Blammer - Gun Blog

Testing a new lighting setup to get softer shadows. Here’s a very dry-looking Kimber Custom TLE II, covered with crud from the leather IWB it’s been sitting in.

Where’s all the gun pictures? Here’s one, of my XD-9 in the Tucker Gunleather “The Answer”. I’ve had this gun for two years now, my first handgun. Nice to see some wear on it.

I got some replacement Hogue rubber grips for my used-but-new-to-me SIG-P226 in .40. I replaced the chewed-up screws…it was a range gun that saw a bit of “wrong-sized screwdriver” action. For $450 I’m not complaining…much.

Here’s the original grips. Click to make bigger! See the chewed-up grip screws!

And here’s what the gun looked like bare, in case anyone was curious. There’s some way of telling whether this is a newer or older SIG based on a spring somewhere, but I can’t remember how.

The Hogue grips are a little thicker than the original ones, so the girth of the gun is a little more challenging to handle. However, the rubber surface does make it easier to hold. It’s quite a handful though.

On the right you can see a closeup of what the grips look like.

For comparison, the photo on the left shows the different in finish. It looks pretty similar (of course). The SIG original grips are on the left. They do the job, but feel just a bit slippery to me despite the pebbly surface.

The photo on the right shows the difference in thickness. The original grips are on the bottom. You can see that the rubber is just a bit thicker.

I find when I shoot the SIG with the Hogue grips on it, I have to use the pad of my index finger to shoot in DA mode. Not quite as much leverage than if I could have put the crease of my finger over the trigger, but it’s a used gun that’s seen a few thousands rounds through it; the trigger action has been worn nice and smooth

Grummz recently acquired this never-fired Colt Python. Absolutely beautiful, and challenging to photograph due to its highly-chromed finish. I didn’t have any lights, so we just went outside into the California sun and plopped it on a placemat on top of a cooler, and tried to find an angle where it looks OK. This was the best we could do…I’m not too happy, but next time we’ll set up a better lighting rig.

I was scared to touch the damn thing…what if I scratched it? Yikes.

I told him he should get a “beater Python” so we could go shoot one. Sort of like when you buy a first edition collectable comic book. Buy two: one to read, one to store.

It was Grummz who first got me interested in pistols, particularly the venerable 1911. He’s been buying all kinds of tools and reference materials to pistolsmith the 1911. This is his guinea pig, a Springfield Armory GI-Spec.

I was lazy and bought a nicely-used Kimber TLE II a while ago, so I was a little spoiled by the features that were already included: lowered ejection port, meprolight sights, front checkering, skeletonized trigger and hammer, ambi-safety, full-length guide rod, frontstrap checkering and the extended beavertail. Grummz’s GI1911 had none of that, so it’s ripe for modifyin’.

His GI-Spec hasn’t had its ejection port lowered yet, and on the range it tended to jam every dozen rounds related to failure-to-extract. He did replace the grips with some nice wood ones he had (a good bit of filing was required to get them to sit tight on the frame). The sights are horrible, but he’s got a mill now and will put his own sights in sometime. I don’t think there’s any checkering yet on the gun, but I’ve seen Grummz’s practice checkering so I’m sure he’s got that planned. He already replaced the ambi-safety, but it’s really really stiff…I needed both thumbs to put the damn thing on safe, which sort of defeats the purpose.

I’m looking forward to seeing how this gun progresses through its lifespan. Even now, it is looking pretty cool. I should pick up another 1911 cheap and start messing around with it.

Grummz loves revolvers. I’ve never been that partial to them myself, favoring nifty autoloaders, but I have to admit there’s something satisfying about a big metal gun.

This is his Dan Wesson .41 Magnum. When it shot it was great, but there were lots of misfires, either due to bad primers or to the gun’s “timing”. Grummz explained that timing was the synchronization of movement between the cylinder, trigger, hammer, and lock-up mechanism. As you pull the trigger back:

• the hammer starts to pull back
• the cylinder simultaneously rotates
• at a certain point, a tab of metal taps the side of the cylinder and starts to slide until it walls into one of the locking grooves, at which point the cylinder doesn’t move
• thus locked, the hammer soon afterwards falls forward and ignites the primer

Since there are 6 chambers in the cylinder, the timing for each chamber needs to be checked. On top of that, the alignment of the cylinder’s bore with the barrel should be dead center before the hammer drops. There are enough variations in the metalwork that it can be significantly different, so when buying a used gun you need to check every chamber.

The other thing Grummz told me to look out for is the gap between the cylinder and the barrel. Don’t want it too tight, nor too wide. The Dan Wesson revolvers are particularly cool in this regard, because the barrels are interchangeable. The barrel is held under tension inside the barrel shroud, which makes it a consistent and straight shooter. Seeing Grummz take it apart was particularly cool; he had a tool sort of like a spark plug gapper to determine when it was correct.

Grummz is planning on getting into Cowboy Action Shooting sometime, so he’s started his collection off with this Beretta Stampede. This was the fun gun at the range. I forget what this one is chambered in…I want to say .45 Long Colt, but I’m probably wrong.

