9mm Major in Tanfoglio Gold factory barrel?

[MrPostman]

Even the force cannot conjure up spare barrels!

I'm thinking of heading to the garage and trying to open up the comp on the spare factory barrel - do the second port and the holes on the front. Suboptimal, but maybe worth it.

I actually did this with my mill. I made a v4 comp out of the factory barrel. I made the v ports larger than the ones on the ported barrel and opened up the 2 large ports. The result was more velocity than the ported barrel and not having to clean the cmore lens as often but it wasn't anywhere as good as a well designed comp.

[BallisticianX]

I am a new member of the Tanfo Gold Team owners club. I got the 9mm v12. I did some upgrades and started in on load development for major. I knew what I was up against with the popple hole orchard on this thing. I have found that making major is not such the "mission impossible" I saw some others claim it to be. I have 3 powders at my disposal; Win AC, HS-6, & Silhouette. I knew 6.7 gr of AC over a 125 Zero JHP made major in my M&P open rig and it would require more with the tanfo. All of my development is with the 124 Zero FMJ as I found the tanfo's have a shallow throat and the 125 hp's need to be loaded short to pass the plunk test. OAL with the 124 fmj are 1.145" for all loads as that is as long as I can go and I'm using Win SP primers. I used info from this forum on the tanfo's to get my starting points for each powder.

• I started with sil at 7.5 gr and got a 162.4 pf with avg velocity at 1310fps. I worked up in 1/10th increments to 7.8 gr with an avg of 1354 for a 167 pf. 7.8 gr leaves about an 1/8" to 3/16" of unfilled case.
• Next I loaded HS-6 and started at 8.0 gr and got an avg of 1358 for a 168 pf. 8.0 gr leaves 3/16" + of empty case
• Lastly I loaded some AC and loaded at 7.5 gr. I got wowed as the 2 shots (did not want to proceed) avg 1459 for 181 pf. 7.5 gr left a little more available space than the HS-6. This load was sharp as you would expect and violent. I will down load it when I have time to get an equal comparison to the other two loads. ( I rechecked the forum for AC loads and saw 7.2 gr mentioned so I must have mistakenly recalled 7.5)

The Sil load was comfortable as was the HS-6. Though they were both close I almost give the edge to HS-6 for being a hair more mild. Some dot tracking tests at a latter time will decide which one I prefer. As far as pressure signs I checked primer condition( a mere reference as variables such as pocket tightness/primer movement come in to play) Out of the above 3 loads the Sil showed the most primer flattening, followed by the AC and least was HS-6. This only proves that burn rates (as these are all close to one another) does not always mean similiar characteristics. It comes down to the the powders design with what other materials are added, double or single based, and temperature variables that can make powders have drastically different characteristics. I have high hopes for HS-6 as I am liking what I saw and felt. I will give AC a less dose and see where it stands. The sil felt nice but the primer flattening indicates the possibility of higher chamber pressures and that again supports me leaning more towards the HS-6.

[BallisticianX]

So After some further charge weight tweaking, recoil spring evaluation, and dot tracking tests I settled on the HS-6 powder at 8.4 gr for a 170 pf with a 10lb recoil spring. I found it soft and tracked very well. I downloaded the previous 7.5 gr (and blistering) AC load to 7.0 gr and it made 168 pf but still feels sharp and the dot would not settle back down and stayed up high. Did not prefer the feel of AC so I eliminated it as a contender. As I mentioned before the Sil at 7.8 gr also felt mild (on par with the HS-6) but showed more pressure signs with the most flattening of the primers than the other two so I decided to eliminate it as a contender. The HS-6 load is also very accurate and proved such at a match where I broke in my Tanfo yesterday. The classifier (CM 08-01) had 2 of it's 4 targets at 35 yards and that will certainly root out how well its accuracy is. All targets required 6 shots and I was impressed as each 35 yard target scored 5 alpha 1 charlie, all center right where the dot was when I cracked them off. Of course I had some other issues, namely a spent case dropping back in the chamber getting pinched between the slide and the barrel with a half stripped off new round beneath it. This happened one on each stage except the classifier by the grace of god. So I can say its occurance rate is one in every 20 rounds or so. Now I have to figure that out!