thermobollocks Posted June 18, 2014 Share Posted June 18, 2014 Somewhere, Henning Wallgren sheds a single tear. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CHA-LEE Posted June 18, 2014 Author Share Posted June 18, 2014 Moving to an STI 2011 isn't a done deal yet. I am still in the "Testing Phase" of this experiment. The pistol fitting my hand in dry fire and on the bench is no guarantee of it actually working properly in live fire conditions. Don't get me wrong, I hope I can make this thing work and am willing to do whatever frankinwrenching possible to try and make it work. But I am not going to consider this a done deal until the solution is proven valid. Who knows, maybe I will not like how the 2011 shoots compared to my EAA/Tanfo guns? Either way, I still have a LONG WAY to go before I start to consider the complete platform jump to the 2011. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MarkCO Posted June 18, 2014 Share Posted June 18, 2014 All you would be able to see is sights and a basepad in the Panda paws. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CHA-LEE Posted June 19, 2014 Author Share Posted June 19, 2014 More mega fiddling last night on the 2011. Rick worked his magic on the thumb safety and mag release. Then I got the blade tech holster tuned up to the correct angles. I also loaded some "Normal" brass ammo. I was able to do some dry fire with the whole rig last night and it seems to be coming together nicely. There were a couple of odd things that i found while dry firing though. The first is that during mag changes, if I don't relax my strong hand grip on the gun while pressing the mag release the mag will not drop free. Evidently I am squeezing the grip hard enough to compress the plastic grip into the magazine. If I completely relaxed my grip while pushing the mag release the magazine would drop free without any friction. I may have to invest in a Phoenix Trinity metal grip for this thing because I am not sure I can stop from gripping the gun firmly during a reload causing the magazine to stick in the gun. The second issue I noticed is the right side of my trigger finger rubbing on the bottom portion of the trigger guard while pressing the trigger. This leads to a strange finger jammed between the trigger shoe and trigger guard situation when I try to reset the trigger. I might have to get another trigger shoe setup that has an arch or ledge on the bottom to basically keep my finger from going down to low and rub against the bottom of the trigger guard. I think it will probably work out best if I get one of the SVI trigger bow's that has the interchangeable trigger shoes. A setup like that will allow me to try a bunch of different configurations out pretty easily. Tonight after work I am going out to the range to zero the 2011 and see how it runs doing some drills. We will see if my hand gets chopped to bits during this testing...... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jerome Posted June 19, 2014 Share Posted June 19, 2014 Many times the mag release will keep the magazine from dropping if it is pressed too hard. You can test it by holding the gun with mag on table, pressing the mag release real hard then lifting the gun. The mag should fall right out. If not, you can remove the release and file the rounded corner that faces the mag on the release button side. I've had to do this on all my mag releases on STI 2011s. Many don't notice it in dry fire or practice, only when under the stress of a match. They press the button too hard and the mag won't drop. However, in your case, I could fully believe those bear mitts of yours could be bending the plastic grip too. The SVI trigger bow is not an easy fit to a STI 2011. I've researched it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CHA-LEE Posted June 20, 2014 Author Share Posted June 20, 2014 Jerome> Thanks for the input. I did double check to see if I was pushing the mag release too far in and effectively pinning the magazine in place with the other side of the mag release. This is not happening. I can press and release the mag button while maintaining a solid grip on the gun and the magazine will not drop free. Then simply relax my grip and the magazine will drop free. My crushing Big Panda grip is the root cause of the failure. I foresee a metal grip in my future. As for the trigger bow, thanks for the info on the fitment of the SVI trigger bow in an STI grip. The Phoenix Trinity metal grip was designed to use the SVI trigger bow so I will order one for the metal grip. I may order another gunsmith blank STI trigger bow and see if I can make the bottom portion work with my trigger finger better. