wsimpso1
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Posts posted by wsimpso1
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Hey all,
I am building a Limited/ESP gun in .40 S&W (Going beyond the single stack .45 ACP), and one o the things I spotted in Front Sight is the S.P.S. mags. Has anybody tried them out? Are they OK, great, poor, what?
Billski
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I have a rifle front sight and ghost ring rear, so you know how I handle a tactical shotgun. I rarely miss our steels and stationary clays. Now if someone put up some flying clays, I wonder what would happen...
Billski
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Rikarin,
I have been using a Lee U die (.45 ACP, that is my only pistol round right now) with no problems and some 4000 rounds. While I recognize that the U die might have the problems you cited, I and the folks I know that have used them just have not seen the problems.
Tungsten carbide has been used extensively over 40 years for machine tool cutting edges, masonry drills, earthmoving equipment, snow plows (guide shoes and cutting edges). There are many grades, and you usually trade wear resistence, Young's modulus, and wear resistence. None are fine china.
Letting Eric clean up you current carbide die is a deal. It should work.
I am thinking about one in .40 (building a LTD gun) but I shall try some Glock brass through the Hornady dies I just recieved first.
The Kalishnakitty is cute, but your smiling face is a better pic.
Billski
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I don't know about the Dark Side, but we do have cookies at some IDPA matches in Southeastern Michigan (Linden, Livingston County, and I think at Capital City). A certain wonderful shooter/SO brings absolutely yummy chocolate chip and oatmeal cookies. Deb, we are bragging on you...
Billski
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Wlydelee,
Since we are talking custom stock fitted to your body and hands, you have a couple options:
Find a shotgun fitting guru near where you live, and get out the checkbook. The folks who are just nuts about stock fitting are the folks who shoot claybirds. Their gun has to shoot where they look, and some will go to extremes to get that from their guns. Skeet, trap, and sporting clays. Go to the clubs and ask for advice on smiths for fitting their guns;
Do it yourself and keep modifying until you like how it fits. You have to be a little handy with tools, but this is not hard stuff to do. Brownells has the stock wrench, butt pad, and cheek pad. Tools needed are a 1/4" wood chisel, perhaps a carving set of chisels, files, rasps, and sandpaper. You may also need epoxy putty from the hardware or car parts store or for the really trick folks, West epoxy and one of their fillers. Understand that by the time you are finished, the stock may be uglied up with carved spots and added filler, so you will probably want to paint it too. It might as well be a cheap birch stock at the outset. By the time you know what you want, you might even want to build a second one. Anyway, if you want to explore doing this yourself, get back on here. I (and others...) will help you through it.
Either way, fitting shotgun stocks is a bit of art and a bit of science. Thankfully, for our game it is not as important as for claybirds. There are books (and probably websites too) out there that cover the topic. My basic view is to watch people shooting shotguns and see who looks "right". If they also shoot well, you want your shotgun to fit you in the same way as theirs fits them. Hand on the pistol grip, face on the stock, etc.
Once the back half of the gun fits you, you can play with barrels to see what really suits you. Since there are so many barrels for M1100's out there, you could arrange to go to someone who has barrels and show up with your modified gun to try them on the gun.
If you are in SE Michigan, I can help you DIY or you can go to B. McDanial in South Lyon.
Good luck!
Billski
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Jeez, A lot depends on hand size, arm length, and recoil tolerance.
I am a big believer that a shotgun that fits has less felt recoil.
I am also a big believer that recoil makes for a less capable shooter.
So, I want to bias towards recoil reduction, proper gun fit, and good gun balance.
Strong hand grip on pistol grip has to be pretty good. If fingers or hands are small, you gotta move the pistol grip closer to the trigger. Cut down and fit the head of the stock (where it fits into the reciever) and then shape with rasp/fillers as necessary to make the shooter's hand fit. This change alone can make a smaller person feel better because they are not crawling to reach things. This is so poorly done on many "youth" and "reduced stature" guns...
Stock length and comb fit has to be pretty good. The correct stock length does several things: It brings the weight of the gun to about the same place proportionally as a 5'10" guy with a standard stock; It allows the shooter to pull the gun into the shoulder for a good mount, which helps prevent blows to the shoulder and chops; And it feels like the other folks look when they shoot a shotgun. All positive. Then make sure that good comb contact exists. If the shooter's face wants to sit on the comb, it will prevent blows to the chops too. A padded comb works nicely here. This too tends to be poorly done on "youth" and "reduced stature" guns.
