A Case of the Chonys

Or, a case *for* the Chrony...

With some room to spare. I will be adding a battery for self-lighted hoods and my notebooks, of course...

My Second IDPA Match

Back on November 21, I shot in my first IDPA match. Weather, holidays and personal schedule issues colluded to prevent my attendance to any of the intervening matches, but last night, I was there!

I was pretty happy with the first three stages. Then my brain took a vacation on stage 4. Yikes... Completely missed the first target. I had two shots into hard cover. I could have made those up, but I made the (wrong) snap decision to move on. That one cost me 5 seconds for two misses and 5 seconds for a FTN. Then one of the two showing 6 down... one was a 1 down and a miss, 2.5 seconds. The other was two 3 downs, which got me 3 seconds plus another 5 second FTN.

All these were from a simple standing position and with Vickers count rules, I could have shot again to make up every one of these for in FAR less than the 21 or so seconds assessed in penalties just for those issues. The rest of the downs would have been fairly trivial and I could have finished in the middle of the pack instead of almost the bottom.

One member offered the advice that I was trying to go too fast. That makes sense to me and intellectually, I know better. Of course, this all means that I just need to practice more and shoot more matches so these kinds of silly things don't happen.

In the good news side, the Lone Wolf 40S&W conversion barrel in my Glock 20C performed perfectly for 70+ rounds. I had one feed issue at load and make ready (on stage 4, interestingly) but I suspect that was my fault... I probably rode the slide forward a bit instead of cleanly releasing it to chamber that first round.

One issue that I have ordered a cheap part to address is that I had trouble finding the magazine release. Probably because I was in too big of a hurry, but still....

[this just in... there was a tiny arithmetic error in the score sheet on stage 4. All the penalties are still as is, but they add up to only 37.06 seconds. That moved me up one notch in the standings on the final scores, but changes nothing in the analysis. I still need practice practice practice.]

Back Yard Range Day

All the good things converged on the calendar, so Christmas Day afforded me a few hours of the magic combination of daylight, reasonable warmth and free time. I used that to do a little back yard shooting.

Besides just an opportunity to shoot, I had a few specific goals. Set up and learn the details of the chronograph, test the 1911 after the work I've done and test fire the Lone Wolf 40S&W conversion barrel in my Glock 20. Since I was shooting anyway, I also took my 10/22 to tweak the scope.

First, all the good news. The 10/22 was pretty close, but now it's my own fault if I miss.

The 1911 seems to work flawlessly, at least 50 rounds worth.

I have a Chrony Beta Master. The user interface is not particularly friendly, but then it's just a few digits of 7 segment LCD with three buttons for all functions. After using it a bit, I get it, mostly anyway. But a cheatsheet is in order because I had to refer back to the manual several times. I dont want velocity testing to get mired down in chronograph procedure, especially when shooting by the hour at the range.

The sun was heading for the horizon and once it got a kinda low, the chrono had difficulty catching every shot. It is well known that lighting is pretty critical. Afterall, it is trying to see a gumball flying by at 130 miles per hour. I have some lighted diffusers (a new product from Chrony), but yesterday's goal was to just work with the unit a bit.

Which brings me to the bad news...

The Lone Wolf barrel seems to be fine, but I didn't have any factory ammo to try it with. Turns out that my 40 S&W reloads had troubles feeding. Actually, they have trouble going into battery.


Glock pistols, especially early generations, are notoriously hard on 40S&W brass. For the relatively short wide cartridge to feed properly, the ramp on the barrel needs to be longer, which leaves some of the case head unsupported. This makes the brass bulge a little more. Some people are completely opposed to reusing 40 brass at all because of some fairly spectacular case failures. The issue, however, is largely addressed with newer generation barrels and with aftermarket barrels.

I have a Lee Pro1000 press, running with Lee full length resizing dies. Even so, the sizing die doesn't seem to reach all the way down the case.

You can just see the "belt" they sizing die leaves:

However, I have a box of the ill fitting ammo with me today as I write this. I am using the LoneWolf barrel as a go-gauge and I have discovered that the issue look more likely to insufficient crimping.

In fact, in the picture above, you might be able to see a little of the expander bell on the case mouth.

So....  I have an ammo gauge on the way, which should make it easier to catch this kind of issue in the future. I really should have caught it on my own before I loaded up nearly 1800 rounds. My bad...

Also on the way is an undersize sizing die that I probably don't actually need :)

The Lone Wolf barrel manually cycles Remington factory ammo just fine, so I am looking forward to my local action shooting club match. Tonight, we are having our 4th Thursday match, which is usually something fun. Tonight, "... stages will be fast and close. Front sights optional. Bring the pistol you most like to hose 'em with!"

Here's to a jam free evening!

Sculpting The Elephant

"A fool-proof method for sculpting an elephant: first, get a huge block of marble; then you chip away everything that doesn't look like an elephant." - Author Unknown
Ok, so maybe it didn't take that much fitting, but it was a bit involved. The slide release cleared the grips afterall. In my quick fit, I confused the lever's failure to move downward with it's being forced as far down as it would go. There is a tab that needed clearance from the back of the slide. In fact, this tab is what holds the slide release in when the slide is anywhere but at the magic take down notch. The thumb safety took a little more work, though mostly because I wanted to sneak up on the proper relief and not risk over cutting and having to build it up again or discard it. In the safe position, the safety must engage the sear with zero clearance. The sear and hammer engage with 0.020 inches or less. If the thumb safety allows the sear to move at all when it's engaged, it can make the trigger extremely light or worse, make the pistol fire immediately when the safety is disengaged. There are several places online to see an extensive safety testing procedure. Besides very carefully stoning the safety lug, I had to remove a bit of metal so it could swing past the spring plunger housing. I found the machined edges of the lever to be uncomfortably sharp against my thumb. I spent a bit of time melting some of the edges. The thing could use a lot of surface sanding before it gets refinished. In any case, I'm pretty pleased with the functionality of both pieces. Now it just needs a range test and a bath.

More parts

The new extended slide release and thumb safety for the 1911 lanquished untouched in my range bag for a whole week. One evening this week, I sat down to do a quick installation.

Now, I already expected that the quick fit I was doing would only verify that I needed to *actually* fit these parts and in that, I was not disappointed. :)

So far as I can tell, the slide release will only need some relief on the top of the left grip panel, which is fairly typical. I may even have some old grips somewhere that have already been cut away, though my cutting away skills have developed significantly since those old grips were done. I probably wont just hog it away with a bench grinder this time.

The thumb safety will require a little more work. It looks like the spring plunger engagement will need a tiny bit of filing. It looks like it will be a sharp snap and may benefit from a very small amount of rounding off. I don't want it too easy to move, just not too hard.

The lug on the safety is, as typical, oversized. It will require substantial fitting work. At first blush, it will probably only need relief on the back of the lug to clear the opening in the frame. Usually, the rest of the lug is very close to the proper shape and position, but until it's in there and everything else is out of the way, ya just can't tell.

The fit between the sear and the lug on the safety when engaged must be zero. The sear must not move at all with the safety engaged, especially if hammer and sear work has been done to lighten trigger pull.