shred

Well, Brownells has the Briley linkless barrels on 'Special', and I haven't heard much great press one way or the other, so I'm expecting they're getting passed over in favor of more gunsmith-familiar components. That said, I do own one of Briley's open guns (in fact their catalog "El Presidente" cover gun one year-- #001), though I've since converted it from 9x25 to .38 Super. Most excellent piece of work.

Fireplaces, safes and maybe thickly packed bookshelves are also probably sufficient to stop most accidents. (than there's always the TV-- destroying that is probably a positive thing)

You rang? Oh, wait.. anyway.. actually I got the 'Shred' handle when I was a windsurfing fool. (now on windy days I just pile bigger rocks on the target stands..) But.. there really is a thread-applicable point to all this, I think. Way back when we used to add a grippy surface to our boards by means of a 'sugar-deck', which meant laying down a coat of epoxy on the board, sprinkling a bunch of sugar crystals on the tacky surface, then epoxy coating it again. Could be a nifty way to add grip to some smooth grip areas that don't take tape well.

"Is Tumbling Loaded Ammo OK?" is one of the perennial arguments like Is-Lee-as-good-as-Dillon? or Will-XYZ-Stop-A-Bear? over on rec.guns (and a whole lot of other places). Many people do it successfully, many advise against it. Some people tumbled rounds for hours or even days with little change. Who knows though-- the powder you use might be different from what they had. I've done it occasionally w/o problems. For the curious, hit www.deja.com and search a while and check it out..

Ack.. I've had a suspicion that I wasn't _really_ calling my shots for a while.. sure, I knew pretty much where they went, and saw the dot do a little dance in the scope, but every so often a shot wouldn't be where it was supposed to be... So, while testing some loads yesterday, I noticed something-- on the last shot of the magazine, the slide locks back. And I don't see the dot return. In fact, I didn't see the dot at all. So I spent the next pile of ammo loading one round into a mag and looking (ok, maybe I was trying..) to see the dot lift, very slow fire. Result: I don't see it lift if the slide locks back. With lots of concentration I get a very faint impression of where the dot was just as I fired, but I don't see it move. If I put two rounds in the mag, sure enough I see the dot drop back in and do it's bouncing around as the slide does it's clackety-clunking forwards loading the second round. I assume this means I'm blinking. I looked around a bit and most of what I found (besides this thread and another one) was "don't do that". Are there any better exercises? Is that really what's happening here? Thanks (Edited by shred at 2:12 pm on May 29, 2002)

Good stuff Jeff-- I'll have to go dig out my VV pamphlets. I'm thinking that if my open loads follow those rates (which they probably don't), varying the powder +/-0.1gr means velocity will wander ~10 fps either way, and pressure (WAG here..) will be +/- ~800psi. And a 20-25' F temperature change is roughly equivalent to 0.1gr powder.. hmm. Time for some testing (as usual, DO NOT assume random math is equivalent to the real world.. especially when reloading) (Edited by shred at 9:30 am on May 29, 2002)

Yeah, I used to think "This 650 is all I'll ever need..." and indeed, it probably is, but that doesn't stop me from plotting where to put a 1050 when I finally get some room and cash in the same place. For serious cranking-out-rounds in one caliber, even the 650 can't keep up. (and for my 550-owning lurker-friends on here, I'll keep the 650, so put down that mouse and stop making me an offer on it..)

another common error on steel is shooting "At the steel" and not at a _certain point_ on the steel. That helped me immensely.

Sounds like one of Benny's personal guns-- he builds them until they work, then goes out and shoots. The stuff he makes for other people is nicer cosmetically, but both work fine.

I think the 'big-blast-every-few-shots' (especially noticable indoors) is due to unburned powder collecting in the comp, and not the primers-- I get it with N350 and almost any sort of primer I care to use in my open gun.

While it is technically possible, it's a bad idea to try and shoot .40 through any 10mm semi-auto I know of (610's are cool with it..). It's a good way to get jams and extractor breakage. It is usually fairly simple to swap the 10mm barrel for a .40 one if your mags work or you can get some .40 ones. Also, if you want, there's a small 10mm cult that likes the witnesses, so you should be able to dump it for almost what a .45 will cost you if you want to go that route.

I've fiddled with holster position over the years and have pretty much settled on the position TJ (and others) suggest-- a bit forward of the hip, muzzle pointing about 4-5" forward and inboard of your strong-side big toe. I find it's about as fast as the others, doesn't involve sweeping any body parts on the draw, and doesn't poke you every time you sit or bend over. Practicing by myself a lot on a range far from medical help has me much more aware of sweeping and such..