Thick pad on the butt for recoil resistence. Obvious...
Pick the barrel, both length and wieght to add weight while keeping the gun balancing between the hands. I prefer a shorter barrel with more weight to a longer barrel and less weight simply for recoil reduction, but also to speed up the handling a little. Check the weight with a long mag tube and dummy shells.
Guns. Gas ops. I like the M1100 in 12 gauge. Cheap, available, ammo choices galore, and many speed parts for them that work. Downside is that you do have to teardown/clean/oil every couple hundred rounds to keep it reliable.
Smaller bores don't do you any favors on recoil, and the hit less well.
Billski's view...
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Rika,
First, understand that I am a recoil wimp. I used to shoot High Power (in the 1980's) with the M-1 rifle, and I was never so happy as to find out that the AR15 had taken over in that game.
Second, I worked for Remington in the 1980's, and the last time that I fired a shotgun was a field test in 1983 or 1984. Don't like'em - they kick!
So, the first suggestion is that there are soft pads available to place over the cheek piece to soften the impact on the cheek.
The second one is to be supple and relaxed. When I got a look at three-gun, and fired a match using my pistol on the shotgun stages, and watched the rifle shooters, I thought, well maybeeeee. Then I stumbled across http://www.quickshoot.com. They teach you to be supple, which is what Brian is also teaching us (bent elbows and no more tension in your whole body than you need to maintain your grip, etc.). Well, I read what they had and decided to be supple and wow, my 3G shutgun doesn't hurt me. This stuff Brian is teaching really works! Even if it takes other people to teach us that!
Billski
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Hey George!
The stats on this match have an error, well that or we are being decieved. Under Lady, all competitors are listed as N, yet, you do have Rika Kasahara in the results. That is our Rikarin, isn't it? Grin! Just fun.
On a serious note, even if we don't have enough women, seniors, etc, to have seperate awards, I think that we want them all listed so that when people scan the results they will see that the matches do have women, old guys (my group starting next year), juniors, etc. It might help to convince more folks to join in the games.
Billski (gray beard and balding head)
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Rika,
Congratualtions on entering the world of Three-Gunning! Congratulations also to George for some excellent mentoring! My TANS efforts have not been so successful. Be warned - more fun ahead!
Oh, and cool t-shirt too.
Now the source of that back pain... There are things to help with toting, running the course, and recoil.
First off, the Benelli kicks harder than some other options for shotgun, just because that is how the Benelli works. Gas ops with stocks that fit you can reduce the battering a bunch, and make the gun easier to drive around the course. And a sore face is usually evidence that you lifted your head off the stock and it got a running start at you!
AR15's don't have to kick - there are many brakes that work great, but you have to learn to deal with blast. Shorter stock/thinner barrel combinations can make the gun easier to drive through the course.
If toting the whole set of gear is the problem, you are only limited by your imagination.
Last is we can all go for better physical strength and capability. And you know what happens when you do that, don't you. Less tired instances and more opportunities to drive yourself into the zone and have the wonderful things happen that Brian had taught us about.
So many opportunities! Life is good.
Billski
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Tin Can,
Three-Gun is great fun!
The AR is fine for the first match. Hell, so is an M-1 and a dozen en-bloc clips. Whatever it is, make sure that it is reliable, cleaned and oiled, and that you have a decent zero. I like to set mine up to be on at 50 yards, which puts it on again at 200 meters or so, no more than 2" high between 50 and 200 yards, and no more than 2.8 inches low on really close targets. Remember that if they paint everything but the upper A/B zone black on an array of really close targets. Know where it will hit over the variety of distances for the match. Have enough reload mags or clips handy and make sure that you know how to reload while maintaining control of the muzzle.
Nobody talked about the third gun. Many 3-Gun shoots are pistol friendly, that is the shotgun stages can be fired with a pistol. If you have a M1100, clean and oil it and then shoot it. If you have a pump, same deal. Know where it hits. You may have small targets at 5 m, and the pattern will not be big, you will have to center the pattern on the target.
Many shotgun stages go 11 to 22 rounds, so find a way to have 25 rounds either in the gun or otherwise available when the beeper goes off. People who are into the game have 9 rounds (standard gun) or 11 rounds (open gun) in the gun, but whatever you have is fine for now. I have even advised people with auto-eject doubles to shoot them, atleast until someone offers to loan a more suitable shotgun. People who are into it will have the rest in wrist holders, bandoliers, belt carriers, etc. For your first shoot, coat pockets will do, but you need to know how to stuff shells cleanly. Right now, just being able to load with muzzle control and without fumbling is way more important than speed.
