mark dye

The current Nighthawk version is slightly heavier than 3.5. I put one of the current production models in a pistol yesterday with a 19 lb mainspring, and it went in at 3lb 10 oz. I would expect a couple of ounces to drop off after the 100-150 round break in. Mark

I don't think we have found that out yet. Like I said before, I have about 25k on one of my prototypes and Nighthawk has 20k + on one of theirs. I don't see any reason that these units would have a shorter lifespan than the standard Nighthawk barstock parts.

Hey guys, I felt the urge to answer some questions on this one. I am the inventor of this gadget. If you watch the Nighthawk videos on the unit, I am the bald dude. I have had this thing for over a decade (the patent was issued in 2011), but never found the right partner to get them produced until I met Mark Stone at Nighthawk. I tried to partner with a lot of the companies in the industry, but could never get the deal done. I think this was partially due to my inexperience and partially due to manufacturers not knowing if they could get this thing made profitably. First things: I am really happy with the quality of the parts that Nighthawk has put together. Their concern for producing a top quality part has been amazing. I don't think any of the other people (companies with names well known on this forum) that I tried to license this idea to over the years would have produced this level of quality. The partnership with Nighthawk has been a great experience so far. The first question from USPSA shooters will be about pull weight. The current Nighthawk part should drop in around 3.5 lb. My original design for this was adjustable for pull weight, and I have run my prototypes much lighter for years. If you ever shot with me at a USPSA or 3-gun match in the last decade, there was one in my pistol. There has been some talk about a competition version to come at a later date, but sales have to start somewhere. If this is something that you would like to see, let Nighthawk know. With that being said, I admit that the serious competitor will still probably want a gunsmith tuned light trigger job, but let's face it, the general shooting market is a lot bigger than the competition market. The next question will likely be about interchangeability. The unit will go into most frames. One notable exception is that the factory beavertail grip safety on Springfield Armory pistols will not clear the housing. There are other occasional examples that don't work, but most do. I have heard some people ask about durability on other forums. I have about 80,000 rounds spread over several of my prototype units, with one a little over 25k. I only have about 7k on a Nighthawk produced unit, but they did a 20k torture test on one of theirs. I don't think durability will be an issue even for high volume shooters. As far as cleaning them when they get full of gunk, just spray it out with gun scrubber or drop in a parts cleaner and then re-lube it after. Mark Dye

Odd question, but how is the cell signal at vir? My wife is pregnant and 3 weeks from her due date. I would hate to miss an important call!

Great match despite my performance and equipment problems! Other match directors should take notes...rifle targets that require a rifle (not pistol targets to be shot with a rifle), shotgun reloads didn't decide the match, and a good mix of challenging stages with all three guns. Charles and crew did an excellent job as usual!

This problem has been discussed on here before, it would be worth searching it. I fought this problem for a long time with a good customer and friend of mine. It is incredibly frustrating when the gunsmith can't replicate the problem. As others have mentioned, it usually occurs with good shooters who are capable of very fast splits AND who spent a lot of time shooting Glocks. The "find the reset point" style of shooting is really the root cause. This is tough to try to explain to a GM level guy who feels like his trigger technique is what has gotten him to that level in the first place! If the trigger is returned to just the right position as the gun cycles, I think you can get a funny bounce of the disconnector when it tries to rise and the sear gets tripped in the process (just my theory). I have talked to a lot of well known gunsmiths regarding this matter, but have never gotten a "magic bullet" type of answer...just ideas of what to try. For the previously mentioned case, the fix was to increase sear engagement considerably and increase overtravel. I think the overtravel portion only helped because it made it a little more difficult for him to find the exact reset point. Other shooters with this predicament have had to go to much heavier pull weights.

For those not aware of the Gunsmithing program that we have at Montgomery Community College in Troy NC...we have a 2-year Associate Degree available in Gunsmithing. In addition to our regular curriculum program, we offer one and two week long seminar type classes. This is our "NRA Program". These classes take place between April and October every year, and are taught by guest instructors from around the country on a variety of subjects. We try to get really good specialists to teach the skills that they are good at. This is a great opportunity for folks who can't drop everything for two years to enroll in our regular program. Students in our NRA program range from novices to professional gunsmiths who have shops of their own. The classes have traditionally been announced on the first Monday in Feb. This year, we changed the beginning of registration to Nov. 1st. That means that classes are now enrolling. The popular classes do tend to fill up very quickly. As a matter of fact, a couple are already full. Below is a link to the list of offerings on the school's website. Contact info for the Con-Ed dept. is on the web page. For technical questions about specific classes, my contact email is below the link. http://www.montgomery.edu/nra-courses.html dyem@montgomery.edu

Everybody be sure to thank Linda for all her hard work. I have attended many matches in which she did the stats, and this is the first time I have ever seen a problem of this magnitude. Linda is probably the best stats/organizer in the sport. I am sure she went far above and beyond the call of duty to get the scores out. Thanks Linda!

