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Garrett

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Everything posted by Garrett

  1. Ok, no 155s yet. But I did find an old box of 165 gr. Xtreme plated bullets at the back of my shelf. I loaded some with 4.8 gr. of N320 and Ginex SP primers. I tried two lengths, at 1.195” and 1.150”. The 1.150” loads gave an average PF of 147. Ejection was positive, recoil was soft, and I had no failures in the 15 rounds I shot. The longer loads produced 136 PF. However, recoil was weak and I got two stovepipe failures with these loads. This was with the 14# recoil spring. I may be ok with this load and a lighter spring. But I’ll probably stick with a slightly faster load to ensure good ejection. I have enough of these bullets to practice a bit and shoot maybe one match. The profile of the MBC 180 gr. bullet feeds really well in my gun. Their 155 is more of a “traditional” SWC style bullet. The Blue Bullet 165 is more like the MBC 180 that I like. So maybe I’ll order a bunch of those instead.
  2. I’m going through a similar situation. I pulled my ‘90s vintage Para P16 out of the back of the safe and threw on an EGW dovetail mount and a spare Holosun 507 that I had. And I still have the CR Speed Holster “2002 World Shoot” model holster. I’m actually having a lot of fun, having not played with this set of equipment in years. Like others, my previous approach was to use a 155 gr. bullet for minor, changing nothing else from my 180 gr. major load. Not having any 155s, I thought I’d go a step farther and bought some coated 140s from MBC, and I loaded them with N320. These felt like shooting a .22LR. The dot hardly moves off the target. And this was at around 155 PF. However, I was getting really weak ejection, to the point I would get a stovepipe failure about once every other magazine. Ejection is good when shooting major PF. And extractor tension is good. So I dropped the recoil spring from 14# to 12# and then 11#. This helped some but I was still getting these failures. So next up I’ll probably have to get some 155 gr. bullets. More to come...
  3. The chevron on mine is not all that crisp. That negates the potential increase in precision. I think I’d do as well with a small dot. This was a spare that I’d bought on sale a while back. I just put it on my ‘90s vintage Para to play in LO. So I have yet to try it out in an actual match. As noted by others, it just gets used like a dot. And for USPSA shooting, that will be precise enough.
  4. Remember the old Bushnell Holosight? Looks like a mini EoTech, at half the size and weight without the armor around it. They were pretty popular back in the day. I must have had this thing for 20+ years. In that time, I’ve run it on rifles, Desert Eagles, and full auto subguns. More recently I’ve had it mounted on an AR15/9mm. The biggest complaint about the Holosight is that it tends to drain batteries, even when powered off. And it’s make matters worse, it uses the less common N-batteries. I’ve gotten into the habit of either removing the batteries when not in use. Or more lately, I’ll put a small piece of card stock on one of the terminals to break the circuit. Just remove the card stock and replace the battery compartment when you’re ready to shoot. This method has worked for years. So this past weekend I brought the Holosight-equipped rifle to a bowling pin match. I pulled the card stock and tried to power up the sight, and got nothing. Figuring the batteries were dead, I dug out a new set of N-batteries from my range bag, only to find the optic would still not work. I think it finally died. I guess I can’t complain, I got my money’s worth out of it. I highly doubt Bushnell will repair it, having been out of production for so long. Has anyone been able to bring one of these back from the dead? Anything I should check on it before I pitch it on the trash?
