So I have this nifty new Smith 642 and I was planning to pocket-carry it, but…

I usually have my left front pocket full of car keys, house keys, cell phone, and flash drive. Right front pocket is for my wallet, with my knife clipped to the edge and my lighter in the watch pocket. My Seecamp rides in a pocket holster inside my back pocket.

This arrangement works for me, but the Smith is a little too fat to comfortably replace the Seecamp in a back pocket. And I don’t really want to relocate any of my front-pocket stuff to make room for the Smith. Nor do I want yet another IWB rig, a belly band or an ankle holster.

This will require further thought. Any advice would be appreciated.

I didn’t mention it yesterday since I was so excited about my CZ coming back, but I also picked up my no-lock Smith & Wesson 642. Took it down to the local PD today for the requisite “Safety Inspection” (read: registration) and I’ll probably get it out to the range tomorrow. Just one pic, because it looks like every other 642 out there; the only remarkable feature is the lack of an integral lock.

First impression: this little guy’s gonna be tough to shoot. As I told a few bloggers via IM yesterday, I’m used to working with twice the gun weight and half the trigger pull. I’ve been dry-firing heavily to break in both the trigger and my finger. Right now, I’d need superglue to keep a dime balanced on the front sight.

For those keeping score, it’s stamped 642-1 under the crane and the serial has a DCM prefix, like the other guns in this series. Range report to follow!

Alright, looks like I have to step in and restore order here. Last week pdb tried to rev up his SiteMeter by posting his Tupperware Jihad bit, which set off a spirited discussion between Tam and James R. Rummel, among others (see comments on pdb’s post). Tam followed up a few days later with Everybody’s an expert, which got KdT all butthurt and drew its own swarm of comments. Then Uncle linked to pdb’s piece, drawing still more commentary about Intarwebz fanboys and the One True Gun. Now we all hate each other and want to trade in our guns for whiffle bats, just to end all the arguing and bitching.

:sigh:

Alright, let me serve up The Truth so we can put this whole thing to bed.

• Glocks are for dilettantes.
• 1911s are for parvenus.
• HKs are for poseurs.
• XDs are for dilettantes who won’t admit to it.
• Real men carry single-action CZs.

I kid, of course. What I really want to do here is show off my freshly-overhauled blaster

Back in mid-May I shipped my CZ 85 Combat down to Coal Creek Armory for a little fine-tuning and tweaking. I’d put a thousand rounds through the gun, found it highly satisfying, and decided that it was worth investing a bit more to make it Just Right.

Here’s what was done:

Single-action-only conversion with a steel CZ-USA trigger and a Miossi Gunworks custom hard sear. I specified 4.5 lbs with minimal take-up, overtravel and creep. Basically, I wanted to get as close to a 1911 trigger as the design would allow. I also asked for the adjustment screws on the trigger to be staked and/or Loctited to keep them from moving after they’d been dialed in. I got exactly what I asked for; the pull is crisp and the reset is as short as you can get on a CZ.

Factory adjustable sights replaced with fixed Trijicon night sights. I prefer Trijicons over Meprolights and I like to support local businesses (Trijicon is here in Michigan). You can see the little flat spot behind the sight where the adjustable sight used to fit, but it doesn’t look bad at all.

Wolff extra-power extractor spring installed. The factory spring was working fine, but extraction problems in CZ 75/85 pattern guns aren’t unheard-of. The Wolff spring is cheap insurance.

Beveled magazine well. Not really a necessity, but since the gun was going to be refinished anyways I decided to get it done. It’s a cheap modification that helps a bit and has absolutely no drawbacks. Plus it shaves 1/100 oz. off the gun’s weight, which is important when you’re a High Speed Low Drag type like myself. :cough cough:

Full matte hard chrome finish on the gun and six magazines. Internet Wisdom holds that CZ’s polycoat is indestructible. Dr. Strangegun, whose opinion I value, reports that his Compact still looks new after 10 years. For whatever reason, my gun’s finish wasn’t holding up as well. It was showing scuffs, scrapes and shiny spots, and there was chipping around the magwell. The hard chrome should last as long as the gun and looks GREAT. Plus it’s corrosion-resistant, slick, and easy to clean.

CZ-USA thin Cocobolo grip panels. They’re purty and they do away with the fat palm swells on the factory plastic stocks.

As I mentioned earlier, Coal Creek Armory got this project turned around in about 10 weeks, which is FANTASTIC. Lots of ’smiths have waiting lists of a year or more; some of the Big Name 1911 guys are booked solid through the middle of the 2010s. CCA’s speed is even more impressive when you take into account the chrome, which required a round-trip to a plating house (almost all gunsmiths farm out their plating jobs to one of the half-dozen specialty outfits that service the gun industry).

