie, Sorry, I just saw your PM and thought I would reply here. The short answer is that no, I don't know if 1.175 will run in these mags. The longer answer is that I am loading tonight to do some more testing tomorrow and will load some up at that length and post here about it when I know. I totally understand the reluctance to change load length when you are already invested in mags and many rounds loaded. I started off this direction now because I was at a good point to make the change and I really wanted to be sure that if the old style 10mm mags became impossible to get we still had good options. The other major driver for me was to see if the new mags would give us Tanfo shooters the flexibility to pick up a box of shells at Wal-Mart if the need arose. At this point in time, I am pretty comfortable saying that all of these questions have been answered, for me, in the positive. I am really beginning to like the new loads, except the cost of N320, and everything is running smooth as can be. I'll let you know tomorrow what I find out about the 1.175 OAL. James

I just shot my first match with four new Tanfo .40 mags today. These are the new .40 mags stamped K40. They have no indentations down the sides like the new 10mm mags do, but they do have a permanently fixed spacer at the back. The spacer tapers at the top of the mag to contact the rear wall of the mag. The spacer ramps forward, 0.37" below the feed lips to create an internal space of approximately 1.185" (in comparison the old mags 1.295") and remains constant for the remainder of the trip down the mag tube. The feed lips on the new mags come farther forward (slightly more than 0.2") than the old mags and the taper to single stack begins higher on the tube than the old mags. I started to experiment with one of these mags recently due to all my old .40 and 10mm mags developing cracks. I hoped that there would be another way to keep my trusty Tanfo fed and happy. As it stands today, I could not be more pleased with the outcome... well ok, I could always ask for a bit more, but this is a heck of a start. Using Henning's base pads, both the older H140 and the newer H141 with the same ol Grams spring and follower I have been using (you do have to trim the length of the follower to fit in the tube) I am able to get 20+1 reloadable with no trouble. All four mags have run flawlessly since I began testing and through the match today. The rounds stack much nicer in these new mags with no nose-down or rattle at all. They are a bit tighter to get #20 in but not bad. Getting 21+1 will be a bit of a challenge but I wouldn't rule it out just yet. Ok, so here is a small bit of bad news. If you want to use these mags and have been using Clays and loading long you will have to switch to another powder. I was not able to push any of the bullets I tested, 165, 180, and 200, anywhere near major (safely) with Clays at a COAL of 1.125". Right now I have several loads that make major using Tite Group and N320. I have settled on N320, at least for now, as it feels very similar to the old Clays load and seems to give better consistency in my guns. If you are looking at the options out there; I would encourage you to have a look at these new mags. They look and feel great and so far seem to run smooth as silk. Hope this helps. I'll keep you posted on how things develop. James Casanova TY-54966

Nice looking drill Cameron! The only comment I might have is that, like conditioning yourself to not shoot Deltas, you are conditioning yourself to shoot one shot only. There has been ample debate about whether it is faster to shoot 1 well aimed shot or two less well aimed shots, but I for one am in the camp of two less well aimed shots is the faster way to go. The same drill with two shots for both the accuracy portion of the drill and the speed portion will keep you in the habit of making solid follow-up shots. As far as the two shots anywhere matches, I think you are still ahead of the game with this technique of training since one FTN at 5 seconds cost a lot more than the fractions you are losing to shooting Charlies. Thanks for the drill posting. James

Thanks for the fun everyone! Nice stages and a fun group to shoot with. It was great to get the new 3-Gunners out there; I hope we will see you guys at many matches to come. Happy Fourth to everyone! James C.

Trapr, Kurt and everyone else; ROs, staff, and sponsors, that put on this match; Thanks very much for a great weekend of fun! I had a blast down there, when I wasn't running past targets anyway, and I am looking forward to the shotgun match next year already. Squad 5, it was great shooting with you all, Thanks for all the entertainment! A special thanks to the Nordic Components guys on squad 5 for their support of the match! I hope I'll see you guys all out at Rocky Mountain.

No worries by me Doc. We all try to make the best/most fair calls we can and that requires following up on questions like this so we can all learn and do a better job and that definitely includes yours truly. Have a great Memorial Day and Thank you for your service!

Ok, this went up while I was writing my rely. The way the No-shoot was ttached to the wall,the bullet would have had to pass through the wood... if the wood was not already shot out of that area.

Hey Guys, I am the RM that made the reshoot call on this one. Here is why I made the call that I did; the No-shoot in question was attached to the end of a wall with the side that was hit, flush to the edge of the wood leg. (I now the arrangement of this one because I am the one who put the No-shoot there in the first place.) The shot in question passed through the No-shoot, then through the wood leg and then hit the plate. Since props are deemed impenetrable this constitutes an REF. I will be the first to admit that this arrangement was not ideal and better course design might have avoided the problem in the first place. Our range requires that all shots must impact the back berm only, this makes setting interesting COFs very tricky with respect to not creating shoot throughs, unfortunately this one was missed in the setup walk through. My apologies to any of our shooters that were caused heart-burn by this. As for the offer to have the score zeroed. That is very nice and noble but the REF call was not the shooter's it was the RMs and scores are in and cannot be changed now. That said, the shooter should not have stopped himself for the shot. If the call had gone the other way it would have meant a lot of penalties. As I understand it however, there may have been other reasons that the shooter chose to stop and the shot and subsequent call just happened to work in his favor. Here are the rules that were considered for the call. 9.1.6 Unless specifically described as “soft cover” (see Rule 4.1.4.2) in the written stage briefing, all props, walls, barriers, vision screens and other obstacles are deemed to be impenetrable “hard cover”: 9.1.6.2 If a bullet strikes wholly within hard cover, and continues on to hit a plate or strike down a popper; this will be treated as range equipment failure (see Section.4.6). The competitor will be required to reshoot the course of fire, after it has been restored. I hope that this will clarify why the call was made the way it was. Happy shooting everyone.