JayDee

I have a 9mm 1911 and it was what I started with in single stack. I now have 2 1911s in 40 as well, but still use the 9mm for steel challenge and practice. It is a pleasure to shoot and recoil is quite mild. If you are loading your own, I hear that 40 can be loaded pretty soft. One guy at our local club shoots 40 minor and it is super easy to shoot. If you did go 40 and load it down, then you/she would have the option of shooting major if you ever felt like it. Tripp can make a 10-round 40/10mm mag ("system mag") that fits in the USPSA box. That is an option if you went 40 and wanted to load minor. Plus is is easier to use shooting major since you don't need a barney mag. I've had good luck with both calibers running reliably, but if you had a gun that preferred longer OALs, then 40 has an advantage if you reload long. Pros to shooting minor: low recoil, flat shooting, 10+1 round capacity. Cons: minor scoring

I use a combo of Tripp & Wilson ETM. Both work well, but I had to trim coil off the Wilsons to get them to seat easily. I also prefer the dawson bases for Tripp over dawson bases for Wilson.

Wow. Was the guy winding you up? Like, is he one of your friends just messing with you? If not, that has the potential to make you dumber by engagement.

Both of those Freedom rounds run well in my TS40. My TS9, however, only likes RN profiles.

After rounding the sharp edge of the extractor cut, I went to the range and still had several failures to feed. Sometimes hanging up on the extractor cut (but not nearly as bad), and sometimes hanging up on one of the squared edges outside the chamber (about 10-11 o'clock, looking into the chamber). I then polished these sharp edges a little bit more, with no noticeable improvement. Thanks Scream for the tip about the tabs of the welded lifter.... I will check that out. I also have a factory lifter and a Taran Tactical lifter to test out. So far, just using dummy rounds, the Taran Tactical has worked smoothly, and it has not torn up the leading edges of the dummy rounds. Hopefully it is warm enough to hit the range this weekend. Thanks for the suggestions!

Thanks for the info everyone! Will hopefully get out this weekend and runs few boxes through it. Before the C-Rums lifter it ate everything. Now, it has jammed on the extractor cut with Win AA, Federal target, Fiocchi Golden Pheasant, Remington gun club, Rio and every type of 2 3/4 shell I've run through it. I was also told by a local GM to smooth all the edges on the rearmost part of the chamber from 12 o'clock to 5 o'clock. I plan to go slowly, one step at a time rather than change too much, too quick.

Don't stand under the coconut palms. Ironically, the first time I was warned about this danger was on a small sign….. at the base of a coconut palm.

Ok, I just smoothed the edge of the extractor cut so it is radiused instead of having a sharp edge. Will hopefully get some range time this coming weekend. Hopefully this does the trick. On a possibly unrelated note, has anyone tried the Taran Tactical carriers for Benelli/Versamax?

Thanks for the replies! I'll start with some light relieving and polishing of sharp this edge and see what happens next time I'm out. Just in case, I may order a stock lifter and see how that does. I read in a shotgun forum that someone else experienced something similar after installing a welded lifter/carrier. That post indicated that since the leading edge of the lifter is no longer notched, the shell is less centered while the action cycles. I like not having my thumb getting caught when loading on the clock, but I hate to sacrifice reliability. Can you tune a welded lifter at all?

I have a Versamax Sportsman that I've had for about a year. I used it for trap and sporting clays until I modded it for 3 gun last summer. When it was stock, it ran every type of load without a hiccup. I've had it out at three matches since getting the loading port opened up, installing a C-Rums welded lifter, replacing stock hammer with a Benelli hammer and installing a Carbon Arms 10-round versa tube. Now that it has been modified, it's not running as reliably. At first, occasionally shells would not travel all the way onto the lifter. After removing & cleaning the action and lubing the bolt and lifter pins, this problem seems to have been solved. What is happening now is that the shell is hanging up on the sharp edge of the chamber, just inside the ejection port. It does this with more than one type of ammo/load, so I don't think it is related to brand of ammo or light vs. heavy load. Here are a couple pictures that hopefully show what is going on. First, a shell caught on the edge of the chamber: Next, here is what this sharp edge is doing to my dummy rounds (white shell) and one of the shells that jammed on a stage last weekend (blue shell): I would appreciate any insight into making this thing run smoothly. Do you think the lifter is causing shells to load differently than before? Has anyone else smoothed the sharp edge of their chamber? If so,what did you do? Thanks for the help!

I love the elbow move. Gotta try that at the next match!

Welcome! You shoot in eastern CO or western?

