The Unforgiving Minute

Or more accurately, magazine cleaning and spring replacement.

During my most recent range session with my Glock 32s, I had a few failures to feed with my black Glock, which usually runs like a top. I happened to have a spare recoil spring assembly in my range bag, so I dropped it in… and got more frequent failures to feed. I looked at my magazines and noticed they were getting pretty lackadaisical about pushing the top round up to the feed lips. Hmm…

The .357 SIG is known for producing very high slide velocity. If the slide is cycling before the magazine spring gets the next round in position for feeding, you get… failures to feed! And all my magazine springs had been used frequently and stored fully compressed for a little over a year. Hmm again…

Magazine spring fatigue is one of those endlessly-debated Internet discussion topics. You have people who argue that it’s compression/decompression cycles that cause spring wear, and people who argue that storing magazines fully loaded causes wear, and people who say that spring fatique is just a myth, because their brother’s cousin’s uncle found a .45 magazine that had been loaded since 1923, and he went out and shot it, and it worked perfectly.

I’m not going to get into all that. Feel free to argue it out in comments, if you must. I just wanted to get my gun running reliably again.

So I ordered up a full set of replacement Glock OEM magazine springs (the best price I found was at Lone Wolf) and sat down to inspect, clean and re-spring my magazines…

Disassembling the first magazine was enlightening. The original spring was significantly shorter than the factory-fresh replacement:

All the mag tubes and followers got cleaned and inspected; they’re still in good shape. There was a fair bit of powder residue, tiny brass and primer shavings, and carbon inside the tubes, which all wiped out pretty easily. They’re all reassembled and ready for test firing, but that will have to wait a few days…

The full-choke riotgun project got a few more little tweaks this week. While I was generally happy with the way the gun turned out, a few niggling issues needed fixing.

Most importantly, the factory Remington follower was giving me some occasional grief with the extended magazine tube. Remington has never seen fit to make extended one-piece magazine tubes, the way Mossberg does with their 590-series guns. If you want more than the 4 rounds that fit in a factory tube, you need to add a screw-on extension. Since you now have two tubes joined end-to-end, there’s the potential for slight misalignment between them.

This caused an intermittent problem for me. I’d go to thumb the fifth round into the mag tube (thereby pushing the first round in the tube out into the extension) and the follower would hang up at the juncture of the two tubes. I fiddled around with different techniques of installing the extension, but never could get absolutely 100% reliable loading.

The factory follower is a molded plastic cup-type piece, and it actually flares out very slightly at the rim of the cup. That little flare is just enough to snag on the transition to the magazine extension. Out it went, to be replaced by an S & J Hardware Type 2 follower. The design is pretty clearly inspired by the Wilson Combat/Scattergun Technologies follower, with a few small alterations. It’s a solid chunk of machined Delrin that has slightly beveled edges. So far, I have not been able to make it snag up.

Left to right: S & J Hardware, Remington factory, Wilson/Scattergun Technologies

This week’s other change was a new recoil pad. The Speedfeed short stock came with a rather stiff rubber recoil pad. I wanted to replace it with one of LimbSaver’s nice soft pads, famous for soaking up recoil like a sponge. A solid two months and many emails and phone calls later…

This really shouldn’t have been difficult. I wrote LimbSaver a nice email explaining that I had a Speedfeed short stock for a Remington 870. They told me they had a suitable pad and asked me to call in my order so they could be sure I got the right pad. Order was duly placed (for 2 pads, so I’d have a spare), and then… nothing happened. After a few weeks and two follow-ups, I got a box containing… the wrong pads. After another 3 follow-ups, the very nice customer service lady at LimbSaver finally succeeded in getting the right pads out to me.

As I understand it, LimbSaver used to make this pad as an OEM part for Remington police shotguns (hence the Remington logo molded into it). That’s no longer the case, and this particular part isn’t a regular-production item anymore, but they were willing to sell me pads they still had on hand. Apparently, though, selling a previously-OEM part via a retail sale just threw a monkey wrench into the works, causing considerable confusion and delays. In any case, I eventually got the recoil pads.

The LimbSaver is definitely softer and more pliable than the Speedfeed pad. Tomorrow’s range session will tell me just how much it reduces recoil. I’m hoping the answer is, “quite a bit,” because I have a 500-round class coming up…

Working on an update. Still on a shotgun kick and building another 870. Picked up one of these to try out:

Stay tuned.

Last month’s full-choke experiment impressed me so much that I decided the barrel would live on the Wingmaster testbed gun permanently, but the gun itself needed a little help.

