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Bomars And Open


SRT Driver

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I was just thinking the other day, "What would I do if I had more money than sense?"

STI open gun with bomars was near the top of the list.

You'd prob. find out you don't shoot any worse with irons instead of scope

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Yup! There is still lots of fire and steam in those old boilers.

Recently a good customer came to me with a similar project.

He had "hoarded" a 6" Caspian Long Slide in 9mm and had available a Long Dust Cover STI frame. He dumped these two items on me and requested I build him an Open Gun. Not just "any" Open Gun, but one with adjustable low Bomar rear and fiber optic front. Yes, in 9mm Major. He wanted maximum non reciprocal "unsprung" weight, and that's why he wanted to use both the long slide and long dust cover. I talked him into letting me whittle a lot of weight from the slide though. I installed one of my 6" barrel Hyper-Comps (what else is there ? ;) ) with two conventional chambers in front, and "pivot recessed" the comp and barrel back to Commander length, while retaining the bottom front as a slide for the comp. It came out awsome. That dude was shooting that iron sighted open as fast as the other guys with their scoped "lighties".

Well, his wife liked the gun more than her present gun and promptly "appropiated" it. (something about witholding services unless she got that gun... ?) Suddenly I get a request to install an Alchin side mount and C-More, plus a racker where the Bomar was... And, oh yes, rechamber it for .38 Super/Comp. I just shot with them the other day, and boy is she ever having fun with it. Now I've got to build him another gun... Luckily I've got some more Bomars somewhere around here. :D:D:DB)B)

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A popular fix was to drill it and leave the bit in there by cutting ends off

Yup! That's how my old open .38 souper kept it's Bomar intact over many, many k of 175+ PF ammo. It was definitely "the" hot setup back in the day ;-)

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Yup! There is still lots of fire and steam in those old boilers.

Recently a good customer came to me with a similar project.

He had "hoarded" a 6" Caspian Long Slide in 9mm and had available a Long Dust Cover STI frame. He dumped these two items on me and requested I build him an Open Gun. Not just "any" Open Gun, but one with adjustable low Bomar rear and fiber optic front. Yes, in 9mm Major. He wanted maximum non reciprocal "unsprung" weight, and that's why he wanted to use both the long slide and long dust cover. I talked him into letting me whittle a lot of weight from the slide though. I installed one of my 6" barrel Hyper-Comps (what else is there ? ;) ) with two conventional chambers in front, and "pivot recessed" the comp and barrel back to Commander length, while retaining the bottom front as a slide for the comp. It came out awsome. That dude was shooting that iron sighted open as fast as the other guys with their scoped "lighties".

Well, his wife liked the gun more than her present gun and promptly "appropiated" it. (something about witholding services unless she got that gun... ?) Suddenly I get a request to install an Alchin side mount and C-More, plus a racker where the Bomar was... And, oh yes, rechamber it for .38 Super/Comp. I just shot with them the other day, and boy is she ever having fun with it. Now I've got to build him another gun... Luckily I've got some more Bomars somewhere around here. :D:D:DB)B)

This thread is worthless without pictures.... :o:o

Although it is hard too tell what I am shooting.. this was my first open gun.

Auto Ord 45 with Clark Recoil MasterFull profile Comp , bomar sights ,

slide was shortened just behind front sight and with the comp it gave me

just over a 6" gun very fun gun and with the 155 grn bullets it kept the

RO's off my back... hehehe.... I will have to lookinto my old computer to find

a more detailed picture.. but the gun is now being transformed into a

single stack class commander gun...

post-1959-1135168459_thumb.jpg

Edited by supercomp9
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Saw a lot of hinge pins break. A popular fix was to drill it and leave the bit in there by cutting ends off.

OK, I'll ask the obvious question... What size drill? I have the STI copy of the Bomar on my Ltd. gun. With a simple modification like that, if it'll keep my sight from being "Erik Warren'd", I'll do it.

Ray

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Saw a lot of hinge pins break. A popular fix was to drill it and leave the bit in there by cutting ends off.

OK, I'll ask the obvious question... What size drill? I have the STI copy of the Bomar on my Ltd. gun. With a simple modification like that, if it'll keep my sight from being "Erik Warren'd", I'll do it.

Ray

Use one a little bigger than the pin I would guess.

Truth is I can only break pins. My gunsmith fixes them. Maybe Geoffrey knows the size. I know it takes a LOT to break a bit

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You know I have never broke a bomar sight. I still have many of the original ones I bought 15 years ago. Yes they are still on open guns for that matter.

