Carmoney

I continue to be disappointed in the shooting "challenges" they keep presenting. Shooting bottles and mason jars and cards at 25 feet? Gimme a break. Way too easy. I suspect they need to keep it very simple based on the mediocre skill level of most of the "Top Shot" contestants.

Before he blew it up, Cliff had his 625PC Ion Bonded, and very quickly a good-sized piece of the finish flaked off the side. Frankly, I'm less than impressed with Ion Bond, particularly considering the high cost.

Looks good to me also. Excellent transitions from target to target, great job rapping down the steel. I did notice a little hesitation right after you shoot the 6th round and before you start into your reload--it's almost like you feel the need to get your reload started before you begin to start moving to the next array. In general, I think you will make up more time getting those feet moving faster than anything you're doing with the gun. Sometime just for kicks you might want to give the weak-hand reload a try. In the purest of all worlds it is not necessarily faster, but I do think keeping the gun in your strong hand helps keep it oriented to the shooter in a more natural way--and you can reload faster when you're not having to constantly worry about muzzle direction, y'know? Your safety habits look excellent, by the way.

On a 5" 625, you will want to use the .360" Millett rear sight with the .300" front blade.

Here ya go: http://www.brianenos.com/forums/index.php?showforum=189 I've installed lots of them, and they're excellent.

I don't think the whole lock issue is a big deal. I have never seen first-hand a failure of the ILS and consider it to be a generally reliable (although unnecessary) mechanism. All the lock ranting on those purist S&W collector sites is mostly just a bunch of noise from a flock of clucking old hens. For competition guns used for USPSA/IPSC and ICORE, I take out the flag (the large piece in the photo), and leave the other parts in place. This is necessary if the hammer has been radically cut-down to the extent that it can no longer retain the IL flag if it comes loose. To some extent, the ILS relies on the full hammer to hold the parts in place. In theory, this means that a fully intact ILS creates some amount of drag on the hammer--in the real world, I've never detected a difference in hammer drag that was really noticeable, so I don't worry about it. Even with the flag removed, the other ILS parts are held in place as they were designed, and I have never seen or heard a report of a lock-related failure on any of those guns either. If anybody is truly worried about the ILS, it is plenty easy to remove the entire system. It just leaves a big hole in the side of the gun, which is entirely harmless from a functional standpoint, but not cosmetically desireable. (I'd rather not see the "zit" but it looks better than the empty hole if you ask me!) For IDPA and Bianchi Production guns, I leave everything in place in order to make sure the gun will fully comply with the equipment rules. On those guns, depending on which rules apply, I either leave the hammer alone, bob the spur but leave the whole body of the hammer intact, or "semi-Carmonize" the hammer which involves cutting away everything that is not needed to allow the ILS to function. On a defense gun, I recommend leaving all safety mechanisms in place and fully functional, including the hammer block and ILS.

I have seen the same thing reported by Toolguy and Bubber, also on a 617 (perhaps not so coincidentally)! I arrived at a slightly different solution--I actually took the plunger out of the yoke screw assembly and replaced the plunger spring with a little piece of drill rod. If the proper length is achieved, the yoke button absolutely will not be able to pull past the plunger. Toolguy's method sounds like a good approach also. Fortunately, these measures are not normally needed, as long as you're not like Bubber.....and let's face it, who is???

A little bit of blue loctite should not require heat when it's time to disassemble. A well-fitting screwdriver should do the trick with no problem. As I have mentioned on here before, there is really no reason to take the yoke screw out very often--the gun does not need to be taken apart for routine cleaning. I can't remember the last time I took the sideplate off my 625, but it's literally been years. And I shoot it quite a bit!

Great! Nice to see you back on the forum, Glenn! Give me a call sometime so we can catch up. I'll make an exception to my "I hate phone calls" thing for you, OK?

But he's still fairly spry.

Bob is the best!

This was a fun match. I really enjoyed it, and it was great to see lots of friends from ENGC and all over the central states. I brought along a couple of new shooters who were shooting their very first big match. If they weren't addicted to this game before, they are now! Thanks to everybody who put effort into this match.

Don't be scared, Josh--the flight attendants will take care of everything. And if you behave on the plane, you might even get a set of shiny junior pilot wings to pin on your shirt.

OK John, just because you moved out to California doesn't mean you should be talking about my tong!

As I have always said, it would depend on stage design at any particular match. On the other hand, not only would I not want to lose because of an "equipment race", I also wouldn't want to win because of one either. That's part of my attraction to Revo, we're all pretty much shooting the same equipment. As it stands right now, if you beat me, we both know it's because you outperformed me, not because you have some trick gun.

