GunBugBit

The Frankenmags (Dawson tubes with Tripp followers and springs) worked great with both guns today. I did fast doubles and a couple of fast mag dumps. All good.

Glad your PM-9 runs great. I really love shooting this gun.

The tighter extractor did seem a little too tight. I don’t claim I have it perfect now but it ran 100% at last Thursday’s club match. Your comment on the Tripp mags describes exactly my experience. Today I put Tripp followers and springs in some Dawson tubes. I saw a comment from someone who did the same with Metalform mags. This gives the round retention of that type of mag body plus the well regarded function of the Tripp followers. I also think the Dawson springs might be a tad too strong and the Tripps seem less so. Some of my malfunctions looked to be caused by the next round escaping the top of the mag after a feed. This isn’t necessarily due to spring strength since feed lip gap and oil on the feed lips could contribute. I’ll see how the Frankenmags work tomorrow. One thing I’ll say is I’ve never had feeding issues with either gun. Just extraction/ejection.

I use a pair of PM-9s for Single Stack, and they have been mostly trouble free. Lately, since I’ve been shooting them more than ever, I’ve experienced occasional stovepipes when doing fast doubles. Malfunctions call for examining several elements and the two I’ve been spending time on are extractors and magazines. The Dawson 9mm ten-round magazines are the best I’ve tried, though the Wilsons and Tripps have done well unless I up the rate of fire. The Tripps are open in the top-front area, making it easy to manually empty the mags but causing hangups when trying to drop the mags after firing a couple of rounds (rarely called for but one practice match stage gave occasion to do this). Fine for Steel Challenge though. The Wilsons have narrower feed lip gaps than the others but function well, except for fast doubles. I might try adjusting the feed lip gaps and see how they do. Clean and degreased Dawsons are proving solid. I might have been too liberal in the past with oil (my experience makes me disagree that a 1911 can be overflowing with oil and all will be ok) even though long aware that lubrication should be kept away from feed lips. I’m being a little more minimalist with oil now, while still getting it on the parts that need it. The two guns had substantially different extractor tensions from the factory, which I only recently discovered after a few malfunctions at matches. So I focused on the tighter one and after a couple iterations of adjusting and live fire testing, it seems dialed in. I did consider limp wristing but tested with intentional limp wristing and didn’t get malfunctions. I was able to produce malfunctions when my grip was solid but the extractor hadn’t been tuned yet. The other gun has yet to be tested after the most recent extractor adjustment. It might now be slightly on the tight side but I’ll find out soon. Casual plinking would not have uncovered these issues, but competition does.

I have plenty of .45 bullets, brass, and a toolhead set up for a nice minor load. The 1911s chambered in .45 are also among my favorite to shoot. All paid for years ago so cost isn’t an issue preventing me from putting this hardware to use in competition. Why can’t I shoot Single Stack minor with .45? The 10-round mags don’t let the gun with mag fit in the box. This would force me into Limited 10 minor. One obvious choice is to shoot SS major with 8 round mags. I find the 8-round limitation to be a bummer. So I shoot SS minor with 9mm. However at some point I might show up at an all-classifier with .45 major. I would probably stick with that until I ran out of large pistol primers. Or, I’ll use up those components shooting for training and enjoyment.

Live fire draws went really well today. The sights were getting aligned right away and the numbers on the clock made me happy. I feel I’ve worked out a good technique and now it’s reps, reps, reps.

Limited is alive and well at my club. Single Stack and Production, not so much.

One of these Thursday night practice matches I’m going to register in the Limited division and shoot my first Limited gun - a G22 with a 40-to-9 conversion barrel. I don’t even have $1,000 into that gun and I’m curious how I’ll do compared to how I’ve done with the Atlas Nemesis. I found the Glock to be much more shootable than I’d anticipated and it’s overdue for an outing.

Keith of Dan Wesson stated on another forum that the PM-9 front sights are .180” tall. I measured mine and found that they both stood .150” above the slide, so that’s why I ordered that height. Changing front sights is not difficult but it does require patience. Years ago I watched a Dawson video on how to fit front sights, and have followed it to a tee several times on various guns. The fitting process takes time but once successfully completed, the reward is a gun that it is definitely easier to shoot accurately.

