nontactical

I have an open gun with a round-top slide. The slide has no dovetail or flat area on top of it at all and I am trying to add a slide racker. I would love to not have to pay to have a dovetail machined into my slide. I KNOW I have seen open guns with rackers mounted via two allen head screws, but I can't find one of these rackers anywhere. The gap between the top of the slide and the bottom of the c-more is just over .3". Thoughts? Ideas? Suggestions? BTW... I have been shooting open for long enough to have decided that I want a slide racker, and the subject has been debated enough on this forum that I am not trying to reopen it.

Got my Ribas mag pouches today, and I was planning on running them "bullets toward the bad guys" because several people on this forum have said it was faster once you got used to it. However, that leaves the mag sticking a LONG way out there.... anyone had problems with them bouncing around? What about going prone?

Sorry to write a book, but I want to provide all the needed info. I have an STI 40 limited gun that has about 2k rounds of my standard load through it (175g TCL, 4.8g w231). I have fired AT LEAST 50k of these, and never had a problem. I have been running a 14lb. recoil spring, and read on this forum that I might want to try a 12 or even 11. The gun only had about 300 rounds through it since it had been cleaned, and I did a few timing drills with the 14, and then switched to a 12.5 at the range. It ran like a top for three more timing drills, and then it wouldnt go into battery any more. I took the barrel out, and couldnt get a round into the chamber . I looked into the chamber and it is completely fouled. I have been running a 16lb hammer spring, and I am wondering if the combination of the hammer spring and 12# recoil spring caused it to come out of battery too quickly... any thoughts?

Wow! Thanks for all of the suggestions. Checked frame and grip screws, they were fine. half an hour on a vise with a couple of peices of wood and everything is great.

Sigmas are one of the most underrated and therefore underpriced guns on the market. I actually like mine better than my glock. A bit big for CCW, at least for me.

w231... cheap and clean burning. I would love to use vit powders, but they are crazy expensive.

11-13# (depending on you), one shock buff. If the gun is set up right this is ssswwweeeet.

There were a few posts on here 6-8 months ago from someone who seemed to have the inside track with Mueller. Thier target date for releasing thier 1x variable has long since passed, has anyone gotten an update?

Yikes! All my local club uses is barrels!

+1

I think the big question remains whether both l10 and ss will survive. L10 was dominated by single stacks, and now if they all move to ss....

It seems to me that FS is an underutilized information outlet. There are very few good sources of info about this sport (this forum being an obvious exception) and I think they could do more with it.

The day I got my first open gun I did a bunch of dry fire with it, and I was getting a lot of dot wobble when I pulled the trigger. As soon as I tightened my weak hand grip, the amount of dot wobble that I got when I pulled the trigger was decreased by 30%. The dot showed me immediately that I was undergripping with my weak hand, and years of shooting limited hadnt made it apparent.

Your right about that... have the gun fit and you will see a huge reduction in felt recoil.

I have 4 factory standard sti 140s that I only use for practice (I had 4 tuned, and those only get used for matches). When I got them, I polished the outsides, and other than that I left them alone. The have less than 1k rounds each through them and all of the sudden two of them dont want to drop free unless they have a lot of rounds left in them. I took them home and polished them again even though they really didnt need it, and sprayed them with mag slick. It didnt help at all. Any ideas?

The topic name says it all... the two places I used to get my once fired brass from are either out of business or on vacation, and every place I have tried wants almost $30 (or more) for unprocessed 9mm range brass. Any ideas?

I tried to give a gun safety lecture for my daughters brownie troop... I told the leader that it would pretty much consist of "if you find a gun dont touch it, RUN and go get an adult". She said that because the meetings were held at the elementary school, they couldnt even mention guns. To reiterate, I was NOT ALLOWED TO TELL A BUNCH OF LITTLE KIDS NOT TO PLAY WITH GUNS BECAUSE I WOULD HAVE BEEN DOING SO AT A PUBLIC SCHOOL. My kid sister just started working at a hardware store, and they told her in training that she had to refer to staple guns as "power staplers" even though it clearly says staple gun on the package.... I think PC stands for "pretty crazy". But I digress.

