Custom laser engraved rear slide plates add pizzazz to you Glock(s)!

I recently had a company in Arizona make up custom laser engraved rear slide plates for a few of my Glocks.  They were $20 each with shipping included, and I think they turned out great.  I like this as a customization because it in no way affects the functional integrity of the pistol, and you're replacing a polymer part with an aluminium part that is at least as strong, if not stronger.  From left to right:  Gen 3 Glock 32,  357 Sig with OD green frame.  Gen 3 Glock 21 .45 auto with OD green frame.  This is the host for my suppressor, so it has very high tritium/fiber optic sights.  Gen 5 glock 17 9mm, and finally Gen 5 Glock 19x in 9mm. 

I just sent them a JPEG of exactly what I wanted, and they made it happen!  If anyone is interested, I'm going to put their card below.  As I said, I'm really happy with the quality of their work, and recommend them without reservation.  

What does a minute of angle (MOA) look like?

For those of us who have ever wondered what a minute of angle group looks like I offer an image of this group. It’s an anomaly because it is precisely one MOA. The overall dimension of the black borders of the square is 1-1/2” inches, and the target was scored using the On Target computer program by Ontargetshooting.com.  The rifle is a Remington 700 in .17 Remington Fireball.

AAC Advanced Armaments Corp. Ti-Rant 45 Suppressor - After a 10 month wait, finally, my can!

I've never owned a suppressor before.  For the longest time, I really didn't want one, I thought they were expensive and pointless.  Last summer (2017) I decided I would finally take the plunge, and I found exactly the model I wanted, used, at a really good price.  So, if you'll pardon the intentional pun, I pulled the trigger and bought it.  The BATF paperwork wasn't as bad as I thought it might be.  It took two full months to transfer the suppressor from a dealer in one state to a dealer in my state.  Then, the BATF took eight months - almost to the day - to get the tax stamp back.

I've had it up to the range twice so far.  Suppressors at my range are so common that no one even gives them a second look.  I did, however, have two other shooters comment on how quiet my Glock 21 .45 auto was with the suppressor.  AAC in their videos claim that the Ti-Rant 45 is a "class leading" suppressor.  It works, it is really, really quiet.  It's also fun to shoot.  It is not, however, fun to clean.  If you're considering your first suppressor and no one's ever told you this, cans get freakin' filthy!  If you can't find some reasonable method of cleaning it, I predict it won't get shot much after the first couple of range trips.

I read the manual that comes with the suppressor on how to clean it.  They mentioned that the baffles are delicate, and they cautioned against using gun cleaning solvents.  I disassembled the can and placed everything carefully into the bottom of my little JEGS 3 gallon parts washer that I use for bicycles and other small mechanical parts.  I then pointed the nozzle down into the pool of  Purple Power de-greaser.  I then turned it on and let the nozzle "agitate" the washer - as in a washing machine - for about an hour.  Then, as I'm taking the parts out, I lightly scrub the especially dirty parts with a plastic brush, then rinse them.  Finally I use my compressor to blow them dry.  I'd say it gets it acceptably clean, but not really as clean as I'd like.  The upside is, your can is being cleaned while you do something else.  Maybe it's just a matter of changing the solvent?  This is clearly going to be an ongoing experiment until I find a reasonably simple way to clean it. 

A Used Anschutz 1907 and the Search for Accuracy

I recently went above my normal gun budget and bought a used Anschutz 1907 .22 target rifle.  These rifles have a reputation for outstanding quality and incredible accuracy.  The fellow in Texas from whom I bought it had apparently competed with it when he was younger.  The rifle had been well maintained, but had the usual sort of dings and mars that you would expect from a young person lugging a rifle to matches.  None of that bothered me a bit, it was love at first sight.