No excuse for idiot drivers like that. I would never want anything bad to happen to anyone, particularly to one of my many friends who are bicyclists. I would also hate to see somebody hurt in a car accident caused in part by a slow-moving vehicle being used on a highway where the majority of traffic is traveling at full highway speed. A good friend of mine nearly launched a bike rider a few years back. He was driving west on a two-lane road and didn't see the guy until the very last second because of the glare of the evening sun. Thankfully there was no contact and it all turned out OK, but my buddy was really shaken up by it. He might have had a lapse of attention, but he's a skilled, experienced, and responsible driver--good thing for the cyclist it wasn't a 16-year-old kid or an old lady behind the wheel, 'cause it would have been ugly.

I think that Roger Davis guy is still around somewhere......

Nothing personal. I would prefer that the local cyclists find a way to get their oxygen deprivation buzz that doesn't create traffic delays and potential hazards for vehicle operators who are using the highways as they were intended. We have hundreds of miles of nice bike trails in this state, built with my tax dollars, and unfortunately they seem to be only very lightly used. If it makes you feel any better, I feel the same way about horses and tractors and everything else that travels on the public highways at speeds dramatically lower than the prevailing traffic. With you being a hard-working law enforcement officer and all, I would think you could see my point on the safety issue. Anyway, I think it's pretty obvious I was just kidding about the launching thing. So....... hulka.wav

I might get interested in bicycle racing when they have a division for hot chicks in bikinis. In the meantime, I will continue to fantasize about how far I could launch the local spandex-clad shaved-leg fruits off the hood of my 300C.

Squibs sound completely different than clicks. I don't think they are that easy to confuse.

I have been following this whole issue pretty closely for the past five years, and I believe the definite trend is toward fewer divisions and categories. Due in large part to marketing effort applied here on this forum, USPSA Revolver division has survived and grown, but there is no consistent support for anything other than what we have now. There is only a tiny handful of people who have any interest in shooting an optical-sighted 8-shot revolver in USPSA anyway. Most of the guys who would be interested in that have already gravitated to ICORE. Most of the USPSA Revo guys prefer the simplicity and challenge of six shots and iron sights, and the lack of any real equipment race which creates what some view as a purer form of competition.

With modern components, there is (almost) no such thing as a hang-fire anymore. Rack it and keep runnin'.

The only major match I have shot so far this year with the wheelgun is Area 5. Here is a link to the stage designs, all laid out on one web page: http://a5match.info/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=49&Itemid=54 Take a look at those stages for a quick minute, and then ask yourself whether you would automatically choose 8-shot minor over 6-shot major. Without looking at the stages in pretty close detail, you might not be able to easily decide. I'm not sure which option I would choose....and I shot the match!

Not long after I went into practice, I did a bunch of pro bono legal work for a couple who was having serious financial problems--problems that were largely not of their own making. During the time I represented them I found them somewhat demanding and difficult. I couldn't help but think, why would they act that way with me when I'm doing this work for free? However, I kept those feelings to myself. We managed to get the issue resolved, I closed up my file and moved on to other stuff. A couple months later a big box showed up at my office--it contained a nice thank you letter from the couple, along with a really neat quilt the lady had made for me. I was touched, and realized they were genuinely nice people who were under a great deal of stress. Somebody here on BE has a signature line with a little quote to the effect that you should be nice, because everybody you encounter is dealing with some kind of challenge or problem that you might not even be able to imagine. Pretty good advice if you think about it.......

They said exactly the same thing about shooting minor in SS, and look what happened there! I'll admit the difference between 6 and 8 is more significant, but still......the truth is it would depend heavily on stage design at any particular match. Lots of places fall into the tired old routine of setting up lots of 8-shot arrays--but you don't see that nearly so much at better matches with more sophisticated stage design effort. There would be some matches where the smart choice would be a 6-round 625, in order to get major scoring and the slightly faster reloads, which would add up over the course of a larger match. You also have to consider the fact that taking an extra reload (or two) while moving may not add much extra time on the clock. I do think it would be interesting. I was hoping to use last year's King of Revo match as a test-bed for this, having everybody shoot the same stages one day with 6-round major and the next day with 8-round minor. With 40 shooters all forced to do this, we would have had some meaningful data to consider. Unfortunately, we modified some of the equipment rules, maninly to accommodate the junior shooters, and so the data got hopelessly skewed. My casual impression, however, is that for the typical "big" USPSA match, the difference between major-6 and minor-8 is much closer to a wash than you might expect at first blush.