sinnsyk

To answer a few of the questions: The last couple of days we've been working on the prototype slide-on magwell with very good results. I will for sure make an aluminum version which for most will be the most interesting due to weight. Our tolerances will be super tight as usual and a world above the fit that the factories do. There will be an absolute minimum slop if any. I have about 10 guns at my disposal that I am using to decide tolerances (frames dating mid 90 - 2009). Besides a tight fit to frame in all the important places, I'm making a custom screw which will have a 0.1670" - 0.1665 spec solid pin to 'lock' the mag-well to the frame. I understand that aluminum gets beat up by heavy use. Up until Rich started making his mag-well I was running the factory and of course it got pitted, but not really that bad at all. One of my buddies' dry fire insanely and apparently misses the center hole a lot ;-)... I am stunned how bad his mag well looked. For that type of abuse, only stainless will do. For most shooters I don't think it's going to be bad at all. I have the option of anodizing in hard clear and hard black which will be a significantly stronger coating / treatment than what you'll see on any of the factory. For the pimps out there I'd like to do a red, but of course nicks will show easy. But it will look awesome with the red checkered grips as my contour grip and mag-well will blend almost perfectly. I have the option for hard red and hard blue, but they don't match the regular [beautiful] red and blue colors that the grips come in. So you have to pick your good & evil. If you want a perfect show gun with a red well and grip, put it on the wall and it will look great. Once we get design in it's final state it will be fairly easy to make a smaller run of stainless. Machining time is of course significantly longer so it will be more expensive. I still think I want to give you the option. The only minor obstacle I can see is potentially having to upgrade some tooling to carbide cutters and it could be a fairly significant expense as we're making several custom cutters. Something I thought about... which I'm not sure if will be economically feasible, would be to make a stainless bottom and aluminum top attachment piece. The cool thing about this would be that you could have a red, blue, clear or black matching mag-well to your already fancy contour grip. And with a shiny stainless 'mouth'. I've got my rough prototype on my desk after leaving the machine shop at 4:30am this morning. We will do a run of the H-550S (small frame H-550 base pads) in between and then I'll continue to work with my machinist towards next weekend. Any suggestions / input in the mean time will be heard and may influence our direction. ..and the size of the mag well will be big & fit the box. It will be very similar in size to the Canyon and a few of the individually created wells seen posted here over the past couple years. My idea is to combine a big mouth with a perfectly as possible blended slide-on style well to the frame. (frames do vary in tolerances which makes this task impossible to make 100.00%. Due to factory variances I'm shooting for 99% and a vast improvement over the factory well & fit).

We got materials, tools and a good headway on the new mag well today. We've got a very clean and nice design in the works. It will fit the IPSC standard box and be huge compared to the factory mag well. Got a few ideas we're still playing with, but main design is 'solved'. We are making them from aluminum to keep the weight down. For anyone wanting more weight I'd suggest the Canyon Creek which is bad ass when you weld them on. They do provide the possibility to open up the frame for a better blend than any slide-on magwell will do. Our aluminum magwells can be anodized in clear, black, red and blue. Not positive if I'll do the colors yet, but please chime in. I think I'll do some clear, black and red as they will match the contour grip in same color beautifully.

Give me a little time to design the magwell for the Limited / large frame, then I might look at match and small frame Limited/Gold Team as well. ;-)

My Fiber Front uses a 0.040" fiber and has a subtle 0.050" recess which will be the size of the dot after melting it (if you do a careful melt job - you can melt more and make it bigger). The factory uses a 0.060" fiber and the dot is typically 0.080". It is over whelming.

I don't know the exact time they will be ready. I would guess 2-3 months just due to production and also delivery time. You can place your order online in my store any time. That is the best way. If you want a higher cap magazine you can always write in the comment box that that's what you'd like. I would need to be supplied mags first before I can say how many rounds and if they'll hold 23 reliably. But I think that'll be very doable once we get some quality magbodies in 9mm.

