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.

90 degrees, left or right. Any difference? How about 180 degree pivot? How about such pivots from the low ready start position, no draw?

Surrender always seemed to cost me about .10 second, as vs hands at sides. Maybe, if I'd worked at it to the exclusion of all else, that diff could have been erased. Have you tried parade rest, or "crucified"?

wow, everyone's scared of this, or what? Sheesh. Well, then, in private practice, see if, at arm's length ranges, you can beat my average of .55 second, hands at sides start, secure holster, 1911, and all A's

It's a blast, really. I was able to run some 16 second times in practice, with a 7 shot 1911, using the 4 ft wall we used at the Natl's, because I could just hurdle it. At the actual match, tho, the loose sand was enough of a "drag" on my feet that I didn't dare risk trying such a thing. I had a foot fault and a brain fart that really knocked me down in the standings,too. :-)

The Western Fast Draw crowd do only one thing, really, they react to a timer's beep or a light flashing, and they draw and fire. So the times, even of a 5 try average, run very, very close to each other. So, even one "jump", where in, say, .15 second is taken off of one's normal reaction time of .20 second, will result in the 5 try average being about .03 second faster. Championships are won and lost over such things. Even the shooter himself can often not realize what has happened. So the match organizers came up with and excellent solution to this problem. When someone posts what seems to be a new record time, he gets 3 subsequent tries, in a short time (1 minute or so, I forget) in which to again shoot that fast a score, or beat it. If he can't do so, the so-called "record" is written off as a "jump".

Stand with gun in hand, safety disengaged, facing a target, finger on the trigger, trigger half"pulled". At the timer's "beep", fire. Do a five run average, and if you can come up with a .16 second, honestly, I'll be VERY surprised. In fact, I'd have to see it for myself to believe it. Few can average under .20 second. This info comes from the real pros at evaluating it and draw time, the Western Fast Draw crowd. 40 years or so ago, they had a division of the matches that was "self start", your time started when you let go of the timer's button. Bob Munden figured out a way to cheat the timer, holding down the button as he drew the gun, so that the only thing timed was the hammer's falling. So Fast Draw went to all reaction time draws. They use both blanks and primer only wax loads, to hit a big rectangle at 5 yds. The hand start position is "hovering' just off of the gun butt. They can prove to you that this is actually faster than holding a cocked gun in hand, at your side. :-) The record, for a 5 draw average, actually hitting a target, is something like .35 second. 30 years ago, it was .50 second. they have the physical movement down under .20 second. All that's left is the reaction time, and it's extremely difficult to reduce that. Many say that it's impossible.

I used a shooting chrony timer for a while, but for simple timing. I returned it over the beep not being loud enough, never did see if it worked ok on complex timing sequences. It was about 3/4 the cost of the others.

I used to average 5.5, with the occasional 5 second run. Full charge ammo? Full 10 yds distance, full 3 yds apart on the targets (edge to edge)? It does make a diff, you know. Start surrender, facing uprange, 180 degree pivot? That makes a diff, too.

Yes, the tapered case creates some problems sometimes. Are you running a carbide sizer die? The brass is all the same make? Did you (gently) deburr the case mouths before loading? I always just spin problematic cases by hand in a Lee shellholder, to check for dented rims and burrs. If you can't sort it out, then the next step is to keep everything else the same, dies, etc, and load in a single station press. This will tell you if it's something about the Dillon that is causing your grief.

I managed that a few times, back before the advent of mag well funnels. No real accuracy at that speed, fired as the mag slammed home, no reestablishment of the weak hand on the gun. What do guys do today? I've read that somehow the double stacks run faster than singles? don't see how that could be? P35 reloads nearly always suck, because it's so easy to twist the mag a bit, and hang up the insertion on a corner.