In a lifetime filled with varied firearm ownership, I never had a rifle quite like this one.  The stock alone has more adjustments than I could probably ever make use of.  The sights, too, on this type of rifle are very different from  typical rimfire iron sights.  They're very specialized, with very fine adjustments.  They take advantage of the eye's ability to center things within a circle.  They're specifically sized to use NRA standard (and international) A23 type 50 yard/meter bullseye targets.  I was really skeptical the first time I shot the rifle with these sights.  I am accustomed to centering a reticle or sight blade on the target.  It takes a little getting used to, but once you get the hang of it, the system works well.  One big advantage of this sighting system that's often mentioned is that, as you're shooting a group, you're not destroying your aiming point as you do so.  I can see some merit in that.  Anschutz also markets a 4-12 x 44 scope (made by Hawke) that has a KK50 reticle which works on the same principle.  So, as you can see, this most recent acquisition forced me out of my comfort zone and compelled me to study and learn in uncharted gun territory.

As a long time reloader, I am used to developing accurate loads for each of my individual rifles (and handguns, for that matter).  You can't do that, of course, with a rimfire rifle.  Rather, you have to experiment with various manufacturers' offerings to see what your particular rifle likes best.   I had a few different types of target specific ammo on my shelves, so I made several trips to the range with the sole objective of finding what the rifle shoots best.  March and early April in Maryland is typically very windy, and this spring was no exception.  Being, like most working people, limited to weekends, I had to take what I could get in terms of conditions.  I did receive some consolation from the fact that every day I was able to go to the range, the wind, though strong, was fairly consistent in force and direction.  Thus, all the various ammo brands were laboring under the same adversity.

I happened to have a fair amount of CCI standard velocity on hand.  I have found this to be very accurate in a variety of 22's over the years.  The 5-shot groups the rifle shoots with it are good to very good, but not great.  They seem to mostly fall between one half inch, to just over an inch.  Every four or five groups, I'll get a really good group significantly under a half inch.  The best group I've managed so far with it is 0.393" which is certainly credible, but not spectacular by bench rest standards.  As I said though, I might shoot a sub-half inch group and follow it up with three or four sub-two inch groups!  So, I certainly couldn't rely on this ammo for any sort of consistency in this rifle.

 Next up was CCI Green Tag, which is their more or less top-of-the-line target ammo.  I have a Savage Mark I that will drive tacks with this stuff, so I had really high hopes for it.  For the most part, it patterns this ammo into five shot groups that look like they came from a .410 shotgun.  I was very disappointed with the Green Tag when suddenly the stars aligned just so and it printed a 0.349" group with it.  Try as I might, the best I ever managed again with this ammo was just under an inch.

Digging more deeply into my ammo bag I tried some Federal Auto Match, and some Remington Golden Bullets.  Both of these showed no promise whatsoever, and were quickly abandoned.  I had a little bit of Remington Standard Velocity (blue label), and decided to give it a go.  It patterned more like a 20 gauge, so I gave up on that pretty quickly, too.  Federal Gold Medal Target gave me one good group of 0.457" along with a bunch of poor ones.

Finally I decided that I'd better try some European ammo in this European rifle.  I tried some RWS R50 along with some Lapua Midas Plus.  These are both premium ammunition, and you can imagine my surprise when neither of the two produced anything spectacular.  The R50 groups averaged 0.995" with a range (my measure of relative consistency) of 0.386.  The Midas Plus averaged 0.973" also with a spread of 0.386, so the two were equally consistent.  Maybe I'm asking too much, but I just feel that a rifle of this quality, paired with top-of-the-line ammo should be sub-half inch at 50 yards.  On the same day, as a control, I also fired some groups with CCI Standard Velocity and got an average of 1.199" with a range of 0.692.  At this point, I'm starting to think about how much I paid for this rifle, and how much I might recoup if I sell it.