So I've returned from the Shot Show and I have many new products in the works. I'm working with three separate machine shops which spreads out the time involved getting them all done. Should mean we'll get all or many of them available very soon: Hammer & Sear We're working on drawings for these hammers that will be EDM'ed and then Milled. Intention is close-to drop-in match trigger pull with full firing pin safety engagement and double/single action capability. Made from tool steel and hardened so the trigger job will last. If we can get the drawing made up, I will see some prototypes very soon. Magazine well A slide-on magazine well is in the works and we will work on this design Tuesday and Wednesday. It will be big, but still fit the IPSC standard box. Magazine Release A magrelease with button alternatives is ready to go on shortly. I'm finalizing my drawings and having them turned so that we can have the final Mill work done right after or during working on the magazine wells. It will hopefully have adjustable magrelease tension built into it as well thanks to Charlie's (CHA-LEE) clever idea. Extractor A beefier, better material extractor will be made available soon. This is right after hammer & sear project. Firing Pin Stop A firing pin stop that slows down the slide is on the agenda and pre-design work has been done. Those are the main projects at the moment. I will look into optimizing the trigger bar/plunger parts as well so we may see more parts coming out before the shooting season really starts (that's when the snow has melted for me.. ;-))

They confirmed.. as soon as they get the regular 9mm mags available, they will make 170mm 9mm large frame mags as well. Good stuff ;-D

Yes, pretty sure that would work.. Read my new article about the new 9mm magazines. You would want these, but without the rear spacer. We'll just have to see if they will be possible for removing the spacer or not. If not, I wouldn't do it. Mags will be key.

Hey everyone who owns an EAA Witness 9mm large frame pistol.. I had a talk with the factory at the Shot Show in Las Vegas yesterday and got some good news. The factory have recently gone through a test of 200 new style 9mm magazines with great results. The magazines which will work with factory spec 9mm (9x19) ammo has the spacer in the back instead of the front. The taper on both sides of the front have been pushed in further which will help support the cone shaped 9mm case. The tests results were extremely successful and we should expect some new style magazines as soon as the production is up and running. They are making a minor change to the follower, but other than that they should be ready. Please do not call and bug EAA when the new magazines will be available. They have asked me about this as I have kept you all informed about the status of the 9mm mag progress. It just gets me in trouble with them as I only want to keep those of you waiting up to speed. When the new magazine is available again here in the US, I will be receiving them as I have a large back order for them. I will make a post to notify everyone through this forum and back orders will be shipped out immediately. This also gives me hopes for having a large frame 22-24 round magazine using a modified Grams follower and my H-141 base pad. I am not 100% certain I can use the H-141 as it is and if I cannot, I will make a special base pad that also spacers out the back of the pad. New 40 S&W magazines is next This is the other great news. As soon as the 9mm magazines are up and running, they will start making a better 40 S&W magazine. I asked to also make a 40 S&W magazine without the rear spacer so that we can load them long. But in effect, if the spacered 40 mags work, we might also be okay going back to loading factory length (1.135") as long as we can still get 21 + 1 in our magazines. I have no news of 38 super magazines, but I would say they are "pretty good". I would like to see the front of the indent of these moved in a little more also and we will just have to wait and see after the 9mm and 40s&w is finished. Visit to the Tanfoglio factory in June Also, I will be visiting the Tanfoglio factory in June this year which will give me a great opportunity to talk more in detail about future products and improvements by Tanfoglio. ;-)

If you don't have the restrictions of IPSC standard box you could do whatever you want. Otherwise, max 45mm width and make sure it fits the box. The canyon creek fits with a little bit of shaving off the bottom.

Carolina Shooter, The conversion kits will work for ANY model including Limited, Hunter, Match, Steel etc. They may not look or match some of the models the best, but they all have the same slide to barrel to frame specifications. Hardly any fitting, but it's never a bad idea to have someone like Rich at canyoncreekcustom.com look it over to make sure the barrel is fitted correctly.

