Rant Commences

I like guns. I think they are neat-o. Because of this I watch a lot of reviews, and a surprisingly large number of them are, not to mince words, stupid. A badly done review is sometimes worse than no review, and it’s ten to twenty minutes of my life I want back.

“We’re going to review the Tisas Duty 1911 .45. Since we know that 1911s like to be lubricated we’re going to run it dry straight out of the box. Oh, and we’re going to put funky magazine extensions of unknow quality on the stock magazines because a sponsor sent them to us. We’re also going to use extended magazines a different sponsor sent us without commenting ion their quality, whether we know they are reliable or have any experience with them.

Next we’re going to show ten minutes of footage of us shooting the gun not particularly well. We’re not going to tell you how many rounds we fired or what type of ammunition we used. We will comment that out of however many rounds we fired there were several times the gun failed to go into battery, but we didn’t show that in the boring shooting segment and we’re not going to tell you if it was a specific type/brand of ammo or if it happened with every type. We also won’t tell you if it happened with specific magazines or all of them. We’ll mention that other than those failures the gun functioned flawlessly with every type of ammo we fired, but we’re still not going to mention what exactly those were. We will absolutely not speculate as to whether the free magazine stuff we got might have something to do with this, and we will not test it with the unmodified factory magazines.

We will also not take the gun apart to examine the interior finish or quality of construction, comment on the fitting or anything else useful.”

So all I can really glean from this is that the gun did not function 100% with modified and aftermarket magazines and whatever random ammunition they used. Uh, great?

This, sadly, is not an isolated incident, not is it restricted to Youtube. From a print article:

“We’re going to review a specific caliber in two different 1911s. To evaluate this caliber we’re going to throw cheap conversion barrels into two random cheap 1911s. To make sure this is a fair test we’re going to compare these rather dubious assemblies to a purpose-built $3000 custom gun in a different caliber. Because science.”

Imagine my shock when they liked the $3000 gun best despite the fact that it’s in the wrong caliber and has literally nothing to do with the caliber they are supposedly evaluating.

Seriously, WTAF?

If you want to review guns find a good youtuber who does reviews and watch a bunch of their videos to see what they think is important and DO THAT. Also, if you are going to show yourself shooting the gun it will increase your credibility if you are actually good at shooting. Mind you you don’t have to be a great shot to review a gun well, but it helps. Oh, and show us if the gun malfunctions, because that’s useful.

Please, please, if you are going to review guns at least know what you should be looking for, talking about and showing us.

Rant ends. Thank you for your time.

Stay safe and take care.

Michael Tinker Pearce, 1 November 2021

CCI’s Blazer line of economy ammunition has been around for a while. Originally they were Berdan-primed aluminum cases, but then they introduced Blazer Brass. Still inexpensive, but with boxer-primed brass cases. This brings me to my shameful confession…

“Hi, my name is Mike, and I pick up brass at the range.”

I reload, and some of them are pretty odd calibers so grabbing the brass just makes sense. I usually only grab my brass but random stuff gets mixed in. Years ago as I was sorting my brass I noticed something odd; some of the .45 ACP brass had small-pistol primers. All of it was Blazer, so apparently at some point they switched to small-pistol primers. OK, whatever. I tossed them in a different bin from the regular ones and went about my life.

Over the last several years I’ve wound up with quite a few of these cases, and today I decided to load some. As I was doing so it occurred to me to wonder- does it make a difference? I mean, if it does I would assume CCI loaded their ammo to compensate. But what about us re-loaders?

I had some target loads on-hand, using a 200gr. LRNFP bullet over 6.2gr. of Universal with Winchester WLP primers. This is a pretty light load, so I figured I wasn’t likely to get in trouble with it. I duplicated these, but used the CCI Blazer brass with Federal Small-pistol primers. I set up my backstop and the Caldwell Chronograph and fired some shots.

Testing yielded a couple of surprises, the first being that this a far weaker load than I thought. Lee Precision load data says that this bullet with 6.0gr. of Universal makes 891 fps. but I got a very different result from 6.2gr-

Small Pistol Primer: 742fps. average with an extreme Spread of 44 fps.

Large Pistol Primer: 737 fps. average with an extreme spread of 23 fps.

