Carmoney

I always planned on shooting 9mm this year, and shipped my ammo down in advance. I am no threat to the top shooters (although I certainly like to brag out about my 19th place finish last year!) and just felt like having fun with it and enjoy the escape from Iowa this time of year. If you ask me, a 9mm 1911 is one of the most enjoyable guns to shoot! However, if I had both major and minor sets of equipment along with me, and assuming I actually took the time to physically look at the stages in advance (which I didn't), I would have shot major. I will admit that the difference between major and minor was not huge at this match--whichever side of the debate you adopt--which I think is a positive testament to both stage design at this match, and the SS division rules in general. It's cool when either option is reasonably viable.

Mark, Let's not do anything silly, like cut off the barrel on a precious and rare 5" 625, OK? You're not even in Tennessee yet--there will be plenty of opportunities for silly stuff when you get down there with all them hilljacks.

On this we can agree!!

I think the results pretty much speak for themselves. Virtually all of the top finishers went with the 8+1 major option, and Nils beat Rob by a relatively large margin. I believe Rob indicated that he was trying minor just for an experiment. I would bet he would tell you that if he could shoot the match all over again, and if he were taking it 100% seriously, he would go with major. The good shooters don't make up very many shots, and at the WSSSC you didn't see the good shooters making very many extra reloads. Having extra "safety" rounds was the only real benefit to shooting minor at this particular match, and that is not enough to make up for minor scoring--not for the upper-echelon shooters anyway. You gotta remember that the major-caliber shooters might have had to slow down on the steel, but the minor-caliber shooters had to slow down on the paper, in order to keep most of the hits in the A-zone and not defeat the whole purpose! Believe me, I tried to find ways to break down the stages differently in order to take advantage of my 10+1 capacity (which as Neomet points out is "sick hi-cap stuff" compared to the six shots I'm most acclimated to having), but there really were not any opportunities to do that. Believe me, I looked.

The stage design really did favor the 2 extra rounds available in minor.. Many stages rewarded shooting arrays of 8 and 9 shots that included swingers and small plates or popers at distance.. Cheers, Los I completely disagree. I shot minor also, and I thought there were virtually no opportunities to find more efficient ways to run the stages and put those extra two bullets to use. I suppose there were a few times the extra rounds were comforting to have, but mostly they just wound up in my dumped mags on the ground as I shot through the stage the same way everybody else did--giving up points with every hit outside the A-zone! It was a fun experiment, but next year I will probably go back to shooting major--and I'll bet TGO does, too! Great match, by the way! Thanks to everybody who helped make it happen.

STI sells both cast and forged 1911 frames. I think it's a good bet they are not doing investment casting in Georgetown, TX right up the road from 19852's house!

Bottom line: You're better off investing the time and effort into making money through your normal work or business. That effort will go much further toward allowing you to afford the costs of competitive shooting than any "sponsorship" angle, and it won't interfere with your enjoyment of the sport.

It's nice to be patriotic, but.......... Have you ever worn a really nice Italian suit? Or a fine Swiss mechanical wristwatch? Have you ever driven a Mercedes-Benz? Or inspected a best English double side-by-side?

I did a "quick" trigger job on my 9mm Spartan by simply adjusting the sear spring to more reasonable tensions. My trigger was heavy but otherwise pretty clean, so that's really all it needed. One problem with drop-in kits is that they often will require you to fit a new thumb safety, and that's not a drop-in proposition.

I had a Model 27 with a bulged barrel that I used for several years for pin matches. I bought it that way because it was so cheap, and never bothered to rebarrel it. It looked funny, but shot fine.

I know some people like them, but in my opinion the last thing you want are amazingly bright dots on your rear sight. The rear sight should be nothing more than a fuzzy frame to look through, and there should not be anything on that focal plane drawing your visual focus away from the front sight.

They make an upgraded version called the American Classic Trophy, which has an adjustable rear sight and FO front. The rear sight is the style that fits in the Novak cut--the same unit sold by Caspian and Dawson and STI. I think that sight is actually made by Champion, but I might be wrong on that. I would much prefer a Bo-Mar pattern rear sight, but this one is functional and gives a decent sight picture. By coincidence, before they brought out the Trophy, I installed the exact same sight on my blue American Classic. The hard-chrome Trophy is a really nice gun. Dealer cost runs around $500.

