Flatland Shooter

Please excuse my ignorance. What is "roll" sized. Is this something different that what I would do with standard Dillon 9x19 die set. Thanks. Bill

It could be that the 125 gr JHP are backordered for several weeks. The recent 10% price increase may also be a consideration. I use the Zero 125 gr JHP, but if I need bullets to continue shooting, I'll take whatever is available. Bill

Now the below average, risk adverse shooter speaks out. It seems that a lot of the stages I shoot locally have a hit factor (HF) around 7.0. That's 7 points per second. A miss instead of a "C" hit is a loss of 14 points. In other words, if you rush to get that "A" hit and miss, I have 2 additional seconds (14 pts divided by 7 HF) to make my "C" shot. Under 2 seconds and I beat you. Add in a no-shoot, you are looking at -24 points versus 3.4 seconds. Now look at the time benefit of shooting an "A" versus a "C". On the same 7.0 HF stage, that's 1 point for 0.14 seconds. If you can improve your score with an "A" at a time cost of less than 14/100th of a second, you come out ahead. At least this is my point of view. Bill

I bought a heavy duty (my nickname will never be "slim") knock-off by Bayou Fitness after I had knee surgery. Mine seems pretty stable and have not seen any balance issues. Set up a routine of about 8 exercises. I really like it. Bill

Its tough to give up a nice safe existance, so a little kick in the butt has probably started quite a few entrepenurial careers. Attitude is a major determiner of success. Good luck out there. Bill

Consider shooting the guns as is with plans to change them out when you finally wear out the barrels. You may decide you really like .38 and want to stay with it. In this forum you will have a lot of company. To do the job right, you are looking at a new barrel, a new comp (instead of the old comp so that it can be reamed in alignment with the new barrel) and possibly new mags (unless your mags are SVI) and the costs of the gunsmith doing all the work. New 38 super brass is around $115 / m and once fired 9 mm is around $25 / m with shipping. If the cost to convert the gun is $700 (my estimate for barrel, comp and fitting), you will need to lose around 7800 pieces of brass to breakeven. If you need to add in mags or spacers and new reloading dies, it gets worse. Just a few things to think about. Bill

Now you are starting to get expensive. HC'ing the gun will probably cost $225 to $250. Add $75 or so for shipping. Probably the higher amount or more since the front sight will need to be left blue and a little polishing may be recommended. I don't know how long the lag time is, but there may be a delay in getting your gun back if the chromer is busy (i.e. does a good job on guns). And if you are looking at this, then you will want new internals and such. It may be time to look at purchasing a single stack already set up for competition. You are probably looking at $500+ if you go with quality parts. Since you are a new shooter, consider searching the forum and you will see some recommendations on everything from the new tricked out Taurus 1911 for around $550 to the little bit higher dollar Kimbers and Springfields. A friend bought a top of the line Kimber Team Match for $1150 at a gun show. You have a fine old 1911, but it may not be worth the time and expense needed to get it to the point you seem to want it to be at. Just my 2 cents. Bill (p.s. Feel free to print this out for the little lady explaining how buying another gun will actually save you money.)

Chris, Go to the following website and plug in the serial number. If its an original military frame, it will come up showing the manufacturer and date of manufacture. http://armscollectors.com/sn/usmilookup.php I enlarged the picture of your gun and cannot make out the S/N, but its a 4 digit number. Per the database, if it was a military contract gun it would have been built around WW I by Remington Rand. Bill

At least they are friends. Mine are relatives. Bill

Build it in my swamp and you have both. So who hasn't shot a stage that required you sitting in an aluminum boat? Worst case scenario, you add a deer feeder out near the far berm and wait til fall. Bill

You might also get someone knowledgable to look at the patent dates on the slide. Some of the old military slides were a little brittle and may crack using major loads. The hammer looks alot like a Series 70 Goldcup hammer. And if you decide you want to go with a lower front sight, you might need to go to a fixed rear sight unless you want a smith to do some cutting on the slide. The high front sight with the unmelted Bomar was very typical of bullseye guns a while back. Try it with the big front sight, you might really like it. Check out Brownells.com or get one of their catalogs. Lots of good 1911 stuff. Bill

Jim, Excellent back yard. For me to do the same the dirt fairy needs to knock down and cover several hundred houses. Where do you shoot? Just curious. A former Socorro native. Bill

With your Para mags, polish the inside and outside. Repeat every season. Install Grams followers and springs. Later, consider converting your Para over to S_I mags, again with Grams followers and springs. Canyon Creek can modify your mag catch to work. Excellent reliability and those S_I mags seem to jump into the gun on the reloads compared to Para mags. Bill

Hence my first and only match DQ. Its been over 20 years since it happened but I remember it like it was yesterday. I refused to go to another match until I "broke the habit". And even then I had to watch myself closely for the next few years. Bill

I love this new technology stuff. I'm so old that I remember putting a 12# VCR camera on a tripod to view our draws and reloads. My first upgrade was a little button on 15' of wire so that I could turn it on & off remotely. (Yes, we did have computers then, the IBM Model 1 was state of the art.) Keep posting those vids. I love to watch them. Bill