  5. There is going to be an ideal stack width for a given cartridge diameter. You can get STI mags in 9mm, .40 and .45 that all fit the same magwell. But if you look at them, the ribs running down the sides of the mags are deeper for the smaller diameter cartridges and barely there for the .45. This is to control the width of the cartridge stack inside the mag. If you go wider than the ideal stack width, the cartridges won’t nest together well and may not roll up the magazine as well. I learned about this when putting together a .40 conversion for an Uzi. Standard Uzi mags are set up for an ideal 9mm double stack. When IMI made a .45 conversion on the Uzi, they had to go to a single stack mag to fit the fatter cartridges into the same magwell. For the .40, I initially tried using .45 mags with the feed lips adjusted. The problem I found was that the stack was half way in between a single stack and an ideal double stack. I could get maybe a dozen rounds in the mag, and then when I tried to add more, the stack would try to collapse on itself and push out wider. This resulted in a slightly pregnant mag that wouldn’t fit in the magwell. I then tried using mags from the short lived .41AE, but found they had the same issue. See below. I have a stack of .40s, as they are arranged in a Glock mag, and another stack as arranged in an Uzi .45 mag. You can see on the narrower Uzi stack how the cartridges will want to collapse together as you push down on them from above. I imagine going too wide would give similarly poor results.
  6. It all depends on the caliber & gun. In .38 Super, I don’t think I’ve ever had one fail. in .40, I get an occasional case with an overly pregnant Glock bulge that won’t size out all the way. These get broken down and the brass scrapped. I have a lot of grungy 9mm brass that’s been through a couple machine gun chambers. I used to get a lot of case gauge rejects from these. Sometimes as much as 10-12%. It’s usually a slightly deformed rim. Depending on how it looks, they will either go in the practice ammo bag or get broken down for components. I’ve since started sorting by headstamp, plus examining the head prior to loading. It’s tedious, but it can sometimes be done during work-from-home online meetings. But since those are few and far between these days, I have a pretty good supply of cleaned, “ready to be inspected” 9mm brass.
  7. So I emailed USPSA HQ asking for clarification on this a week ago. I didn’t expect them to answer right away, as I sent the email going into the New Year weekend. But to date I still haven’t received any response. I’ll post back if I hear anything.
  8. That’s true. But I’m only down a few rounds in CO compared to 9mm. In Open, it’s 15-round mags vs. 30-round big sticks. The other option I'd considered is to leave the optic off and shoot in Limited. I’ll probably just buy the 4.5” barrel and go with that in CO.
  9. I bought an FNX-45 Tactical to play with, mostly suppressed. And while I realize it won’t be the most competitive due to mag capacity and recoil, it might be fun to play with at club level matches in Carry Optics. I was thinking I could swap out the threaded barrel for a plain one and it should be good to go. I see the Production gun list allows FNX 45 4" barrel .45 ACP (32 oz.) However, when I look up specs on the standard FNX-45, it says it has a 4.5” barrel. There does not appear to have ever been a 4” barreled model. Am I missing something here? Where this would be used at Level 1 matches only, I doubt it would be an issue. But one still wonders if this is just an error when USPSA published the list. anyone know?
  10. It appears to be aluminum. I haven’t used mine much since installing, but I have seen no issues. keep in mind, the Ruger factory mag catch is steel (MIM), and I have not heard people complaining about that chewing up mags either.
  11. Mine is supposed to be delivered tomorrow. But if I’m looking at it right, you push the lever inward, toward the receiver. It would pivot, pulling the mag release.
  12. Lefty model here, but currently showing out of stock. The right-handed model is now showing in-stock, so I just ordered one. Hopefully will be able to try it out next week.
  13. I see they show as being out of stock at the moment. My initial reaction is to think it would be really easy to bump on a wall or prop and dump the mag. But having said that, I can’t really think of any time I’m bumping the gun into stuff, so for a game gun, it’s probably not a big deal. My biggest gripe using the Ruger PC Carbine in USPSA is the reloads are kind of awkward, due to the placement of the mag release. And of course the only time when you need to reload is on a classifier. This may help address that. I don’t know that I’ll run right out and get one right away, but I am intrigued.
