I've said it before and I'll say it again...

I might have mentioned finding this Gen4 Glock 29 sitting in the showcase at Premier Arms out in Brownsburg for a very attractive price. I used to tote a 29 'way back in the day, so there's a bunch of nostalgia wrapped up in the gun for me.

Further, the fact that it still had the copper-colored grease on the slide and that the extractor, breechface, and chamber hood were unmarred led me to suspect the gun was unfired. Should I put 2,000 rounds through it for the amusement of the internet? Sure, why not.

I lubed the gun on the factory-recommended lubrication points with Lucas Extreme Duty Gun Oil, which I selected because there happened to be a .5 oz. bottle of it on my desk at the time. I found a box with thirty leftover rounds of Bobcat Armament 10mm JHP in the trunk of the Zed Drei, and so I brought the 29 along when I took the XD-E to Indy Arms Co on Wednesday. I figured I'd shoot the XD for work and then the G29 for a bit of fun...

*BOOM!* I'd forgotten that Bobcat Armament, like most small ammo makers, feels obliged to load up 10mm Auto to NUKYULAR levels, lest it get mistaken for .40 Short & Weak. Consulting my notes, this stuff averaged 1,225fps out of my Glock 20. Recoil in the stubby little Glock 29 was, as the old saw goes, "brisk but manageable".

With the first shot, the grip torqued in my hand, I could feel the slide bottom out hard as the recoil spring fully compressed, and...failure to feed on the second round in the magazine. As a matter of fact, the second and third round did this in all three magazines. "You're limp-wristing!" Okay. Personally, I think my wrists were fine, but the gun was trying its best to get out of my hands; I'll cop to not having a Captains of Crush Grip...but should that be necessary to make a gun function?

The primers were well flattened and at the ragged edge of primer flow. This is hot ammo. You play at the edge, sooner or later, you fall off... (Sig Sauer's 10mm ammo only chrono'ed some 50fps slower and showed no pressure signs at all when I tried it in my 20, remember.)

Additionally, my favorite bugbear of hard-recoiling compact Glocks popped up: Light, off-center primer strikes caused by a failure to go completely into battery. This happened six times in thirty rounds. I've said it before and I'll say it again: Glock's reputation for reliability is built on their 9mm guns. The further away from the 17 you get, the more chance there is that there will be special issues. In the case of this range session, I'm perfectly willing to bet that if the ammunition were loaded more reasonably, the gun would have been a bunch less problematic.

Factory sights impacting high when I forget to align the plastic and not the paint...

This makes 30 rounds fired since the gun was last cleaned or lubed, with six failures to feed (#2, #3, #12, #13, #22, #23) and six failures to fire (#4, #7, #9, #15, #17, #26). 1,970 rounds to go.
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