The Song of my People

 "Which do you prefer, T-Bolt:  A day at the range where every thing works out, or a day at the gunsmithing bench where everything works out?"

You know, that is a hard one.  You can HAVE more days at the range, because how often do you need to rebuild your pistol?  And fixing something that broke, well, that means the range day before was less than stellar, so you have that bad taste in your mouth.

A really good day at the bench is awesome!  But few and far between.  

I miss them both, and hope to one day get my stamina and feeling back to at least dabble at it.

Oh dear...

Because I can take a pile of metal parts that don't fit together, apply file and stone and even dremel to said parts, end up with part that DO then fit together and make a darn reliable military grade firearm...  All in the comfort of my living room.

Am I now a terrist?

And there a plenty of you that can get a pile of parts mailed to you, acquire a single other part elsewhere, then with a video or $14 picture book instruction put those parts together because they are supposed to all fit together as they come from the warehouse... And then end up with a perfectly functioning AR.

Are you a potential terrist?  If you just read the picture book and internalized the lessons are you a terrist?

If you can detail strip a firearm and put it back together, is that enough gunsmith skill to make you a terrist?

So many questions.  

Since 1934, was the ATF ever more than a dangerous joke?

RUN RUN RUN RUN RUN

 Sometime I want to get into machining.  Maybe make a clock.  Maybe use a foundry to pour the brass or aluminum or whatnot.  If I had a really good foundry...  Steel 1911 parts!

Maybe not.

  

You know what else makes me feel shame

Installing the mag release button before replacing the trigger/trigger-bow. 

And ALL 1911 gunsmiths have done that.  More than once.  Guaranteed.  They often don't care to admit it... 

Engraving Ol' Slabsides

 The 1911 has a lot of flat metal.  Engraving purty designs on guns predates 1911 by centuries.  But gunsmiths and gunnies are a conservative lot, so they commonly stick to the classic designs when engraving their pistols.  Which predates 1911 by millennia.  Scrolls and S's and C's.

If I made my living as a gunsmith I'd have eschewed the engraving side.  It requires more patience and a sharper artist's eye I than I possess

I've been enamored with Art Deco.   More and more lately.  It's spare and more muted and geometrical.  

Then the lightbulb went off and I put two and two together.  The style and pistol are contemporary. The designs can be very complex but don't have to be to still pull off a good look.  

I have seen Deco 1911s, but they aren't super common. 

In my fever-dream fantasy alternate universe where I make custom 1911s for a living I'd definitely try to remedy that.  

Well, Crap

 Now I posted a second one yesterday instead of today.  And I am still wanting for content.

Uhhh, a buddy has a MAB Model D, which is similar to the FN 1910.  It fired one and now don't fire no more.  Broken spring?  Reassembled wrong?  Who knows!

Do I know an active competent gunsmith with his own bidness and business insurance?  No I do not.  Am I wary of doing gunsmithing FOR him?  Yes I am.  If the gun blows up in his hand after I touched it, then, well, I am in the stew.  

Solution?  Risk Covid, and have him do all the wrench turning while I observe.  A broken spring is obvious and replaceable.  A flaw in the field stripping technique could also be caught just watching.  Plus, I know my limitations.  "Yeah, that's next level stuff.  Let's look harder for a gunsmith.  Not like anyone specializes in these.  I don't have to take you to a top end 1911 custom builder for this, but, it's beyond us at this point."

Gun, Golden

 I had never seen The Man with the Golden Gun other than in bits and pieces over my life.  Never sat down to watch it beginning to end.  I had seen the opening, the funny spinny car jump in an AMC, but not the whole kit and kaboodle.

I noticed right off, this viewing, the belly dancer dressing room scene (Pinewood Studios?) where the dressing table mirror got bumped.  And I could see the film crew.  So that was kinda fun.

I was very jealous of the Portuguese in Macao and his gunsmith workshop.  Very nicely set up.  You gotta watch the whole scene to drink it all in.  This sample is inadequate.

On the whole, production values felt kinda low.  The 50 years since this movie...  A person with an iPhone can shoot a better one, it seems, the tech has improved that much.  HiDef from a film from this era feels like bad videotaped news productions.    

A bit distracted

 But hey, I got that MRI referral to arrange for now.  

Hard to blog.  Distracted by the burning, charlie horse, sensation in my legs.  Distracting.  I wish I could get a nights sleep.  So tired.  Hooray, whinging.  That always draws in the readers.  

---

Buddy told me a story of woe with his FN pistol he got a year ago.  Stove pipes a lot.  When I hear about that malfunction my first thought goes to extract tension or some other extractor issue.  I mean, it could be a lotta things, but that is the first, sorta-most-common, thing I check.

I know how to adjust the tension on a 1911.  I don't even know how to disassemble the newer types extractor hooks on more modern designs.  How to adjust that once disassembled?  Cut a bit of the spring off?  A loop or two?  I'd have to do more research on that.  A burr on the hook is another thing to look for.  On new guns especially.  When you are told to shoot a gun a lot to work it into reliability, and it does get more reliable, I kinda think this might be one of the things that is happening.  You are wearing off the burrs on the machined bits. Something a good manufacturer should have already done. But even good makers might miss a spot.     