The very last ammo I had in my bag was Lapua Center X.  This is actually below the Midas Plus in terms of price and, therefore, presumably, quality.  Happily, it shot pretty well.  Not spectacularly, but pretty good.  Good enough that I felt that, under better wind conditions, it would probably shoot acceptably well.  At this same range outing, the Center X shot an average of 0.734" with a range of 0.692.  This may not seem like a big gain, but when you consider that the worst group it shot, 1.098", was better than most of the better groups shot with the other rounds.  The best group was a very nice 0.406"

     
I still want to try out some Eley Tenex with it, but of the rounds I tried, the Lapua Center X is clearly the rifle's preference.  I would hardly call my experimentation definitive.  So many different factors are at work when you're really trying to find the upper limits of a rifle's ability.  Wind, of course, is the most obvious but it's by no means the only one.  As any serious shooter can attest, some days you have the mojo, and other days you just don't.   The only really fair test is over time, with multiple range outings.  And that is my plan, but at least I feel that this early experimentation gave me a good starting point for the rest of the search.     
    

AR Update: A few mods make a great shooter

The shortcomings of the rifle had been sort of nagging me since January.  I knew it needed two things: a two-stage trigger, and a more powerful scope.  I finally decided that I would spend a little more money on this already over-budget rifle.  I like the Bushnell drop zone scope that was on it, so I went with another scope from the same series.  This one however is 4.5-18x, probably about as powerful a scope as you would even dare put on a 5.56 caliber rifle.  They can be purchased pretty reasonably on eBay.  I got one for $169.00 dollars, shipped.  Although the SWFA scope mount that I was using was very good, it is a 30mm mount that has insert bushings to reduce it to 1" if so desired.  I just didn't like the idea of using the bushings, so I ended up putting out another $80 dollars for a Burris P.E.P.R. mount, which is almost identical to the SWFA. 

I then started reading up on two-stage triggers for the AR.  There are a lot of excellent options available.  The trouble is, when you get into the highly recommended ones, they become commensurately pricey.  I'm not cheap, mind you, but I've already got close to fifteen hundred bucks invested in this rifle, and I'm not sure if I want to try to set some price record with it!  At any rate, I found one by Rock River Arms that was a lot more reasonable - under $80 bucks.  I've used various RRA parts on other AR's, and always found their stuff to be very good quality.  So, with another click of the "buy it now" button, my AR had all the upgrades I felt it needed. 

Using a laser bore sight tool this time, I took extra pains to make sure I could get on paper quickly at the range.  Despite my confidence, I started off at 50 yards just to put the odds further in my favor.  My first two shots were on the upper right corner of the target, so I was in business right from the get go.  Moving out to 100 yards, I fine-tuned the zero until I was completely satisfied with it.  Then, I settled in to see what the rifle and I could do together.  It's been a long time since I shot anything with a scope this powerful.  I had forgotten how much movement you can get, even with a bipod, with an 18 power optic.  For whatever reason, I just wasn't in the grove either.  I just couldn't seem to get the breathing, trigger squeeze, and sight picture to all gel together.  For the first twenty rounds or so, I felt like I had entered a trigger jerking contest, and was winning!  Consequently, I consider it to be a pretty lackluster performance on my part.  The rifle, on the other hand, functioned flawlessly and put the hole right where I aimed it with the relatively few shots where I could pull all of my marksmanship elements together.  I was, despite my mediocre shooting, delighted because the rifle demonstrated, in those few shots, its potential.   I had enough X ring shots over the course of 80 rounds to preclude it being a fluke.  The rifle can shoot.  I'm looking forward to getting up to the range when it's not crowded, with nothing pressing on my mind, and really focus on marksmanship fundamentals.  School's out in 4 weeks, and I know where I'll be!      

     

Building an AR-15 from Scratch

I've had a Stag Arms stripped lower receiver sitting in my gun safe for about two years, and I finally decided to build an AR on it.  I have an A3 and an M4, so I wasn't sure how exactly I wanted to build it.  I thought it would be neat to build one that could do some precision shooting, maybe out to 250 - 300 yards or so.  Not a "sniper rifle" exactly, more along the lines of what a squad designated marksman might use.  I started looking on Gunbroker and eBay, and it wasn't very long before a tidal wave of packages began arriving at my house.  I tried to save a little money here and there, but I was determined to only use quality parts.  If the rifle was a patchwork of good parts, than so be it.  I found a stripped Noveske upper receiver at a good price.  I found a really nice 18" spiral fluted heavy barrel on eBay, believe it or not.  I found a like new Bushnell 1-4x scope and an SWFA mount.  I found a good buy on a Hogue floating hand guard -  at less than half of what it would normally go for.  It was like a scavenger hunt for about three weeks.  I admit, the rifle's a mutt.  There's probably at least one component in it from any major AR brand you would care to name.  I kept thinking of that old fast food chicken nugget commercial, "parts is parts."  Also, the Johnny Cash song about the car he put together from stolen parts over a couple of decades kept playing in my head as I assembled this pile of springs, pins, and forgings.  Gee, I hope this thing works. 