When I purchased my pair of PM-9s for Single Stack competition, I made a few changes. One was the Dawson competition trigger with the polymer shoe and pretravel adjustment tabs. I also tuned the grip safety leg of the leaf spring so it wasn’t too light but light enough to never cause issues with grip safety disengagement. I slightly lightened the disconnect leg of the leaf spring, adjusted the overtravel screw, and of course took advantage of the pretravel adjustment tabs. I took my time with all of the above so the two guns are identical in function and feel. The triggers are at 2.25# and absolutely creep-free, thanks to DW doing a fantastic job mating the hammer-sear interface, which I did not touch. I also did nothing to the sear leg of the leaf spring because I want to be well clear of hammer follow issues, which I’ve never had. Other add-ons were the TechWell magwell with companion grip panels to hold it in place, a Wilson extended mag catch button with extra strength spring from Wolff, EGW ambi thumb safety (LOVE those). O-rings for the grip panel screws of course. Both guns have been working great for the past few years but there is one more thing that I recently completed on both guns, and that was to change out the front sight. The factory fiber optic presents a rather fat front dot and I realized it wasn’t facilitating the best precision. After the front sight swap, I immediately noticed much better accuracy, clearly reflected in my scores. The front sights I installed are: Dawson Precision Springfield 1911 Fiber Optic Front Sight .150” Tall x .100” Wide, Patridge Serrated.

If I don’t have to do reloads such as in Steel Challenge, then Wilsons, Tripps and Dawsons are all good. If mag changes are needed, I use Dawsons because the mags will drop reliably since the bullet nose won’t poke out beyond the front of the mag. Tripps make it easy to deload the rounds out of the mags, but the downside is that the top bullet tends to slip out beyond the front of the mag, making mag drops problematic.

I’m shooting 120 PF 9mm loads out of PM-9s and recently switched from 8# to 7# recoil springs. I perceive less muzzle flip with the lighter spring. Worked great for today’s Steel Challenge. To get above the 125 PF floor of minor for USPSA, I have to bump up the powder 0.2gr and then I use an 8# spring. With my minor .40 loads, I use 8#.

I’ve seen guys unload and holster when done with a stage before the RO even starts saying, “If you are finished…” And I saw one of those guys get mad because he thought the RO wasn’t paying attention and wasn’t keeping up, after the RO told him to show him a clear gun and verify a hammer drop after his gun was already holstered. The RO is responsible to verify a cold gun before declaring the range clear.

No I’m not forgetting that command. The RO can say that command as he should but if he didn’t bother to see a clear chamber, he might also not have bothered to see/hear the hammer drop before the shooter holstered his gun.

Troy McManus, director of NROI, was our RO class instructor last summer. He specifically addressed flip and catch. He has no problem with it if it’s done safely. I do it and so does almost everyone I shoot with.

Well said. If the RO isn’t paying attention enough to see a clear chamber, he might also fail to see that the shooter might have holstered a hot gun. And then calling “clear” when the range is in fact not cold is an RO doing a crappy job.

Lately at local matches I’ve been noticing ROs not paying attention to whether my chamber is clear. So I’m making a point of drawing their attention to my clear chamber so we both agree it’s clear before I do hammer down.

Today’s Steel Challenge was a little different because I was on a squad with just two other shooters, a father and his son. The son had shot a few of these matches but it was the dad’s first one. So I ran both the clock and scorepad for the son while teaching the dad. No new best times for me. I remember the 2015-2018 period where I got a new best on at least one stage every match. Nowadays I’ll have to put in a special effort to beat my old scores.

I’m adjusting to two matches per week. That was my routine 5 years ago. Looking forward to weather that’s under 100 degrees. At least it’s beneficial to get out and sweat. Last Thursday’s practice match was far from my best. I was shooting SS Minor. One bright spot was a stage where I placed 7th overall out of 94 shooters. My time was 0.05s slower than an Open GM, and the HF 0.3 lower. Wasn’t even thinking speed, just smoothness, efficiency and solid fundamentals. Finally a few seconds where the practice in dry fire and live fire, and a few learning moments in recent matches, showed up in a stage.

I definitely can’t. I’ve checked the draw time a few times during Steel Challenge matches and draws I thought were fast were in the 1.1 to 1.15 zone. I’d be thrilled with consistent sub-1.0s.

The one place I never plan to disengage the thumb safety is immediately out of the holster, for obvious reasons. If the trigger finger stays out of the trigger guard until the gun is pointing at the targets, and the safety came off when the muzzle was angled well beyond a 10-foot point in the dirt, I believe we are being safe. I said a 45-degree angle but that is very rough. I think it’s a higher angle than that.

Yes.

I’ll be an exclusively irons competitor until my eyes need an optic. Until then I’m content often being the only guy on squads without an optic.

Recently found a video of Rob Leatham coaching a young guy on his draw. A lot of the focus was on the shooting hand approaching the gun, and getting it out of the holster. Ron Avery has a video called “Science of the Draw Stroke” or something like that. So far I only watched a tiny bit of it. He seems especially fast in the punch-out phase of his draw. The fastest draw I’ve ever clocked - live fire at 7 yards with a hit in the ‘A’ zone - was 0.87. That felt like I was trying very hard. I’d like to do it with less “trying,” and consistently.

It’s all worth it. You’ll thank yourself for doing it.