Some of you guys have heard the story about my main ICORE gun breaking its trigger stud off the week before the IRC last year. I didn't want them dicking with my action stuff, so I sent just the stripped frame (with sideplate and sideplate screws) back to the factory under a warranty claim. They fixed it, refinished it beautifully, and it's now perfect again. So you might be able to get them to rebarrel it, even with the guts removed.

If you're looking to buy a .45 1911 on a budget, the Metroarms American Classic is really tough to beat. Better fit and finish than a Spartan or any of the other Armscor products (which are actually pretty decent in their own right), and cheaper to boot! I'm fortunate to have a bunch of nice 1911s, but my American Classic that I bought on a whim for $340 performs amazingly well, and I would not hesitate for a second to shoot it at a major match.

That spur is probably not the only thing Dave "wacked off" while working on your gun, Joey!

There are people with only one? Strangely enough, I only have one 617! Never really saw the need for a second one.

I fly with guns quite often, and my solution is a Samsonite hard-sided suitcase like the one pictured here. These suitcases are extremely strong and durable, and they are always available on ebay for $50 or less. Because the suitcase itself is hard-sided, the guns can be placed inside in soft zippered gun rugs. Properly packed ammo can be carried inside the suitcase also, along with all your clothes and other stuff. I have a small simple shooting bag I use for a carry-on. It's small enough to fit neatly under the seat in front of me, which is convenient for my DVD player, books/magazines, water bottle, etc. And that way I have an actual shooting bag when I'm at the range.

Seriously? Your local smith didn't bother to adjust the mainspring tension and test-fire the gun before returning it to you? How did he know where to set the rebound spring tension? Or does he not understand these two springs need to be balanced to each other? Dude....I don't know about this guy....hope he didn't charge you a whole lot.

Any update on when the super squad video compilations might be available to watch?

By the way, for a long time it was mostly red grease I was cleaning out of people's guns. More recently it's tended to be the white stuff like the Lubriplate. I attribute that change to the increasing popularily of cream pie fetish internet porn among revolver shooters.

My New Year's resolution is to be a nicer BE Forum poster, so I'll leave a nice smiley-face right after I say this: Ignore my advice at your own peril! Seriously, guys, I've taken apart a lot of S&W revolvers, OK? More than most people have, right? Can we agree on that? I've seen every kind of gun grease you can imagine gunked into the actions on these things, and believe me, you do not want that crap inside your action. Grease attracts and holds all kinds of nastiness, and it always eventually stiffens up into a sticky mess. A well-tuned revo action needs very little lubrication, and a few drops of light synthetic motor oil is everything you need. All of this is especially true, by the way, if you live in a northern climate where you might decide to take your gun out into the cold weather now and then.

Personally, I'm more likely to hit a long shot with a nice smooth easy double-action roll anyway. Obviously, my guns are well-tuned.... There's a reason why DA revolvers (shot in DA mode) dominated the Bianchi Cup--which is a match with very serious long-range accuracy demands. You will never see a top-level competitor in Revolver Division thumb-cock his gun during a stage, regardless of how long the shot might be.

sbcman, I'm afraid I'm going to come across as being really critical of your posts, but right now you're 0 for 3! The MIM stuff slicks up wonderfully. Check out a good competition action job on a gun with MIM guts and you'll see exactly what I mean. I have lots of revolvers, and the guns I shoot in USPSA Revolver Division are both 625-6s. Nothing like a good MIM job!

Unfortunately, those extra pins won't help you if the extended pin breaks in the middle of a stage. In my opinion, the C&S pins don't create enough benefit to overcome that risk. I now use them in 617s (although I don't dry-fire those guns), but I'm not a fan of them for center-fire wheels.

No, the factory firing pins are Ti, and they do not break from dry-firing. The C&S extended pins are steel, and (at least in the past) are known to break from extensive dry-firing.