It’s hard for me to believe that my last post was nearly 5 months ago!

Then again, it’s been a tough 5 months. We had flooding level rains on at least two occasions in the spring, work had me travelling to California a few times and this last month has been the worst, emptying out our old house so we can sell it. Man, I wish we had done that when it was cooler.

Sale closes tomorrow, now all we have to do is dispatch all that stuff we moved. We sorted a lot of it for trash/charity/keep status before we moved it or we would really be crammed in. We have a 45 foot shipping container that is approaching full, the barn and workshop are packed, the little metal shed that is intended for lawn mowers and such is full and my wife’s car has been parked outside of the garage for weeks.

One interesting thing that I rediscovered is a set of RCBS 10mm/40 dies that I *knew* I had, just not sure where they were! 🙂

So, it’s looking possible that I might be able to actually attend my first IDPA match since late April. Since I’ll be kinda raw anyway, I’m thinking of going ahead and shooting the G17. The previous owner put some nice sights on it, so I’ll be right at home with them…

Speaking of 9mm, Xtreme Bullets is now carrying cleaned and primed brass for about the price of brass plus primers. Since I have a 9mm pistol now, I went ahead and ordered 1000 rounds of 9mm primed brass and four weights of 9mm plated bullets for experimenting with. I’m guessing that the heavier bullets are going to be the nicest to shoot; generally speaking, a heavy bullet loaded to a low velocity will be easier on the body and still make minimum power factor.

I also got a little more than 1000 rounds of new Starline brass in 40 S&W. I have never loaded with new brass. At least, I don’t remember every loading with new brass. It’s not like I was low on 40 S&W brass, but…

It’s not my fault, really. The seller made it too easy….

I finally swapped out the Burris red dot sight on my G20 non-compensated slide for a set of TruGlo fiber optic sights. I got a compact sight pusher tool from RST. It’s a simple & clever “I could have made that” design but I didn’t have to.

The pusher consists of two steel plates, both with holes and one with nuts welded in front of them. There are two long thumbscrews for clamping the slide between the plates and a shorter one with an interchangeable tip that does the actually pushing work.

Clamping the pusher to the slide is pretty trivial, beyond aligning the pusher screw to hit the sight but not the slide.

The base plate of the Burris sight is only slightly narrower than the slide, so all this pusher could do was pop it loose and start it moving. I put the slide in a vise and tapped the sight the rest of the way out with a handy deadblow hammer, which was bigger than needed. I have no doubt that I could have completed the removal without the vise if required.

Installing the new sight was pretty much exactly the reverse of removing the old. I had to tap the new sight far enough into the dovetail for the RST pusher plate to be able to clamp to the slide, then the pusher very easily and precisely moved it into place.

That pic was deceptively hard to get. The focus depth of field on my smartphone is narrow enough that I had to hold it almost at the limit of my reach for front and rear sight to both be in focus. Since I needed to crop most of the pic, I had to turn the resolution up to max. Pretty happy with it, actually.

The one complaint about the RST was something I might have been able to avoid, but the soft brass pusher tip left brassy colored scuff dots on the black finish on both sights. This is mostly removable, but particularly on the Burris plate, cleaning the brass dot off left a slightly polished finish. I think that is because the Burris plate has a paint/powdercoat finish and the TruGlo is some sort of chemical finish like anodizing.

The tool comes with a spare brass point and a steel point. The steel point may have actually been better for not leaving these marks. If I need to adjust the TruGlo sight, I will test the steel point for that.

Though it is a fairly common “mod”, I had not taken the time to paint fill the imprinted lettering on my magazines and the slide of the pistol.

Pretty happy with the added contrast. It doesn’t help it shoot any better, but it was a nice project that I could do in a couple of hours with a bonus of spending time with my Love in the craftroom.

As an aside, I noticed while doing this work that the screw holding the front sight is loose. It will be an easy enough fix, removing the screw and sight, cleaning with acetone and reassembling with Locktite.