Billski
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Those of us who are loading 40 S&W to Major for a Limited gun are almost downloading a 10mm, we are loading out so far. With the bullet out that far and the velocities fairly low, the fast powders work fine.
Now if Vihtavouri does not recommend N320 in standard 40 S&W, they probably have a reason, and the reason might be erratic behaviour with the smaller space left in standard length loads... I can give a specific example - N310 is not recommended in .45ACP with 230's, yet I just had to try it. At one charge weight, it was low (660 ft/sec), dirty, and big SD! I bumped my Dillon meter two flats of the bolt, between 0.1 and 0.2 grains heavier, and now it burned clean and I got around 820 ft/sec average, still got big SD, and some were still extremely smokey. I switched to N320 and it worked fine. Hmmm, there is a load for that ammo in the VV manual too.
Billski
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Cool Biz!
Like you, the sessions where I have learned the most have been the ones with only one target! I recently got to the point where I am watching the gun return to the target almost like slow motion. I shall have to dry your routine now that I am waiting for the gun to come back to the target.
Billski
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For our kind of shotgun shooting? I don't see much need for it, but I suppose if you have to have a better trigger, you could check out Derrick Martin's web site. He has a trigger kit for the Remington shotguns (and semiauto- and pump-rifles too) at:
http://www.accuracyspeaks.com/parts.htm
His other stuff is really good, so I expect that the trigger kit would be good too.
Billski
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Lanny, another fan is checking in. I listened to you speak to an auditorium at West Point in 1982 or 1983, bought the tapes from that session, and still have them.
I have played High Power off and on, and loved what it did for me in that game where the thinking in words and running mental programs works pretty well. But for some reason, I was still working with words, and I never got into The Zone or even to the point where the subconcious was doing everything. Maybe that is because High Power really is slow paced and there is just too much time for the mind to go looking for other stuff.
My mind likes to be fully occupied. Sailboat racing when the wind is UP and snowboarding on deep stuff appeal do that. Maybe adrenaline figures into it too. And I figured out that High Power is just not much fun for me...
And then I started playing these practical pistol games, read Brian's book (twice now, and thinking about a third time) and I am finally figuring out that the mental program does not involve words or concious thought at all once I hear "Stand by..". Hmm, I wished that I had that insightful realization years ago. High Power might have been a lot more fun.
I have only gotten fully into The Zone a couple of times, both were recent practice sessions, and it faded fast. But I learned stuff from it. And it helped me trust my subconscious mind in doing many of the little things that have to happen. And it helped me drop words out of my thinking and go with movement or actions. That is my BIG WOW, so now I think that I had better listen to those tapes from long ago, and read With Winning in Mind again. I wonder what I will find when I do that?
Billski
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Hey Big Shooter,
I just bored through the thread, and there is a lot of good advice. Here's mine (I got it from Lanny Basham in 1983) when you are shooting well, do it a lot. When you are shooting poorly STOP! The last thing that you want to do is reinforce doing something wrong.
Once you stop, you have choices and you should do all of them sometime. Here are a few:
Change something. It almost does not matter what you change. Occupy that thinking part of your brain with something new or at least different, and then do some basic drills. This allows you to experiment a little with some fundementals which distracts the concious mind from getting in your way. Reload with the gun a little higher or lower, take your hand to the holstered gun a little differently, practice something that you have not done in a while. Maybe the change is grit your teeth and approach the session with some aggressiveness or some anger. It could happen in a match, and you might want to find out how you will respond. Anything but frustration. If the last thing you want to do is practice doing it wrong, the next to last thing you want to do is resign yourself to performing poorly. Change Something;
Put the equipment away for the day or even a few days. Recharge your batteries on some other activity. Reading Brian's book is always a good one. So is cleaning the car or detail clean your gun or reloading gear, having a leisurely dinner with the other half or friends or both, calling somebody that you have not talked to in a while. Then, when you miss the practice or the shooting, get back into it. A day, a week, a month, whatever it takes. Do some other activity that you have not done in a while. I am almost to the point of doing some sailboat racing again. Maybe a bike ride suits you better today. Maybe that buddy with an airplane would want to go for a hamburger. This weekend, I am tearing apart the airplane that I own half of for the annual inspection. Do Something Else;
Do a drill that you have not done in awhile. Prone, weak handed, chair draws, extreme cover. Maybe you have been playing in your mind with three gun - go get the rifle or shotgun out and do dry fire and reload drills with it. Practice Something Different.