My first range outing with the rifle was somewhat disappointing, because I had apparently not bore sighted the scope properly and couldn't even get a hole in the paper.  The good news was that the rifle functioned perfectly - that was indeed welcome news.  After correcting my hasty mistake, I took the rifle back to the range and managed to get it zeroed first at 50, then at 100 yards.  Then I settled down and tried to see what I could do with the rifle.  I was very pleased with the results.  Again, the rifle functioned flawlessly, and it produced some reasonable groups when all aspects of its composition are taken into consideration.  Allow me to elaborate on this.

The first thing I noticed was that the 1-4x scope I had put on the rifle was barely adequate.  At 100 yards with four power dialed in, you can see a big black circle, but not enough detail to do anything except aim for the center of mass.  It's a big improvement over iron sights, but that's about as far as I'd go.  I am absolutely convinced that the rifle could shoot better groups with a more powerful scope.  A 3-9x would probably be about right, but I think it could make good use of a 12x or even an 18x scope.   The rifle is certainly steady enough to use most of that magnification, with its bipod and rear monopod. 

The other aspect that seemed to cry out for improvement was the trigger.  I built the rifle with a stock Stag Arms single stage trigger.  There's nothing wrong with it, mind you.  It's actually a really nice service-rifle type trigger.  It lets off very cleanly, with no discernable creep.  However, after firing a few groups, it occurred to me that a good, national match, two stage trigger would probably make a world of difference in what the rifle could do.  It would afford that small but very important improvement in the ease of release, and would probably tighten those groups up noticeably.

 Fortunately, these two issues are both easily fixed.  At some point in the future I will undoubtedly mount a scope with greater magnification.  I like the Bushnell drop zone AR scope that is on the rifle, and I'll probably replace it with another scope from the same line.  Bushnell offers a 3-9x, but they also have a drop zone scope that is 4.5-18x that is very intriguing.  Do you really need all that magnification?  Maybe not, but you can always back it off.  It would sure be interesting to see what the rifle could do with it, in any case.  Similarly, two stage match triggers are readily available and easily installed.  I'm not familiar with all of the brands that are available, so I'll have to do some research on the internet before I settle on which one I want to put in the rifle. 

While I was cleaning it, I reflected on the two year lapse, and then the furious three week parts acquisition frenzy that culminated in this great rifle.  A year ago I would have probably built it differently.  Two years ago, perhaps differently, still.  Nevertheless, as AR shooters are fond of pointing out, AR's are like Barbie Dolls for men:  if you don't like what it looks like, it's easy to change it.  Despite the shortcomings of the scope and trigger however, I'm very happy with the way my AR turned out.  It functions well, shoots well, and most importantly, it's a lot of fun.                    

Seecamp: King of the Mouse Guns

A couple of years ago, I went on a "guns I've always wanted to have" kick.  One of the guns I acquired during this shameless binge is a Seecamp .32 automatic.  I remember reading about them back in 1985 when they were introduced.  All the gun writers who reviewed them mentioned the obvious quality of the guns, pointing out that they were hand-fitted nearly to the level of a custom gun.  They immediately came to be regarded as the "Cadillac" of the pocket guns, and there was a waiting list of over a year to get one.  I really wanted one.  The idea of a high quality pocket pistol made sense to me.  Anyone who carries concealed regularly will tell you that it aways comes down to a compromise between effectiveness, concealability, and convienience.  There are times and circumstances when a small pocket pistol is the best (or sometimes only) option. 