Like most on here, I have been primarily a pistol/rifle guy for years. I am recently on a quest to broaden my horizons. I have always been told that shotgun fit is very important since your eye is essentially the rear sight. Despite the importance of fit to proper shotgun shooting, it doesn't seem like a lot of people are actually good at it. It seems like mostly hearsay and voodoo. Length of pull seems easy enough, but drops and casts make it a little more complicated. To make it harder still, I also hear that it is very hard to fit a shotgun to anyone who is not already a pretty good shotgun shooter, since a newbie will never mount the gun the same way twice. Yesterday, I picked up a bunch of shotguns and did the "closed eye test" for drop. I assumed my shooting stance, picked out a distant object, closed my eyes and mounted the gun. When I opened my eyes, I found that with most guns I am looking at the back of the receiver. Out of the whole lot, only one seemed to come up with me looking straight down the rib. It was an older Winchester 101. That particular gun has less drop than any other gun that I tried. It has a bit of a monte carlo cut with a drop at the comb of 1 9/16 and a drop at the mid-point of 1 5/8. After the step down of the cheekpiece, the drop at the heel is 2 3/8. Does this sound reasonable? I am a pretty average 5'09 and 175 lbs with reasonably short arms and neck, and a thin face. I also tend to really weld my face to the stock. Is it possible that I push my face into the stock too hard? Is there anything else that I could be doing that would give me a false reading? Mark

For years, I thought the "beware the man who has only one gun" theory was golden. I wanted to learn one gun to the point that it became an extension of my arm, and not "mess myself up" by practicing with something else. I still think this idea has a lot of value in the beginning...while you are learning the basic skill set that you will need to compete in practical shooting. That way you can focus your attention on calling shots, transitions, etc. without having to spend all your time trying to remember all the ways this gun is different from your others. As you progress, I think this mindset is less valid. As your grasp of the fundamentals of practical shooting improves, your ability to adjust to new equipment will improve as well. In fact, I find that I now perform better if I spend a little time training with several different guns. For example: for years, I shunned open guns as a crutch for people who weren't "man enough" to shoot iron sights. I couldn't have been more wrong. When I finally began shooting Open occasionally, it completely changed the way I shoot and see targets...for the better. I didn't want to shoot Glocks because they "point funny". Now, I can adjust to one with about ten minutes of dry fire drills. If you take a look at the top shooters, many of them may have a different gun in their hand for any given match. Jerry M is a good example. One week he will be shooting Open in a 3-gun match, the next he will be shooting a revolver in an ICORE event, and the next he might be shooting an M&P for a S&W demo. The cool thing is that at his level, none of these detracts from the other. I guess the crux of my argument is that shooting one gun exclusively is a great way to learn the fundamentals of shooting, but it can also leave you "pigeon holed" and eventually limit your progression. Further, I feel like I have also limited my progression by focusing largely on one type of shooting. My new training plan is including a lot of cross-training in other shooting sports. I think shooting some other games from time to time may be able to add new ideas and dimensions to my game in USPSA. But...I could have it all wrong!!! Mark

Ok, I have been playing with handguns all these years, and am a little behind the curve on shotgun tech. I know that the old benelli guns could be ghost loaded...leaving a round on the follower. I am told that the new ones can be readily modified to do this as well...something about welding a groove on the bolt. Does anyone have pics of this? Also, does anyone have good pics of a benelli carrier that has been welded to not pinch the crap out of your thumb during loading?

Years ago, I did some .22 bullseye postal matches through the US Revolver Assoc. I thought it might be a good way to get some trigger squeezing practice this winter. Are they still around? Their website doesn't come up, leading me to think they might be defunct. If they still exist, does anyone know how to contact them? The NRA does .22 conventional pistol postals, but only as an individual match. I was hoping to find a team match.

Ok, so this is a weird request. I have a hair-brained idea for a new type of red dot sight, and I'd like to play with prototyping it. Does anyone out there in the enosphere know where one could purchase some of the emitter diodes without having to disassemble perfectly good sights to rob them? The ones I am looking for are less like the dot modules in a C-more, and more like the ones in a J-point. I am sure some Japanese electronics company probably sells just what I need, I just haven't been able to locate them so far. Mark

Someone handed me some 1911 trigger components (hammer, sear, disconnector) made by a company called BC Engineering in TN. The parts looked to be of reasonably good quality. It surprised me that someone was making gun stuff an hour from me without me hearing about it. Has anyone on here know anything about the company or ever used any of their parts? Mark