---

Hooray!  Got an imaging appt Monday.

World's Collide

When my firearm interests coincide with my watching-machinist interests.

Here is Stefan Gotteswinter, German machinist extraordinaire, working a mini 1911 magazine spring.



"T-Bolt, why do you only watch machinist youtube videos instead of, you know, learning machining?"

Are you crazy?  I have enough scary expensive hobbies.  Watching the videos, I get my fix, and I can handle it.

Advertisement

Automotive supplies?  Why that looks like...

Oh, I'm not falling for THAT one, ATF!

Spares Box

This reminds me.

I should get some more spare recoil springs.   And with every spare recoil spring change, change the firing pin spring on your 1911.  I only have a couple spares.

What's that?  When do you need to change them?   What round count?  Well, it's not so much round count as it is when you need em.   And you don't know your round count, really, unless you record your range sessions.

A gov't can go 6000 round tho.  An officer?  Some say 500.

Break In

I could be convinced otherwise

But, for me, a firearm 'break-in period' where you shoot it a bunch to round over any sharp corners and condition it or 'shoot it loose' is bushwa.  If a gun left the factory 'too tight' and they expect YOU to make it a functioning piece through use?  That's not right.

That said, pobodys nerfect.  Sometime a gun fails, when new, and that does not necessarily mean it is a lemon.  It might need a adjustment that the factory failed to make.  The gun assembler isn't as expert as they used to be.

Example:  My Hudson.  Glad I didn't send it back.  All it needed was an adjustment to the extractor and it runs fine now, and I was lucky enough to have the expertise to toubleshoot that myself.  If you mailed yours back and the company went bankrupt?  Well, sucks to be you.

What a 'break in period' does do, for me, is determine a baseline reliability of your new firearm.  I have learned, through my gunsmith training, it is a good idea to see if your new gun can do 250 rounds of the ammo you intend to shoot through it without failure.

If it fails on round 240 for your Federal HST, well, make you adjustment, and start this expensive test over.  If you buy a custom gun you should expect this sort of test to be done for you before they slap on a $5000 price tag.

If you believed you had to do the break in period to loosen up you custom gun, well, YOU are doing the build testing, not the reliability testing.  A gunsmith worth anything (or lucky) should aim to make a gun that WORKS when it leaves the assembly bench and heads to the range. 

(I was the lucky kind, I must admit.  Twice.)

Now let me read that Shooting Illustrated article past the headline....

Yup, condition your new pistol is a scam and a cover for non-existent QC.


And since you can count on a LOT of $600 or less guns to work through 250 rounds flawlessly right out of the box, you'd think the $6000 one would work AND be pretty.

That High School Shooting in Cali?

They are claiming the kid got an 80% lower and made the 1911 himself.

There were reports it jammed once during his spree.

Having made a couple 1911, I am impressed he was able to do that on his own, as a teenager, and get a pistol out of it that only jammed once with one magazine.  It is non-trivial to accomplish even that level of 'success.'

To maximize his chances of getting something that works even that much (presuming the kid built it and not his dead father 3 years ago) he must have eschewed oversized parts that require lots of fiddling and fitting.  And lubricate the crap out of it.  But it's hard to pick up for book and instructional videos the, say, proper tension of an extractor, and to know to avoid significant pitfalls in the build process with only 16 years of life under your belt.  If he was lucky with his parts pile he'd have a rattly 1911 that would work.

"But T-Bolt, facotry workers in 40s threw these together by the millions with minimal futzing!"

Yes, they did, but there was a guy around that trained the final assemblers and helped the final assemblers when they ran into problems.  A secretive murderous 16 year old has nothing to fall back on besides the internet, and the internet is fat least three quarters BS.  If the kid made the pistol he had to have been kinda clever at least.  It can be easy, but not THAT easy.

Kid's still an asshole, tho.  And what a gawd-awful waste.  If you insist, and were gonna off yourself, what is wrong with chugging a bottle of Lye, huh, punk?

(All this presumes the media and California aren't just lying to us about it all.  And they probably are.)

No Springs

It's hard to make your own brass cases at home.  Primers too.  Good bottlenecks for a tyrant to disarm a populace is to go after these.

Another hard thing to make at home is spring.  Well, GOOD springs.  You can make springs pretty easy.



A spring will make or break magazine functionality. 

If you are making a Home Depot Plumbing Department Sten gun at home, you need that one critical big spring.  Looks like an AR buffer spring a little.  Lots of those around.  I wonder if it would work for that application... Might not be stout enough.

Anyway, I need more spare springs.   I'm thinking for 1911s more than anything.  

And never wish for a disappearance of all springs.



Coily

These gimmicks always intrigue me

See All Open Sights.


I'm a sucker for fancy new sighting systems and I have to resist buying all of them with every fiber of my being.  Sometimes I succeed in resisting the temptation.