I picked it up on the cheap because, well, it was a genuine beater, a hard-used, worn, ratty old gun. The serial number dated to 1979, and it saw 30 years of service as a state-owned gun in Wyoming (Game and Fish? Prison? State Police? I don’t know). When it came to me the finish was worn and scratched, and both stock and forend were missing a lot of finish and significant chunks of wood. The ejector had been replaced without refinishing the receiver, leaving a large patch of bare steel on the left side of the gun. Still, it was a mechanically sound DuPont-era Wingmaster, and it’s really hard to truly wear out a Remington 870. This one just needed a little overhaul.

So, off it went to Wilson Combat for their Remington Steal rebuild package. I opted for the basic rebuild, with two changes: I requested a short stock and the Wilson jumbo head safety. Three weeks later, my gun was back, outfitted with a SpeedFeed Youth buttstock (13″ LOP) and Law Enforcement forend:

The receiver was converted to handle 3″ shells (by installing the 3″ ejector assembly) and updated with the flexitab modification. All the steel parts aside from the chrome bolt were blasted and nicely parkerized:

The gun’s old rack number, stamped into the receiver, is still there:

The trigger plate assembly was either refinished or replaced; I can’t tell if it’s the original, but it’s still alloy, not the plastic part used on current guns. The Jumbo Head safety was installed as well.

And still sporting that weird, wonderful full-choke barrel:

I haven’t been out to the range yet, but I did do quite a bit of function testing with dummy rounds and everything seems to be in order. Looking forward to doing some shooting!

After pattern-testing my new full-choke 870 barrel and seeing the differences between the Remington #1 buck load and the Winchester Supreme #1 20-pellet load, I decided to sacrifice one of my precious, rare Winchester rounds to take a look inside.

There’s the expected 20 pellets of copper-plated shot, plenty of buffer material, and a full-length shot cup to protect the shot from contact with the bore. Regular (non-premium) shells like the Remington use a simple plastic wad instead of the full-length shot cup. It acts as a gas seal to keep powder gasses away from the shot, but the pellets are still free to rub against the bore and deform. You can see the results in the previous post: the Winchester patterns significantly tighter than the Remington.

Sadly, this particular Winchester offering is extinct. I bought out Brownell’s entire stock and continue searching for odd lots on Gunbroker, but it’s pretty scarce.

I’m susceptible to the occasional impulse buy, and I like weird, offbeat guns. So when I saw some very unusual Remington 870 barrels on sale at CDNN for the low, low price of $99.99, well, hell, that’s practically pocket change…

What’s weird and offbeat about it? It’s a factory Remington 870 Police barrel, 20″, polished and blued, typical bead sight, and a fixed full choke.

I’ve never seen such a beast before. Every “consumer” 870 riot gun barrel I’ve ever seen was cylinder bored, and 870 Police barrels are typically choked Improved Cylinder or, much less commonly, Modified. A full choke is a real oddity. My best guess is that these tubes were built for a special order, and either the order was canceled or Remington produced an overrun. The part number is 24548, and good luck finding it in a Remmy catalog or price list.

The barrel I got is indeed new, but it looks like it sat on the shelf for a loooong time. It’s slightly shopworn and has a few small flaws in the bluing. The magazine support has taken on the purplish color you sometimes see on old blued parts. Not a big deal, and for a hundred bucks I’m not gonna complain, but it makes me suspect these barrels came off the line more than a few years ago. It does have the detent ball that’s missing from many current Remington barrels, which is nice.

In theory, the tight choke should produce tight patterns, which are all the rage for tactical shotguns these days. The cool kids send their barrels off to Vang Comp and use fancy shotshells with plated, hardened, buffered shot and trick wads, all to make an open choke gun shoot like it’s tightly choked. Why not use an actual tight choke instead?

Well, two reasons, really. First, an overly-tight choke can actually open up patterns, especially with buckshot. Smaller shot has an easier time of flowing through the choke, but the big pellets of buckshot can instead get squeezed and deformed as they pass through the constriction, causing flyers as the out-of-round pellets tumble. Second, a full choke may or may not work well with slugs. It’s generally safe to put slugs through a modern full choke barrel (check with the manufacturer if in doubt!), but the slug might get squeezed enough to ruin accuracy.

Then again, every shotgun barrel is a law unto itself, and you never know what it will do until you shoot it. I dropped this barrel onto an old, beat-to-hell Wingmaster riot gun, threw on a Remington 3-round extension, and headed to the range.

