DarthMuffin

Really cool!

At least post a link to your post in the reloading forum in this thread. That sort of seems like a good compromise between giving info and thread-jacking. Oh, and for those that care, I got in touch with the maker of the Gizmo and "the check is in the mail".

Is it normal for the nationals not to have been announced yet? Some of us need to request vacation dates at the first of the year, especially if it's a "popular" weekend. I can't believe I'm on the only one with this problem...

OP here. Thanks for the reply all. As Chuck A mentioned, I never felt the situation was unsafe. All the time we fire at targets at 2:00 with an RO at 4:00, right? If I did think there was any chance of hitting the RO, I of course would have stopped. It did cause me a moment of pause when I passed the RO (he was obviously more worried than I was and moved pretty quickly), so technically I probably could have asked for a reshoot due to Interference. Local match, so not a real big deal either way for me. I'm trying to make it a habit to inform the RO if I'm doing anything odd on a stage, however this time I was in "the zone" prepping for the stage and it just wasn't on my mental checklist. I'm sure you all know how that goes. Muzzle safe points just seem like they'd cause more problems than they fix. It's one more thing for the shooter to re-learn on each stage, remember, keep track of, and distract him from all his other important safety duties. I don't see anything wrong with the 180. I've made my decision in that if it ever happens again, I'm stopping. If I don't get a reshoot I'll be mighty PO'd, but no score is worth shooting someone. Ideally I'd like to see a rule entitling the shooter to stop and be automatically granted a reshoot if any person is within his 180 degree field of fire at any time between "make ready" and "range is clear". This could conceivably be used by a competitor to have a [brave or foolish] accomplice step into the 180 if it looks like they're doing bad, but that would be a 10.4 DQ anyhow. DQ-ing is unreasonable -- say if I'm turned facing a target array at 10:00 and someone 30 feet to my right, behind me where I can't see them, puts one foot over the line so they can see what I'm doing.

Anyone have a web address or a phone number of where to get the Gizmo case sizing die? I emailed the address given a while ago and have not heard back.

When running shooters I stick to the official range commands, and answering questions. After reading the stage description verbatim, and after everyone knows that's the end of the description, I may make certain clarifications. Especially safety-related ones ("If you shoot this target from that port, you will break the 180, don't try it.", "Due to the unusual start position, *please* watch your draw, don't sweep yourself, turn *then* draw.")

A short 3 hour match yesterday, up North, on the 2nd shortest day of the year, totally overcast, 100% clouds, some fog, even sprinkling rain at one point. And me wearing a baseball hat too. And yeah, my face *still* got sunburned. Man, I've got to use sunblock all the time. I should just go buy a case at Costco and be done with it.

Earlier this year we had a "retreat" stage (I hate those, they are very seldom safely designed) where you started upstage and engaged some targets from there, backed up to a mid position and engaged some from there, then finally backed all the way up and engaged the remainder. I discovered that you could omit the middle stop as you could see just a sliver of those targets from the final positions -- good enough for me. Anyhow, in hindsight it would have worked better if I informed the RO of my plan, but on the other hand it's not the responsibility of the shooter to do so. I ended up passing the RO so that he was downrange of me, at about 2:00. I hesitated for a second but he did not call stop, so I kept shooting at some targets at about my 10:00 position and the RO had gotten behind me by the time I moved on. What was the correct thing for me to do here? I know the RO should have stopped me and done a reshoot, but he didn't. If I stopped myself, am I guaranteed a reshoot? Should I (or the RO) have been DQ'd for a safety violation?

Cha-lee wins the Internet for tonight! That was exactly it. The sharpie idea was brilliant. Thank you very very much! A little thread-drift here, but where do you guys adjust your trigger travel screws to? I generally sneak them down until it just barely doesn't fire or reset, then back off a half turn.

I thought of the overtravel issue (it was pretty agressive) and already dialed that back, but unfortunately I didn't think of it until after I got back from the range. My highly scientific method of measuring firing pin force (putting a pencil in the barrel, eraser end down, and see how high it goes when firing) says the adjustment didn't make a noticeable difference. Yes, I removed the hammer and made sure it slides freely. I installed it temporarily without the spring so I could really get a good feel for it. Hmm, maybe I can load up some "blanks", just case and primer, no bullets, to test this at home. It's 11 degrees outside and dark by the time I get off work

I'm thinking it's not the hammer to frame, hammer pin, or hammer strut to blame because when I remove the sear cage the hammer swings freely. The drag is gone. It doesn't seem to be dragging on the side of the sear cage either, but maybe I missed something... If I can't figure this out I may just go up to a 15-lb spring for a while and see if the problem doesn't work itself out.

I put an EGW hammer and sear in my Limited and got to give it a try today. I was getting occasional light strikes and primers wouldn't ignite. The gun has the same Henning XL firing pin and 13-lb hammer spring it's had in it for a year with no problems. Firing pin channel is clean. It seems like the hammer is dragging on something, there's some resistance in the last 3/16" of travel before it hits the pin. I took the gun apart several times looking to find the problem, and I can't find it. When disassembling the gun I can remove the sear cage and the "drag" goes away and the hammer moves freely, so it's not the hammer itself binding. Anyone got any ideas? Thanks in advance.

I got to test the gun out today. Put about 50 rounds through and it reset just fine every time. The trigger return spring is definitely binding on the overtravel screw threads, you can feel it on mine. I'll have to see what I can find to line it with or adjust it.