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CHA-LEE Posted June 20, 2014 Author Share Posted June 20, 2014 I took the 2011 to the range yesterday for some live fire testing. I was using some 1.200 length ammo and had several failure to feed jams. I think the ammo is too long as it is getting jammed between the feed lips and the barrel ramp. I need to test some shorter ammo the next time I do some live fire testing. I did a bunch of draw then shoot drills and noticed that the right side of the slide is still chopping into my hand. When I am drawing the gun I am getting a higher grip on the gun than when I simply pick it up and this is causing the clearance issue. We need to work on the right side of the beaver tail some more to see if it can hold down the skin on my hand better to keep it away from the slide. Since I couldn't draw and blast aggressively without chopping my hand I instead focused on shooting groups and getting use to the recoil feel. The cool thing is that this thing is super accurate, shooting small groups was really easy to do with this gun. The recoil impulse was somewhat odd though. During the breakin process we have a 12lb recoil spring and a 20lb hammer spring. These heavy springs make the muzzle flip a lot more dramatic than it needs to be. I am not too worried about fine tuning the muzzle flip for felt recoil characteristics right now. I need to figure out the hand chopping and feeding issues first. Given that this blaster still needs some more fiddling to make it work properly I am not going to shoot it this weekend in the local matches. More tuning and testing is needed before I turn it loose at a match. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thermobollocks Posted June 20, 2014 Share Posted June 20, 2014 What's the purpose behind the extra stout hammer spring? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CHA-LEE Posted June 20, 2014 Author Share Posted June 20, 2014 What's the purpose behind the extra stout hammer spring? That is a good question. I am not sure. I am not a 2011 gunsmith so I am rolling with whatever Rick suggests. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thermobollocks Posted June 20, 2014 Share Posted June 20, 2014 It's probably just perception on my part. That number looks awfully large contrasted to striker springs and N-frame springs, which are not directly comparable in the least. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cy Soto Posted June 20, 2014 Share Posted June 20, 2014 What's the purpose behind the extra stout hammer spring? As I understand it, the heavier hammer spring helps with the lock-up which in turn enhances the pistol's accuracy. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
frunkenstein Posted June 22, 2014 Share Posted June 22, 2014 Chalee with your grip you could probably crush that grip I was told that if you reduce the grip too much that would happen but with you that might happen with a factory grip. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CHA-LEE Posted June 23, 2014 Author Share Posted June 23, 2014 Chalee with your grip you could probably crush that grip I was told that if you reduce the grip too much that would happen but with you that might happen with a factory grip. I tried several different STI's over the weekend with varying levels of grip modifications and I could pin the magazine in the grip by simply gripping the gun firmly while pressing the magazine release. The Mega Panda Paw grip is proving to be too much for the weak sauce plastic STI grip. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CHA-LEE Posted June 23, 2014 Author Share Posted June 23, 2014 This past weekend I attended two local club matches. Saturday was the HPPS match where I served as the Match Director. Our score keeper was out as well so I got to do the score keeping job as well. It was a busy morning with trying to wrangle everything up but thankfully we had a lot of shooters show up early to help setup stages so that was nice. The weather was nice and the wind was calm and that was a welcomed change. I didn’t get a chance to check out any of the stages from a competitive perspective before the start of the match so I had to figure them out as we got to each stage. Lucky for me the stages were not too complex so basic plans worked out well enough. I shot the match pretty solid but had a squib on the last stage of the day which was the classifier. It ended up being a primer only load that got the bullet half way down the barrel but that’s it. I stopped shooting as soon as I heard the “pop” instead of a “BANG” which was good because it could have been bad if I kept shooting. That was my first squib round ever so it sucked to happen, but given how many rounds I have loaded over the years I guess it was bound to happen sooner or later. I am not too worried about it and was lucky that it happened on a 40 point classifier stage instead of a long field course. After the match I broke out the STI 2011 again to test it out some more. Rick made some changes to the ramp angle of the barrel to help promote better feeding. He also swapped the 12lb recoil spring for a 10lb spring. He also noticed that the pining of the grip safety was failing and it was allowing it to rock upwards making the slide bite issue worse. He is going to build up a totally different beavertail so we temporarily taped the grip safety down to keep it from rocking upwards. I tried both 1.160 and 1.200 OAL ammo and they both fed without jamming. The 1.200 OAL ammo still felt a little clunky while