Does Your Slide Lock Work ?

[TBF]

I have determined that the slide lock may be evil and just may have to disable it.

Your thoughts on the pros and cons of this mod are appreciated.

I shoot L10.

Thanks in advance !

Travis F.

[diehli]

Limited, Limited 10, Production: yes.

Open: no... though I almost wish it did.

[Putty]

On my Benny Limited blaster he disables the lock back function.

[diehli]

On my Benny Limited blaster he disables the lock back function.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Odd... on mine it works.

[folsoml]

Shooting limited ten, I feel like I am pushing the envelope most of the times on my reloads, so I would prefer that the gun let me know when I have crossed the line.

[.40AET]

Both Limited and Open guns I disabled the slide lock. If you run out of bullets, there's not much chance of winning.

[Flyin40]

I disabled mine also. After having having it lock back when it was not supposed to I just took one possibility of something going wrong out of the equation.

Question though, how many has ran the gun dry with it disabled and how many times doing it before it damages the hammer/sear. I did it today. It has been only the 2nd time I have done it, just wondering how many others do it also.

Flyin40

[davidwiz]

The reason for disabling it is that with most, if not all, double-column 1911 magazines, there is a tendency for the slide to lock back when there are still rounds in the magazine. With a single-stack 1911, I've not found that problem. The slide stops still function on my wide-body 1911s, but they just won't lock back on their own.

-David

[XRe]

I picked other - yes, I want it to lock back on my L-10 gun. No, I don't want it to on a race gun. The difference is, there may be times where it's to my advantage to run the L-10 gun dry, and it seems to be easier to load the next round that way. Otherwise, I don't want any chance of it being activated by accident....

[j1b]

I disable the slide lock on every gun -

Today I shot a match Lim-10 and had a make-up shot when I was planning on shooting 10 anyhow. I finished the load and racked the slide - no biggie.

They seem like a part that can cause more problems than they are worth. I loved the old P-9's (CZ's or whatever they are these days) when we simply threw a pin in where the slide lock originally was. (To me) it was a strong statement about how necessary the industry deemed the slidelock to be.

J

[stingerjg]

For a carry gun i think it is very important to have a slidelock. That way u will know for sure if you are out of ammo. In a controled area of competition, its not necessary to have a functioning slidelock. An experienced shooter should plan ahead to not run out of ammo in a stage of fire. On my slidestop i had my smith make the detent hole alot deeper than it needs to be, i can still manually lock the slide back, but it takes some effort to do. There is NO way that it can accidently lock back, even on an empty mag.

[j1b]

You caught me - all of my IPSC competition guns are disabled.

My IDPA and carry guns all work.

J

[Duane Thomas]

Yeah, for a carry gun I think it's important to have a gun that lets you know it's empty. For IDPA, since the slide lock reload is such an immense part of the game, and racking the slide just adds unnecessary time, on such a gun it's also important. All my slide locks work.

[ipscron2000]

The reason for disabling it is that with most, if not all, double-column 1911 magazines, there is a tendency for the slide to lock back when there are still rounds in the magazine.  With a single-stack 1911, I've not found that problem.  The slide stops still function on my wide-body 1911s, but they just won't lock back on their own.

-David

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

When my open gun was new it would always lock open with one round in the mag. My GS cut off part of the slide stop. Problem fixed.

[Mistral404]

I was getting premature slide lock on my L10. Hated it. Now both my guns have been fixed so it wont happen. I think I have only ran my gun dry once in the last 2.5 years because I got over-confident and forgot to pay attention of the round count after my reload.

[Carmoney]

The reason for disabling it is that with most, if not all, double-column 1911 magazines, there is a tendency for the slide to lock back when there are still rounds in the magazine.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Baloney--the slide-lock on my Para works 100% perfectly and always has, with all eight of my mags. I use it as an L-10 gun, so there are times in particular stages when I need to run it dry to get all the necessary shots off on a target array....and when I'm moving to the next array I'd much rather hit the slide-lock with my left thumb (as Plaxco says, that's the reason God gave me one) rather than rack the dang slide.

Y'know what? I think many "gunsmiths" convince their customers they need to disable the slide-stop because they don't know how to (or don't want to be bothered with) fit the thing correctly.

Or so it seems to me.

Mike

[davidwiz]

Baloney--the slide-lock on my Para works 100% perfectly and always has, with all eight of my mags.  I use it as an L-10 gun, so there are times in particular stages when I need to run it dry to get all the necessary shots off on a target array....and when I'm moving to the next array I'd much rather hit the slide-lock with my left thumb (as Plaxco says, that's the reason God gave me one) rather than rack the dang slide.

