bountyhunter

Very interesting. If this article gets written, please post a link to it. Here are additonal thoughts: With only one cartridge in the tube, the round can angle itself and basically follow the angle of the follower. As more rounds stack up, the edges of the tube tend to "flatten" the angle of the collective pile with respect to the mag tube.. In other words, it gets progressively harder for the round to be at an angle steeper than what the tube walls dictate..... so the follower is less able to force the noses upward. Another major factor: that spring which is trying to push the nose up has only so much strength, and pushing up fewer rounds is easier than trying to hold up a stack of eight. It's an interesting problem..... but, a minor in mechanical engineering clearly has not armed me well enough to solve it.

I'm still not sure why it is that with only a couple of rounds in the mag (and the spring lightly compressed) the top round is held very firmly up at the nose.... and as more rounds are added, the nose gets progressively less well supported allowing it to roll down easily. I suspect it is because the "spring load" effect of the angled follower is felt more with fewer rounds above it.... Still wondering if there is a way to make this better?

Sorry to hear it. I have arthritis in just about every place in my body.... not to mention a deformity called Dupatryn's syndrome that has turned my right hand into a claw..... I recommend you dose out on Glucosamine and Chondroitin to the maximum. But I still have all my guns. I suspect my wife will bury me with my guns...... I just hope she waits until I'm actually dead.....

They are new, hardly ever been used to date.

If it happened 'suddenly" and is doing it on more than one cylinder tube, you probably bent the yoke (crane) tube. If it came on gradually, you need at least to install a wider hand, maybe also a new star to fix it. Gunsmith only operation, not a drop in part. Only if you heat the metal. It is very brittle. After heating, it will be softer than original. I called SW a while back and they told me they no longer stocked wide parts (hands and cylinder stops) so I had to go to Numrich to get them. IIRC, the last "wide" hand I got from them measured about 0.100" or so.

This may be the dumb question for the day, but I am still not sure I completely understand why single stack mags have this "personality trait": As you load the first few rounds in, the nose of the rond has good upward "lift" on it and will feed very well. As you get near mag capacity, the nose lift goes away and you can get feed ramp nose-slam dead stop jams because the slide coming forward catches the top of the round and rotates it's nose down....and drives it into the flat bottom of the feed ramp. I thought I knew why it does it in a single stack 9mm magazine.... they are not "straight wall" cases so they curve as you stack them up. But in a .40? This is a ten round CMC power mag and it feeds well for round counts up to about 8, above that it will nosedive jam the first round. It has the 'spring load" follower with the piece of metal angled upward at about 30 degrees from the horizontal base piece. Why do the "straight wall" cases lose their "nose lift" as the round count increases? With ten in, that top round just wants to lay it's nose down and not hold it up.... hence the jam.

The law simply does not work this way. If a person of common reason could forsee something as being the case, that person may not claim refuge by saying: "Well.... I had no way of knowing when I shipped him a box of parts which could be used to make a high-cap mag that he would actually use them to BUILD a high-cap mag..." OR: "Well..... of course I assumed that when I shipped him all the parts to build a high-cap mag he must have been replacing one which somehow died, since nobody ever would think he might actually want to break the law and build one from scratch." It is likely true the CaDOJ is not pursuing many of these.... and I used to call them and chat regularly a while back. They told me that the problem is they only have a tiny fraction of the manpower it would take to do enforcement. They had a list of dealers they knew were violating the law by importing non-list guns and selling them, as well as dealers doing PPT's from persons out of state for non-list guns. The bottom line is, they have to prioritize. They might never bother to look at somebody who shipped a few hi-caps or parts to build them into kali. Or, they might. It certainly can, which is why no major gun parts manufacturer that I know of ships high-cap tubes to kali unless it is to LE. If they do, I would think they would want you to send the old tube in to verify it is replacement not manufacture (which would cover their backside). I can not imagine any manufacturer in their right mind who would assume this legal risk without it.

STI has been off the list for quite a while. They told Kali to stuff it.

It is so. It's also why the manufacturers generally refuse to ship high-cap tunbes to Kali. We all agree on that: the problem is, it is also a crime to help somebody in the commission of a crime. It is not a stretch to figure out what a person intends to do with a high cap mag tube, or to understand the chances are reasonably good he is building a magazine because he can't buy one here.

My pet peeve is getting anew gun that has to be reworked. It costs me about $70 for each "overnight" ride it makes going back to the mother ship. It also bugs me that my new gun is gone and I can't shoot it. So, I prefer to pay more to get higher certainty that a really smart gunsmith fitted the parts and made sure they fitted right before they went out the door. On a gun that costs $600, that is not possible. STI has provided excellent support for the ones I have, so I don't think they would reneg on backing up the gun. I would just rather spend the extra $250 and get a Trojan. $250 is only the price of a case of ammo. The gun will go through at least 50 of those in it's lifetime. It will be interesting to see how this works out for them. If they are somehow able to manufacture very well fitted (tightly controlled) guns with consitently high performance and quality, the first thing they should do is raise the price.... because their competition like SA, Colt and Kimber are not doing that consistently at that price point. If they don't..... I suspect they will not continue to ship them for long. Paid $825 for my Trojan a while back, they were $925 last time I looked at dawsons. And I hardly hate STI, mine is the most accurate 1911 I have ever seen.... and hasn't failed to cycle in so many years I have forgotten the last time it didn't.

