geo

Hello, If needed we can offer the die opened up for pass through, Chris alerted us to this post today. best regards geo www.egwguns.com

Hi All, Sorry that we had problems with the dies. They have been a good part for US as you can tell from the many people that have a 9 38 40 and 45. Seems there were two issues in a row. First we received some 9x18 dies. Not so good. Than the next batch of dies came in and people were having issues with shaving brass and making basically a new caliber, belted 9mm ammo. We received some dies in thursday or friday and broke out the gage pins. the base of the die where the taper starts was too tight on the last batch. The New dies are correct. they gage about .003-.004 larger than the shaver batch. Again sorry for the grief. We will get all the dies in the shop replaced and than be able to fill new orders. Best regards, geo www.egw-guns.com

Hey Guys thank you for the kind words! We started making scope mounts with the Red Buff mounts on IPSC guns in 1992. made and sold something like 6500 scope mounts. Ipsc guns it turns out get shot a good amount. This crowd would know better than most. A couple years after that we started making S&W revolver mounts we still make both. We have had an occasional issue but only if someone shoots a scope and it comes loose and is left loose when shooting. than in about 1995 we started in on a Savage Striker pistol mount, sold a bunch of these too. same deal no problem. Fast forward to today. We produced in our shop well over 2 miles of Rifle mounts in just over 2 years. Today we do 58 different rifles. Rem Tikka, Savage, Win, Howa etc. Our extrusion die is within .001 of the Pic spec. (we do have the center relief in our mount though) The only returns we have besides getting the guy the wrong mount is Remington Long Action seems to have a problem putting the holes in a consistant place. Any square cross bolt ring works fine. Weaver will fit but the small round contact is not ideal for the picatinny cross slot. plus don't try to torque one to 65 inch lbs. We made screws in Quakertown but had trouble making enough, so we bought from an industry supplier. That did not work as we had failures right away. Now we have USA made from Cold forming and roll thread 4037 steel bolts heat treated locally also. All USA. Our mounting screws strip the hex head out at 57 inch lbs. We receomend 20 inch lbs as do many scope base manufacturs. Our ring corss bolts break at 131 inch lbs. We recomend 65 inch lbs. We measure each action, cross check as many places as we can even with other manufacturs. our endmills are ground in Pottstown Pa. all the radus endmills are Carbide. We use Fadal machining centers, we have 4 of them. They are made in Ca. Try our mounts out, I think you will be pleased. We don't try to put our kids through College with each one . You can order direct, through Brownells, Midway, Dillon or SWFA. You will find we do a good amount of sponsoring in the shooting sports. best regards geo

From EGW inc Hello All, We had an issue where dies were sent and miss packaged to us. They were switched and were in fact 9x18 in the 9mm packaging. this has caused problems. Opps I believe the tracking on one of the die customers showed the die was still in florida so we were waiting for it to show up. I believe that is resolved now. Today we are out of 9mm U dies but expect stock in the next two weeks. we have 2 cases of 9x18 again if you know someone that needs one Thank you for the work geo www.egw-guns.com/store

Interesting times. There was work in the AT 84 (Action arms copy of the CZ) Otto is such a great charicter. a must meet guy. Immagine coming from that background and doing what he has. Awsome. Casting your own stuff. His guns were very KooL John Dixon shot the prototype Berylum copper Para around that time maybe 1989 or 91? He said the mag cost 25k to make they build the gun around the mag, did not even need a feed ramp. IIRC it was a 45. Burner shot a scope at Topton, one of the first. From Single stk 45 to single super to Scope single super to P-9 / Eaa to double stack in a short time. Leibenburg with his Short 40 in the most impressive gun ever the Centimter I believe in 1987 ish. I am not sure the gun in the article would work. the scope would get creamed on the first shot. geo www.egw-guns.com