While all guns are different, here is something that fixed the same symptom on a couple of 9mm major guns that I've built: the ejector needs to be as wide toward the center of the breech face as the cutout in the slide will allow. I had to weld on the side of a few ejectors to get them as wide as possible (only a few thousandths clearance in the slide cutout). It seems that on a lot of the 9mm guns, the ejector only hits the case rim with a glancing blow rather than solidly. This sends the case up into the scope mount rather than out of the port. Proper extractor tension also plays a significant role in getting the case headed out of the gun in the right direction. Mark

I am going to go on a fishing trip in Alaska in August. I want to take my .44 mag Bisley Blackhawk to scare away any problem bears. I really like the looks of the Mernickle CCW type holsters that is sold in Blue Press, and on the Mernickle website. I would prefer to have a kydex holster as opposed to a leather one since it will certainly get wet. I need to find a kydex holster guy who would be willing to copy this holster for a reasonable price, and could deliver by mid-summer. Mark

If the forward end of your factory sight ends in a rounded tang, the sight should work on your gun. If it has a square tang and a small diameter front hole then...no. We do have plans to make some sights for the older model guns in the future though. Mark Dye

As a faithful employee at Bowen, I have tried to get a lot of revo guys to try our sights. Jerry M has been using them for several years now. They are a little more expensive than some of the other sights on the market, but are a lot nicer and tougher. One of the nice features is that the rear blades are fully interchangable...if you want a bo-mar face, white outline, v-notch, custom blade, or some combination, we have them all in several heights. Check out the link below. http://www.bowenclassicarms.com/Parts_SW_Rough_Country_Rear.htm

as long as the part "swings" out far enough, you need to remove material from the end that you have marked "B". As you fit the part, as long as there is a pronounced "hop" as the trigger transitions from the DA sear to the hammer (as opposed to a perfectly smooth transition)...you still need to remove material. If you remove too much, there will be a pronounced "catch" as the lower hook on the trigger catches the bottom portion of the hammer foot. Unlike the hammer and trigger, I would not be concerned about cutting through the surface hardening on this part. Mark

One bonehead simple thing to check. Make sure the ejector is tight, and that the retaining pin is fitted tightly to the ejector. The groove in the ejector should be a nice little radius, not a wallowed out groove. Sometimes a loose ejector can work fine for a while and then mysteriously "walk up" and bind on the underside of the slide. You can check this with layout fluid or a magic marker. This was an expensive lesson for me...maybe it will help somebody else! Mark

does anyone know off the top of their heads how much has to be trimmed off of a Dawson magwell for a Para Ordnance in order for it to fit in the IDPA box??? mark

If you shoot the rifle or pistol matches, be advised that they are not like the kind of matches that we are all used to shooting. The rifle match is timed with a stopwatch!!! The pistol match is usually pretty easy with a hand full of USPSA "ringers" to mop up the prize money. Most of the shooters are not competitive shooters. I once heard the Knob Creek Matches described as a "circus side show beside a machine gun buying orgy". That said, the few times I have been, I have had a great time. The Knob Creek Shoot is something the every gun owning American should see at least once!!! Mark

Sorry for your loss, but glad you are ok. All the suggestions about having a loading manual or twelve on hand is good advice. You can also always call Hodgdon and ask to speak to one of their tech guys. Please don't take any of the following as an insult. I have loaded 9mm with titegroup extensively (about 80 to 100 thousand rounds). I don't think your load was too hot. My standard load with a 125 gr lead bullet is 3.7 gr. of Titegroup at 1.085. I would think that 3.2 with a 147 should be about right. I think you may have double charged a round. This is VERY easy to do with low charge weight powders like Titegroup or Clays. I blew up a .40 STI several years ago with what I am sure was a double charge of Titegroup. If it was not a double charge, (and there is no way to be certain) it may have had something to do with trying to re-seat the bullets after they had already been crimped...never a good idea with soft lead bullets. Try to take this as a learning experience! The tougher the lesson, the better we remember it!

I have a new Caspian hi-cap frame on the way. I know that a lot of folks used modified Tangfolio mags in the .40's before the current "good" .40 mags were available. I will just buy some of the new mags for USPSA, but wondered if anyone has used Tangfolio mags in these frames to fit in the IDPA box? I don't shoot a lot of IDPA, but think it would be cool to be able to buy some cheap mags to modify just in case. If this will work, any suggestions on the specific mags needed? Mark Dye

After looking in my safe the other day, I realized just how much I had tied up in guns. I have been looking into the NRA endorsed insurance. (most home owners and renters plans only cover $1500) I just wondered how many folks bother to insure their guns? While the insurance is more that I'd like to put into it, it is probably dumb not to have it. Are there any other companies that offer similar insurance plans? Mark