The Unforgiving Minute

Blogging time is still scarce, but I wanted to take a few minutes to thank Brownells for some great customer service.

A couple weeks ago I placed an order for a half-dozen odds and ends, including a couple Milt Sparks Summer Special 2 holsters. I got both holsters, but one of them was sans belt loops. Oops.

I filled out the merchandise return form, noting the missing belt loops and asking for an exchange, and mailed the holster back.

A few days later I got an email notification that the return had been processed, and a few days after that a new holster showed up via FedEx… along with a check, refunding my shipping fees.

THIS is how business should be done. No hassle, no RMA run-around, no restocking fees, just Making Things Right. Thanks, Brownells!

(Hiatus is over? ish? Life’s a bit more sane and I’m going to try to get back into the blogging…)

I liked my first Glock 32 so much that I decided I’d really like to have a spare. Two is one and one is none, as they say. I also got word that the OD Glocks were being discontinued due to lack of demand. Well, hell. Why not?

Funshop ordered one in for me and dropped a set of Trijicons onto the slide. I popped in the extended slide stop and mag release. Then I ordered up a pile of spare mags and a few miscellaneous spare parts (recoil spring assemblies, trigger springs, a couple extractors…).

I now have a pair of near-identical carry guns. They both run like tops and shoot to the same point of aim. I slightly prefer the Trijicons on the OD gun over the Glock night sights on the black one; I can see more light on the sides of the front blade and the tritium dots are more sharply focused in low light. That said, the difference is small enough that the guns are functionally interchangeable.

The more I shoot them, the more I like this configuration. The G19/23/32 frame size is Glock’s “Goldilocks” model. Small enough to carry easily, big enough to shoot well, and notably comfortable in the hand. Slip it into a Summer Special 2 and the gun disappears under a T-shirt.

Now that I’ve shot up a few thousand rounds of it, I have some observations on the .357 SIG cartridge as well, but that’s another post…

I’m resurfacing briefly to go all geeky on the subject of buckshot. Bear with me.

Mention buckshot to the average shooter and he’ll probably assume you mean #00 buck. The gold-standard buckshot load you’ll find in every *mart in America is the 12-ga. 2 3/4″ 9-pellet load; it’s offered by just about every company that pours powder and lead into shotshells. While t’s indisputably effective and I’d never want to be on the receiving end, a little math shows that we can do better.

#00 buckshot is nominally 0.330″ in diameter, with a nominal pellet weight of 53.8 grains. Put 9 of ‘em into a 12-ga hull and you’re launching 484 grains of lead with a total frontal area of .77″. Formidable, to be sure. It’s also not the best use of the internal volume of the shotshell.

Those 9 pellets stack up in 3 staggered layers of 3 pellets each. If you instead switch to #1 buckshot, at 0.300″ diameter and 40.5 grains each, you can make much more efficient use of the shell’s internal space. Instead of a 3×3 arrangement of pellets, you can have a nice shot column of 4 staggered layers of 4 pellets each, like so:

#1 buck shot column on the left, #00 on the right.

So what’s the big deal? With #1 buck we get 16 pellets instead of 9. Yes, they’re smaller and lighter, but the increase in pellet count FAR outweighs the decrease in pellet size. Total payload is now 648 grains with a total frontal area of 1.13 inches. That’s a 34% increase in weight and 47% increase in frontal area! Look at the two payloads side-by-side and the difference is dramatic.

Of course, there’s no such thing as a free lunch. The smaller #1 pellets are fully 25% lighter than #00 pellets, and will give up some penetration. And if you’re launching more lead at the same velocity, you’re necessarily also accepting more recoil in return. Then there’s the matter of availability; you can find #00 just about anywhere, but #1 buck is going to be a mail-order proposition for most of us.

If you can get your hands on some #1 buck, try it in your favorite scattergun. Patterns from my Benelli are the same size as #00 patterns, but with a more even distribution of pellets.

Aaaand I’m back to semi-hiatus mode. Go shoot your shotguns.

So… I’m carrying a Glock these days.

I know. It’s practical, pragmatic, conventional…. completely unlike me. I had been carrying my custom CZ-85, switching to a little J-frame when I wanted something smaller and easier to conceal. Then I found myself making excuses for carrying the little Smith instead of the CZ, which was just a little too big and a little too heavy for all-day comfort, especially in warmer weather. Eventually the CZ stayed at home most days and I became one of those guys who took hi-cap semi-autos to the range but dropped a 5-shot snubby in his pocket every morning. Kinda silly.

Then I picked up a Glock 32, almost on a whim, just because I wanted to play with a .357 SIG. It’s light, 100% reliable, easy enough to shoot (yeah, I know, I was hitting 1/2″ to the left. Too much trigger finger.), and I don’t have to feel bad if it gets knocked around or bumped into the occasional doorframe. It’s also almost completely stock; Glock night sights, Glock extended slide stop and extended mag release with the sharp corners lightly broken. The slide stop is about 1387 times more useful than the stock part without getting in the way or impacting reliability, and the mag release provides just enough extra length to let me drop magazines without shifting my grip.

Carry rig is a Milt Sparks Summer Special 2 and a Blade-Tech mag pouch. The holster rides very comfortably at 4 o’clock and keeps the gun right up next to the body. All-day carry is a breeze, even on the days when I spend 6+ hours on the road.

And cue pdb telling me I almost got it right, except I should have bought a Glock 19 instead…