One aspect of some mim products is good design. I saw a picture of a wilson ejector where the front leg was double thick, presumably to make up for the metalurgically challenged part. The fp stop pictured shows the round ejector holes used to eject the green part from the mold before firing. The inside corner has a nice radius. This is good design, however the FP stop literally gets hammered and mim is not as tough as bar stock nor Cast (The Spanish Ecramesa lists strenght of materials with Casting above mim) The Perfect part for mim is the beavertail. each almost identical, good surface finish and no great danger of breaking off. Colt started using Mim sears in the late 80's but they did not come out and announce it. They wend to less expensive sears, Disconectors, mag catches and did not say a thing. The parts were well done (almost no failures that I know of) but the quality of the process was good. Even with that the mim sear did not hold a trigger job as well as a Ser 70 Colt machined sear. Mim has been done on the cheap by some compaines. slide stop, safety, sear, lots of mag catches, front sight failures are not the fault of the process per se. There were booth's at the shot show which sold mim parts used in Aerospace and they have x rays etc to prove the quality of the parts. I have a good collecton of the gun parts we see today and at 500x the mim parts are not even close to cast nor bar stock (depending, I have an import extractor we sectioned and the perocity in this bar stock part is amazingly bad) As it is not practical to x ray each gun part nor section it, add the fact that you do not get to choose where the perocity in the parts collects we stick with machined parts. If someone wants to shrink some picturs I can send evidence of what I speak. hope this helps geo www.egw-guns.com

The gun is a 40 or 45? 11 lb is on the lite side for a 45. The slide is lightened but the barrel remails the std weight. geo

Hi All, thank you for the interest. Jim Hand (his real name ) came in and asked to make up a comp. We were happy to ablidge (sp?) We started with 1 1/8 diameter not 1 inch stock. We made the back port normal from the bore down so it did not grow a vent out the guide rod hole. the next two ports we went deeper, within .060 of a flat bottom we put on to loose weight. the back we put a chamfer on to not leave a sharp edge where the step up is from the slide. there is our std 9 port front port which vents to the sides and slightly up but not down. We made 5 wile we were set up. If Yooz need a photo email me and we will shoot one this week. or better, We make about 40 comps today. there is always room for improvment so let us know what you want to try, send some sketches and we can make one up for you. there are 14 comp picturs on our site for our std 7, 8, 9 port comps. by the by, anyone know the guy that did the article in front sight on the AR comps? I would like to get him to test ours. best regards, geo

Hi All, Yes there are Many Many comps out there. The Semi profile in my opinion feels plusher. As the slide travels to the rear the guide rod goes through the comp and keeps it from moving around much. Many people that have gotten back to us say this makes the gun feel plusher. Inside the bottom is hollow, we are able to use a full size recoil spring system. the fact that it is hollow keeps the weight in line with a round comp. I you go with the bull barrel 11/16 or .687 thread barrels the back wall of the comp has to approach half an inch. Using a cone you can bring that back to 1/4" or less. Comps work for a variety of reasons and comp ports, barrel ports, Baffel design, port size, distance from muzzle to first port, side ports, exit hole size, number of ports and impact surfaces, weight etc. are some of the many contributing factors involved. Thanks for posting the pictures Warmest regards, geo www.egw-guns.com

From what I have seen the probablem is "probably" the half cock notch of the hammer nicking the sear every time it goes past. Do it 100 times no big deal, do it 10,000 time and it takes a toll. See if the hammer half cock notch is peened? run a finger nail over the notch from the head down and see if some peening is presn't? also look at the sear surface and see if there is a sign of the half cock hitting each time the hammer falls? Either way send the sear back and we will replace it free. send the hammer along and we can retrue the full cock notches and we can make sure the half cock is not peened. The good check for this with an unloaded gun is to see as the hammer is manually lowered to the fire position with the trigger pulled does it scrub or hit the half cock as it passes? geo www.egw-guns.com egw@pil.net

Hi Jack, First off, I am sorry to hear the parts are not what you expected. Like you many people have installed our sear and Doug's hammer and had very good luck. If there is pitting and or a grove in the sear I would very much like to see the part. this concerns me. The sear is milled from solid, sent out to heat treat, and comes back to be blasted and the notch ground. Also I would like to know where it came from? Very interested. The notch is ground over the milling marks and some times you can see the immage of the circular mill marks. People have dropped them in with good sucess. On the hammer I have even more questions. Doug sells hammers to an OEM now. we can not make enough hammers so there are two sourses. I would like to see the hammer also. The next problem is there is a company that has sold hammers that are coppies. Were the sides of the hammer ground? that would be very telling. if the sides of the hammer were not ground this would be a major concern. The fourth concern is there was reports of a vendor having the hammer knocked off. That said I can tell by a photo if the parts are ours. I will happly replace the parts if they came from EGW or Doug. If you call me today and email a picture, I will next day air saturday the parts, provided the parts are from us. Also I will replace the broken sear and would like to have it analized, Please send it back, both parts. What I have seen on this is the hammer half cock notch hits the sear every time the gun fires and causes problems over time. To check this we made a fixture to KILL a sear. on a cut in half frame we took a hammer and milled the half cock notch back so when the hammer fell it hit the half cock just short of hitting the frame. We dropped the hammer 250 times and each and every time the hammer hit the sear at the half cock. After hitting full on 250 times there was no damage to the sear. Please call or email 215-538 1012 egw@pil.net Best regards, geo

