Carlos

EricW wrote: "Bob Londrigan, Benny Hill, EGW, Kodiak, Experimental Machining (BrianH), etc. are all in business for a reason. If a factory S_I runs out of the box, it's dumb luck." I have to agree with him. While I did not use any of the named 'smiths, I had the same experience with my 1st 1911: an STI Edge in .45 ACP. It never ran 100% for the 1st owner so he decided to sell it cheap and I got it for $1000. Intermitent problems required trip after trip to 3 different friends who are 1911 'smiths to get the thing to run & even then it was never 100% (thank God they are friends of mine or it would have cost a small fortune to fix everything). Among the repairs, the barrel was never throated and rounds would hang up as a result (but only occasionally), the leaf spring allowed the hammer to follow occasionally (& it was a 3 lb trigger), the ejector was oddly shaped & caused jams on occasions, a recoil master I tried broke in fewer than 1500 rounds and after a factory extractor hook broke clean off, an Aftec worked as a drop in part. Current state of affairs seems to be that buying a new S_I is merely the purchase of raw materials that must then be 'smithed into a working USPSA tool at additional expense. I'm OK w/ replacing wear parts as a gun ages but it took a lot to get this thing running at all; & many of these were things that should have been done prior to the gun leaving the factory.

Kimber kid wrote: " The ejector does not appear to be dragging" In addition to the disassembly that Flex indicated, go ahead and remove the ejector as Bob suggests. Then check slide to frame fit. C.

Here is a picture I took of all three guns after parkerizing, oiling and reassembly: (click HERE for larger photo) I think they came out great. I have helped out friends with the re-finish of about a dozen guns so far and with the exception of a lighter color on a cast Para frame, they all came out great. Next refinishing hurdle will be anodizing aluminum at home. Rush: check out pg. 184 of the Brownells catalog (new arrivals) for "Super Strip" -it is supposed to strip chrome finish without damaging underlying steel. D.

-Move into A class in at least one division -Earn B card in the divisions where I am still in C (L10, Production and Revolver) -Travel and shoot more large matches during the outdoor season -Organize several GSSF teams through my employer, Shooters Paradise & dominate the team event at the Maryland GSSF round this year. Douglas www.shootersparadise.com

Bob wrote: "I have a guy making 250+ grain .40 bullets" Curses! Foiled again. Thanks again for pushing the reloading R&D envelope Bob. Look forward to seeing what you guys show up with next month. Regards, D.

Wow - I remember growing up near San Francisco when you could easily park on the streets and we would visit the San Francisco Gun Exchange (quite large at that time). One of my grade-school class mates was Diane Feinstein's step-daughter & my math instructor was Mr. Moscone (cousin of the Mayor killed by a homophobic moron weilding -of course - a handgun). I never would have guesed things would slide down hill so far as this in San Francisco. Shame.

OK Kingman - a heavy minor load eh? I got your heavyload - right here! I'll see your 180 grain and raise you 40 grains! That's right - a minor .40 load using a 220 grain bullet! I'll need to make a whoping 586+ feet per second with these heavyweights to meet minor & man are they going to recoil soft! I've got you now, Kingman! You better quit this contest or else. Don't make me go .45 on your ass! (hmmmm - .45 minor w/ a 255 grain - lets see - that's 490 FPS! Should we turn the .45 ACP into a glorified slingshot with a 300 grain minor load @ 416fps?). Seriously, it was good to see you & Steve tonight; I appreciate you guys taking the time to travel all that way for our match. Folks: I tried out Bob's 180 minor load & it is amazing! Certainly seems like the way to go in 9mm. Regards, Douglas

Steve wrote: Do you have an aftermarket bbl in your glock i did have some leading problems in a stock barrel using 180's Good point; leading is supposed to get worse with faster powders & 310 is about as fast as it gets. Glock once warned in is manuals that UNCOATED Lead+Glock = KB! (if you are using a stock Glock barrel) The Master Blasters Driver8M3 tried are not bare lead but rather polymer/moly coated (polymer jacketed really) so they are safe (unlike lead). Just thought I'd point this out since I gave him the coated bullets & did not want anyone to think I was trying to get him "blowed up!" (even if he is my competition).

Good point. I find its the gun owners who are not into competition shooting who usually screw up the 1st-timers at the range. Another point: 1st timers do not want to feel like failures first time out so give them a chance by not setting the bar too high. How? Make it easy. Plenty of chances to toughen the challenge later. I took my pro-gun (though generally non-shooting) ex to the range to shoot at some old bowling pins. She told me she had shot rifle in High School and she once had a CCW permit so I gave her the benefit of the doubt about knowing what she was doing with a pistol. Using a 9mm Glock, things did not go very well for her. Turns out she had less pistol experience than I thought. I then had her try out shooting those same pins with red-dot equiped semi auto (a .22 w/ a sweet trigger) and truth be told, it was hard NOT to hit the pins with that gun. She felt like a champ & always wanted to try it again.