I agree with Nik's comments on consistency-- 'trashed' classifier stages are automatically thrown out, so if the 90% shooter also has a bunch of poor scores, it could be they aren't consistent-- that'll catch you in a big match, but is filtered out of classifications. It could also be an indication that the shooter in question likes to run wide-open at 110% all the time. You can get away with that on most classifiers, but if you don't turn it back a notch at major matches, it'll bite you. And then the whole classifier-reshooting question comes up..

Just FYI, there are still some slots left.. I sent my app in today since I'm suddenly free that weekend. Hopefully there's still a hotel room in Shreveport somewhere.

Glock 18's are cool. For those of us without the connections to get our hands on a real one often enough, there's a gas-operated Airsoft version that rocks. I got one the other day and spent the rest of the afternoon loading bb's and gassing up magazines.. brraaaap.. btw, if you haven't checked out some of the super-realistic Airsoft's coming out of Japan and Taiwan lately, you're missing out. My G18 operates exactly the same, trigger safety and all, the slide cycles and it has the same markings (minus one glock-logo) and fits perfectly in my G17 holsters (no cardboard box is safe from me now...) (Edited by shred at 11:13 am on May 16, 2002)

While I'm not sure exactly how recoil springs are officially measured for "poundage", I believe it's at full compression, which is closer to 1.4" in length than the 2" I measured at. A while ago I ran across This Article on building and using a recoil spring tester and just re-read it (it's worthwhile). In there he computes the maximum in-gun compression distance to be closer to 1.5 or 1.6" instead of 2". I may need to recheck my math and measurements.. (Edited by shred at 2:06 pm on May 14, 2002)

Yeah, the SDM tool is the "Pro" version of this. The scale I got in the fishing aisle at MegaMart. The recording feature is handy for this sort of thing. And for anyone with only a push-scale like a bathroom or mail scale, you can make this work by sticking a bit of anti-skid tape to the bolt head, turning the whole works vertical and pushing down on the washer. I don't suggest doing this in the produce section of your local grocery store, however..

I threatened to do this in another thread, but figured this engineering masterpiece deserved it's own.. Here's how to make your basic recoil spring tester: Pop by your favorite hardware store and acquire an 8-inch 5/16" bolt and fender washer. Drill a hole crosswise in the threaded end that will fit the hook of a handy pull scale (somewhat more than $0.99 at fishing-supply stores, but multi-purpose). If you've already got a pull scale that won't reasonably fit, you can do what I did and twist up a coathanger into an appropriate adapter wire. Mark two marks on the shaft of the bolt. I made mine at 2" and 3.7" from the shaft-side of the bolt head. These numbers came from some measuring I did on an STI, and if I did it right, are approximately the length of the spring with the slide closed (3.7") and also at slide-lock (2"). Here's a picture of the parts: To use it, slide a spring onto the bolt and follow it with the washer. Attach your scale and pull until the washer is even with one of the marks. Record what the scale says. Repeat with the other mark. Here it is ready to go: As an experiment, a brand new Wolff 15 lb variable recoil spring measured 8 lbs at "slide closed" and 13 lbs at "slide-lock". With one coil chopped off, it measures 7 & 13 lbs. Missing two coils, 6.5 & 12.5 lbs. With 4 coils gone, it comes in at 6 & 12 lbs. (Edited by shred at 9:31 pm on May 13, 2002)

I hammered the case in lightly (that's where the ding in the case came from), but basically it's just jammed in there. It's worked through the first bottle full of primers so far.

In combination with bringing this thread back up, here's a shot of my contraption (Edited by shred at 6:23 pm on May 6, 2002)

Sounds like what you're looking for is either a Production-class IPSC load or a GSSF load-- both are way down there in the PF category. Here are a few loads that barely cycle the slide in my .40 glocks: 180 FMJ, 3.3gr Titegroup 180 FMJ, 3.8gr WST 170 LSWC, 3.8gr 231

While I've never tried the Dillon muffs, I like my ProEars. And they were not only cool enough to donate some to a prize table so I could win them, but also to swap that pair out with the set I wanted.

A while ago, back when the IPSC e-mail list actually had useful info on it , there was a discussion of the "Glint Doppler Effect" of sun reflections from shiny bullets fooling the skyscreens. Half the people never believed it, and the other half thought of black magic-markering a bullet or two to see if it helped or not. Maybe something to try next time just for the sake of science. With .22's being smaller, maybe they shine differently.

I've heard of people dropping the mag into a large shirt pocket, but that might be an IDPA no-no by now. Done right , you might not even need to handle the old mag.. (Edited by shred at 2:50 pm on May 6, 2002)

Well, when guns are outlawed we can all stand around and have "Timerslap" matches.. Actually this is a decent idea for checking reaction times without firing. I'll have to try it sometime. (Edited by shred at 2:14 pm on May 2, 2002)