Mickey Fowler was the guy, he put in a Koenig hammer and our sear and fiddeled with the sear spring, shot the Steel Challenge with it a couple days latter under 2# Benny, Yes they are not sold as finished sears, I just looked at some on the shelf and a couple you could not see a mark on wile others you could see where an endmill went across. Call me next time and I can pick some out for you. And thansk for using some! I appreciate it. When we looked at the wear numbers and toughness and hardness etc, we opted for a different material than S7. S7 is tough no doubt, but with the very small contact area the hammer hooks have on the sear we though out choice was better. any machined from tool steel sear will be worlds ahead of MIM anything though. Thank you all for the nice feed back! and if you get a chance, we have a new shopping cart on the web site. We have never had this good a listing of parts and tools with pictures in our 14 year history. If your a dealer like Benny, just put a note in the comment area and we will make sure if we have you on file you get dealer price. geo

manufactures that use mim Colt Kimber Springfield STI (the safety you mention is probably a later mim version) Para (newer LDA parts, power extractor etc.) Wilson Beretta (trigger bar, and when you do a trigger job you will see it dents easly) Winchester mod 70 trigger Smith, auto and revolver, not Pref ctr though. Taurus, and offering to do mim for other companies. Chip McCormick NO mim Baer, (he had a lab do some testing and it came back DON'T USE!) RRA and they put it in there adds Ed Brown (so far as I know and have seen) Wilson's more expensive guns Night Hawk SIG GSR (so far, hiring the coo from Kimber may change that?) SV? EGW and the VAST majority of other Smith's. (at least the better ones) Caspian geo

Lots of good info on this post guys. Hi My first discovery of mim was trying to anneal mag catches in 88 to make it easier to drill and tap. black good came out. the gun was a colt, the sear, disconector and mag catch were suddenly different. turns out it was mim. the sears were pretty hard, Colt of course chose someone to do a good job but with shooters like Koenig and Piatt we could not get them the triggers they wanted on the sears. We sought out a Ser 70 machined colt sear. they were 52 53 rc and hard through. and they hold an edge. Colt did not ring the bell saying were going to this new process, not many new what was going on. Later we were offered sears from Isreal for under 2.00 each so I have a good idea why the parts started showing up. Later Colt used a Mim extractor but they failed often and they were dropped a couple years ago. Kimber comes on the scene and Chip rings the bell MIM is Here Mim is here. The engineers at kimber are pretty smart fellas, good work, radiuses in corners etc. but Mim was not up to it. First the bottom of the bushings were breaking off, than the extractor hooks seporated, Novak told me he had some front sights break off stock Kimbers, (the other day we broke a sight off call it a test, and it was EASY) Mag catches have a small section if you cut them away. they are breaking, as are safeties. Yes you can inject tool steels but the strength does not approach bar stock. I have some nice 500x photo's of mim and tool steel it is day and night, you could do a class, Mim for 6 year olds. Cast frams are intersting Browning has had good luck with cast frames vs forgings, think of taking all that material, machining it and the residual stress left in there. I have photo's of Caspian frame parts and they look 200 % better than any mim photo's I have part of the mim question is where is it made? India, Spain, Isreal? and how can you tell? and is it checked? We have checked sears from 2 manufactures of guns that are in the RC 20's how long will that trigger hold up? Someone mentioned the contact area on a sear, yes it is really small. perhaps .002 x .092 on each side. Mim sears dent much more quickly than a tool steel sear. they will not hold a "trigger job" near as long as a tool steel hammer and sear. Im with Ross, Koenig just won bianchi for the 9th time, and I asure you there is not a mim part in his gun if you shoot it, and I suspect if your here your a shooter, stay with the real deal, solid bar stock or forged steel. Mim is a great choice for a grip safety so long as you can get it to blue and match the gun, same for main spring housings. Not the hammer, sear, fp stop extractor, slide stop, or mag catch though. geo

Hi all, I have 2 in my collection that broke at the ser 80 cut out, hard to tell from the photo. we have a "staff" scientist now that does or analasis and we would like to see the part regardless of who's it is. if it is ours we will cheerfully replace it free. I would always recomend ser 70 if you are not using the ser 80 mech. geo