This one, tho...  Maybe I can try it on a Ruger .22 pistol...  It's not that expensive.

If you are the type of person that will put a mini-red dot on your 9mm, why not this?  It's more compact.  Though you lose some view under the 'dot' that you already don't have with iron sights, but do with regular red dots.

"Why do you resist getting these new fangled sight things, or sights with wide notches and big dots or sights with little triangles or sights that are just troughs in the slide, T-Bolt?"

Well, they don't really gain you much, and sometimes take away.  New equipment combos don't make a better a shooter, the shooter makes a better shooter.  Plus the whole Keep It Simple Stupid.  Were there gains to be made in pistol sights?  Yes, and we already made them.  Compare the sights on a WWII vintage 1911.  Teeny and low vis.  Now look at what come universal on most 1911s that aren't trying to look GI.  Bigger, square, decent rear notch with 'room' for light on both side of the front sight.  I like a single dot, but three dot, or line and dot, or dot over dot, are all fine, too.  I used to have CHANGE IMMEDIATELY to my preferred config, now...  I just live and let live on the sight types.  That's from training with a variety of configurations

"You gonna get one to try, T-Bolt?"

Naw, not right yet.  Let's simmer on this a little while.

Viper MkI

"A simplified Sten gun."

Wait, how do you make a Sten simpler?

Better watch.

Yup.  That is simple. Jeezum crow, making something Spork simple even simpler.  It's practically Foon simple.

So, you spec out the common parts and the hard machining part is a barrel and a bolt assembly... I am going through the fabrication order of operations in my head, see....

But yeah, one of the more complicated operations on that viper is all the woodworking required.  Easier now, these days, with CNC routers, tho.

Mini

This belt sander is ADORABLE and gives me a case of the Wants.

Another ad, that went unblocked.

Looks like they get belts from powerer jobs like these

That table is adjustable.  I'm thinking it would be a great little sander for a mini-lathe, sharpening the HSS bits or drill bits.  Other duties. 

And, being a gunnie, I think of how quickly that thing could ruin gun parts.  Prolly faster than a Dremel even.

Seriously, in some gunsmith applications it would be great. Don't go nuts with precision stuff, no.  And I am having a hard time thinking of an application this belt sander would do that a regular belt sander could not.  If your shop has no room for something bigger, this might be a way to go.   

Hey, Look at That!

I put off the Monday Bupkis of blog fodder drought til Tuesday.  Good for me.

I'm thinking I'll break up my range time.  Take something else to the range.  Revolver or 9mm.  Just for giggles.  Change things up  Even though I am 5 mags away from reaching 1000.  Those five mags will come soon enough.

Someone posted a video about how hand fitted 1911s are worse than factory guns.  I can't even link it.  Even if it would stretch a post.  I think I first saw Tam link it, tho.  It's cringe inducing.  The nicest things people said about him is he didn't know what he didn't know.  Hoofa.  If you HAVE to see it despite my warning, youtube search "Why a hand fitted 1911 is a bad idea" and remember I warned ya.

Ever misplace your wallet with a bit of cash in it?  And you think to yourself "ya know they could HAVE all them 20s and I'd double the thief's money as well just to have all the other parts back.   DL,  CCW,  Handgun buying license. Credit Cards, health insurance cards..."

Looks like I dodged... a bullet

Ok, sorry for that title.

I didn't send my H9 in for warranty work.  Didn't need to.  I had a gunsmith that correctly diagnosed my FTF problem, and we fixed it.

Other people aren't so lucky and their gun is in a bin, in parts, at Hudson's bankruptcy proceedings.  Prolly will never be fixed and returned. 

Shame, really.  It's a decent gun.

"Oh, no, T-Bolt, what will you do when something else goes wrong?"

Dunno.  Same thing I'd do if my Colt Pocket Hammerless fails?

Spare parts aren't as bad as you'd think.  A lot are sourced from other makers.  But I WOULD pay money to see the catalog numbers for all those on a paper list right now.  You never know.

I feel like I was one of the people that got a Bren Ten AND got a few spare mags before they were all gone, back in the 80s. 

Specific Language

All of this is in English.

"... set the quill dial to zero then advance upward for one quarter of the cordial thickness at the small end and remember to take up the backlash."

I understand it.  Or I understand enough to be able to consult references to fill in the gaps.  For instance, I'd have to look up the codial thickness to get an exact number.

It's machinist talk.  I've been learning a lot about it on youtube, and that that specifically is for a bevel gear being fabricated here.

But most folks reading that have no idea what it is on about.  And that struck me.

And firearm folks have similar specific language item.  Here is a gunsmithing patter:

"I need an oversized hand for my three-screw Model 10, as the the timing is off and the forcing cone is shaving off lead."

And lots of other example of specific language pertaining to the tiniest details in communication of a specialized profession, abound.  Typewriter repair, circus work, diner waitress to short order chef, oil rig wildcatter, seamstress/tailor.