You have a very nice slab side that has a little history to it. For some reason, it looks to me like the kind of work being performed in the mid to late 70's. It appears that the top of the slide where the front sight is located was turned down. The front sight was probably silver-soldered in. I don't get around like I used to, but I have not seen that done in over 25 years. For sentimental reasons, I recommend you not make any changes that cannot be reversed at a later date. It may seem trivial now, but 20 years from now you may kick yourself. Brownells sells several single stack magwells that slip over the lower grip bushings but will require you make a relief cut on the inside of the grips. So, get a new set of grips at the same time so you can leave the originals alone. You may also need replacement grip bushings since the originals were staked in and once you get them loose, may be tough to keep tight without restaking or a little Loc-Tite. New springs would also be recommended. Bill

I recently purchased several tuned STI mags from Brazos. They recommend a minimum length of 1.200" for reliable feeding. Shorter and the spacers are recommended. But to load this long may present problems with the barrel. The longer bullet may hit the rifling too soon and even if it does go into battery, you may see some very high pressures. This would be solved by having your gunsmith run a throater reamer to your specs. If you want to load 1.170", consider finding some SVI mags. These seem to feed 9 x 19 round without the need for spacers. If you have a good load with a PF of 135, you may want to stop there, especially if it functions well in both guns. Much lower and you need to reduce recoil springs and cut out a little slide weight. Bill

Thank you John and Dave. This is a good way of handling it and I'll give it a try later this weekend. Bill

Very nice. Please post more. Bill

Thanks Scott and Dan and Merlin. Now that I see what they are talking about I know that none of my triggers have that tab. Like I said, something new fangled. But it also looks like something I can do to my trigger bow. Current pretravel measures at 0.086". I hope to reduce it to 0.050". Again, thank you. Bill

In the old days we either welded or silver soldered a small metal spacer to the back of the trigger bow to adjust pretravel. From the forum I gather that most triggers have an adjusting tab that, bent forward, reduces the pretravel. Either my triggers are so old that this is a new fangled feature (anything new in the past 10 years or so I consirder to be new fangled), or just as likely I just don't know what to look for. I assume its located at the front of the bow on either side (or both sides) of the trigger shoe. So, if someone could tell me what and where to look, I'd appreciate it. Thank you. Bill

First, I do not allow loaded ammo into the "practice" area. Hard fast rule. All "shootin" ammo is Zero JHP, so for the dummy loads I used some 147 gr lead bullets to distinguish the difference. I do not like to leave rounds in a magazine, so I keep the dummy rounds in a zip-lok bag in the practice area and load them into the mag at the start of the session and unload them at the end of the session. I need to try the magic marker. I didn't think it would stay on the brass very well, but will give it a try. Bill

On a very light and poorly installed sear/hammer combination, dropping the slide will cause the hammer to follow possibly causing damage to the sear engagment face or the hammer hooks. Even on a well built 1911, repeated dropping of the slide will take its toll on the sear and hammer. Or so I've been told. Rather than risk it, I just never decided to test it. Holding the trigger back was an old bullseye shooters action. It was not used to drop the slide on an empty chamber, but to chamber the first round off of a new magazine on slide lock. The thought was holding back the hammer kept the disconnector disengaged resulting in less wear on a delicate sear. I don't know if it worked or not, but it was common practice until the mid-80's. I believe John Shaw, in one of his shooting books, even mentioned this once. Bill

I'm not a pro, but I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express once. That said, I've always been told that dry firing will not damage a well built 1911. Snap caps are not necessary. There are people on the forum that dry fire their 1911 pattern firearms hundreds of thousands of times every year. Go ahead and pull the trigger with the hammer back as much as you want. (Yelling bang is optional, but will get old quickly.) However, dropping the slide from slide lock on an empty chamber is a quick way to destroy a decent trigger job. To practice mag changes, load up a few dummy rounds (no primer and no powder) and put at least a few into each magazine to avoid damaging the feed lips. Most people go ahead and fill the mag up with dummy rounds so that the mag weight in practice is the same as its weight in a match. HTH. Bill

Hello Steve, I believe I have held a "B" card in Open for longer than anyone in USPSA. My best classifier was probably 65% or so back in the mid-80's. After a 10 year hiatus, I started shooting USPSA again last fall. No range to practice so I relied on dry firing to shake off the rust. Now at 54 I really didn't expect to set the world on fire. Just wanted to go out and do my best. Through Mr. Enos, I bought your first book several months ago and I am doing the exercises religiously. But hey, I'm old, overweight, and I just want to have fun. Just pulled up the scores from a match this past Saturday where we shot Classifier 06-06 "Golden Bullets Standards". My HF of 6.4438 put me, per the Ohio Classifier database, at 75.5%. Holy crap. I finally did an "A" card classifier. Like fine wine, I age well. No way. But the exercises do work! Just wanted to tell you my results and to say THANK YOU. Bill