Cost was quite reasonable, especially considering the quality of the work. If you’re thinking about a similar project, bear in mind you’ll be spending over $100 in shipping ALONE, and that’s not the gunsmith’s fault; UPS and FedEx both require overnight service on firearms. If you have a friendly local FFL, I believe he can ship it for you more cheaply via USPS.

I’m going to try to take it out to the range tomorrow afternoon; I expect I’ll be even more pleased then.

Thanks to ColtCCO and the rest of the crew at Coal Creek!

Just in case you’d been considering it, I do not recommend doing this:

• Roll into bed ’round 2:00 AM Sunday night/Monday morning.
• Wake up at 3:30 with a throbbing sinus headache all down the left side of your face, severe enough to make your teeth ache from the pressure.
• Get up and take allergy meds.
• Spend the next 3 hours failing at sleep.
• Get up at 6:45 to tend to the critters and go to work.
• Leave work and swing by Grandma’s house to chop down the weeds in the alley. On an 87-degree day. In jeans and a long-sleeve shirt. Because you’re an idiot.
• Make the mistake of stopping for a sweet tea on the way home.
• Get too jacked up on sugar and caffeine to even CONSIDER an afternoon nap, desperately needed though it may be.

Ah well, I’m up ’til midnight at the very soonest. Might as well go to work on my email backlog…

I just got off the phone with one of the guys down at Coal Creek Armory. With a little luck, there will be some spectacular gun pr0n posted here tomorrow!

All three of my regular readers know what it is, of course. The other two of you will just have to wait and see.

As reported on THR and the Smith & Wesson forums, a batch of 4000 new Smith & Wesson Model 642 revolvers WITHOUT the cursed integral lock are now hitting the market via wholesaler RSR.

I fired off a quick email to my favorite S&W expert, asking if I should buy one. To Tam’s credit, she had the patience and courtesy to answer such a patently stupid question in the affirmative:

        Does a big snake crawl low to the ground?

I take Tam’s opinion pretty seriously, so I stopped in at my favorite local emporium of death, had them check with RSR (11oo guns in stock as of this afternoon), and slapped my credit card down on the counter. It’s actually costing me a few bucks less than the lock-afflicted 642 currently sitting in their showcase.

This will actually be my first Smith and first D/A wheelgun (I’ve shot a bunch of ‘em, but never bought one until today). Hopefully they sell out fast and signal to Smith that there’s a goodly number of us who would be happy to buy their products if they’d just ditch the locks.

I got mine, go get yours!

Dear TD,You seem like a fascinating guy with a rich inner life and excellent taste. And you have a “Movies” category in your sidebar! But you haven’t posted anything about movies in quite a while. What are you watching these days? You should go see The Dark Knight. It’s the best movie EVAR. Batman beats up his mom and the Joker OD’s!
Signed,
Somebody I Made Up

Dear Imaginary Reader,

Thank you for your fake letter. Here’s the current contents of my movie queue, in no particular order:

• Dark Star – cult scifi comedy, John Carpenter’s first full-length film
• Day of the Triffids – ripped off by that hack M. Night Shyamalan in two of his shit movies
• The Mouse that Roared – Peter Sellers x 3. What more do you need?
• Being There – well, maybe a little more Peter Sellers for good measure.
• Alphaville – scifi from Jean-Luc Godard? I predict lots of talking and smoking.
• The Third Man – I do need to see this, if only for the cuckoo clock speech
• Colossus: The Forbin Project – before there was Skynet, there was Colossus
• Art School Confidential – Terry Zwigoff directed it, so I’m sure I’ll love it.
• Straight to Hell – the movie that killed Alex Cox’s career!
• El Topo – because we all need cult allegorical westerns from time to time

And yes, I’m going to see The Dark Knight. Stop bothering me about it.

Sincerely,

TD

CORRECTION: The plot thickens.

Sebastian has a heads-up on an anti-gun group abusing its tax-exempt status in Pennsylvania.

I’m sure the IRS will get around to this right after they deal with Snuffy Pfleger.

I’d just like to state for the record that I love boobs.

As of January 7, 2009, Michiganders won’t have to jump through the hoops of our state’s farcical “safety inspection” for handguns, thanks to a trio of bills signed last week by Gov. Granholm.

While the change is an improvement, the bills were, unfortunately, significantly watered down from their original form, which would have done away with the handgun registry entirely. Instead, the registry will be maintained and handguns will still have to be registered, but purchasers can drop off or mail in their registration rather than go to their local PD for a “safety inspection.”

Historically-minded readers might be interested to know that this permit system was originally put in place by the KKK-backed “Public Acts of 1927″, a racist reaction to the case of Dr. Ossian Sweet, a black physician who dared to defend his home from a white mob in Detroit.

Hat tip to Justin Buist; the NRA-ILA announcement is here.