AustinMike

Thanks ya'll. I just visited Lucy and her fever has come down, so it looks like she is getting better. They said they want to keep her on a fluid and antibiotic IV for a couple more days and she can't have anything orally yet. I hope we will get to bring her home this weekend if she continues to improve. Poor thing is so scared there, just sits there and quivers in her little crate. She's used to having a king sized bed all to herself! It is SO tough to go home and not have her there to greet me at night! I'm not sure if the separation is tougher on Lucy or my wife and I!

Yeah, they're both toys. Lucy is near to teacup size at around 8 lbs, but they have the same mother, one year apart. My wife is allergic to most animals, but poodles are an exception.

One of our dogs got sick a few days ago and we had to take her to the vet hospital yesterday morning after she had been unable to keep food down for a couple of days. They think it is a bad case of pancreatitis and they had to keep her last night. I went to see her in the doggy ICU and she looked so depressed, locked in a small crate with an IV. I had a real hard time getting through the day yesterday. We're waiting for an update on her condition this morning. Wife and I haven't got much sleep the past several days and not having Lucy home last night for the first time in the 5 years we've had her made emotional wrecks of the both of us. Our other dog, Chloe, is beside herself as well. Nobody got much sleep last night. I hate this and I hope she gets well quickly and can come home to us soon. Our dogs are our children. I'm feeling guilty that I've been so busy with work and school that I haven't gotten to spend much time with them lately. I always try to play ball with them a little each day, but it's hard to find time. I'd say the hell with work for a day and spend it in a park with our dogs if we could get her back today! I'll definitely skip shooting a match this weekend if Lucy can come home and be with us. Lucy is on the left.

Locks are just there to keep honest people honest. Reminds of me of years ago when I had a Geo Tracker and the stereo got stolen. Had an alarm and it was a rag top. They broke the driver side window and pretty much crow-barred out the whole center of the dash (almost $2000 dollars damage for a $100 stereo!) Probably did it in under 10 seconds and the alarm was no deterent. I asked the cops why they didn't just unzip the window and open the door. He said because breaking windows is more fun! Guess the same thing applies to houses. Why monkey around picking a lock when a paver stone gets you instant access?

With me, it usually ends up being whichever gun I happen to have ammo loaded for! Hard to find time to get my reloading done lately. I end up shooting Production with the G17 and cheapo factory ammo from Academy a lot. Also hard to find time to clean guns and I know the Glock will run dirty - ain't so sure about the 2011 or 1911!

For production, I've been buying green box Monarch 115 at Academy for $5.86 a box. The cases are brass reloadable (not to be confused with blue box steel cases.) They have been accurate and soft, about 127PF out of my Glock 17, last I checked. Seem to be cleaner than WWB too.

Was it the trigger safety catching on the frame as you pulled the trigger? That's what mine was doing in my 2nd gen. Glock 22. Never could get it to work right. Ralph offered to send different springs (actually he did send some, but the post office destroyed them.) I decided I didn't want to spend time messing with it and took the trigger bar and spring out, but kept the top end. Works good enough. Ralph let me return the trigger bar for credit towards some mags. Give him a shout and I'm sure he'll be happy to help you out.

That really sucks. We've got some idiots in our neighborhood that keep a german shepherd and a pit bull chained up outside, no fence. Dogs have ways of getting out of their collars if they really want to bad enough. I try to always have it with me anyway, but I always carry my gun when I walk our dogs. We have toy poodles, so I'm not about to let an aggressive dog 10 times their size near them if I can help it. I'd hate to have to kill an animal due to the stupidity of its owner, but I won't permit our dogs to be harmed.

Better not let Dave Sevigny know that! Equipment plays a significant role, certainly. But there are more than a few M's and GM's that shoot at that level with Glocks or other guns not far off from stock. It's what's between your ears that accounts for most of your shooting ability, IMO. If I've got my head on straight that day, I can shoot as well or better with my production gun as I can with my open gun (I am only shooting at a C level though. ). Both platforms teach me skills that complement each other. I hesitantly dropped the cash for a used open gun earlier this year and I can't say it's made me a better shooter per se, but it's brought out my weaknesses very clearly and given me things to work on that carry over into my Limited/Production shooting. To me anyway, the open gun is a very unforgiving beast on bad draws, indexing, etc. At my current level of shooting development, I view the open gun as a cruel, unrelenting trainer that will amplify my flaws if I don't stay absolutely focused and consistent. I currently enjoy iron sight shooting more, but as I switch between the two, my iron sight shooting steadily improves. I think open shooting is helping remove some of the slop from my iron sight shooting.