The point I was making is that if STI (like Kimber) have decided to enter the mass-market arena where they no longer have direct control of quality and fit, that will likely result in what Kimber achieved: making guns where most are OK, some are exceptional, and some are junk. It's called the "bell curve" and governs the charateristics of a process which is subject to random distribution. IMHO, the "quality or lack thereof" of a single item is not a definitive representation of the lot, or even the average. My gripe about off the rack 1911's is this: I usually have to order one and then take whatever shows up. Even if the piece can be examined on the counter, how it shoots is only seen after purchase. I prefer to spend a bit more money to multiply the chances of it being right without going back for work.

Which is why it is only legal to ship high-cap tubes into the state to replace ones which are already here and are "unserviceable". If the person you are shipping them to ends up in possession of more operational high caps than he had prior to the shipment arriving, you are violating the Kali ban.

Interesting you mention Kimber. When they first fired up, they were a lot lower volume (like STI is) and most of their guns were very tight, high quality, essentially hand fitted. Their quality, accuracy, and value were revered. When Kimber "ramped up" to mass production that was lost and they started basically shipping production guns...... many good, many mediocre, some junk, and none fitted tight. I bought my STI Trojan back in about 1999 and marveled at how much better it was than the junk that cost a couple of hundred less...... I also wondered how long it would be until they tried to transition into high volume, mass market guns. I hope they don't start shipping junk like the rest of the "big names".

In a video starring John Shaw (champion shooter), he said something to the effect that most law enforcement officers can not draw their weapon and fire an accurate shot in under two seconds.

It looks exactly like my Trojan except it has a different front sight and a cheaper hammer. You can bet that "introductory price" will take off like a cruise missile as soon as they start shipping them. Why would STI sell it's guns for a lower price than Springfield and Kimber sell their junk? Can you compare and contrast it with the Trojan? Why the difference in price? Is a comparably configured Trojan twice the gun the Spartan is? My Trojan (which is about six years old) is hand fitted and even has individual's marks engraved on the slide, barrel and frame. I suspect that at this price, it is impossible to have their gunsmith's spend that much time on each gun. That's true, but it is the gunsmith fitting that makes the difference IMHO. .... and I suspect they won't be going to the Phillipines.

When I used to do it, it wasn't a game either......

As I said, I saw the promo on a tape of a different program. I always fast scan through the commercials but her eyes froze me dead and made me come back for a second look. I think they are real...... actually, I think everything on her is real!

YEOWWWWW!!!!! That is one fine delectable molestable. Watch CW and see if the ad I saw out here is running in your area: It shows scenes from the show and the one it has I remember is her walking toward camera wearing some kind of white cotton top clearly minus bra..... and the very last part of the ad is face close ups of her mom then Rory, both in full hooker makeup. The very last scene is a slo-mo head and eye turn from Rory in face close up. They definietly know their target audience. Got my attention.

I stopped watching Gilmore Girls years ago because it was so dumb. I taped a different show on CW and there was an ad for Gilmore Girls in it that froze me like a deer in headlights: That young babe who plays Rory has grown up to be a stone fox. Her eyes are so blue they look like halogen headlights..... And speaking of headlights, Rory won't be borrowing her mom's shirts anymore because they sure won't fit. I may have to start taping that show again. Of course, I'll probably be watching it with the sound turned off......

Link to Lone Wolf If you are a Glock person, it's a fun site to look through Thanks.

Where can one get a Lone Wolf barrel?

I have a G35 with a 9mm barrel. I have shot a lot of 9mm out of it. Never changed the ejector to date. It cycled fine as stock, but I put in the 9mm extractor just because it was so cheap and easy to do. I am not convinced it's necessary since mine ran fine with all the .40 parts in place. YMMV

It is to die for..... white meat so tender and juicy it falls apart as you cut it. I used the peanut oil kettle cooker (fired by propane tank) and cooked a 17 pound cheapo Safeway discount turkey. Got a jar of "chicken spice rub" and it dissolves into the oil and saturates all of the meat, flavoring it with what is very much like the KFC taste. So, there I was cutting a 17 pound turkey and more was going into my mouth than onto the serving platter. This is the first time I have seen turkey meat so juicy and flavorful I refused to let gravy near it...... it was too perfect standing alone. It's so cruel that fried food is so bad (and so fattening) because it is a slice of heaven.

That's a relief. I thought it was something personal.... Don't ask, don't tell.... I don't know how big his hands are exactly, but he can pull a DA revo trigger with full power springs faster than a machine gun fires.... so his hands must be pretty strong.

This is true, you can certainly manage to fit the barrel into the gun with some simple instructions. (There are a few tricks to make it easier) However the tips and expierence that comes from being taught in person can't be replaced. You'll get it in the gun and it can work, but it's not going to be as accurate as it could be... That's why the smiths get paid the $$$. Even though I have one degree in mech engineering, I am not sure how I could properly fit a barrel into a 1911/2011. The perfect fit is with all fits just snug (lower lugs to slide pin and upper barrel hood snug against the slide). The problem is you have to start with a barrel that is too big..... and end up cutting it just right without overcutting. Query: if the slide and frame are fitted just right, and the barrel lugs are oversized.... how do I "fit it"? Wouldn't it be too tight and bind if I tried to fit them up? makes me wonder.