Action Pistolero

USCBigDawg, A friend of mine had the same problem when it came to shrouds. The Piatt shroud was $100 cheaper so he passed up the Gilmore. 2 years later and alot of cussing he now has a Gilmore, which has helped his barricade scores greatly. As far as guns go, Bob Howard with Guncraft Sports in Knoxville,Tn builds all of mine. His number is 865-966-4545. If you talk to him just tell him you talked to Kevin and he'll know what you need. He builds the guns for parts, at cost, plus $800. The total price winds up to be from $2500 to $3000 with sights. This way you can decide exactly what you want to spend and what parts you want installed. My action gun shoots well under an inch at 50 yards so he knows what he's doing. This has allowed me to win 4 regionals and 2 state championships in the last 3 years. Hope this helps.

As far as a contact for the WV matches your conversing with him. The matches are held in Hinton. I'm not familiar enough with WV enough to know where Wellsburg is. I live in Va. I have shot with a guy named Richard Gonsman from around your area. I believe he lives in Holidaysburg. I don't know what else he shoots but he came down for our regional a few years ago. Our monthly matches are normally on Sat. but the next one is 7/13. If you think you can make it, let me know and I'll get you some directions. If you could make the match at Factoryville that would be closer. Factoryville is just northeast of Scranton. Hope you can make it. Kevin

Where in central Pa. do you live? The next match at Factoryville is 7/6. Call us crazy, but a friend of mine and I will be coming from south western Va. to shoot the match. Ken Hewett is the match director. His phone # is 570- 586-5306 after 3:30 PM. Email is bakerbuns@webtv.net. Ken puts on a good match. Most of the shooters he gets go to the "Cup" every year where you won't find a better bunch. We skipped a match yesterday that was just 3 hours away to shoot this one which is a 7 hour drive. The next match will consist of barricade, practical and plates. If you decide you want to travel, I have a monthly match in Hinton, WV. We shoot all four of the "Cup" events. We also have a regional Sep 27th. Last year we had shooters from NY, VA, WV and Canada.

Mo Zee, The spring that you refer to is a Clark 4 leaf sear spring. I believe Kings also puts them out. If you look at the spring from the back (just like it would sit in the gun) the leaf on the left, with the hook, puts spring pressure on the sear. The next leaf to the right is the trigger return, the next one is to push up on the disconnector and the one on the right is for the grip safety. I have these springs in all my competition guns (6) and have had no problems. The one has had over 50,000 rounds through it and I'm still on the original spring. They can be difficult to tune. Just remember as soon as you tweak one leaf it causes the others to act differently. Follow the 2 round rule and you'll do fine.

The answer is with the Open gun post you made.

I had the same problems with mine. Still do in one of them. I bought the Arrendo kit from Brownells. It replaces the follower, spring and base pad. I have the Dawson base pads and like them but those STI followers keep causing me problems. The Arrendo modified mags don't let me down like the other ones. I want to try the Arrendo followers in the mags with the Dawson mags but haven't had the chance.

Megaman, I had the same problem. All of my singlestacks have one and it's never been a problem. I started shooting the STI with the big mag button and it started. Most of the time it happened during weak hand shooting but once it happened during a big steel match so I took it off. I haven't missed it and I still have the same mag release in the gun with the hole in it.

I am the friend that posed the question to Alan about the 1050. Most of us in the Action Pistol community take accuracy of a pistol as seriously as do benchrest shooters. When I shoot a pistol I am looking to put the second shot in the same hole as the first. Two inch groups at 17 yards, in my opinion, are unacceptable. The Dillon 650 manual states that an overall length variation of plus or minus .020 is acceptable. Alot of this variation depends on how consistant you are with each pull of the handle. The other problem this causes most IPSC shooters will never see. Our pistols have tight chambers, we use light loads, and light springs. The pistol and load have to be meticulously tuned. If it's not, you have failure to extract or failure to go into battery. Of course this will always happen when you have 3 seconds to put one shot on each target at 10 yards. This would be an easy feat if I was going for an A zone but that 4 inch X ring is a little more difficult. At any rate, here's the procedure I go through to get what I want. Cases are new for all big matches. In this case they are Starline 9 super comp. They are sized, trimmed, deburred and chamfered. They are then weighed and separated into piles that all weigh within .3 grains of each other. Bullets are Hornady 125 gr HAP's. They are sorted by weight within .2 grains of each other. I also use Fed Gold Medal Match primers. I load the rounds on the machine but I seat the bullet out .020 from my target length. I then do the final seat on the bullet with a redding comp die on a rock chucker and then do a final crimp. When I finish, all the rounds measure within .001. To most shooters this would seem to be a waste of time. Here are the results: 2001 TX State and Regional champ 2002 MS Regional champ 2002 Bianchi Cup 21st place 2002 TX State and Regional champ Set a new National Record in the Speedload Challenge and shot a personal best 47X Barricade at a registered match. Earned the NRA Action Pistol Distinguished badge with last years MS win. Waste of time? Not in my opinion. I started feeling differences in recoil between rounds with the same load. Is the powder measure varying the charge? Does it need to be rebuilt? This year I decided to take it a step further. Use the 650 to size, prime and bell. Use a Redding 30x measure to throw the charges. Use the Rock Chucker for the final seat and crimp. Got 'em loaded but have had too much #$@!#* rain and snow to contend with to get to the range. I'll keep you posted on the results.

