Jonnin

Im sorta new at reloading (little over a year now) but happy to share. I do not have too fancy a setup, turret press. Ive done a little of everything, from pistol and rifle to trimming and making obsolete rounds from the wrong brass and slugs... others are also helpful here just ask in the section for it.

By the way stealth is way, way out of balance. If you want an easy game, go stealth. If you want a standard game, go with melee. If you want a harder game, go with magic. Or if you go with stealth or melee push the difficutly slider up to make it interesting. I dunno if a mage could stand taking double damage while doing 1/2 at the master level, not easy....

Heh I got it on christmas and already beat it. Pretty easy main quest, I don't think its possible to get to 100 in any skill before beating the game and before all the content becomes trivial. Im just now hitting 75 in my main stuff. Still a lot to do in the world but the only thing that has managed to hurt me so far are those darn high level fire mages. I like the new system but the content needed to be much deeper so you can still be challenged past level 40. I don't like the nerfs to enchanting & spellmaking. Part of what I loved was the spellmaker and the custom enchantments. I am going to try a spellsword next, probably use a touch of archery & one handed with conjured weapons and magic and some sort of armor. Sort of a mage, but not a pure one. I may try a pure one if that also gets boring. Im sure that destro magic is powerful enough, if not as good as a 200+ per hit melee attack. I have been one shotted several times by mages and I have well over 500 health.

Welcome! Sounds like a nice setup, I miss having space to shoot but city life is just one of those things for a software developer.

I was talking about actual gun jerk to pull the shooter off target, not comfort. I agree the thin grip is more painful, but the glocks jump badly. Glocks are among the few large 9mm guns that push me off target between shots. In the same sized gun, like the large metal beretta 380, the 380 has far, far less recoil than a 9mm. Or shoot a 380 in your 9mm to test that theory... the round does not have more recoil inherently than a 9mm. Put it into a micro platform, and it can be pretty stout -- I have shot a micro 25 that made my hand hurt, for that matter.

The response says as much, the stocks may be different, IE cheaper, on some models of some guns by under some contracts. Sounds like exactly what people are saying --- well not the extreme made in china comments --- but that some of the walmart guns were made by cutting corners somewhere along the way. Which is fine, no one is buying at walmart to get a gun with a $500 engraved hardwood stock in the first place. But to say the response is not weasel words for "yea, we do special runs with low grade stocks and take off some of the accessories" is to delude yourself.

Its probably marginally more powerful but not really all that much. To be honest its just an oversized pistol, with a very small bit of extra range and hitting force. If I had that gun I would use lighter bullets to extend the range; I would bet a 150 grain bullet would get you several hundred FPS which would translate to a number of extra yards worth of usable range. I do not know how strong the action is on that gun, so if you were to reload it I do not know if you could push it harder than a pistol. Often a well made carbine can handle a stouter load than a pistol, but its a case by case thing and you should find out before doing anything unsafe. The KTOG might have some thoughts on the best ammo for these guns.

Anything smaller than the ruger is very likely going to kick as much or more. The glock kicks more for sure, though the 19 is one of the better glock models in that regard. Is half a pound of weight worth 30% more kick? Actually I think the pps and glock are going to be about identical, with the pps actually having slightly less recoil! I am not sure about the xd, but I suspect it is also about like the pps. That weight difference is so small, I wonder if instead the issue is balance (front heavy ruger) and not actual mass? I suspect this is the case, and if so.... I will say get a cz rami. A smallish gun that has recoil no worse than your ruger but is very well balanced and a great shooter. I see you are in chattanooga, so you could try mine to test the recoil. I could also let her try the beretta nano, px4 subcompact (but its a 40, so the recoil is going to have to be taken with a grain of salt). Could also try a makarov, its between a 380 and 9mm, though current factory ammo is closer to 380 (for some reason they have, over the last decade, greatly reduced the power of the loads).

Plenty of folks go with a pump shotgun, maybe 1 out of 7 or 8 has a pump. Its a handicap of sorts; yours will not jam and sometimes the auto's do, and your time/score will be a little worse, maybe a lot worse, depends on how fast you can shuck it. The real problem is capacity ---- if you cannot get close to 8-10 in your gun, it will really slow you down to keep reloading. That is easy to fix though: most models accept an extended mag tube that costs like $30 or so and is easy to install (even I was able to do it!). You can enjoy the sport with what you have, is where I am going, so long as you are not expecting to win (in which case you will end up buying more guns and gear anyway). If you hate the shotgun stage, well, its usually just 1 out of 4 or 5 stages as most places do not really use the shotgun on every stage --- it requires expensive, heavy targets instead of the easy to set up cardboard stuff used by rifle and pistol.

So long as the informant is charged 10x the reward if they turn someone in who's guns are legal, with 1/2 of that going to the victim and 1/2 to fund the program, I am ok with it. That IS how this program would work, right, so as not to burden taxpayers with funding this nonsense?

All that is probably spot on Lester. When I say it is the same I meant using the same type of powder (with different amounts of it but that effect is less than a totally different type). I am cheap and only keep 3 or 4 types of powder on hand, middle of the road stuff that works in nearly any caliber or setup. Changing the burn rates or other stuff changes the physics as that reference noted. Give it a try, put super hot stuff behind that light slug to see if it does the job.... also a side effect is hot powder is a lower mass (3 grains vs 7 or so) which has a small effect as well, also noted. All around that may be the way to make a light legal load, though with a spring change it could be dropped down to 380 levels which is going to be close to the weakest you can make a 9 without messing up its trajectory.

That is why I mentioned the 380 bullets. I am still not convinced this is true from physics, but lots of folks say the recoil FEELS less with light slugs. For what its worth I am still tweaking my loads for accuracy working in the neighborhood of 6-7 grains of accurate #5 on the MBC lead bullet which is 95 grains. I still say, though, if you push them with the same force you get the same recoil, even if you used a 200 grain fat boy; I use the 380s for a different reason (they feed better in a couple of european guns).