+1 for Dan Wesson. @straightshooter- if you are leaning that way, it is a direction that is worthy of exploration. I own a PM9 and an SSC and I am very happy with the performance of both in terms of fit and function. Their service is good and their product is high quality.

I had a Simmons Whitetail 6.5-21 that held zero well on my FNAR. It functioned great for the $100 I spent on it. Was accurate and bright with a fine Mildot reticle.

^^^^ that is funny. All those options are good. Customer service counts for me when researching a purchase. Also, I like to support brands who support the sport.

Yes- had this happen on my CZ a couple weeks ago. Now I periodically check my sights and always have wrenches and loctite in my bag.

I have one of those......in my AR.

Not a shop expert story, but related to the random "expert" advice that comes unsolicited from strangers. A couple weeks ago I took my new 6.5 creedmoor to the local range during public hours to sight in. The fellow next to me was shooting a 308 and talking all about how awesome he was at bench rest competition. The conversation was like "Hey, how are you? Can I ask you a question so that I can tell you about me?" After being distracted by him several times, I just put muffs on over my plugs. Did he get the idea? Nope, just got louder with more "Enough about me.......what do YOU think about me?" Through my hearing protection, I managed to hear him tell me that 308 was far superior to any 6.5 chambering, I needed to clean my barrel after every shot to shoot a decent group, and that 6.5mm would soon be an obsolete caliber....... I am not a BR shooter, I just like 6.5s for longer ranges. At target change, it was obvious that his best group (out of 20 groups) was about 1.5" at 100 yds. It seems logical that if you are grouping that wide, that close, it's probably not very competitive at 1000 yds. When he saw my five shot groups all within the 1" square on the target, he started giving me pointers to further improve my shooting! I already knew this, but the experience drilled it home: actions trump words. No matter how loud or confident someone is, look at their targets/scores/ranking before accepting their advice in the gun store or at the range.

+2. For CZ rimfires. A 452 or 455 would probably be worth testing if you want a bolt action. Nicely built and accurate. Quite a few on the used market last time I checked. Rimfirecentral.com has a ton of info on these and others if you want to tune it for competition.

I also prefer the short. If you have very large hands, the large mag well may make a difference with your support hand grip.

+1 for Tripp mags (w/ dawson bases) +1 for Dawson Ice magwell 9mm 1911s are already soft shooting, I doubt that you'll need to go sub-minor to comfortably shoot it. I use 124 grain and 10# recoil spring. Everyone has their own preferences for grips, but I have been really happy with Magpul 1911 grips. Affordable and comfortable. I see you are in CO… there is a good 1911 smith in So. Denver who can do a trigger job when you decide you want/need some work done. He's done two triggers for me and I'm very pleased. PM me if you want his info.

^^^^This I've shot several SP01s and short dust cover 75s.The differences in muzzle flip and transitions are subtle but noticeable. I still use my SP01 for production and 3gun. If I wanted a dedicated steel gun, I would probably go with a short dust cover model, but it is splitting hairs in my opinion.

The CTS is a great option if you want to get all the modifications done up front. I suspect that the cost of the CTS is slightly less than it would be for you to get a TS and deal with each modification individually and the shipping and time that goes with getting each type of work done. The TS is a good stock option that would let you make some upgrades as you get more into Limited. If you do the upgrades yourself, it will save you some $$. With that said, in the first year I owned a TS, I added grips, SSGR, magwell, 9mm top end, and 5 additional mags (w/ CZC bases/guts). The next step I will make is to get a race hammer and straight AL trigger. Since I'm not totally comfortable taking it apart, it will likely go to CZC for the work. Eventually I will have a pistol that is close to a CTS, and cost about the same.

It was actually a new 9mm top end for my CZ Tac Sport. Had only shot it once before….. the sight was semi-tight in the dovetail, needed to be tapped back to center. It seemed to be rattling left a minute amount with each shot before I caught it.

Shot the local steel challenge match this weekend. It was a little rough getting warmed up since I hadn't shot in a couple weeks. I was just starting to get into a rhythm and was doing OK with transitions and nailing all the closer plates. For some reason, I just kept missing all the long shots. No matter how I tried to focus on the front sight, slowly press the trigger, follow through, I just went to war with a couple longer shots on two different stages. I was starting to wonder how I could be missing so badly. Then someone on the squad mentioned that I was shooting consistently left. Ok, I thought, time to check my sights. Sure enough, the rear sight had drifted wayyyyy off to one side. Usually I have a bunch of tools in my kit and a few extra parts. Today I went light and left most of the important stuff on my bench at home. Luckily, someone else had the right size wrench to get my back in the match. Note to self…. always bring some thread locker and ALL the little allen wrenches, metric and imperial.