I think I'm going to go look for an IDPA match just so I can run my P7M13 and tweak the RO's when I go to slide lock and do a speed reload anyhow

I installed the trigger today and it went pretty well. I think I did differently than most people though. I got the whole hammer/sear/pins/trigger package from Henning (ordered Wednesday night, day before thanksgiving, got the parts on Saturday!). I put the hammer/sear/pins in my Limited (got big hands and don't really want the flat trigger) and then put the Limited's old hammer, sear, and the flat trigger in my wife's regular Witness Steel. I had to file down the front of the trigger bow quite a bit where the trigger pin goes through, it hit the inside of the trigger. The pin from the stock trigger doesn't really fit all that well (it's too long, and slightly too large diameter), but I think it's "good enough". Other than that and having to round off two corners on the new trigger rod nut to get it to fit, the install was uneventful. The reset on the trigger seems like it may be too light, I had one or two fails to reset during dry fire. Hopefully I'll get a chance to do live fire next weekend. A suggestion for a possible future improvement: make the edges of the pretravel stop serrated, then we can tweak it minor amounts with a screwdriver or knife blade in the field and not have to disassemble things. Oh, and *wow*, I love the EGW hammer/sear/henning hammer-sear pins combo. Light and crisp, very little overtravel and pretravel required. I can't be the first person to have thought of this, but I use Henning's slave pin idea to reassemble the sear. The WD40 straw was too narrow and not strong enough so I cut myself off a piece of machine screw that I had laying around which was just a little smaller diameter than the pin. Make it as wide as the sear (just the sear, not the cage). Then you can insert everything and get that PITA sear spring where it belongs, then just push the real pin through and push out the slave pin.

Loaded up a bunch of guns and gear and headed off with a friend to the range today. Weather cleared up and was beautiful! Sunny and T-shirts for a while. And then I realized I forgot the magazines for my AR 10. The whole point behind this exercise was to get it sighted in and get some practice with it. Oh well, at least I got it roughly sighted in -- one round at a time. I felt like such a dork loading it that way.

... as if the 20% off the other day wasn't enough My credit card hates you. Thanks, and happy Thanksgiving!

I've seen several people recommend the browning gold light piston for these guns, it's even lighter than the "light" one that comes with the gun. http://www.midwayusa.com/viewproduct/?productnumber=493004 I'm intrigued, but it's a little expensive for me to try out when I don't really need it. Mine runs fine on the Wal-mart federal #7.5 bulk pack, but I did have some feed problems with the Winchester. Oh, and by cutting your recoil spring you actually may worsen the problem. Less coils makes for a stiffer spring, not a lighter one (I know it sounds counter-intuitive at first, but go look up spring formulas if you don't believe me). But cutting it does make for a shorter spring that may take less total force to compress to a given total length.

The pistol micrometer insert is great. Locktite the allen head screw on the end of the micrometer lever though, they tend to come loose and then all of the "numbers" you wrote down to quickly duplicate loads are worthless. I use an RCBS powder check, just because it was available. Works great! (edit: mine is the lockout die, no problems getting it working. It's not extremely sensitive, with mine set at 4.6g of titegroup it won't lock up at 3gr or 6gr for example, but it will lock with a double load or squib load) The best addition was a vibra-prime and 3 extra tubes, but they're not available any more With that I can start with 100 in the press and 400 more loaded in tubes to quickly crank out 500 rounds in a session. An 1/8" wood dowel in the primer tube makes a good dipstick to tell you when you're low on primers. Mark it or put a piece of tape so you know when "out" is. I have the case feeder, it's nice! For .40 S&W you'll probably need to use a mix of the large and small tubes supplied. Large clear plastic feed tube and small everything else. The most critical adjustment to getting the case feeder working is the gap between the top of the case and the bottom of the feed tube. Too little and you don't get a case, too much and you get doubles sometimes. It's a fine line. If you feel the need to adjust the pawls (you might, I had to), study them well to make sure you understand how they work first. Adjust one at a time in very small increments, they're sensitive.

I have a cheaperthandirt one. It's surprisingly good quality. http://www.cheaperthandirt.com/ItemDetail.aspx?sku=MOLLE-181 It fits my SLP MK1 just fine. Says 48" length on the description, but I haven't got a 48" gun to try.

Me too! I grabbed 2 4lb-ers from powdervalley earlier this week. They're out now, but it's about time I got a lucky break

I like the 4MAO target size idea. Another idea may be to open up Heavy Metal to any major pistol caliber. I'd shoot it if I didn't have to have a 1911. Keep it to steel frames if you want. However, what I'd really like to see is more of a reward for major power factor. I realize that nobody wants to walk out and paste targets at 300 meters, but there has to be a way to figure something out. Maybe make a metal plate with an inner "A" zone and and outer "C" zone. Hit the A zone and both plates fall, hit the C zone and just the C falls. Or maybe calibrate the C zone plate only to fall to major PF.

Natchez is out now. Cabelas just updated my WSP order from April -- new due date is 12/10. Ironically, they just shipped my titegroup power which they never even could get an ETA on.

I just wanted to thank Bruce for his great post. Packed full of good info! Thanks.

9.2.2.1 A competitor’s score is calculated by adding the highest value stipulated number of hits per target, minus penalties, divided by the total time (recorded to two decimal places) taken by the competitor to complete the course of fire, to arrive at a hit factor. The overall stage results are factored by awarding the competitor with the highest hit factor the maximum points available for the course of fire, with all other competitors ranked relatively below the stage winner. It says the competitor with the highest hit factor, not the competitor in the relevant Division. Shouldn't zero-boy's hit factor be compared to everyone else's (not just his division) before awarding max points available? I suppose if everyone in the match zeroed the stage, then everyone would get max points and it would all come out in the wash. Otherwise, I think I'll shoot revolver next time the division is empty, intentionally zero each stage, and win the match