Jonas; I'll get the parts in the mail when I'm back next week. Scott; you're sick and twisted. Rob; took Emma to SF for her b-day.

I'm in San Francisco for the weekend and we have been very busy lately. I do miss some emails from time to time and I know there are some emails from around xmas that I haven't gotten back on. I'll try to be available on my cell 720 352 1080 tomorrow (Friday) during the day. Remember it's US Pacific Time while in California. For Norway/Sweden that's 8 hours behind so wait until about 6pm your time to call. Otherwise, email me again. I'm checking emails while I'm here and trying to catch up. We've been working on a lot of projects lately and December was a particularly busy month. Sorry ! ;-) Henning

We shipped a lot of the new ConeFit guiderods in the mail today, you guys should have them shortly. The Conefit is designed to stop the battering of the frame, but next step is to design a matching shock buffer to prevent the slide from hitting the frame. There will ultimately probably be two shock buffer systems: 1) An aluminum shock buffer that can be install without any modification to the gun. It will have to be thin and from aluminum to allow the slide to move far enough back for reliable ejection and feeding. I'm going to play with some steel washers to determine the thickness. Preliminary measures will be 0.050" - 0.080". I doubt any thicker shock buff will be reliable. 2) The ultimate shock buffer is of course made from rubber for a softer recoil. However, they are thick and a thin steel washer in front of the rubber will be the best setup. To be able to do this it will be necessary to cut the same amount of thickness added by the rubber buffer and steel washer off the slide. This will probably only be done by a few, but I'm guessing more and more will follow suit as soon as the brave few starts modifying their guns in this direction. I'm also hoping to have an american made slide (and barrel) which my plan is to be designed to work with my guide rod and a rubber washer. ;-)

Not yet, I'll check on them tomorrow.

Just to remind everyone... all Henning Contour grips are still on sale until December 31 st. And the Henning Torx grip screws are $6 instead of normal $10. Remember to write in the comment box: 20% OFF GRIPS

Absolutely. Tanfoglio makes them and your tanfo importer either have them or can get them for you. They may require some tuning to make them work reliably. 22's are always finicky so choice of 22 ammo will be important. Less lead is better as the chamber and feedramp can easily get dirty and stop feeding. I experienced misfires on mine that I had about 10 years ago. Was never very reliable so I gave up, but I'm positive they can be tuned to work well. Here's what I would do if I was going to use it for practice; have my gunsmith polish chamber and feedramp and improve anything that can improve feeding. Probably also have him make a longer firing pin (these are special firing pins) to improve ignition. The idea of a 22 for practice is very very tempting. Just be prepared for a little bit of work to make it run reliably.

EAA sells the conversion kits and you can buy them direct. I don't carry the conversion kits, but magazines including 22 mags. They will fit all models as every frame model is the "same".

Hey Steve Thanks for beautiful pictures, story and your enthusiasm. The finish is the same as comes on the Limited, Gold Teams and is by factory considered to be a chrome finish. Back in the early 90's they offered their competition models in stainless which I always thought was the prettiest finish. Just a nicer 'shine' than the chrome they have done since. My competition pistols; my Limited 40 and my Gold Team 38 super has been modified so much and are still somewhat 'under construction' as I continue to develop parts for them or modify the frame and slide. So these guns I have re-finished in IonBond. For info on this, see www.ionbond.com. I love this finish. Here are a few pictures of my guns. They will both be re-finished again as they now have a weld-on magwell and need to have the entire gun re-matched to look good. All further work on these guns will be done internally. The third picture is of my 6" project which is not finished yet, but when it is, also will be IonBond'ed. When done right the absolute strongest finish I've seen on the market. Chrome is pretty if you like it that way, but it'll scratch and rub pretty easy. Because it's 'silver' you won't see it as easy. To mess up the IonBond you almost have to do it purposely. btw. regarding holsters.. I will have holsters to fit the Match model with rail in about 1.5 - 2 weeks. Once we get them we will also push forward to get holsters made to hold the TLR-1, M3, M6 etc. It's all in the works.