Thank you, We have been overfortunate. Blessed with Tons of work both making parts and Gun work. Right now it is shut down but last year we made about 35,000 parts for SIG arms and we are starting to make parts for Smith and Wesson. Feel free to ask me if a question comes up, I usually play on the 1911 forum but have not had much time lately, there was a thread with 4,000 reads on our FP stop which was pretty KooL, over on the High Road. I would Love to be asked and cut out the speculation Thanks guys geo

A whole lot of custom parts aren't made by the guy with his name on the package. It's just the way it is. They figure out what they want, and order 'em from a manufacturer and put their name on it. Doug Koenig isn't filing out hammers and sears in his garage.. Caspian probably doesn't cast Caspian frames. Nothing wrong there. If somebody else can do it to specs and more efficiently than you can, that's where you go. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Hi all, last time I was invited here was about the mag gage, the outrage about the pricing till someone found out that the material was pretty pricy and anodizing cost money, and that we did it from the start for the good of the sport. EGW offers is not EGW MANUFACTURES.... About 16 years ago John Lee and I worked on a couple things. I wanted to use the press and dies, ended up with just the dies but by now we have sold over 5000 U dies in super, 40,9, and 45 They are made to our spec. the flat has a U stamped on it, and a special die (we order 50 at a time) that saves your bacon and is quite a bit cheaper than a roll sizer. Every Time Todd Jarret has a class we sell half a dozen in the area he was last. What they cost? last time I checked we were a for profit corp. You guys know what Bill Wilson Pays for a magazine? didn't think so. I bet he aint tellin Thank you to the positives that chimed in. I appreciate you guys!!! Very Much. Ironically we make Doug's hammers, and Doug does come in sometimes and grind the flats or notches to get an order out to Brownells. Caspian Does have there Frames cast by a Ruger company, the cast every day and from a guy that welds gun at least twice a week and has 500x pictures of many different materials Caspian has some of the best castings in the world. George Smith (not some nameless call tag) EGW inc 48 N Belmont ave Quakertown Pa 18951 www.egw-guns.com, check out our new shopping cart the dies are listed there and you can order 24 hrs a day. again, to the faithful, I appreciate you guys. and to the guy that directed me here, thank you! geo

The Area guys are correct. It took Mike V and I 3 month's of back and fourth, ordering mags from ST and SV ordering pads from all the maunufacturs to put mags together and measure the length's. It seems some mag tubes were growing over time and a "line in the sand" was needed So we made a prototype gage, put the cutters aside in a box just for mag gages, and sent one off for approval. The angle cutter alone is 60.00 I offered to make the gage to avoid controversy in the sport, seems we have that from time to time. A std. was needed. The "Master" gages were made, hard coat anodized at our expense and sent to the AD's and one for the limited and one for the open nationals. For this we were "allowed" to make the "official" gages to help defray the cost and the time, materials, and 100.00 anodizing fee. We made a third batch recently and have sold about 18 gages of the 39 we made. Also We have moved, after 13 years we were able, Thanks to our CUSTOMERS! to buy our own building. EGW inc 48 N. Belmont ave Quakertown Pa 18951 215 538 1012 That plus the fact that we were awarded a nice jucy contract to make parts For SIG and the fact Brownells is buying parts faster than we can make them, combined with the 140 guns we have in line for work you can see why we were behind. We bought another machining center to help catch up. well see.... As mentioned in the post, the material 1x2x8" chunk of aluminum is pretty pricy by itself, add anodizing and were not sending our kids to college on this one The gage is relieved in the middle between the pads because the mag backs are not all that flat, they are relieved to fit the larger buckets that is why we went with a large piece of metal, and if someone takes a gage and opens it up a couple mm and re anodizes it well that's why the AD's have there own. Hope this helps clear up a couple things. geo

DPMS 's 308 deserves a Look. there is a run coming out that takes fal mags. geo ps you forgot the Knights. SR25 and heck were use to paying 100.00 for mags anyway right geo

You should replace after 15k rounds. The hooks can and do break off. We like to tension between the center bump and the hook. You aquire a "feel" when bending them. if it bends too easily you know it will not hold tension over time. Rockwell testing can be a guilde. extractors over 47 seem to hold tension better. But not a hard and fast rule. For us if it loosed tension throw it away, it will again and at the worts possible time. geo