Good Luck.
Billski
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I already had a background in High Power (off-and-on since the early 1980's). In 1983, I spent an afternoon listening to an Olympic Gold Medalist named Lanny Basham talk about Mental Management. Bought the tapes of that lecture and still have 'em. "With Winning in Mind" sure sounded familiar when I read it.
Anyway, I bought Brian's book a year ago spring when I decided to play this practical pistol stuff. Read it then and thought "Wow! This guy understands his shooting and trusts a well prepared mind to uncover the important stuff." Then I wondered if I could ever get to the point of actually using his stuff.
This summer I blazed through the book again and lately have had the wonderful thing happen of things smoothing out and going faster while feeling slower. In the last six weeks I actually started tracking the sights and seeing them come right back to the target for repeats and go right to the next target on transitions. Now here is the important part. I did not conciously try to do these things. I knew that I wanted to do those things, and that is important, but it was my subconcious that drove things while my concious mind was on the lookout for the inputs. As I bacame more practiced at figuring out how I would shoot a stage and then memorizing it, the concious mind became freed up to observe. It is happening! And it is so cool that I can not help telling people about it! Calling shots is now easy. All those years in High Power and my calls were never very good, but now, wow!
So my advice, based upon my just getting to the point where the inner game can start to work, is to stay on it, practice fundementals and basic drills, and keep the mind open. In time you will train the mind to see faster and train the muscles to do what you need and then the mental game can really begin to take over.
Billski
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Intel6,
Hey, I am definitely not arguing that it works or not - You are shooting it and it works. Good enough for me, I am just trying to figure out what is allowing it to work.
In the early 80's we had film. High speed video just wasn't ready then. We shot a bunch of film when we we were debugging something, usually because it did not act up all of the time.
We also had a bunch of high speed film from destructive testing of rifles and shotguns, but that is thread drift. Just to finish the thought, these tests were intended to look at the results with blocked barrels (mud, cleaning rods, etc), wrong ammo (308 in a 270, 20 in a 12, etc), head seperations, and head splits.
As to the M1187 ammo keeping up with the action bars, well, cool. I wonder if the current engineers at Remington know about this. I do remember folks talking about how some of the other semi-auto shotguns of the era did not lock back until empty... Wish I knew more about it. Being as we have to chamber flag our guns now, we do not need to have them lock back when empty, and we should not be letting our guns go empty until the end of the string.
I do know that the lighter load guns do tend to need a higher average bolt velocity to be reliable, while the the heavy load guns need less "extra" power to be reliable, so maybe the bolt velocity is low enough that the ammo can keep up with it. We tried to always keep bolt velocity below certain numbers because when the action bars and bolt hit the back of the reciever, it hurt. We also were reluctant to increase spring oomph, either on the action spring or the magazine spring, because the gun became very difficult to operate.
I have a M870 in the rack, so I could check out the idea in my M1100. The differences are: No shell carrier latch; No carrier release button; Action bar lock. Something to play with when nothing more pressing is in front of me... Right now my M1100 cycles and loads flawlessly, so I am not messing with it. Just clean it and shoot it...
Billski
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Intel 6,
That using the M870 Shell Carrier actually works is kind of amazing to me. My problem is that when I worked for Remington at Ilion (1980-1981), I knew the people who developed the M1100. I, as a young engineer, suggested that all of these latches and stuff seemed superfluous (as they must now to you), and cited rifles and machine guns that move ammo around without latching open. Some folks there explained that they could not get the M1100 type shotguns to work with the range of ammo that they wanted to without the lock open type of mechanism. Shooting heavy waterfowl loads and full magazines were cited as delivering shells the slowest while the action was opening the fastest. They wanted to use the M870 parts, but justified the latch and loading button to both themselves and the bean counters.
In the course of being a product engineer there, I saw high speed film of M1100's operating. In these films, you can see the hammer fall, then the bolt unlocks and the action bars and bolt sweep open. After it hits the buffer, the bolt and action bars start forward but are stopped by the latched shell carrier. While the action bars are going aft, the next round is usually moving more slowly and would get to the back end of the shell carrier way too late to be loaded cleanly if the bolt and action bars were not waiting for the shell.
So I came to believe that the latch was not only a way to stand the action open when empty, but necessary for the gun to work reliably. You are telling me that M1100's work fine without the latches. Learn something new everyday... Sort of like trying to convince someone that metaphor is OK to use in interpreting the Bible when they are accustomed to literal interpretation.
