Overdue Update

Quite a lot has happened in the last month. I finished off loading all my 10mm and 40S&W brass, bought a 1991A1, ordered a gob of brass for me and my friends, rediscovered USPSA and discovered IDPA and airsoft. And all that is just the gun stuff. I make custom pens on a lathe, too, and that has been busy with Christmas coming up.

Reloading components have generally become more available lately. Panic abates. While their prices aren't necessarily the best, I've had pretty good luck with Cabela's having *something* in stock lately and the Fort Worth store is not too far out of my way home. As of my last trip out there, they still limit daily purchases to 2000 primers and 1 container of powder. On the other hand, they had an 8 pound jug of Alliant Green Dot. Green Dot is not technically a "pistol" powder, but a lot of shotgun powders work quite well in pistols and there are a lot of recipes for it. And 8 pounds of any powder will load a lot of cartridges. I didn't happen to buy it.

But between Cabelas and all the usual online suspects, I have enough components to replenish my supply, which in light of my IDPA/USPSA interests, I suspect will be dwindling somewhat.

My brass source is cheap enough that, even with shipping, it's pretty attractive. I ran him completely out of 10mm and coworkers jumped on for 9mm and 45ACP. Now that I have a 45 of my own again, I have my own 45ACP brass order in place.

A good friend reacquired a Colt 1991A1 that he had once owned. Once he had it in hand, he decided to sell it to help finance a different venture and I jumped on it for way less than retail. It didn't take long for me to start getting hopup parts for it, like a drop in barrel with a compensator, a beavertail safety, commander style hammer, nice trigger, etc. The first thing I installed was the barrel and that was pretty cool. Using a 100 ct box of Federal American Eagle ammo, I shot a magazine or two through the stock barrel then the rest of the box through the compensated barrel. The difference is significant, though I'm not likely to confuse it with a 22.

So, I shoot with the comp on Tuesday night, discover IDPA on Wednesday and find the rules say that I can't shoot IDPA with the comp. Well, that's why it's removable and why I didn't do any fitting of the frame itself. Actually, I needed only to fit the barrel link. It shot accurately to point of aim immediately.

Ages ago, I was a passive USPSA member, but never got a chance to shoot and failed to renew the membership. Recently, I either renewed or got a new number. Since I don't know the old number, I presume they gave me a new one.  Anyway, I got that and had been looking for a club, hoping there would be something near home since a lot of that sort of activity tends to be on weekends. Weekday evening stuff would be ok in or near Fort Worth proper, but living nearly an hour north of Fort Worth changes that perspective a little.

I emailed with a couple of contacts with the Cross Timbers Action Shooting Association and showed up to one of the weekly matches. This particular evening, they were doing a low-light match and required a minimum classification to shoot, so I could only observe, but I had a great time anyway! Bunch of very friendly folks. I asked questions and never turned off my brain recorder. I will definitely be there this Thursday night with something to shoot.

On that subject, as mentioned a little earlier, IDPA rules prohibit shooting with a compensator and another pistol I want to use is my Glock 20C. The rules do allow for barrel changes from stock, so I had the option to run with a non-compensated Glock 20 barrel or a conversion barrel to another cartridge. I went with Lone Wolf 40S&W conversion barrel ordered from The Glock Store. Unfortunately, they had to drop ship it, so I while I have received the other items on that order, the barrel itself is not here yet. Hopefully it will arrive today, giving me a chance to check it out before I try to shoot a match with it. If not, I will be shooting the Colt in the match. Honestly, I'm fine with either :)

The other items in my order were an extended slide lock, an extended slide release lever and a 3.5 pound connector. I put all of those in last night. All do what they are supposed to. The longer slide lock makes disassembly easier, the slide release makes it easier to drop the slide after a magazine change and the connector makes the trigger pull substantially lighter and, I think, smoother.

The Glock trigger is a little problematic to measure for pull. You need to depress the trigger safety, but the little hook on the trigger pull gauge doesn't naturally sit in the right place to do that on its own. In any case, I measured the "before" pull at nearly 8 pounds and the "after" pull at about 4.5 pounds. I need nothing so precise as the scale to detect the improvement with my finger.

Also this week, I installed a couple of hop up parts on the Colt and attempted to install a couple others, but was prevented for one reason or another.

It was pretty easy to put in the mainspring housing and removable magazine well funnel. The stock unit is plastic; nothing really wrong with plastic, especially in the role of mainspring housing, but the Ed Brown 818F25 I put in has 25 LPI checkering (can't we just say 1mm?) and the magwell funnel, so there it is.

I expected to find that the beavertail would need some relief on the frame, so it wasn't a surprise to verify that. It will need to be a later project.

It did surprise me to find that the spiffy Wilson hammer I got would not clear the stock grip safety tang. Once the pistol was completely reassembled, there was enough interference between the hammer and the tang that the hammer would not clear the slide. I got to pretty much completely disassemble the pistol again to change the hammer back to stock.

In looking around for the links to include above, I may have discovered my error. Looks like I ordered the drop in safety for the Commander. More research....