What impressed me about this sixgun was the process of loading and firing it. Let me see if I remember this correctly:

• Though it’s a six-shooter, you never keep a live round under the hammer (old revolvers didn’t have the safety features to keep it from going BOOM if you happened to somehow shock the hammer).
• Raise the hammer? Or keep it lowered? I forget
• Start loading by opening the loading gate (the cylinder is fixed, and doesn’t swing out). Load one, skip the next chamber, then load 4 more. Don’t advance cylinder after loading that 5th round.
• Was the hammer raised or lowered? At some point you lower it, and then the hammer rests on top of the empty chamber if you haven’t messed up. Which I’m pretty sure I did…will check later.
• To fire, face the target and yell something appropriate like “No one’s taking my land!” and start doing the single-action dance: thumb the hammer back, aim, trigger, repeat until empty.
• Prepare to reload! Pop open the gate and use the plunger thing to knock the brass out. There’s this cool thing you can do with your hand to rotate the cylinder as you do this. Then, for extra cool points, hold up your left arm (assuming you’re right handed) and roll the cylinder down it to check that all the chambers are empty.
• Repeat

It’s a lot more involved than just jammin’ a new mag into the grip. The gun makes a vast assortment of neat clicking noises…it’s very satisfying. I am looking forward to buying my own set of cowboy guns and giving this a try.

Here’s a bunch of miscellaneous pictures of ammunition. Whee! I just noticed that the bullets in this box have copper-colored bullets, but the other batch had brass-colored bullets. Interesting.

One of those personal defensive pistol articles said, “If you’re going to have a defensive handgun, get some quality hollowpoints and run through a box. If there are no problems with feeding or extraction, keep a mag of them handy.” What I’ve got here is Speer Gold Dot GDHP in 9mm.

It’s suggested that you don’t shoot more than one caliber at the time… too much possibility of accidently loading a .40 into a 9mm, or a 9mm into a .38, and so on, and ruining a perfectly good gun / hand / face. I didn’t find out about this rule of thumb until recently, but I had actually made the choice of choosing relatively extreme calibers that would be easy to tell apart prior. 9mm versus .45ACP is pretty obvious, as is 9mm to .22LR. This sort of rules out .40 from my gun collection at the moment, though. Next I need to choose a nice revolver caliber that stands out from all of these.

That Speer GDHP uses some kind of non-brass cartridge material. Is it steel? Aluminum? I don’t think it’s reloadable, but it reflects light very nicely. Looks like a nice wedding gift for someone, doesn’t it?

A nice bunch of Federal .45ACP. The guys at the gun store said, “If you plan on reloading someday, save some good brass. Federal makes great brass.”

I picked this up as gun #3. I didn’t t need it at all, but I’ve always wanted a 1911-style pistol, and this one I just liked. It’s an older model of the TLE II with some wear marks and scuffs, but it just makes the gun look that much better. The trigger is great, the gun is tight, and as a used gun the price was in the high $500s. Not sure I got gyped, but I like the gun and am glad I got it.

The TLE is one of the cheaper Kimbers you can get, but it feels pretty good. I’m a bit partial to the simpler “three hole” aluminum trigger, as opposed to those funky triangles you see on some of the newer Kimbers. And though I’m not a huge fan of the forward slashes, they don’t look that bad here.

After shooting a few hundred rounds through this gun, I can understand why people recommend just picking one gun and sticking with it. Compared to the striker-fired Glock and XD-9, the 1911 trigger requires a different mindset. The idea of carrying “cocked and locked” and training to sweep the safety with the thumb is something that requires training. If I were serious about carrying, I would have to definitely pick something and stay with it.

The first few times I shot the Kimber, I accidentally touched off a quick double because I was used to more forward trigger movement required to reset. Bad. Now I hold the trigger back until I’m ready to shoot again, which probably helps with followthrough at the same time. I’m still a little intimidated by the 45ACP, but this is still my favorite gun to shoot. I just don’t shoot it particularly well. I am thinking of reloading just so I can shoot this more.

This particular Kimber has the glow-in-the-dark meprolight sights. I don’t find them particularly easy to see in the dim light at the range, though, and they’re a bit difficult to line up vertically. I might replace them with Big Dots. The raked back angle of the rear sight also contributes to shadow issues, making the two dots even harder to see in regular light. The newer TLE II is different in that the sights are raked forward, so I wonder if they’re a bit easier on the eyes.

The full-length guide rod is kind of a pain in the butt, but I’ve gotten the hang of taking it apart. The gun came with one of those Kimber magazines that I hear are terrible, but the replacement mag I got is even worse. I’m pretty sure it was a new 8-round Wilson Combat mag, but I’m not sure …the mag isn’t marked and I already tossed the packaging. The big problem I have with it is that when empty, you can’t push down on the slide release because the top of the magazine flexes and jams. The follower, I think this is called. It’s plastic, which I’m told is used for guns with aluminum frames.

My first handgun purchase was this Springfield Armory Xtreme Duty polymer frame pistol. I’d been reading about it on the HS2000 forums and in several mainstream gun magazines. This being my first handgun, I wanted to get something that was robust, modern, and interesting. Also, I wanted something that would be cheap to shoot in a reasonable caliber.

I was pretty much set on getting an HK USP in 9mm, because I liked the way it shot at the range and the operating controls. However, the day I went to Riley’s to get one, they were out, and weren’t expecting any for a couple of weeks.

When I picked up the XD9, I liked the way it felt. I also liked that it had the Glock-like action, but with a passive grip-safety that didn’t seem to impact the trigger pull in a way I could detect (but what do I know?). As I was thinking of getting 1911-style pistols after I had learned to shoot better, it didn’t seem like a bad idea to get used to it.

The XD also has two features that, as a newbie shooter, I found reassuring: the “chamber loaded” and “firing pin cocked” indicators. You can check ‘em by sight or by feel. The XD slide is also milled to take SIG-style sights, uses Beretta mags, and was very reasonably priced.

Why didn’t I just get a SIG or a Glock? I figure I’ll get them eventually to fill out the collection. I didn’t like the SIGs at the range, and everyone has a Glock. The XD9 was also a good intro gun, and I figured I can use it to introduce other friends to shooting.