  14. Ok, now that I've messed around with this for a while, here's what I've found: I made up a dummy round and was able to reproduce the issue a number of times. I started by going through my routine at the LAMR command, where I unholster the gun, ease the slide back to verify to myself the chamber is empty, insert mag, rack slide fully to the rear and release. When I do this, I get the dead trigger more often than not. It's odd. If I just ease the slide back, it's good. If I pull it back fully and release, it's good. If I ease it back and forward then rack it, I get the dead trigger. I'm not sure why this would be. I could get it to do this whether chambering the dummy round or not. So then I swapped slides with the Gen 2 gun and was able to repeat it with the Gen 3 frame and Gen 2 slide assembly. So then I put a Glock 23/Gen3 slide on and I was able to reproduce the issue again with this other silde. So I pulled the trigger group out, inspected it and cleaned things. The trigger return spring was installed correctly. No binding or other issues. I reassembled and the issue persisted. So then I swapped trigger groups between two frames. Now reassembling everything, all of them are working correctly. I can no longer replicate the failure in any of the guns. Maybe just an odd combination of worn parts? The frame that was showing this issue is at least 15 years old, and I have no idea how many rounds are through it. Maybe it's time to replace some of these small parts.
  15. So I’ve read all of the Glock dead trigger threads I can find, but none seem to be quite like mine. I have a G19 Brownells slide, factory cut for an optic, that I had put this together a couple years ago on a P80 frame. I recently moved it over to a Glock 19 frame to use in CO. Aside from the no-name barrel, everything else in the slide & frame is factory Glock parts. I will occasionally get a dead trigger when I chamber a round. The funny part is the trigger will reset forward and the trigger safety will trap it in the forward position. But when I press the trigger, it snaps to the rear and doesn’t fire. There is no tension to the trigger. It’s obvious the striker didn’t catch on the sear when the gun was cycled. Obviously there is no mark on the primer of the chambered round when this happens. Of course I cannot get it to do this when trying to diagnose at home. I have not had it do this when the gun cycles from firing. Just hand cycling. But with the trigger trapped forward, it’s difficult to tell if the condition exists without pulling the trigger. Today at a match I had this happen at the beginning of two stages, plus it happened once during the unload & show clear. I’ll try putting the slide assembly on an old Gen 2 Glock that I have. Or maybe I’ll start swapping parts around. thoughts? Anything obvious I’m missing?
  16. I looked on both the USPSA website results page and the app. It does not appear to have been uploaded to USPSA yet. But a procedural added in error would be a valid explanation.
  17. Or maybe Practiscore messed up? I wouldnt usually jump to that one, but at yesterday’s club match I scored 110 points in 15.09 seconds with no penalties. That should give a HF of 7.2, but it give me 3.3. And HF is just a straight calculation, unaffected by other shooter’s scores. Is there a glitch in the code? I haven’t gone back and looked for other discrepancies, but it makes me wonder. Just a club match, so not a big deal. But at a bigger match...
  18. I've been loading 9mm on my XL650 for a dozen or more years now. I've got the Dillon sizing die in station 1. Lately, it has been having a difficult time pushing primers all of the way out of the case. They hang on, and then of course the new primer pushes the old one back into place. The issue does not seem to be related to any one headstamp. The die has not backed out, and the decapping pin appears to be undamaged. So after tens of thousands of rounds, what has changed? In the 100 rounds I just loaded, I had 7 primers hang up. I finally got smart and put a universal decapping die in the Rock Chucker, so I can address these as they come up. Or maybe I should be really smart and just use a different die. I'm sure I've got another one around here somewhere. But it's bugging me. Any idea on why it would start not fully decapping like this?
  19. There are a few .45 options out there. Not a whole lot, though.
  20. I had to pull out the notes from way back. In the late ‘90s I was loading a 200 gr. Montana Gold bullet to 1.235” over 5.3 gr. of N320 for a 182 PF. (This was back when Major PF was still 175). My work-up notes indicate I was getting a 172 PF with 4.7 gr. N230.
  21. Try this: use .357 Mag data, loading to the correct magnum OAL. You have the same internal capacity, which gives you the same pressure, but with the benefit of ejecting shorter cases. This works as long as you’re not shooting a really light bullet that’s not long enough for the shorter case. You may need to use a taper crimp die. Or some bullets have a second crimp groove in the appropriate location, such as the XTP .357/180 or .44/300.
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