There are many descriptions on the web as to the lettering procedure. In my case, I first cleaned the slide and magazines with acetone. Next, I used plain ol’ Testors model white enamel and a size 0 detail round brush. Technically, I was globbing it on to fill all the lines, but I tried to keep the glob in the lines and the part outside the lines as thin as reasonably possible. I filled all the lettering except for #10, which I went back and did in red. I wish I’d had a brighter red, maybe a fluorescent red or orange, even green. The point is that #10 is also filled but in another color. In IDPA shooting, magazines in my divisions are typically loaded to 10 rounds and since I am corrected to slightly farsighted with my contact lenses, it is hard to make out even the higher contrast lettering to read the actual number. Making the 10 another color makes it easier to check the magazine capacity.

Once all the paint was well dried came the somewhat tedious bit. I used the Testors thinner on bits of paper towel. It took a couple of magazines to refine the technique, but what seemed to work well was to put a drop of thinner on a small piece of paper towel and quickly rub it over a small area of lettering, checking between each stroke. When only the desired coloring is left, buff the area with a dry paper towel. This was the fastest way and required the least retouching cleanup. The thinner needs to be really light on the towel. Too much on the towel and it wets the paint too much and too much is removed from the lettering. I did all the white then came back to the red with fresh towels to keep the white from becoming kind of pink.

I pretty pleased with how they turned out.

In a previous post, I noted that I had a magazine that did not easily drop clear at reload time. Since I had numbered the magazines, I knew which one it was. While I was preparing the magazines, I had them all in one place and wanted to compare this troublemaker with it’s stablemates. I found a couple of differences that I am sure are documented online somewhere else, but here goes….

Since the empty magazine wasn’t dropping well when released, I first wanted to compare the latching notch. It turns out that there was a pretty big difference immediately visible. The magazine on the right is the one that doesn’t drop well.

In further digging, I noticed a difference in the followers as well. The one marked with a 2 is the one that doesn’t drop well. Due to the shadow, it’s hare to see, but the top magazine follower has a simple ’10’ on it while the bottom one has ’10 mm’ completely obscured by the shadow.

Referring back to the pic above of all the magazines, note that the two on the left are slightly different in the placement of the Glock logo. Yes, I have two magazines of this different model. In the original numbering order, these were magazines 0 and 2. The first was easy to remove from the magazine order. I did all other shooting with magazines 1, 2 and 3. However, I have so rarely had to drop mag #2 on the clock that I haven’t noticed if it also had trouble dropping clear.

Partly to address this issue and partly because I just have them, I decided to install the six magazine extension floor plates that I got in the box of goodies that included, among other things, most of these magazines. The previous owner found that, with all other equipment on his pistol, these extension floor plates in stock condition made the overall weight of the pistol perilously close to overweight for IDPA. He drilled out some material from the inside of the plates to reduce the weight. I hope my combination of parts fits under the wire because the added weight to the magazine makes all six thus equipped drop out of the pistol nicely. I have put them on both of the ‘odd’ magazines for the acid test.

The pistol is a close but passing fit in the IDPA box with the extensions.

Well, I didn’t get to attend the SO class. I will try harder to make the next one!

A few of my coworkers and I have begun a lunchtime range trip. Three Thursdays in a row have had us going to three different local ranges. For the last two, I have also attended IDPA matches that evening and I think it has helped. Last night’s match was particularly gratifying. I like all those 0’s and 1’s. In fact, there was a single 3 and all other targets were 0’s and 1’s. Oh, and one procedural for taking a step when I was supposed to be flat footed for those targets. I didn’t even know I did it. 🙂

At yesterday’s shooty lunch, I was was shooting hot ammo. Power Pistol handloaded 40’s and some bulk 10mm I bought some time ago that are pretty peppery. I need to chrono those someday. Then for the match, I was back to my usual semi-mild 155/165 grain TiteGroup loads. While I didn’t specifically train with big ammo and shoot with lighter, that’s how it worked out. It was quite a confidence booster.

At the match, I had one magazine that didn’t drop free very well. Because I only yesterday numbered my magazines with some skate tape stickers from Dawson Precision and I kept track of which ones I was using last night, I know which one it was. I will see what I can figure out, but I suspect it will be a slight burr on the notch where the magazine engages the release.

