HSMITH

I am trying to picture a scope mount that could possibly interfere with a thumb safety, could you post a picture? EDIT: Forgot to say 'Welcome to the best place on the internet Joe!!!'.

I'd turn it off myself, throw it in a lathe and keep that kind of heat off the barrel. I know it has been done once but that doesn't make me feel better about doing it again....

If the trigger never stops moving it won't be an issue. At 25 yards a .40 split is all you will ever need to pull, and a .40 is dead simple for most of us. Time out some .40 splits, then move out to a 25 yard target, and watch them land in the middle. The hard part is coming off a 7 yard hoser target and not shooting a .20 or a .25 on the long target.....

Right now you can get it done easily, a lot of the restoration shops that have been doing classics are REALLY slow and looking for work of any kind. There are 5 listed in the yellow pages here within about 50 miles, I'd start there if I were you and didn't have any recommendations.

Well, at least you found a good cat.

Congrats!!!

I drop the slide empty on my guns every couple or several thousand and do it a couple times, if the hammer follows there is a problem coming. I use it as a health and welfare check. Here is the thing, you can get the hammer and sear to bounce a little when you do it. If the geometry is right, the parts haven't worn and the spring tensions are right life is good. No harm no foul. If something isn't quite right the hammer can follow. If it does you need professional assistance NOW. I don't do it ALL the time, but I am convinced that doing it occasionally is a healthy activity. If you are told you can't do it occasionally as a preventative measure I propose that the parts used are inferior or the work on the parts was inferior or that you are being misguided. EDIT: spelling

I have a 550 and a 650. The 550 is nearly bullet proof, you can't kill it and it will ALWAYS be there for you with the spare parts kit. The 650 is an awesome machine, it flat out kicks ass. But, with the added level of automation and convenience comes the added potential for something to go wrong. With the 550 I have never been without a loader just by picking parts out of the spare parts kit, and over 4 machines I have had I have loaded a couple hundred thousand rounds easily. The 650 is a TON faster, almost double the speed for me. My 650 has been down twice in 60 thousand rounds, one time because I impersonate an absolute idiot very well, and once was just something broke. Both times the part has not been in the spare parts kit and I ended up down for 3-5 days to get the ridiculously free parts from Dillon. BTW, if you too can impersonate an idiot well and want to pay for the things you wrecked because your head was in your butt you have to call and order 'spare parts' to replace the broken parts, if they get wind that it is broken they send it free and I can't stand that. When I wear my own ass as a hat I should pay the consequences..... Sorry, got side tracked, LOL, that never happens...... Get a 650 but keep a tool head and conversion kit set up for your main match blaster and the low run stuff you reload on the 550 and life is good. EDIT: call Brian and tell him what you are doing, he will help you with what you need, what would be nice to have and what is fluff. His price is as good as you will find anywhere and the assistance he provides is superb. He even figures out which 'doohicky' and 'thingamajig' you are talking about when you ask which beats the hell out of trying to find out what it is actually called. Doing business with people you can trust and respect is priceless.

Cut the dust cover off, put in an aluminum guide rod, fit a 6" slide and bushing barrel, lighten the slide and the frame, and you will be getting close to the ultimate Limited gun. Benny is a great guy and so is Dan Bedell. There are a BUNCH of his guns around here, Open and Limited, and they are superb. There are a bunch of good smiths, enough to make it hard to choose.

The gun I am going to shoot steel with looks nothing like a Single Stack legal pistol. First, no way in HELL am I going to shoot a 5" gun in a match where a 6" gun is legal. Second, I am going to do some lightening of the slide on a steel gun that you can't do with a Single stack legal gun. Third, I am NOT going to shoot a single stack platform in a match like the Pro-Am where I can use a fat gun, reloads with a fat gun are like throwing a pickle down the hall compared to a single stack regardless of magwell used. Unless sponsored I cannot see a reason not to use a 2011 based pistol for the Pro-Am. If I was set on a single stack I would pony up $1400 or so and buy a Baer Premier II, if the budge was a little higher I would go full custom. The Baer is all the gun you can buy, full custom just allows you to put your personal touches on it......

I haven't shot the M&P a lot yet, but I like it a LOT better than the Glock. I really like the M&P. To be fair I haven't shot the XDM, but I have played with one Rich did a little and the trigger was incredible as well as generally feeling good. I hated the original XD, I even sold one I got free, wouldn't touch it with a ten foot pole. But, the XDM is a LOT nicer. I'd like to compare the XDM and M&P side by side, they are the only two contenders for me in a poly framed pistol.... I really like the Beretta 92 style pistols and the CZ-75 family of pistols too for Production, don't rule them out.....

I had to put my Lab down a year and a half ago, I still get bleary eyed when I think about her. My first hunting dog and the best dog a guy could have ever had. Sorry to hear of your loss, I know what you are going through.