Snokid, I've heard that Roland Croes has been toying around with one. I was interested until I found out that it goes in place of the powder check die. I moved up from the Lee 1000 and had problems with no powder in some of my revolver loads. I like the idea of the powder check. Anyway, you can get a hold of Roland by calling the phone number for Nill grips. His girlfriend is Doris Siebert and she is the distributor for Nill in the US.

What happened to this new show on ESPN2 that I heard was going to take the place of American Shooter? When I was at the Cup we heard about it and Mike Voight claims the IPSC nationals are going to be on it. NRA claims that the reason that they pour all that money into Perry is because they have tens of thousands of shooters classified in High Power. The number in Action Pistol they claim is 2700. My biggest beef with the perry bunch is that they count shooters multiple times. A guy may go to Perry and shoot what, 3 or 4 events. Now let's round off the number we had at the Cup and say 150. If we could shoot more that one gun we would have 450 to 600 shooters. They do the same with Pistol Silhouette. You could go there and shoot 11 guns. If they only had 30 people there that turns into 330 shooters. For the past several years they have had a shooters meeting at the Cup. Each year we ask for rimfire events or a chance to shoot open and stock. They did give us the option last year but we could only compete for prizes in open or stock, not both. This year we once again asked about rimfire events and it all boiled down to this. They claim that the range can handle 250 shooters. If each of us entered with 2 guns we would go over that amount and the facilities couldn't handle it. So that brings us to the next debate. Do they expand the facilities in Columbia or go somewhere else? Does the future of Action Pistol depend on those two options?

TMC, I own a 627 in 38 Super. I bought it because a 38 Super revolver is not something that is available all the time. As a matter of fact it is kind of rare. There are some that believe that the 38 Super is more inherently accurate than a 9mm or 38 Special. The main reason that I bought it was because I already shoot Super and now I can shoot in revolver class without loading for another caliber. Kevin

Phillip, Bruce Piatt finished 6th. He shot an 8 on the practical. I believe his x count was 174 so he wouldn't have been able to beat Doug if he had cleaned it. My understanding is that Bruce is the one that made the comment about the unsponsored shooters. The word that I got was that he was complaining that he shot the 8 because the shooter next to him was shooting too fast!!!!!!! Normally him and Doug are squadded together but that didn't happen this year. What I would like to know is why is a shooter with 3 "Cups" paying attention to another shooter while he is on the firing line? When the RO says "load and make ready" from that moment on I am the only shooter on the line. I had this same thing happen to me last year while shooting the Barricade. I was shooting at the 10 yard line, which the time limit is 5 seconds, and I was determined that I was going to get all of the shots off before the target turned. When we moved to the 15 yard line the guy to my left complained to me that I was shooting too fast and was "messing him up". The point to all this is that anyone who shoots Action Pistol on a regular basis knows the time limits and shoots at their own pace. I think they should squad all the top shooters with us nobodies. That would make it even more challenging. I had the priviledge of shooting the plates with Doug at the practice range and he shot like I wasn't there. This was my third year shooting the "cup" and I learned quite a bit. I learned my lesson on the Barricade and cleaned it, cleaned the plates, dropped 2 eights on the mover and dropped a 5 on the practical to finish up with a 1911. That placed me 21st overall. Not too shabby for a nobody.

I have one. I shot Merle's standards in my first IPSC match in Nov. with an open gun shooting minor.

I received an e-mail from someone who went. He says Mickey Fowler won with a 1920- 180 something x. He set a record with a mover score of 480-47x. I heard it was pretty much a fiasco. The RO's didn't speak english or know what they were doing. Doug, Bruce or John Pride didn't go. I believe there were only 4 Americans.