Blammer - Gun Blog

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.

Saw this post on casting your own silver bullets. Harder than you’d think:

[…] At 1,764°F, molten silver would ruin traditional and modern bullet molds. They could have been fashioned using jewelers’ methods, but that would require a new plaster mold for every bullet. Frankly, I think people spent a lot more time talking about silver bullets than they did turning them out. I don’t like legends that are all talk, so I decided to see what it takes to produce a real silver bullet: not plated, not sterling—pure silver.

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.

I stumbled upon this link for the weapons for a mod called NATO 3, for a variant of the PC game Rainbow Six. Though it’s for a computer game, their section on primary and secondary weapons is actually very informative with regards to the historical developmental context of these arms. The tactics portion of the descriptions, though, probably should be kept within the context of the game…I have no idea how accurate they are.

There was a Gun Show in Concord, New Hampshire this weekend, so I went Sunday morning to check it out. Haven’t been to one since a friend of mine brought me to one in upstate New York years ago.

Didn’t see anything particularly interesting. I did find another magazine for my Beretta 92SB Compact Type M, a single-stack 8 rounder that’s a bit difficult to find. It was about the same as I’d have paid online + shipping, but I got to bring it home today.

I also picked up a couple new Chip McCormick 8-round blued 1911 magazines and some extra Fobus holsters and mag carriers for the other guns. I’ve been wanting to shoot the Kimber TLE, but lacked anything to carry it in.

I was tempted to pick up one of those huge extended Glock mags for the novelty value, but didn’t.

I was hoping to see an HK P7-M13 or Rohrbaugh R9 somewhere, but no such luck. A lot of AR-15s, and lots of Walther G22 22s. There was a Mossberg Mariner shotgun and also a Mossberg 590 12gauge that caught my eye. I saw another Ruger PC4, and some kind of 9mm AR carbine that looked like an AR-7…not sure. It looked like a toy, but was kind of interesting. Maybe the most exotic thing that caught my eye was an HK VP-70.

That was about it…took about an hour to meander through the entire show. It occured to me that I need to learn more about rifles. There’s lots of interesting looking guns out there.

I thought I wanted the Kahr P9, but I mixed it up with the Rohrbaugh R9. I saw it in the September/October issue of American Handgunner. Seems like a nifty little gun in 9mm, 6+1 capacity, small enough for pocket carry.

The image shows the R9 with some kind of laser pocket thingy that’s in the Rohrbaugh store. “Prints like a wallet”.

On the downside, it’s almost $900.

My $8.95 Pachmayr Slip-On Grip arrived from pistol-gear.com, very quickly I might add. It’s a rubber sleeve you can tug onto the handle of your pistol. This particular one is a ‘universal sleeve’, fitting Berettas, Brownings, CZs, larger Glocks, Rugers, and SIGs among others. So it’s not exactly cut ideally for the Springfield XD-9.

After about 30 minutes of grunting and swearing, I got the thing on. It’s a durable rubber that seems to take to this pretty well…reminds me a bit of some kind of tire rubber (smells like it too). It would have been cool if it was trimmed exactly to fit the gun, but alas that was not meant to be. You can see how the back of the sleeve just kisses the grip safety of the XD. The material actually is a little loose if you pull it that high, because of the way the handle curves in, so it doesn’t end up really causing an operational problem. You might be able to tell this from the picture on the right.

I haven’t tried this at the range, but the gun does feel more graspable and hopefully more controllable. I was noticing that the gun was moving around more than it should have. Given the pain it was to tug on, I think it will stay put under stress, but we’ll see.

There are some nice things about this sleeve:

• It’s just a bit tacky to the touch, so grip feels pretty firm. It gives very slightly to pressure.
• The top of the sleeve is gently molded to form a smooth transition to the gun. I think this probably helps with comfort, so I’m hesistant to make any additional cuts to size it.
• The bottom is just cut straight.
• The thickness of the sleeve is about the same as an American quarter, so it does add some discernable width to the gun.

I actually like the way it feels despite the additional girth. Which makes me wonder if maybe one of those Para-Ordinance double-stack .45s is in my future. After paying my taxes today, I figure that will be the distant future.

UPDATE 05/25/05

There is some slight movement, I’ve noticed, after maybe a hundred or so practice draw-fire drills. Not a lot, but a noticeable drop for that front finger groove relative to the bottom of the trigger guard. Maybe a millimeter.

I can’t quite bring the groove high enough without starting to cover the back of the XD’s grip safety, however that part of the grip curves in more extremely than the shape of the sleeve, so it doesn’t squeeze it.

I’m thinking of trying that AGrip stuff that WDE mentioned next.