Tasco Optima and JP are the same sight, Optima got up to 5 revisions before Tasco went belly up. It did come out as a very expensive (299. )sight and before they went out came down to 129.00 1.6" Long Doctor is made in the old Carl Zeiss plant. it is a much higher quality scope. Alum body, 1.8" long. smaller pins to hold it down Coated glass lens. set screws to hold the adjustment once it is sighted in. geo

Very Interesting post. Enjoyed the read and prespective. At EGW we have 4 guys and My Sister one day a week to take care of some of the book work. It is Quite a task running a one man shop. Most guys have trouble getting the bench time they would like and need to make a profit. You put your time in going to matches and shooting. Order parts tools cutters, Answer the phones and emails, pay the bills, do the adds, tell one investment guy one long distance company and one other sales call each day. than you get to do some work. Blake Gann worked late at night so he wasn't disrupted wile doing his bench time. I think we are fortunate. Joe takes care of most of the phone calls, UPS FED ex prio mail FFL book, ordering parts, prepping parts, Applying finishes he is developing and our very limited walk in trade. Jim Works on guns almost all the time. (occasionally we work on developing a part or fixture) He has worked with me for 12 years. Jim 2 runs the cnc dept. I am fortunate to work with all 3 of these guys. They take pride in there work and helped get us were we are today. For me, My time is divided between gun work, trouble shooting, Parts development design and programing, (which Jim S. is taking over nicely) Test firing, Email, and all the stuff the one man shops do. We service about 20 shops doing dealer service type work. bomar cuts, Machine checkering, and we service several of the manufactures. (recently we were awarded a nice contract to make parts for a new gun due out now) We make parts for quite a few Smith's that market them under there own name. We have 4 lists of work Dealer work "Quick jobs" (oxy moron as it is up to 3 1/2 month's Minor work over half a year Full guns over a year. We have about 140 guns in line for work and I can not see a way to do the work any faster or better. Like the others that Value there reputations and protect them diligently We don't intend to compromise. Plus we have over 100 parts in Brownells. We have 2 people that do gun work, I do not think it hurts us one bit geo

I think expecting a gun to work that our troops cary is not a lot to ask. The Design is certinally proven. Maybe after 5k rounds some field parts. Wile I believe it will work fine without it. 2 things come to mind. One gun that I hear breaks them more than any other is a 3rd teer Lower. the pin is perhaps in the wrong location. if the buffer stops on it every shot that is not a good plan. Recent entries in the High volum AR market are making parts real REAL fast. out of Land O Lakes material. Like 12L14 Leaded steel. I have seen this on this retainer and on Hammer and sear pins that are soft and case hardened only. I think the retainer calls out 4140 which would be over twice as tough as leadalloy.

Plating guns that have rounds through them can be a problem. My father use to work for SPS they have a room they cook bolt in for 24 hrs after they are plated. One of the early uses for plating was airplane landing gear, they plated them and found that they broke off the planes! not a great plan. Study found that hydrogen created in the plating process was "trapped" inside the steel and call it Hydrogen Enbrittlement. one cure is to cook the parts out for an extended peroid of time. Early early Baer guns sometimes had the back of the lug where it meets the chamber a little square. (like from Allentown Pa) He has used Kart barrels for a long time and they are good barrels. I have in my collection one like you describe. Blue or carbon barrels are tougher than ss barrels, espically 416 ss barrels. If the corner was a "little sharp" and plated after a couple thousand rounds..... That the extractor broke off is interesting. Some guys won't plate extractors barrels or sears...... geo ps nice offer from Benny!

Ill Bite First for the record, we Make comps. Lots of comps we manufacture comps for 26 companies, and all are the best Just ask the inventer. some will tell you they have a friend at nasa, others are just engineers there was a fixtrure used that had an arm and was used to measrue the push and rise of a comp. pretty interesting stuff. Skinner from STI said there was a guy over the pond that was testing comps and his was the best but a couple otheres did very well Koenig has an expensive method. (for us) we put a comp on, he shoots it, and takes a hack saw with him. lop of a port, try again, lop off another...... drive over and ask can I have another one please, I Liked it before I prunned the last one off I think it is very subjective. one guy weigh's 130 # and his style and grip may be much different than another 270 # guy that works out. If you had a room full of gunsmith's and asked who's is the best. almost all would say theres is, and why. if possible shoot as many guns as you can. try em out and see what YOU like. and thank YOU to those out there that use ours! With the new PF I like the 4 port up and 2 pair side port version personally.