How do you guys break hinge pins, or are they a different material now then they were then.

Ah the good ole days.

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You know I have never broke a bomar sight. I still have many of the original ones I bought 15 years ago. Yes they are still on open guns for that matter.

How do you guys break hinge pins, or are they a different material now then they were then.

Ah the good ole days.

Remember major was 175. It really is a difference on gun life. I bet Bomars are made exactly the same as 25 years ago.

Very few Limited and Limited 10 guns today, shoot at 1350+ FPS. We were doing it 25,000+ times a year in Open ;)

That and you must live right, have a good gunsmith and be lucky since yours never broke. :)

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Had my Genuine Bomar replaced by a HPS Chinese knock-off Bomar-style something.

Hinge-pin broke again...replaced it with a Porsche supplied steel pin (part of a brake-caliper), I did it myself this time...no probs eversince.....almost 2 years and counting.....

btw. if some-one can tell me, why do those pins always break during Matches and not during Practise :huh: same counts for those Fiber optics which I rejected and went back to solid steel

Edited by schmitz
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Yeh I remember the 175 pf quite well.

Boy we thought we had the hot shit running 155gr swc's major in a .38super that held 9 or 10 rds.

But still damn, its been on the same open .45 since then and never broke. Granted that gun probably only has 20k through it. But the one on my single stack super has to have about 15k through it at 175pf.

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Isn't the point of a comp gun to recoil less than an uncomped one? And that would make iron sights break more, how?

If people are running 7 & 8 lb springs in major open guns and they aren't beating themselves to death, there's less recoil energy available than a 16-lb springed Limited gun.

Early scopes liked to die a lot, but they did that anyway.

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Isn't the point of a comp gun to recoil less than an uncomped one? And that would make iron sights break more, how?

If people are running 7 & 8 lb springs in major open guns and they aren't beating themselves to death, there's less recoil energy available than a 16-lb springed Limited gun.

Early scopes liked to die a lot, but they did that anyway.

Its a theory but I am pretty sure its not as much the recoil that broke Bomars and early red dots.

Its the sudden change in direction from the comp. The gun recoils, gas slams into comp and changes the direction of recoil. With the side benefit of recoil reduction ;)B)

Engineers might be able to give a measurement but that's also related to why a 7lb spring works in a Open gun but not in a Limited

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Yup! There is still lots of fire and steam in those old boilers.

Recently a good customer came to me with a similar project.

He had "hoarded" a 6" Caspian Long Slide in 9mm and had available a Long Dust Cover STI frame. He dumped these two items on me and requested I build him an Open Gun. Not just "any" Open Gun, but one with adjustable low Bomar rear and fiber optic front. Yes, in 9mm Major. He wanted maximum non reciprocal "unsprung" weight, and that's why he wanted to use both the long slide and long dust cover. I talked him into letting me whittle a lot of weight from the slide though. I installed one of my 6" barrel Hyper-Comps (what else is there ? ;) ) with two conventional chambers in front, and "pivot recessed" the comp and barrel back to Commander length, while retaining the bottom front as a slide for the comp. It came out awsome. That dude was shooting that iron sighted open as fast as the other guys with their scoped "lighties".

Well, his wife liked the gun more than her present gun and promptly "appropiated" it. (something about witholding services unless she got that gun... ?) Suddenly I get a request to install an Alchin side mount and C-More, plus a racker where the Bomar was... And, oh yes, rechamber it for .38 Super/Comp. I just shot with them the other day, and boy is she ever having fun with it. Now I've got to build him another gun... Luckily I've got some more Bomars somewhere around here. :D:D:DB)B)

This thread is worthless without pictures.... :o:o

Ok. Ok. Since you guys keep on twisting my arms, and sending me e-mails about pictures... I just got this one back to do some more work on it after the owner "stripped" the threads of the two scope mount under the C-More. Need to install a new Alchin on it. On the meantime I snapped a couple of pictures of it for my memory lane.

As y'all can see this gun has the 6" slide and 6" barrel, with the Hyper-Jet Comp, along with the 5" frame long dust cover. Yup, all these things were the customers brainstorm. A little bit heavy for my own taste but darn if this thing doesn't move while "racing".

RadCatSamples001.jpg

RadCatSamples.jpg

I hope you like the pictures.

MTHO-

I will send you these and other pictures by e-mail as requested. DVC

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