feeding so I think that ammo is too long. The 1.160 OAL ammo fed smooth as silk so I think that is the optimal OAL for this gun. I chronoed the 1.160 ammo after changing the powder drop from 5.1gr to 4.8gr of WST to offset for the shorter OAL and was happy to see that the velocity was still at a 950fps average, which is right where it should be. Since the gun was actually functioning jam free I decided to do some shooting drills back to back against my Tanfo to see how the STI performed differently. The first thing that I noticed is that the front sight tracks up and back to an aligned state as it should but the whole gun displaces off of my aiming point pretty dramatically. I experienced the same situation when I did my testing using the M&P Limited gun. The 2011 is about 10oz lighter than my Tanfo so I think the reduced overall mass in the frame/grip is allowing the whole gun to displace off of the target a lot easier when shooting. I tried gripping the gun harder and it reduced the gun displacement but it was still happening and was really inconsistent, especially when transitioning from target to target aggressively. I think that adding more weight to the frame by swapping to a steel grip and possibly a tungsten guide rod will help reduce this gun displacement issue. I will need to order up some more parts to see if adding more weight to the frame makes it any better. Other than that I noticed that I couldn’t call my shots as well because the rear sight notch is only 0.100 deep. My Tanfo has a 0.140 wide x 0.140 deep notch and the shallow notch on the STI was a significant detractor in being able to stay on the front sight while shooting fast. I kept wanting to look at the rear blade instead of the front sight because the shallow notch was really distracting. I am going to get the rear notch cut to a 0.140 depth just like my Tanfo and this should fix that issue. Other than these issues, I was happy with the testing session. The gun is running reliably now and even though more tweaking and tuning is needed, we are at least heading in the right direction. This project is far from completed so a lot more testing is going to be needed before I can deploy this 2011 in a match. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CHA-LEE Posted June 23, 2014 Author Share Posted June 23, 2014 On Sunday I attended a local USPSA match up in the mountains. The weather was threatening to rain in the afternoon, and it did just that. I shot the match really good up to the last two stages when it was heavily over cast and we were getting rained on. I couldn’t see my sights worth a crap due to the darker lighting conditions on dark steel and this lead to a lot of misses on steel for both the classifier and the speed shoot stage next to it. Up until that point, when the sky was clear I was shooting really good points in aggressive stage times. Oh well, sometimes the lighting conditions just don’t go my way. Either way it was a fun match and the stages were challenging. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CHA-LEE Posted June 25, 2014 Author Share Posted June 25, 2014 The 2011 Project continues to churn. Rick welded and blended another beavertail that is a little wider and comes back a little further. This version of the beaver tail seems like its going to do the trick. I did a bunch of aggressive draws to test out where my hand would end up and every time there would be a 2 – 3mm gap between the bottom of the slide and the skin of my hand on the right side. I need to do some more live fire testing with this new beavertail to see if it in fact wide and long enough to keep my hand away from the slide, but this is the most promising setup so far. Rick has a bullet trap in his shop so we did a limited amount of live fire to test out a bunch of different spring and firing pin retainer setups. We started out with a 10lb recoil spring, 24lb hammer spring, and a pretty square firing pin retainer. This setup had a strange muzzle flip / gun displacement feeling when the shot broke, but the front sight returned to an aligned state post shot. We then put in a curved firing pin retainer and a 9lb recoil spring and it had the same muzzle flip / gun displacement feeling but it wasn’t as bad. We then put in a 17lb hammer spring and that greatly reduced the muzzle flip but it would still displace the whole gun a little. The front sight was then dipping low then coming back up post shot. We then put an 8lb recoil spring in with the curved firing pin retainer and 17lb recoil spring and this setup felt really good. The muzzle flip feeling was very similar to my EAA and the front sight was returning right down to an aligned state post shot. But the whole gun was still displacing off of my aiming point a little bit. I think that this spring and firing pin stop setup is tuned properly and now all it needs is some more weight in the frame or grip. I ordered a Tungsten guide rod and will test that out next to see if that added weight helps offset the gun displacement issue. I have also ordered a phoenix trinity stainless steel grip and that will add 9 more ounces of