As soon as the temps get above about 45* I FILL my guns with Slide Glide Lite. I have played with every major gun lube and a bunch of other lubes, and SGL just performs better than anything else my money has ever been able to buy. My competition guns are quite tight and the heavier grades slow them down enough that I won't use them, but stock type guns love the standard. In the cold I am using Weapon Shield now, Chuck told me about some tests he saw at Shot Show and I bought it. When I say I fill them I am not kidding, I use Brian's 'cheap ass brush' and I paint every interior surface with enough to see a good film, the film is pink and you can SEE depth in it. I also coat the hammer and sear, the disconnector and back of the trigger bow. The sides and front of the trigger bow are BONE DRY and CLEAN, another benefit to SG is it stays where you put it and doesn't migrate to where you don't want it like every oil there is will do. I coat the barrel well and if it is a bushing gun I fill the back of the bushing before assembly, it makes a tremendous grease tank that keeps the barrel and bushing lubed for an eternity. It is the ONLY lube I have found that an extremely tight bushing cannot wipe off over time, fill it up and shoot without worry. Guys that shoot with me can verify this: I routinely shoot 5-7K rounds through my Limited gun and 2-3K through my Open gun without cleaning. Months of match shooting without cleaning is really nice, and the guns are still dead tight. That was NOT possible before Slide Glide without re-application of oil each time out. Also, one of the HUGE benefits of Slide Glide to me is not having my shirts and hats destroyed in a few matches, it doesn't come out of the gun and doesn't get on me like ANY oil will. It is also nice not to have to clean my glasses during a match. The other big advantage to me is that with Slide Glide the fouling never gets hard, no scrubbing or fuss to clean the gun when I do clean. Just hose it out with brake cleaner and re-paint it with SGL. Sorry if it seems like a Slide Glide commercial, but I am SOLD on it. I still try new stuff as it comes out, but nothing has been close. Every gun I build ships full of Slide Glide, I can't think of a stronger endorsement.

Mount is up on Shooters Connection website.

Bore sight it, clocking it for proper windage and you will be good to go.

Blue loc-tite.

The Firebird handguards are super cool too, shouldn't be long before they are available commercially.

Cool story. My oldest has no interest in shooting but the younger two are harping on me to get them out. My middle child almost has the hand size to shot an S_I and I can't wait. When her hands are big enough to manage the gun safely it is going to be too cool, I only hope I can manage the ammo bill well enough to give her the chance to do well....

I am not talking about the Quinn mount, this is a new mount. They are different.

I worked with a russian immigrant years ago, he was extremely rank as well as possibly the greediest person I have ever known. He had an upper/lower 2 family, and rented both of them out. The renters in the upper called the health department, he had been living in the attic with no AC, no water, no bathroom, and his aroma was getting into their apartment. The health department threw him out so he started living in the office, coming back late at night and 'getting there first' in the morning. During the attic period I was sent out to train him on a couple jobs, the second involved getting inside a CNC machine with him. It was well over 100* and NO air moving. It didn't last a full minute. I sent him home, did the job, and called our boss and told him I would NEVER work with him again until he had corrected his hygiene problems. The boss got mad at me for not being a 'team player', so I told him that if he would train him I would train him, the boss made it about 3 minutes in a machine with him and all my transgressions were forgiven. He was fired a couple months later for damaging equipment repeatedly. It took 2 years to find all the machines he had screwed up....

Score by division, otherwise it won't work. "Level" playing fields don't exist without divisions.

Bear in mind that the PM traffic for some people can take HOURS per day to manage that could be used to produce, and when production is needed the PM box gets put on the back burner.....

Flyin, give it a couple days. I had a pre-production sample and then the first production unit. They will be in stores today or Monday.

I built my gun with a Serendipity but went with a single side and slide ride. The large offset from dot to bore was my main complaint, my second complaint was really ugly brass could cause a jam every couple hundred to a thousand rounds, of course that only happened in matches. First was a Barry mount, it was more rigid and I could run really crappy brass with the open ejection port. The Barry also took the bore offset down where I could shoot the dot at any range but it was a little heavy. Then I took that off and put a CCG single side 90* mount on, it is vastly more rigid than the Serendipity and very low. It lays FLAT for table starts, looks great, and is lighter than any other mount I have ever seen. It is as light as my Serendipity on my scale. As far as I am concerned it is the ultimate solution.

I'll run .0005" total clearance on a bushing to barrel, but you can't tell the difference between it an .001" for thousands of rounds. It stays accurate longer provided everything else is good. If the back of the barrel isn't locking up DEAD solid you won't be able to tell the difference between .0005" and .003". .003" is what I will set a carry gun up for, if the back of the barrel is locking up correctly it will shoot an inch at 25 yards using a premium barrel and good ammo. Slide to frame fit on an iron sight gun is way less than 10% of total accuracy IMO, if the barrel locks up tight and consistently it just doesn't matter. The sights are on the slide and the barrel locks into the slide, if that is consistent the gun will shoot great. On a sloppy factory gun it will often help the sloppy factory barrel fit to lower the slide on the frame so it might be worth doing. Peening the rails will not hold up like a good hard fit slide, accu-rails will but are expensive. I wouldn't tighten the slide up dead tight and lap, the more you move the metal the more you risk it wanting to go back and removing metal when there already isn't enough is a bad plan. You need to look at the whole gun as a system, the big picture of how everything is working together will tell you what you should do first, second, etc, when you are trying to piece one together a bit at a time.