I am still curious - Do you have any restrictions on the types of ammo or the size of the magazine that you can run and still have the gun function reliably?
Billski
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My M1100 (and lots of others too) worked OK with the standard shell carrier, but when I put a DMW EZ Loader in the gun, I decided to put in the 3" Carrier anyway.
Understand something (and Sweeny did describe it correctly too), the M1100/1187 does lock back on every shot. As the action bars side aft, the shell latch is opened releasing a shell from the magazine, and the shell hits the carrier latch, freeing the action bars to close. When you are shooting it, this all happens fast and most shooters will never detect the lock open/release stutter.
But when you cycle the piece by hand (misfire, loaded magazine but empty chamber, etc) you can not let go of the bolt handle quickly enough. The carrier latch catches things back, and the magazine pumps a shell at the latch, and the latch goes open and then closed before you can let go of the handle. So you have to hit the feed button or EZ Loader to close the action.
Remington developed the 3" carrier, which has a latch that holds the carrier latch open once it has been hit by the shell and resets when the action finishes cycling. It will save us time if we ever have to cycle the action manually, because we do not need to hit the button or EZ Loader to get it to close. That is why I put it in.
Remington originally developed it to prevent an occaisional malfunction in combat shotguns where the gun would stop open with a shell on the shell carrier. What was happening is that there are a lot of dynamic movements going on when a shotgun is cycling. The action bars, the bolt and locking block, all do some bouncing during the cycle, and if the next round opens the carrier latch a little too early, or while the bouncing is occuring, the carrier latch can close again before the shell carrier is released. But if we latch the carrier latch back when it is hit, this malfunction quits happening.
We have another thread going about using the M870 Shell Carrier in a M1100, which keeps it from locking open at all (no carrier latch). In that case, the magazine has to get the next round back soon enough to be loaded... The high speed film I have watched of the process makes me believe that the carrier latch is necessary - the shell gets into position way too late to allow the action bars to just cycle freely. I am still trying to understand how Vang Comp makes the M870 carrier work.
Billski
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I am building a widebody Limited/ESP gun in .40 S&W with a Para frame and slide, got a barrel, and am ready to acquire the rest of the parts. So, I am concerned about parts quality and am looking for the benefit of experience... Yeah, why am I building instead of buying? Sorry, too much love for tinkering, and I am used to building or tuning my other guns myself (M-1's and AR15's for High Power, Tactical Rifle, Tactical Shotgun, and my L10/CDP .45).
I am wondering about Chip McCormick's slide stop, safety, sear, and hammer. Good Parts? If you guys would not use his parts, where would you go to fill out this gun?
Next, it is a bushing gun to allow use in IDPA ESP, so would that limit me to a two piece guide rod? Or would a one-piece work? I just have not gotten the distinction yet...
Do the quality of the disconnectors really show up in trigger pull and reset speed?
Any advice you can give a guy on building his first Ltd/ESP is welcomed.
Billski
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+1 on a cheap used M1100, extended mag, EZ Loader and rifle sights.
Someone mentioned being able to rack to gun manually and have it close automatically. That is a feature of of the 3" Shell Carrier. Many used M1100's don't have it, but it is not a pricey addition. Pat Sweeney covers it, the EZ loader, sights, and other stuff in his book (search borders.com, amazon.com, etc under his name, and you will find the book). Brownells has all of these parts...
After that, you might want to get the loading path slicked up a bit, but the M1100 is one of the best places to start.
Billski
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Intel6,
I do not know anything about "Vang Comp" - perhaps something in the action is modified?
I learned how the M1100 worked when I was a product engineering guy at Remington in Ilion (a long time ago). We were taught that a magazine spring of reasonable force just can not get the ammo stack shoved back far enough before the action bars start forward. Thus the carrier latch and loading button, which lock the gun open on every shot. Then when the next round hits the latch, the action closes. I have seen high speed film of this stuff - The bolt and action bars come back rather quickly, and the next shell floats back to the latch long after the carrier latch has locked.
So I am curious if the Vang Comp included some fancy action work to either slow down the action bar movement or speed up the magazine movements.
Billski
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Hey Intel6,
More details please. This could be interesting. Did you do anything else to the gun to make it work? Is it reliable?
Billski
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I think that it sounds like they they studied under the same teacher...
Cool.
Billski
Sps Magazines - Are They Any Good?
in Gear & Accessories
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For that matter will they work in a Para pattern frame?
Billski