Having loaded up a good inventory of IDPA ammo, I took time to inventory my reloading components and find that I am in pretty decent shape there. Since I am consuming more 40S&W than anything else, it makes sense to have some extra for components needed for 40. I was gifted with a big heavy bag of 40S&W brass. I haven’t weighed it, but I imagine its in the 10 pound range, which puts it at about 1000 rounds. Add that to the stock I already had and I should be able to practice enough to help. 🙂

Speaking of practice and chronographing… Begining at about 2:40 into this Jerry Miculek video about a cool shotgun speedloader (interesting in its own right), I noticed a piece of equipment in the background. It seems obvious to me *now* but it had simply not occurred to me that a bullet trap could be sized to be mounted on a trailer. In my mind, a bullet trap small enough to be portable was just a safe area tool and all others were part of a permanent structure, typically an indoor shooting range. Now I want one.

I see a small unit with a 24″ square opening as adequate to my most common need, a safe place to chrono handloads and otherwise test firearms. Other than a lotto win purchase, I think I’ll have to just keep my eyes open for something for sale or make one.

I haven’t updated the ol’ blog in a while, but I have still been shooting!

The intervening time included one major match, a bunch of local matches and a couple of months fighting off a return of my childhood nemesis, asthma.

Asthmatically speaking, it’s now well controlled. I’m essentially symptom free once we found the right combination of treatments, which turned out to be Singulair, Breo Ellipta, albuterol and occasional Allegra for good measure. Once I was able to get it under control with medication, I have been able to wean completely off the medication once more.

I haven’t stopped tracking all my matches, but I have stopped deeply analyzing bad stages. A tip from With Winning In Mind is to make note of bad stages and their general causes, but to not exhaustively analyze them as I have been. That actually reinforces bad behaviors by dedicating a lot of mind-space to them.

As I have begun looking at stages that way, I have also realized that, while the actual details may vary, the root cause of…. I’m going to go out on a limb and say probably all…. of my bad stages is….  prepare yourself for this nugget of wisdom…. not doing everything right.

What looks like a quote from Captain Obvious is more subtle than it seems. Obviously, I didn’t do everything right or I would not have scored badly on the stage in question. But the subtle bit is that rather than agonize over what I did *wrong*, I need to add to what I did right.

I have cranked out a lot of ammo lately, about 2000 rounds of 40 S&W, split between 155 and 165 grain bullets. 155/165 grain bullets on 4.5 grains of TiteGroup has become my routine ammo. It makes about 140 power factor from the Glock, so it should make better than 125 even in the Kahr.

My press issues have all been addressed, as have the quality assurance issues. I have not had a single ammo issue since before June of 2014. I like having a sizable inventory because I can just go shoot without being overly concerned with whether I have suitable ammo.

I *have* had troubles with misfeeds that seem clearly to be caused by a limp wrist when shooting weak hand. At least two matches in the last couple of months featured a course of fire requiring shots fired weak hand only and on both occasions, I had ammo feed problems with the weak hand only element and full reliability with all other shooting. Reliability, not necessarily decent scoring 🙂

This weekend, I am taking the IDPA SO course. I’ve been with IDPA for over a year, shooting almost every week, so no excuses not to take on a little more responsibility.

A local club member sold his Glock 21 some time back, but he still had quite a few accessories for it. Long story short, we cut a deal…

Since the Glock 20 and Glock 21 use the same polymer frame, the top ends and magazines are interchangeable. Consequently, one can have a 45 or a 10mm just by changing out the top end and magazines. By extension, they could also shoot whatever conversion barrels are available for either upper.

My friend had a stock Glock 20 slide and barrel with a nice Burris Fast Fire III sight installed, and a Lone Wolf stainless steel long slide 45 Auto with a compensator and ghost ring sights. There were also five 10mm magazines, aluminum magazine baseplates, two holsters and two mag pouches.

I have used enough of these CCI shotshells lately that I needed to get some more.

I checked Cabela’s and Academy, no luck. The last ones I got from MidwayUSA online, but they were out of stock, too.

Found a place, Alamo Ammo, in San Antonio. They had them in stock and they are in the state, next best thing to buying local. I ordered two boxes in 40S&W and for the sake of completeness, two in 45 Auto.

In the order process, I discovered that, without some paperwork hoop-jumping, they will only ship to the same address as the billing address of the credit card used. Mildly inconvenient, as this usually results in an extra day as a delivery attempt is made at home, a door tag left, signed and delivery made the next day.

The FedEx guy calls me Thursday night, during the match. I call him back when I’m free and in short, discover that the shipper requires an adult signature and he has to witness the signature. We discuss that it’s unlikely that I can be home at any time in his delivery schedule without taking time off work, so he suggests I request that it be held at the depot in Fort Worth so I can pick it up in person there.