Amen! Don't think it's going to happen though. The Valkyrie wasn't a big seller for Honda because Americans like V-twins in the cruiser market (i.e. it's got to look and sound like a Harley.) I'm surprised they've been making the Rune as long as they have. The Valkyrie community has tried to hold out hope that the Rune is a temporary offering until a new standard Valk comes out. They sell VTXs about as fast as they make them though and Honda seems to be of the opinion that a regular Valk cruiser just isn't worth their while. Few folks can appreciate the odd looking flat six engine on a cruiser. I found the power and smoothness addicting and I'm not sure I could ever go back to a twin (although I have been eyeing some enduro styled bikes for those rough range roads lately!) Unless they bring back "The Dragon", as it's known in the Valk community, Honda just doesn't make anything else that interests me.

Nothing wrong at all with shooting a Glock in Steel Challenge! I've been going back and forth between my G17 and my shorty open gun. I love the Glock because my busy schedule often keeps me from reloading and keeping my gun as clean as it should be. The Glock runs no matter what and I can my cheapo factory stuff from Academy when I didn't get time to reload for a match. In .40, it's a little tougher to find good cheap factory stuff though! Last steel match I shot, I did better with the G17 than the open gun. Not sure how much is the gun vs. me struggling with the dot. In any event, if you like the Glock, shoot it! Having rotated through various guns the past year trying to figure out what I like best, I'm convinced that doing well has a LOT more to do with you than the gun. Reliability and accuracy are all you really need from your gun, the rest is up to you.

Not sure I understand the problem. Do you mean that you can rack the slide, pull the trigger and hold it back, rack the slide again, let the trigger out, and it doesn't come out enough to engage the trigger safety? If so, I had that on both my G22 and G17 (2nd gen.) with the RS kit. Also, sometimes the trigger safety on the G22 would jam against the back of the frame, freezing the trigger until I took my finger off for a moment. I was running stock recoil springs. I ended up taking out the RS trigger bar and return spring and run stock lower, modified upper. Still pretty light trigger pull. Not everybody has this problem, it's just one of those things with drop-in parts. Even in Glock, there are enough variances in manufacturing that the safest bet is going to be custom fit parts.

I hate 'em with you! We just had to change carriers due to my wife's layoff. I hated them anyway because they gave us fits over chiropractors too. Now, the new company is giving me trouble over medications. Went to pick up a refill for some stuff I take for acid reflux and the insurance company won't approve it until they confer with my Dr. WTF is that all about? They'll probably come back and tell me to just take Rolaids and don't worry about esophagus erosion because it's not as bad as it sounds. I get reamed out on allergy meds too. Ever since Claritin hit the OTC list, the insurance companies think that's all you need. Yeah, too bad it doesn't work real well for me.

I got the same thing with my Kimber's barrel. Used a copper "Chore Boy" and Kroil to get the lead out. It was in just a couple grooves, but pretty bad. Must have a couple rough spots in my barrel. That gun is 10 years old and I've shot lots of rounds down it. Mostly plated bullets, but I had switched to jacked for better accurary and decided to try Precision for the price. Wish they would have worked! I went back to jacketed for this gun. I'm trying out the Precisions again in my Glock 22 with a KKM barrel right now. They work better there and just leaves a little residue of the coating that will scrub out with a brush.

You just take a regular one (I used a blank Sidewinder) and have your smith install it with the ball and detent. Here's a thread I had on it a while back. Ball and detent on slide racker

Imp Cyl seems to work fine for most stages.

If you get a racker, definitely go the ball and detent route. I had mine converted because I clean my gun after every match (gasp!) and the set screw and loctite thing got old real fast to me. My set screw was on the top of the slide, so I had to pull the slide back to loosen/tighten the screw. I guess if you had a right side racker, that would be a non issue since you could just leave it attached. Left side is what you want if you're right handed though. Anyway, I love the ball and detent system. Any good 'smith should be able to install it. It is the same kit used to install ball and detent locks on a revolver crane.

I run 8.4 grains HS-6 at 1.155" with a 125gr. Zero JHP. I think the bullet touches the powder, but it doesn't seem to be compressing much, if any. Plenty of room left in the case.