This is way, way slower than the listed velocity led me to expect! OK, I know chronographs and conditions vary, but a minimum difference of 150 fps.?! This is one of many reasons reloading data should be approached with caution.

The second surprise was that the CCI cases all failed to extract. I a can’t account for this. I measured the two types of cases and for all practical purposes they’re identical, differing by only .002″ here and there. That’s about as much variation as I find between any two random cases of the same brand. Removing the cases was no problem; I inserted a rod down the barrel and they popped right out. The standard cases did eject, but with less enthusiasm than usual.

One thing I did change on the gun; I installed a new hammer-spring that is significantly stouter than the one that was in it before. It’s noticeably more difficult to rack the slide. It still isn’t hard, but overcoming the tension on the hammer does take more effort. I suspect this load was only just powerful enough to cycle the gun, and the new spring was enough to interfere. This does not explain why the CCI cases failed to extract. Perhaps they use a cheaper, ‘stickier’ alloy of brass that was just enough with a load of marginal power to make a difference.

Summing it Up

Looking at the results I cannot say that using small-pistol primers made any real difference. Yes, the extreme spread was almost twice as large, but it wasn’t a huge difference even so, and could just be a difference between the brands of primers. If you want to use CCI Blazer Brass .45 ACP cases with small-pistol primers go for it; it really doesn’t seem to make a notable difference in velocity.

Stay safe and take care.

Michael Tinker Pearce, 24 October 2021

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Haven’t been shooting since I injured my left hand, but I did spend some time reloading so I had a decent amount of 9mm and .45 ACP waiting for an opportunity. With the hand feeling much better today i loaded up a few guns and trundled off to the range.

S&W Model 1917

The previously described M1917 has a new set of Goncalo Alves grips made to suit my hand. Being a .45 ACP revolver it uses spring-steel clips to hold the rounds. I have removed the Wonder Sight; it did not fit properly and tended to shift when the gun was fired. I was eager to try the gun out with the stock sights and new handle.

It all works well enough; it shoots to point-of-aim at seven yards at least, and the new grips are comfortable and manage recoil well. I had a bit of trouble getting used to the gun; my first shots went all over but the group tightened up nicely as I got into the gun’s rhythm. I think I will smooth the trigger; the grooves really aren’t ideal for double-action shooting.

1911a1 Street Racer

This gun was completed recently, and I’ve really been looking forward to giving it a good wringing out. It’s pretty much what I was hoping for; a gun specialized for rapid, accurate fire.

I’m really pleased with how this gun is working out. Super-reliable and fast on target. I love it when a plan comes together!

The Beretta Model 1951 and Maadi Helwan

These two are together because they are effectively the same gun, one made by Beretta and one made under license in Egypt by Maadi. It’s a descendant of the Walther P-38, using the same sort of under-barrel locking-block. Unlike the Walther it locates the recoil-spring under the barrel instead of in the sides of the slide, allowing the Italian gun to be much more svelte. The Beretta is also a single-action semi-auto. They’re quite a trim, flat, good-handling gun, and while the sights aren’t particularly good they are quite accurate.

The Beretta is better-finished and may have used better metallurgy, but they start out otherwise identical. Importantly they use the same magazine, and I had just procured two new Beretta-manufactured magazines that needed to be tested. I tested all four of my magazines in both guns, and they worked flawlessly.

These guns double-tap very nicely; while neither has what you would call a great trigger, the break is reasonably crisp and the reset is nicely tactile. Not bothering to show the Maadi’s double-tap picture; it pretty much looks like the Beretta’s.

These are really, genuinely pleasant guns to shoot, and while the cross-bolt safety takes some getting used to it’s surprisingly easy to use and works well. Shooting these guns side-by-side there’s a not a nickel’s worth of difference between them, but there is a difference. Neither of these guns should be used with +P ammunition, but for the Maadi it’s likely to cause problems with as little as one round; the metallurgy of the Egyptian’s gun’s locking-block is inferior and it will peen immediately. Best policy for these guns is to restrict them to a diet of 115gr commercial target ammo or it’s equivalent.

Fun day at the range; I put a couple hundred rounds or 9mm downrange. been quite a while since I’ve been able to do that!

Stay safe and take care.

Michael Tinker Pearce, 22 October 2021.