Y'know what?  I think many "gunsmiths" convince their customers they need to disable the slide-stop because they don't know how to (or don't want to be bothered with) fit the thing correctly.   

OK, don't believe me. It's happened on both my STI and SV, both built by one of the best gunsmiths in the country. And, I shot both guns with the slide-stops unmodified and had them grounded-down when they locked back prematurely with rounds still in the mag.

-David

[Carmoney]

Sorry David, I didn't mean to sound terse. That "baloney" stuff I wrote was not directed at you personally...this topic just happens to bump into one of my most severe sore spots--lousy gunsmiths. People who try to make money off my sport better be willing to do it right.

We have a number of high-profile 'smiths who spool through this sub-forum on a daily basis--this topic has now been up for a couple days, but none have responded so far.

So--let's hear from all you pro gunsmiths who are tuned in--can you or can you not make a slide stop function correctly in a wide-body IPSC gun??

Mike

[j1b]

I think the response is that certainly a gun can be built such that the slide lock works and functions properly (once the last round of the mag is ejected)

Someone said it in this thread and in IPSC I believe this is what it boils down to - disabling the slide lock simply eliminates one more thing that could potentially go wrong. It would be easy to say "fix it properly and that'll never be a problem" however guns aren't exactly without attitude. Murphy plays a reasonably significant role in our sport and disabling the slide lock gives him one less thing to screw with me on.

The last match I shot there were several stages where I shot to 10. I was very cognisant of the fact that I had only one make up shot, and if I took it then I'd need to rack the slide on the next load. On one stage I had to do precisely that. Being aware of it made it a non-issue. Did it cost me time? Potentially I'm certain but I'd guess it was in the .3 second range - if that. I was still shuffling to position anyhow. If you have to rack the slide, or drop it, odds are things are off plan a bit anyhow. The shooter needs to recognize this and adapt.

J

[Brazos Custom]

Carmoney, before you paint most of us lazy gunsmiths with the "lousy" tag you might want to find out what are the advantages and disadvantages of lockback. Some of us are not just lazy we actually know a little about how to set up guns for competition.

There are several advantages to setting up the gun so it does not lockback:

1) A doublestack magazine is wedge shaped at the top and can be over inserted into the magazine when the slide is locked back causing it to stick and cause the jam from hell.

2) If you have an extended ejector (which many competition guns do for reliability) over inserting the magazine when the slide is locked back will cause it to hit the ejector and bend or break it. Again causing a malfunction that will ruin your match.

3) Most everyone is using aftermarket followers which maximize magazine capacity. You gain magazine capacity by making the follower shorter top to bottom and getting it to sit as high up in the magazine as possible. This in turn means that small changes in the width of the feed lips will make large changes in how high the follower sits and thus cause erratic lockback timing.

4) If you dimple the slide stop and cut most of the tang off you keep the nose of bullets in the mag from hitting the slide stop and moving it causing a variety of other malfunctions that are hard to diagnose.

There is no reason to have the slide lock back if you have 20-30 rounds in the gun. If you run out you have already screwed the stage, no point in making it worse. If you are shooting Limited 10 then there is good reason to have the slide lock work but you don't have to worry about magazine capacity anymore so you can go back to stock followers and the stock slide lock and tune for lockback. You just need to be careful when reloading that you don't slam the mag home with excessive force.

If it sounds like I have pondered this a little it is because I just got through writing an article for Front Sight about this very subject. Look for it in the next issue.

[XRe]

Well put, Bob!!! Nice summary of the various issues

[mike4045]

Works on my Glock, for limited shooting. The new open gun will have it deactivated, mainly to prevent damage to ejector.

Mike

[AikiDale]

Thanks Bob! My open gun came with the slidelock function disabled and I did not know why, now I do.

[Carmoney]

Bob, the whole point of my most recent post was to encourage the qualified and competent 'smiths on this forum to chime in and let folks here know that slide-locks CAN be made to work on wide-body IPSC guns--albeit with certain trade-offs, which you have detailed for us. Thank you for doing so!

It sounds like we agree that a functioning slide-lock is a good idea (or at least a good option) on an L-10 gun, where occasionally it will be advantageous to run the guy all the way empty and then reload on the move. Certainly we would also agree that lazy and lousy gunsmiths (and unfortunately, there are still some of them out there) ought not be tolerated in our sport....

Best regards,

Mike

[Jasonub]

What Bob said,

I knew that

so thats why my gun does not lock back