You're not going to find any consensus because powder selection is an extremely subjective thing. It depends on your gun, what you want to feel, bullet selection, etc. I didn't like the snappy feel of TG in my gun and it seemed to burn dirty at the low pressure in .45acp. Clays with a 230gr. bullet has a nice soft recoil to me and burns cleaner. N310 is like Clays in feel and seems more consistent. I shoot Clays because I'm too cheap to buy VV powders! I've done all my chrono readings when it's hot, since that's the weather in south Texas 90% of the year, so I can't tell you how cold effects velocity. I'll have to remember to check during our 2 weeks of winter. FWIW, I use 230gr jacketed bullets (Hornady HAP or Zero), 4.1gr. Clays, 1.125" OAL, Federal primer, and any brass I find laying around.

I'd recommend buying used, if you can find a gun from someone reputable. When I bought mine, the seller gave me his ebay account so I could see he had good feedback there and he was able to give me a detailed history of the gun. I even called JL, the gun's builder, and he was able to tell me a lot about it (super nice guy!) I had a good feeling about buying it and it's worked out for me. You definitely don't want someone else's nightmare! Like you, I was leaning toward having one built initially, but it was so much more money! I hadn't shot open at all before, so I didn't even know if I would even like it. I'm still not sure I like open, to tell you the truth! Anyway, I wouldn't have known really what to tell a 'smith to build for me without the experience, so it really made sense to me to go the used route. If I change my mind and decide to sell, I won't be out near as much. The only hard part here is that there aren't nearly as many 9's for sale as there are 38's, so finding the right used gun will take some patience!

I grabbed up a used shorty built by JL Hardy earlier this year. It was very appealing to me because it came with 9mm and 38SC barrels. I tried the 38SC barrel once to check it out, but it sits in the safe. I like shooting 9mm major, mainly because of the cheap used brass and not having to worry about scrounging for brass at matches. I've been very pleased with this gun. It shoots way better than I do! I was a little uncertain over buying the shorty, but I don't think recoil is bad and it shoots very flat.

No pressure signs, but I'm just wary of pushing TG to make major with the FMJs, since it's not getting there "easily" in my barrel. I'll have to do some searching when I have time, but I don't recall too many folks having to go higher than 4.7gr with a 180gr. jacketed bullet loading short. I'm more inclined to try V320 as a fast powder option if I decide to stick with jacketed bullets.

Powder dumps are pretty consistent. My powder assembly gets brushed out pretty frequently because I have a bunch of different powder bars that I've preset to the various charges I regularly use and I brush everything out when changing. The brass I was using in load development was all Speer, but don't know if it was Lawman specifically. I don't think I'm getting any setback though. Passed the "push test" and I'm using an undersize sizer, plus the Lee FCD crimping to .420, so it's unlikely. The bangs seem fairly consistent. I don't really care where the brass goes, since I don't even bother picking up .40 most of the time since it's cheap to buy once-fired. I don't want any stovepipe jams though! I brought up the subject because of the jams. Since posting, I shot some Titegroup with some Precision Delta FMJ bullets, with a higher charge (4.7 grains.) That seemed to eject better for me. I'm wondering if maybe with the heavy stock recoil spring if the 4.3gr. with the Precision coated bullets wasn't enough to reliably work the slide even though it pushed the bullets to major PF (although seems weird to me. ) Interestingly, 4.7gr. wasn't pushing the jacketed bullets fast enough (only got me to 163PF out of my KKM G22 barrel.) I'll have to order in a new recoil spring setup to try a 15# spring for kicks. Whether I ultimately stick with Titegroup will probably depend on which bullet I stay with. I don't think I want to push Titegroup much higher to reach PF with the jacketed bullets. Power Pistol makes it easily and I found that with the jacketed bullets it got real consistent at major PF (about 172PF with SD a little over 7 in a 10 shot group.) That 4.3 of Titegroup with the coated bullets felt SOFT though. We'll see! Thanks everyone for the input!

+1! The Redding Comp. seater has become a must-have for me! The Lee dies work fine for everything else.

+1 Pull a bullet or two and examine it for any plating damage. I just went through some bullet damage issues that were a result of a bad batch of brass. Probably a result of some commercial tumbling process, the case mouths were peened in a bit and would scrape the bullet in the seating process. I was able to see brass scrapings sticking out at the case mouth after seating, so it was pretty extreme. The calipers showed that the case walls were way too thick at the mouth, hence the problem. Might be worth checking the brass, as well as the bullet.