Hey Carl Not sure. I've got many types of barrels on order with Briley for Glocks, 1911s and Tanfoglios. They are on top o fit and maybe a month or so ? Just drop me an email at the end of January. I don't think they'll be done prior to the Shot Show, but I'll talk with them there as well and will have a good idea at that point. We've also got a few other projects in the works that'll be pretty cool.

Though conventionally tight fit in barrel, slide and frame is considered why a gun is accurate... what causes a bullet to hit in the same spot round after round is when the barrel consistently return to the same position [barrel in slide & frame position] shot after shot. Though a gun may be horribly sloppy, if the barrel returns to the same ready-to-fire position it doesn't matter for creating a small group on paper. The bullet choice is the other biggest ingredient for group shooting consistency. In 2003 I had a Gold Team 38 super with a horrible slide to frame fit. I shot several different bullets. At 50 yards the bottom shelf bullets barely could hit the C-zone. Then I tried the Hornady 121 HAP bullet and put several 1.5" groups on paper. So make sure to test multiple bullets before the gun is found to be the reason. Irritated by the frame to slide slop I had a gunsmith tighten up my gun. It came out great, but of course had no improvement on the groups I was shooting. So.. don't dismiss what the guns can shoot on account of what you think before everything is tried and tested. They are production guns, perform well out of the box, but tweaking is what we all do here. A gunsmith can modify frame/slide/barrel fit if you want. Even help tweak your magazines to avoid nose-dives. The 9mm magazine bodies has inherent issues. You want to narrow the front feed lips to about 0.335" and use round nose bullets to start. Further work can be done on follower, spring and magbodies to reduce nose dive issues. Personally I'm holding my breath for a newer style magazine body that we've been waiting for. For work on your gun etc give Canyon Creek Custom a call; www.canyoncreekcustom.com. Rich is a great guy who does all barrel fitting, slide lightening and custom work on my pistols. Most of the parts I sell can be installed by yourself, but machining and modifying gun parts, barrel, slide and frame are jobs for the gunsmith. Good luck henning

Starline Supercomp brass, Round Nose bullets, 1.25" overall length, tune extractor knob to 0.040" - 0.045" for secure extraction from chamber. Make sure your magazines doesn't have a gap between the top and 2nd round. If you do, make sure cases are resized as straight as possible and spring/follower setup in your mags are set up to push the rounds up in front. All rounds in your mags must support each other for reliable feeding. Nose-diving issues in any caliber and magazine is caused by a lack of support from the round below. Think of it as a lower feedramp. The round comes out straight with a strong bottom support and then starts to tilt upwards and into the barrels feedramp.

I'm comopletely sold out of the Briley barrels. I have a Briley barrel installed in my Gold Team. I love it. But ... these barrels were from an old stock from Briley and they are sold out as well. I sent them several of the latest slides and guns to have the barrel hood, lugs & design tweaked to fit the newest slides. Making sure the firing pin hole is perfectly centered. Even with factory barrels you may experience that the firing pin hole is slightly off-centered. This can cause misfires if you are shooting harder primers. Especially in these times where Winchester primers are hard to find and we have to resort to crap brands. They will make more and of the newest stye shortly. I get slightly higher velocity out of my brileys and very good groups. Other main advantage is a tighter chamber than factory, making reloading easier too.

I'm definitely going to make it with a cocker. I drew a new style hammer on Saturday which is a skeleton hammer. The cocker is smaller than factory, but very functional. I will check in with the machinist later today to see if he's on board with the skeleton. It will be super light weight and bad ass. Well, we'll see if that's where we'll end up, but so far I like all the numbers on width/height and the skeleton cut-out.

I currently have black, titanium gray and silver in smooth 161