No experience blasting hardchrome though I imagine you would need the hardest, toughest media that is readily avaiable (probably common aluminum oxide which I have used). I doubt that glass bead would do anything to hardchrome. You might find more answers HERE by going to the fourm section labled "metal and stock finishes" and doing a search on chrome. As for park vs. blueing: park is a whole lot tougher & very rust resistant. I use a black park that claims to meet a listed mil-spec which is supposed to include resistance to constant salt water spray for x-number of days, etc. In practice, park holds up very very well on guns that previously showed a lot of the blueing worn off. Park creates a slightly porous surface sort of like a Glock's tennifer surface that retains oil (ever hit a Glock slide w/ gunscrubber & see it change color? Same idea). Even bone dry, the park resists water & rust betterthan blue, although it will never look as pretty as gloss blueing. I often shoot early & late season matches in foul weather (who remembers the Area 8 Championship '04?) and have had zero rust issues since I parked my SV (more than I can say about my holster).

I lack pictures of the next step so I'll describe it: use some un-coated steel or brass wire (I use coat-hanger wire) and bend it into forms that will allow you to suspend the pieces in the park bath without exposing your skin or your acid-resistant gloves to the park solution. Make sure that after final de-grease, you do not touch the parts with your hands. This keeps oil off the surface of the metal. I prefer to pre-heat my parts in an oven heated to about 200 degrees & w/ the door kept open. I have friends who do not bother with this & their parkerizing turns out about as well, but I find that it is trickier to maintain temp control without pre-heating. Every gunsmith has their own routine; I prefer distilled water while a friend uses tap water. We both use non-stainless muffin tins (now permanently parked balck inside) & we never re-use solution even though many old time gunsmiths scoff at all non-stainless tanks & they use their solution for years. Expert opinions vary. Anyway, to parkerize, mix the solution per manufactuer's directions or the chemical recipe (artificially age the solution if called for), heat to the called for-temp (in my case, a narrow range between 185 and 199 degrees) using accurate thermometers (I use 2 at once) and imerse the pieces. Some recipes call for leaving the work in the park until it stops fizzing. I leave it in for 8 to 10 min. & find that adequate. To prevent phosphatization (white spots) its critical to snatch the piece from the solution (remember - its hot acid, hence the gloves & face shield) and plunge it in cold water before any liquid acid can dry on it. I use tap water for the cold water bath. Leave in for 5 min, then coat the work w/ WD-40 as a final fix. The black coating should NOT rub off at all once fixed. Here is a picture of the 3 guns pictured above fresh out of the water bath & fully parked: click here for larger picture And another angle of above: click here for larger picture D.

jkushner wrote: "Nothing beats an 18.9 . . . - end of story" Unless you value short trigger reset. Try this: compare the 18.9 to a gun with extremely short reset like an 85 Combat - particularly since the 85 Combat is factory equiped with a trigger overtravel screw - and see if the 85 Combat's SA trigger does not feel a whole lot like best triggers in Open & Limited i.e., the light, tuned, 1911 trigger. I think the 18.9 is an OK production gun. I simply do not agree that it is (without a doubt) the best. Looking forward to the long, heavy dust cover CZ, the SP-01. I expect it will do well in Production division.

Thanks Monster, Shred & Flex! WIll figure this out & start posting pics as intended. Flex: It is true that oxide & sand tend to cut steel; they can even begin to change dimensions if they are used too agresively. Glass beads are supposed to peen the surface rather than cut or abrade. Traditional park is supposed to need a fresh steel surface for the parkerizing reaction to take place & one would think that only an abraded surface would react while a peened surface would not. However, if the blueing is first removed and the steel thouroghly de-greased, the park seems to react just fine with either beads or oxide. The beads I am using now are nearly worn out & they still cut well enough to leave a satin finish & park well. Thanks again guys, D.

Looks like you must be using the 1st Edition of the Lee manual. The second Edition contains the following: 3.0 Grns of straight Clays with a 180 Grain copper jacket (they specify the XTP JHP rather than a plated bullet) loaded to an OAL of 1.125" which should yeild: 741 FPS. To meet minor with a 180, you need: 694.4 or higher. If 3.0 will work and actually yeild that velocity with a plated bullet, then you are set. On the other hand, the Lee maunual lists a max of 3.5 grns so your original load idea of 3.2 should be a safe option. Straight Clays is my favorite .45 powder and for .40 Minor? WHy not? I use N310 for 40 Minor, but that is a dangerous practice as there is NO data published for that powder & a 180 in .40. At least for MINOR clays, there is ample published data.

Traditional copper jacketed took about 3.2 grns & Montana nearly always requires more powder for the same velocity. I would start out with 3.2 & work up.

Mission accomplished, however, the pictures came out too small this time. Looks like I may need to buy one of the photographic manipulating programs & try to figure out how it works; the crappy Comcast website that came free with the cable modem seems to lack the ability to make my photographs smaller. I had hoped that the small photographs would return to normal size if you were to click on them, but that function only seems to work on my actual website. Sorry. If anyone is still interested in the full-sized photographs, you may take a look around my personal webpage where they are stored. Looks like the second installment will be delayed for a while. Regards, D.

Gee thanks Sterling - I resemble your remark! How dare you. gm iprod: I appologize for butchering your name, Thanks again for the data. It would seem that Titewad only has realistic potential for: .40 Minor; especailly with lead, 9mm minor up to 147 and .45 minor for SSR in IDPA. possibly steel loads Regards, D.

