twikster

I had no trouble with an Officer's ACP or a Spld of the same length, but only had them for a few hundred rds each. Both in .45.

No,only a gunsmith-specialist can be trusted to weld on guns. It requires heat sinks, heat control gel, and a very, very gentle foot on the heat-pedal,and a very experienced hand on the torch. The crack has to be ground out in a "v" trough. Some say that you have to drill out the end of the crack, to stop it from "running" further. Then the frame has to be put into normalizing, heat treatment oven, for a time period suitable to the metal it is made of. The right welding rod and gas have to be used, too. The fee is likely to be nearly as high as a new frame, if it's all done right.

Hard chrome helps with wear, but I don't see how it could help with cracking? In fact, if it's not heat treated right out of the plating bath, the hydrogen embrittlement of the plating will make cracking MORE likely than if the frame was not plated. I shot such a cracked frame for many thousands of rds, but I ran 200 gr .45 swc cast bullets, at 750 fps, 20 lb Wolf recoil spring. I did sell the gun, and the buyer has sinces shot it many more thousands of rds, without incident.

you might try a few different lubes, too, or have your caster do so. I've never been much of a 9mm guy, so I can't help much there. I never noticed smoke with cast .45's, and Bullseye, just a lot of carbon and wax residue. I used a 50-50 Alox/beeswax mix for bullet lube.

I don't understand. Why would you wear the sunglasses while loading rds into the mags?

Actually, I thought he was. Sorry. As for where I'm coming from, I helped write the IPSC charter, where were YOU in 1976? :-) Anyway, the .55 average is done by firing a 1 hand point. As the curve of the wrist hits the muscles of the pectorals/ribs, the gun is fired. It is considerably more dangerous with a 1911 than with a DA gun, so you really should have a muzzle forward cant speed rig, so that the muzzle never crosses your leg as you draw. This part of the draw is not helpful to the sort of matches discussed here. For those, you have to learn to get your hands together as the gun is thrust forward and as it comes up from the rig. It really takes very little longer to get a 2 handed, eyelevel point shot than it does to do a chest level 1 handed shot. The very slight hesitation, necessary to assure safety with the 1 handed style, costs you a bit of the time that you could in theory save by not using both hands. Karate men punch to full arm's length,at shoulder height from a cocked hand over hip start, in .010 sec or less. Slapping one hand into the other slows you down maybe at most another .010". So the "Isosoles Point" is at most .20 second slower than a 1 handed, chest level point shot, from the leather. In practice, it's proven to be only .010 second slower, for me, because delivering a (one time).50 second draw and it, 1 handed, scared me badly. I thought that I'd fired a premature shot, actually. However, I hit the A zone, at 3 ft of range. Bill Jordan I am not interested in being, at least not with a 1911. Bill could do this same thing in .35 second, but he had a rig that exposed the trigger guard,his draw had him partially pulling the trigger with the gun in the holster, the rig was completely insecure, and he had (supposedly) a reaction time of .09 second.

By Clair Davies is a great work. He gives layman's explanation of a 1980's medical text of much greater detail, or so I gather from what he says. Little "charlie horses" get "setup" in the "belly" of a lot of your muscles, causing weakness and pain. Quite often, the cause of the problem is a long ways from where you feel the pain. For instance, a lot of "carpel tunnel" pain is actually due to mini-spasms in the neck muscles. These trigger points crimp the nerves where they emerge from the spinal cord, and cause pain all the way down in your wrist/hand. A very, very big problem causer is such trigger points in your shin and calf muscles. You can get this book free, from your local library's Interlibrary Loan System. It's really helped my neck and my legs. It's also gotten rid of a bit of "tennis elbow" that was ruining my ability to fast draw more than a very few times, before the pain made me slow down a lot.

Play slap hands with someone, or use a speed bag like a boxer, but with just one hand at a time. Or just work on alternate karate punches, or the fast draw, or the speed mag swap.

Has anyone here ever owned a Bob Loveless chopjob "trailgun" version of the M41? He cut it to 7" OAL and about 28 ozs of wt, and claimed it still retained 2" or better groups at 50 yds, firing two handed, unsupported.

you don't know how such a simple thing as the draw is done? If so, what are you doing here?

you oughta try a big shoot, your first one, facing a TV camera on National News, pivot 180 degrees and hit a row of plates at 25 yds! :-) It was my first big match, and I'd never practiced the plates before!. I would have settled for a miss, but I hit the target that was beside the one I was aiming at, and the entire WORLD knew that I'd missed my mark by at least 18". My knees were knocking together, despite my feet being a shoulder width apart. It was decidedly not funny to me at the time.

I've done so many times. It just depends on who else is at the match, how they are doing, what all is involved in the stage of fire. For instance, if I can react, draw, and fire a miss at 10 yds, in .70 second, and fire again ad hit in .20 second more, and your best draw and hit is 1.10 second, you can most definitely be beaten, even tho I miss with the the first shot. This applies to many things. I believe that I read that TGO once blew up his .38 Super at a match. Lots of people beat him that day, eh? So even a little thing can be your undoing, but oftentimes, especially in a long tournament, you can make several small errors and still win. In fact, that's why we set up tournaments to be long and involved. So the best man does win, and a little fluke thing doesn't let some B class guy beat everyone.

What is your draw time, what is your rig? I used to manage this in under 1.0 second pretty regularly, using a cross draw and always moving the left leg (right hand drawing). Have you tried all 4 ways of doing a 180 pivot? Move either foot, going left or right? 10 yds, nearly all A's. I used to have to slow down so much to get all A's that I just decided to go fast as hell and accept some C's.

Why would you need a 1" group at 10 yds? The furthest we shoot, other than rare, one off things, is 50 yds, and the A zone is 10", the Bianchi plate/10 ring is 8". So all you need is 2" at 10 yds, at best, and you can win a lot of matches if "all" you can do is stay in the A zone at 25 yds, but do it faster than TGO. :-)

I learned to use whichever eye matches the hand holding the gun. I did it mostly by dryfiring at a blank ceiling, while lying on the bed. Of the two guns that you see, always pick the "inside one" and it will be the correct one for that hand. Ie, the right gun for the left hand, and the left gun for the right hand. I have not had a master eye for over 30 years now.