I use a 380 bullet at high velocity, hot enough to cycle the gun but not stout loads. But any 9mm capable of running the action is going to produce a pretty good jerk in a small or lightweight pistol, no matter what you do. If you want to reduce recoil, pull out your recoil spring and put in a very light one and THEN build up a light load for the gun. Remember that using a weak spring and light load is not legal in some competitions, such as IDPA, but it can turn a bad recoil gun into a better target pistol for plinkery.

My thoughts would be alongside the gunsmith idea but get the most simple gun you can. I would not fool with a hammer/SA gun, but a DA or DAO design or striker with no safety (or one you can leave off all the time without worry, like a DA gun would have). You want to reduce it to 2 controls: mag release and slide release. Add a loop for the hook to grab the slide to rack it. Or look into a push-rack design (add material to the front of the slide to push into a wall to rack it). Best of luck, its bad enough being a lefty with 2 hands, so you are starting with just a few guns that are left hand friendly, which is a poor starting point.

I have it and it works well. I have the .40 smallest model, and its sort of fat but no jams, good accuracy, great small size, a good choice if you are not turned off by the excessive width.

250 thru mine without problems. The gun works, though like all small guns it has its trade-offs. Its not a little copy pistol, its a new design not a stolen one. Unless LCP could mean something else? I thought that was what it stood for...

What blew my mind was his score is actually pretty low. I mean he is better than average, but average people are not all that smart, proven time and time again...

Absolutely you can do this. You can use a variety of things, as a stone does not always work on the parts (many parts are rounded and oddly shaped so a stone does not fit) so I use various polishing tools including just a rag+diamond dust. The only thing to remember is that polishing and grinding are very different things, never grind! This will not replace shooting the gun, though. New springs need to be exercised, as does the magazine. But a once over polishing job is a big help, esp the feed ramp and sometimes the barrel/slide lockup area etc.

there is nothing you can DO to make the value go up that is legit. (You can do things to ruin it to attempt to trick your buyers ... not a good plan). Otherwise, the less you touch it the better it will be with the exception of stopping any and all rust. Take it all the way apart, deal with any rust and give it a protective oil wipe down, and take a picture of everything in disassembled state to use as pictures when you sell it (you may want to show the rifleing in a picture as well). Or just sell it as-is and let the buyer clean it up. The only other thing you could do is buy unmatched accessories like an original holster or original cleaning rod, spare mag, etc sorts of things to build up a package, but I doubt you would make money on that, just gives it a cool factor for the eventual happy owner, may or may not make it easier to sell and may or may not turn a profit, you would want to be very careful if you threw money at it in order to flip it.

Yuck, what DID they put into that snack we just ate?

Sounds like a good plan, since you know what you are getting into. My thoughts were just so you do not spend $1200 in parts and work on a $500 gun and then realize you wanted a better slide/frame fit after all, or something. If you want to tinker and learn, this is an inexpensive way to do it.

Technically, the government would love to see a flow of money like this: you earn $10, you pay $1 of it in income tax. You spend $4 of it and pay $1 in sales taxes and other taxes like gas tax or whatever. The business pays $.4 of it in income tax and uses $2 of it to pay an employee who pays $.2 of it in income taxes.... then spends the buck he has left... If they miss it on one of the times it changes hands, they will get it the next time around, trust me.

thoughts.... 1) thats a lot of money in barrels. Note that poly barrels shoot hard cast lead slugs just fine and the price difference is minor. Note that MBC produces hard cast, not pure lead, bullets. Their hardness varies some based off the caliber and designed use of the rounds. 4) glocks will not function on weak rounds. I worked out a great 9mm recipe for my beretta 92, ruger 89, couple of others, worked great. Glock would not cycle. Glock has springs designed for constant +P ammo use and needs pretty stout loads (compared to the starter loads in books) to even work at all, and a bit hotter still to never jam. so my recommendation is to use the MBC bullets in your poly barrels, and start your starter loads at exactly 1/2 way between the max load and posted starter load. While I sold my glocks, they never had a problem with hard cast MBC bullets and I also shoot their bullet in my makarov (also a poly barrel) with zero troubles. Thousands of rounds, no leading. I second Dolomite on the powder, the hot hot powders are difficult to work with and will drive you nuts if you are trying to tweak a load unless you have high precision equipment. 0.1 of a grain is not much in a load that is using 7-8 grains of a weak powder. Its a much bigger difference in a 3 grain load.

Those drop in triggers are over $100, some over 200. I fail to see how buying a cheap gun then replace the guts with pricy parts is helpful. Ria is a good product at a great price, I am not saying otherwise, but throw a lot of $$ in parts at a RIA and you still have a RIA --- and by the time you turn the gun into a pro shooter, you could have bought a more expensive gun and saved a lot of trouble. If ALL you want, and will ever want, is a decent trigger, it may be worth doing, but if you want to slowly upgrade the gun into a high end shooter, it may not be worth doing. A match barrel, bushing, and trigger job will end up costing more than the gun did new, but the resell value will probably never top $500.

I also love my lee turret press. I can make a box of 50 9mm in 15 min on it. Easy to use and fairly inexpensive, easily paid for itself 3-4 times over this past year. If that is too expensive, a single stage will do it but much slower per box, so if you shoot a LOT the turret is far better, if you shoot just a little, a single stage may suit you better. If you have an uzi or shoot daily, you might want to skip to the dillion or something. From the number of bullets I have bought, I would say the lee has loaded about 3000 9mms for me this past year (and probably that many 45s and 223s along with a few boxes of random other calibers).