These excellent guns are basically built around a single cartridge: the Winchester silver tip hollow point.  That's what they're tuned for, and that's what Seecamp recommends you shoot in them.  I couldn't locate an silver tips locally, so I bought a box of UMC 71 grain FMJ rounds and decided to see what would happen.  The first thing that happened (or more correctly, didn't happen) was the inability of the rounds to be loaded into the gun's magazine.  They were too long, and would not fit.  It dawned on me that the silver tips are 60 grain bullets, and I theorized that the 11 grain difference in bullet weight - or more precisely, the accompanying increase in bullet length - was the real culprit behind the ammunition limitation.

 

While I was thinking through all of this, I remembered another odd thing I noticed when I first received the used Seecamp.  A part of the magazine was loose in the box, and the magazine had been assembled without it.  The part is a sort of "L" shaped plate whose long side fits vertically along the spine of the magazine. It's main purpose is to retain the magazine's floorplate.  I recall thinking that was sort of strange, why would someone take that part out of the magazine and leave it out?  In one of those eureka moments, I disassembled the magazine, and reassembled it without the L-shaped plate.  Sure enough, without that part, it is possible to load 71 grain cartridges into the magazine.  I guess the gun's previous owner had figured that out, and just left it that way.  So, the thickness of that particular part was essentially the reason for all 60 grain ammo recommendations.  But would it work without that part?  A trip to the range showed that, yes, while the magazine would function without the part,  without it, there was nothing holding the floorplate in place.  If you're not careful, the floorplate will slip forward and dump the spring and follower - along with all of your cartridges - onto the ground.  A solution?  Sort of, but not a very good one.  Especially so as the Seecamp is a self-defense pistol. 

I should point out here that I'm perfectly happy to load my Seecamp with silver tips and carry it that way.  By this point, the question had become just a "can it be done" sort of thing that shooters sometimes indulge in.  There was nothing really to gain from taking this any further except information, and maybe a little bit of satisfaction.

With that understanding, I did a little experimenting.  I found that my gun will function perfectly with the heavier bullets - no problem.  I went along like this for a while, because the cheaper factory ammo is almost invariably 71 grain.  I just didn't feel like spending nearly a dollar a round to shoot my Seecamp.  So, I took the part out of the magazine before each trip to the range, then put it back in.  

I am a long time reloader, but I never seriously considered reloading .32 ACP because the Seecamp is my only gun in that caliber, and I just don't shoot it enough to justify keeping an inventory of the additional components.   By pure chance, I found a deal on a good set of Hornady dies, and bought them in case I wanted to start loading .32 auto.  I haven't loaded any, but having the dies gave me another idea.  What if you bought the cheaper 71 grain ammo and simply seated the bullets the thickness of the L-shaped plate deeper?  I tried it.  The magic number ended up being about .020" and the rounds loaded easily into the magazine.  They fed, fired, cycled, ejected perfectly.  So I had found two ways to use cheaper ammo in my Seecamp:  take the magazine part out, or seat the bullets more deeply. 

Does seating the bullet deeper increase the pressure of the cartridge?  Sure it does.  Does it increase it dangerously so?  Not even close.  Remember, we're only talking about seating the bullet about two one-hundredths of an inch deeper, and the .32 auto is not really a fire breathing, high-pressure cartridge to begin with.  There was no discernable difference in blast, report, or recoil.  A very careful examination of the primers of the spent casings showed no hint of the flattening or cratering indicative of excessive pressure.  The only thing that seemed to suffer a little bit was accuracy, but my perception of that is purely subjective since I did not include that variable as part of my experimentation.

So what does all of this prove?  Well, not a lot really.  It confirms that the Seecamp pistol was designed around a specific cartridge of a specific bullet weight.  That's hardly a news flash, the Seecamp website explains that very clearly.  Like most shooters and reloaders, I like to tinker and experiment in my hobby.  I guess it just presented me with a challenge, and I wanted to see if I could figure out a way to solve it.