I am guessing that TD's exasperated post: "uHHH..." comes from the original poster's name: "EwokUK" - I am also guessing he is from the UK or United Kingdom or England where the the only pistols allowed by law are air pistols. Ewok: your funny vocabulary like "engineering company" (in place of: "machine shop") is also a dead give away. Please let us know how the project turns out. Could you post a picture? Regards, Douglas

At the request of Carmoney, here is more information regarding black phosphating or black parkerizing. I realized in looking over my photos that: I am a terrible photographer! (Siggy found this out the hard way last time I posted a pic on be.com - thanks again) I took these photos last summer with the intent to show the process and (as you will see) the photographs do a poor job of explaining things. I'll try to fill in the gaps with text, but you will have to use your imagination at times. I also want to add that I am not a gunsmith. I get together with friends and we work together on our projects but I only refinish guns as a hobby and I have never charged a dime for my help. On to the project. In the original thread I expalined: Traditional zink park is colored from light to dark grey to the holy-grail of park: WWII green. In contrast to the traditional zink parkerizing, I use modern manganese park which is coal black on high carbon steel like the 4140 used to make STI (less black on castings like the Para). First, our guns as they were (if you look close, you can see the wear-marks from the holsters on the underside of the dust-covers): click here for larger picture Two of these guns were blued, shot for several seasons and then the slides were milled with flutes. I'll leave it up to the owners of these guns to come forward here on be.com if they want. The gun with the short/wide SV frame is Tawn Argeris (Team SV) old Open gun that I bought in 2001. I built a limited top end for it and previously parked that; these photos show the park of the lower. The guns been through a lot & still shoots great. click here for larger picture This shot should show the bare steel left after the fluting. It also shows how dirty & well used these limited blasters were. I forgot my camera when I stripped the blueing and bead-blasted the guns prior to parkerizing. Instead, in the next pixture I show a more recent project gun (a single stack Monolith .40 I built) undergoing blasting. Of the sand, oxide and glass beads I have used, glass yields the finest result, though for parkerizing, the differences in media are small. Blueing is another matter & you will want to use glass. The next photo shows the finished parts for the monolith after blasting: More to follow (want to make sure these work out). For now, remember that there are many things that can go wrong in the process but one of the most critical steps is surface prep. As I said, I have blasted using forms of media from plain sand to oxide to glass beads. Stripping old blue, cleaning, degreasing, blasting, cleaning, degreasing, - prep is everything.

They did not just hit that Barak with the ugly stick, more like: it fell outta the ugly tree and hit every branch on the way down. Its grip reminds me of a garden hose's squirt nozzle & its topped off with a turd & they added a hunch-back just for good measure. I really like Israeli guns but its safe to say the Barak will not be my choice for Production division in '05. Now that Civilian Tavor that Barret was showing on the Barak site - that's a done deal for 3gun if it makes it to the US.

My older brother tried one & it turned his Glock into a jam-o-matic. I would strongly suggest KKM. You get what you pay for.

We use a single sheet of plain white 8x10' paper printed on both sides; 2 stages per side. We submit our classifier scores electronically & thus shooters do not sign their classifier scores (though we encourage shooters to look over all their scoresheets). All shooters are alloted slots prior to the match; one squad of 6 shooters every hour on the hour from 3 PM to 9 PM one time per month & pre-squadding allows lables to be printed ahead of time. Once you pay for your slot in the pro-shop, they give you a lable. Works for us. www.shootersparadise.com

BE wrote: "As soon as you are being paid to do something you love, everything changes." That is an eerily similar thought to something a friend once said about his former career as a gunsmith; the gist of his words was: "never take something you love and make it your livelihood; you WILL end up hating it in the end." D.

Excellent! Just the gun I was thinking of. Thanks for the pic, D.

Carmoney wrote: "Carlos mentioned that he has done black phosphating for himself. I'd like to hear more about that." Pictures to follow. For now, everyone interested can take a look at the sub-forum "Metal & Stock Fishish" at a site where I often post in the forum section (as user CBR600): www.roderuscustom.tzo.com As for parkerizing: 2 quick points: 1) traditional zink park is colored from light to dark grey to the holy-grail of park: WWII green. In contrast to the traditional zink, I use modern manganese park which is coal black on high carbon steel like the 4140 used to make STI (less black on castings like the Para). 2) there are many things that can go wrong in the process but one of the most critical steps is surface prep. I have blasted using forms of media from plain sand to oxide to glass beads. Stripping old blue, cleaning, degreasing, blasting, cleaning, degreasing, - prep is everything. As for Blueing: you wrote: "I'm not real thrilled about the idea . . .all the toxic stuff. . . too expensive anyway...." I agree with you 100%. I ordered the detailed instructions from Brownells after I obtained some salts from a friend. Blueing is not for me since its easy to screw up & very toxic (and I live in a 900 sq foot condo w/ no work room). I will admit, however, it really does look quite attractive when done properly (even if it is not very durable). Douglas (aka Carlos aka CBR600)