I brought along the three types of buckshot I had on hand:

• Winchester’s standard Super X 2 3/4″, 9-pellet #00 buck load, SKU XB1200. This is probably THE most common buckshot load in the country, the one you’ll find in every sporting goods store and *mart, frequently on sale or in 15-round “value packs”. It’s buffered but not plated or hardened, and there’s no fancy shot cup to prevent deformation.
• Remington’s 2 3/4″, 16-pellet #1 buck load, SKU 12B1. Buffered, unplated, no shot cup.
• Winchester’s now-discontinued “baby magnum” Supreme Double X Magnum 2 3/4″, 20-pellet #1 buck, SKU X12C1B. These are copper-plated, but I haven’t dissected a shell to see if they’re buffered or what kind of cup/wad is used.

Patterning was done at 15 and 25 yards. Pictures suck because I used my cellphone and didn’t have a lot of time.

#1 buck, 15 yards, 13" spread

#1 buck, 25 yards, 21" spread

The Remington #1 buck threw the largest patterns by far: 13″ spread at 15 yards, and 21″ at 25 yards. Not too impressive. #1 buck does have a reputation for throwing bigger patterns than #00, and these are still better than you’d see out of a cylinder bore, but they’re larger than I expected/hoped. Winchester’s version of this load uses a shot cup and might perform better; I need to buy some and test it.

#1 buck, 20 pellets, 15 yards, 7.5" spread

#1 buck, 20 pellets, 25 yards, 16.75" spread

The fancy Winchester baby magnum #1 buck shot significantly tighter. The pattern at 25 yards had a pretty dense center with a few flyers that opened things up. It’s possible that the full choke is just a little bit too tight for this load.

#00 buck, 15 yards, 6" spread

#00 buck, 25 yards, 9" spread

The really surprising one was the Winchester #00 buck. 6″ pattern at 15 yards, and only 9″ at 25 yards. With a cylinder bore you’ll often see patterns that size at 10 yards! Every shotgun is unique, but this particular barrel really likes that particular load. And that’s a lucky thing, given the universal availability of XB1200. There’s a lot to be said for a shotgun that performs really, really well with the most common ammunition in the country.

Overall I’m quite pleased with this oddball barrel. It might just stay on that beat-to-hell Wingmaster and take a trip to Wilson Combat for their Remington Steal overhaul… Also, who knows where I can get a deal on a case of XB1200?

Was looking over the Glock 17L tonight and I noticed some lightening cuts in the slide that had previously escaped my attention. There’s a cut in the side of the slide, opposite the ejection port:

And another in the underside, parallel to the striker channel:

Combined with the big opening cut into the top of the slide, the top half of the gun is only a bit heavier than a standard Glock 17 slide assembly. Apparently those cuts are necessary to keep the reciprocating mass low enough to work with a regular G17/22/31 recoil spring assembly.

I don’t know if these cuts are present on any of the other longslide Glocks. Any G24, 34, and/or 35 owners care to chime in?

I usually get what I want. Sometimes it just takes me a really, really long time. I’ve been wanting a Glock 17L for… <counts on fingers, then removes socks and starts on toes>… 17 years, give or take.

17Ls were officially discontinued years back, but Glock continues to sporadically produce tiny batches of guns. Seems like every 2 or 3 years a few hit the market and stay available for about a week, quickly snapped up by folks who are not eager to part with them. I’ve *never* seen a used one offered for sale in my area.

So, when I got word that a few more guns would be slipping out of Smyrna, I started bugging my friendly local gunshoppe. They managed to snag a gun for me, then replaced the gawd-awful factory adjustable sights with a set of Trijicon’s new HD night sights.

Pretty pictures:

Longslide is, indeed, looooong.

Front sight has a bright orange ring around the tritium vial.

Rear tritium vials are sans rings, to direct attention toward the front sight, where it belongs. The wide, U-shaped notch is supposed to make sight acquisition faster. The width of the notch definitely helps; I’m not convinced the U shape makes any difference.

This picture sucks, I couldn’t get the camera to stay focused on the front sight. It does give you some idea what the sight picture actually looks like. In reality the front sight appears larger and is VERY eye-catching.

First range session was today. The gun had numerous FTRBs with CCI Blazer but ran perfectly on Gold Dot +Ps. It apparently has no tolerance for wimpy ammunition. I have 500 rounds of Georgia Arms 115-gr FMJ coming in tomorrow; we’ll see how the gun likes that.

More to come…