6+1 is going to kill you... unless you can talk them into letting you shoot in SSR

You'll have to give us a range report on the thing. I have been thinking about buying one, but I figured since a good reloading scale that will only go up to the equivilent of a few ounces costs $100 or more, there was a good chance that the postal scale was a POS.

I just bought an Ultimate Ghost Holster for my Limited gun, and I am trying to figure out the retention system. Can anyone tell me, if I go to a match and I am required to do the "jump test", can I do it with the lock lever on, or would the holster be unlocked and ready to draw? The instructions that came with the holster are not great, but after tinkering with it for a while, I just don't think there is any way to make it pass the jump test while unlocked. It would be no problem when it was locked, and when its unlocked I feel comfortable with the level of retention it gives me as far as a regular draw goes, but I really dont see any way to adjust the level of retention appreciably. I have played with the tiny white polymer screws, and I think that it is as secure as its going to get unless there is something that I am missing. Sheesh... Blade-Techs are so much less work!

What do you think was wrong with the grip safety? The kimber safety is pretty easy to disengage... I would hate for you to buy another gun only to have the same problem. As far as the guns you are looking at go, I'm gonna have to +1 on the Trojan. I had one and my gun guru and I could never get it working. I hate to ever say anything bad about STI... they are a fantastic company and all 5 of mine run like tops. But I have heard a lot of complaints about trojans.

I recently upgraded to CR Speed mag pouches from my safarilands which had seen better days. I am running them on a safariland 1 1/2" outer belt, and the little tightening wedges that you push in above and/or below the belt to lock the mag pouches in place keep squirting out, making the mag pouch come loose. They go in nice and tight, but dont want to stay. Before I experiment with glue, tape, etc. has someone already come up with a solution?

Right, but my point is that if there is more to be done for free or close to it, I would like to know what it is, and Im sure there are a lot of other shooters who would.. especially those who don't have several hundred $ to send thier mags off to be tuned.

Okay, I know that mag tuning has been discussed on this forum ad-nausium. I have done all of the searches and looked at almost all of the posts. What I don’t feel has been fully discussed or answered is how much you can expect to get out of a 140mm magazine WITHOUT the Gram’s tuning job or the equivalent. I have several of Gram’s mags, but I don’t have the $ to have him do all of them (20x$90= a lot). The couple of posts that I have read claiming to get 20 or 21 rounds by themselves didn’t fully detail the procedure, or if they did they were a bit out of date. I thought I’d post what I have been doing in the hopes that someone can do better. I have found that I can get 19 rounds in new STI mags (with the much maligned new style follower) and have them fairly reloadable for free. For $8, I can get 19 rounds and a completely reloadable magazine, and maybe 20 depending on the mag. So if anyone is getting 20 or even 21 consistently I would love to know how. Yes, we all know that mags are better after they are professionally tunded. Maybe I should have called this thread “how to build cheaper mags so you aren’t dropping your tuned ones in the mud during practice”. All I do to get one extra round is file the bottom of the follower (quite a bit). There is a sort of flange that sticks out the front and back of the follower maybe ¼” and I just take those down until they are just proud of the two circular posts. If you take them down too far, the follower has a tendency to pop out the top of the magazine if you run it dry (but this isn’t IDPA, so why would you do that?). But you can get it down just far enough to get that extra round in. Most of the time, this is all it takes and I get a reloadable 19 rounds. Sometimes it’s a little tight and I’ll either, A. Take ½ coil off the spring, or B. Spring $8 for an Arredondo “+1” basepad. These are wedge shaped and still legal on 140mm tubes. They are Brownell’s item # 069-000-016. I usually end up with ISMI springs in all of my mags, but this trick works with stock springs just as well.

I think you misunderstood my entire post.... what I am bothered by (bothered is a little strong... lets try "confounded by") is people barking at me about the way I shoot (when I do so well within the confines of the rules) and using what I consider an invalid excuse. SOmebody said it really well in a reply: Speed is a tactic. And a darn good one if you ask me. I know my post was a bit of a rant (especailly for a guys first post) but I wanted to see if serious shooters in other parts of the country were experiencing this same thing. In a way, I think this is kind of damaging to IDPA, which is still already not taken seriously. As I said in the orriginal post, I think this excuse has stymied a lot of people's improvemment.