weight. But the Phoenix Trinity grips are currently on back order and I won’t see one for 4 – 6 weeks. I also ordered a fixed rear sight that I will have cut to a 0.140 wide by 0.140 deep notch and that should solve the sight picture processing challenges I am having. Since the 2011 is now functioning reliably, and recoil tuned pretty close to my liking I am thinking about shooting it in a match this coming weekend. The primary road blocks to using it in a match is the rear sight notch being too shallow and the magazines not dropping free during reloads. I don’t want to set the wrong performance expectation during a match by trying to force this new gun to perform at or above the level of my EAA when I know its not in an optimal configuration. I will probably use my EAA for the match but then see if I can shoot the 2011 as a second gun during the match to give it a decent match conditions flogging but not worry about it trashing my match if it has issues. Doing that really depends on how many people show up to the next match or not. If there are not too many shooters then there won’t be enough time to screw around with trying to shoot two guns. We will see how it goes. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cy Soto Posted June 25, 2014 Share Posted June 25, 2014 Come on, don't be a tease... Let's see some photos! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vanniek71 Posted June 25, 2014 Share Posted June 25, 2014 Come on, don't be a tease... Let's see some photos! I tried hinting at that earlier but I like how you put it Cy lol Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CHA-LEE Posted June 25, 2014 Author Share Posted June 25, 2014 I am not posting any pictures of this frankinblaster until its in its final match performing configuration. There is a ton of stuff changing on it regularly as I keep fiddling with it to make it do my bidding. So it does not make sense to post any pictures until I settle on a final configuration. If you come to the PSAC match on Saturday, you may be able to see it in action....... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vanniek71 Posted June 25, 2014 Share Posted June 25, 2014 I am not posting any pictures of this frankinblaster until its in its final match performing configuration. There is a ton of stuff changing on it regularly as I keep fiddling with it to make it do my bidding. So it does not make sense to post any pictures until I settle on a final configuration. If you come to the PSAC match on Saturday, you may be able to see it in action....... I'm going to re nickname you Big "Tease" Panda!!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MarkCO Posted June 25, 2014 Share Posted June 25, 2014 If either of you go, take lots of pictures and put them all over the internet...I won't make PSAC on Saturday. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Glock26Toter Posted June 26, 2014 Share Posted June 26, 2014 I know a place that will do a totally boss camo job when you get ready. HAHA. Rick will LOVE you for it... I swear. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pkm Posted June 26, 2014 Share Posted June 26, 2014 But then how will you find your gun? Is it legal to photograph Pandas in the wild? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CHA-LEE Posted June 26, 2014 Author Share Posted June 26, 2014 Really funny guys...... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
drewbeck Posted June 27, 2014 Share Posted June 27, 2014 (edited) you may want to try tuning the mags in the front to back axis. I have had one mag from the factory that I had to squeeze down a little to make it drop free. Not saying the mags wouldn't work for us mere mortals, but you do have a "solid" grip and making them a touch wider and shorter from front to back may work for you. The mags for "us" with a mediocre grip strength probably slide by on a typical tolerance "front to back" but you may need an extra .05-.10 of an inch of room for the compression of the grip itself. The OAL may also need to be adjusted slightly but it's probably woth testing while you wait for the PT grip. If it's not front to back compression of the grip, it's side to side compression, either way, you probably aren't compressing it in both directions at the same time or it would crack and implode.. You would also probably be having major feed issues because the cartridges would be rubbing all the way up the mag at the head and base. Just thinking out loud, but it's like a balloon, squeeze it and it has to displace or pop. You haven't cracked it yet so the flex is going somewhere. - PS to everyone.., If you've never shaken his hand, "normal" advice on the situation is next to worthless.... He doesn't need to palm a basketball, it deflates at the sight of his hand. " Edited June 27, 2014 by drewbeck Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Create an account or sign in to comment
You need to be a member in order to leave a comment
Create an account
Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!
Register a new accountSign in
Already have an account? Sign in here.
Sign In Now