I do that, arranged via the tracking website and found that it can be held for pickup not only at some depot but at other FedEx facilities. I have it sent to the nearby FedEx Office store on Camp Bowie.

After work yesterday, I go down there and after great effort on the part of the girl at the counter, the difficulty comes clear. The original driver needed an adult signature because the package is marked ORM-D. They can’t accept ORM-D shipments at a FedEx Office store, so it was probably refused and went back to that driver’s depot. The ugly bit is that the computer said only that it was held at a FedEx Worldship facility, but not which FedEx Worldship facility.

It was decided that customer service had likely sent her call to a facility that probably closed at 5PM, so for the best results, I should call during regular business hours. I just did that. I have an address and it closes at 5. Hopefully, I can sneak out a bit early and get it today, for tomorrow is the last day before it gets returned to the original shipper.

So….

If I plan to order anything else from Alamo Ammo, maybe I need to fill out that paperwork so they can ship to where I am during the day.

Forgive me, internet. It has been 21 days since my last post….

Actually, things have been a little bit pokey on the shooting front since State.

During this time, I have attended only one match, but I scored pretty well. I really only had one stage that gave me any grief, a stage where all shots were weak hand only. It was a 6 round stage that took 11 rounds to score 8 down. All other shots on all stages were 0’s and 1’s, which is starting to be the case more and more often.

I have loaded a lot of ammo and the spring mod on my press has worked perfectly through about 500 rounds with no signs of failing.

Powder is beginning to stay on store shelves for more than the length of a Two Stupid Dogs cartoon. Selection is still not impressive, but it’s way better than none.

Only peripherally related, I have dispatched a few particularly aggressive snakes. I really try to chase them off first. A rock tossed directly at them or bit of fishing rod whipping is usually enough to make them flee, but if they keep coming back directly at us without keeping a respectful distance, like sands though their hourglass, their days run out. Abruptly. CCI shot shells in my Kahr CW40 work really well. More shot and more power behind it than the 22LR shot loads and a non-heirloom pistol that is easier to carry to the lake. It’s a bit loud, though.

The thing that has consumed most of my free time for the last couple of weeks is not shooting related at all. ARRL Field Day is an annual amateur radio contest that I enjoy participating in. The object is essentially to practice extended emergency operations, to make as many contacts in a 24 hour period as possible, but with your station operating in varying degrees of emergency configuration. There are various classes of station ranging from large but completely portable and self-sufficient operations set up no more than 3 hours before the contest begins to folks just operating from their regular setup in their den, with many scoring weights and multipliers in between.

In 2012, I set up a nice permanent vertical antenna and had some friends out. We set up a second temporary antenna and operated a 2E station, two transmitters in a permanent station location, but with power provided by emergency means, in this case a generator. In 2013, I had a scheduling conflict and could not participate.

Then last winter, in an escaped horse recovery incident, I ran over my antenna with my truck. I mowed that thing down. The damage was actually fairly minor, considering. I got two replacement parts and over the last couple of weeks, I have erected the antenna once more!

One bit of the design of the Lee Pro1000 press that is both clever and a little cheap is the use of a length of ball chain to return the powder measure at the bottom of each stroke. The ball chain works very well in this role., but it is not particularly durable. Mine has broken enough times that it is now too short to use.

Some time ago, I predicted that the chain would eventually be too short and purchased some hardware to replace it with a length of 1/16″ steel cable. Due to one of my other hobbies, I generally have a supply such cable laying around.

Last night, the chain broke and, as expected, it was too short to use again. Unexpectedly, however, I could not locate my stash of cable. I was able to work around it to good effect, though it was by using the ball chain again.

The Lee design uses a compression spring to give the return mechanism a positive return, yet some mechanical compliance. Personally, I think this spring is too strong and leads to the failure of the chain. I have contemplated replacing it with a lighter spring, but I think the use of an extension spring instead might prove better still.

My workaround was to mix the leftover ball chain with a new extension spring. The length of the assembly just extends the spring, but it appeared to always retract the powder measure as needed.

It still works basically the same way, but the new spring should put substantially less load on the chain. The spring is rated at just under one pound working load.

I loaded 100 rounds this morning without incident. At least without a powder measuring incident. 🙂