Project Whimsy Crosses the Finish Line

Sunday afternoon on the back yard range at Castle Frostbite, the Glock 37 (aka "the waterhead Glock", aka "Project Whimsy") fired a hundred rounds of commercial .45GAP, bringing the total to 2,010 since the last time it had been cleaned or lubricated, back in January.

The elusive Major Caudill fired a couple magazines.

The Remington 230gr FMJ left my fingers all gray and nasty as always, but all one hundred rounds fired without a hitch. The weapon went through its complete cycle of operation with every press of the trigger.

The Glock 37 has now fired 2,010 rounds since it was last cleaned or lubed, with one failure to feed on round #1,589, one failure to fire on round #1,712, and one parts breakage. This concludes the 2,000 round challenge and the gun is getting a well-deserved bath. Look for a wrap-up piece soon with more photos, thoughts, explanations, and future plans for the poor bobblehead Glock.
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Grinding along...

Wednesday I went to Indy Arms Co. and put another hundred rounds through Project Whimsy: The last fifty rounds of that Remington UMC 230gr FMJ and fifty rounds of Federal 230gr HST jacketed hollow points.

I still need a lot of work. If you put the virtual 3"x5" cards up there that were my imaginary targets, I've got six or seven missed out of a hundred rounds, which is unsat.

There were no malfunctions of any type to report.

The Glock 37 has now fired 1410 rounds since it was last cleaned or lubed, with one parts breakage. 590 rounds to go.
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We can make it better, faster, stronger...

With the arrival of a package from Brownells on the Big Brown Truck of Happiness, Project Whimsy is well and truly underway.

Due to the off-beat chambering, the G37 was priced at $325 with night sights and one magazine. In the configuration it was in, it was absolutely ready for someone to purchase it, load it up, and throw it in the sock drawer as a ballistic rabbit's foot (or carry it if they were so inclined.)

Or, you know, it's a low-cost base gun to play with various Glock modifications, which is what I'll be doing with it while I do the whole 2,000-round thing.
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Down the Well

While I was at Raven Concealment's booth at the NRAAM, Michael Goerlich pressed a ziploc bag with one of RCS's newer offerings into my hands with a "Here, try this." Well, okay. I'm game to try new stuff, and in this case I already had the perfect host gun in mind...

I popped the Pearce grip plug out of Project Whimsy and prepared to attach the Freya mag well...

Because I am not dumb, I read the included instructions carefully. (It was only, like, eight paragraphs, dude. It's not like it was Dostoevsky or anything.)

Like the ad copy says, there's enough clearance to get some purchase on the flooplate and rip out a stuck mag. Not a terribly common occurrence with double-column/single-feed mag guns with external extractors, but there you go...

It doesn't add a ton to the size of the gun. Its effect on concealment would depend on where you were carrying it and which gun you had it on. I think it could be a serious help on a G19-size gun for people with wide hands, but I don't know...

Some people decry this as "gamer", but in most games this modification would push your Glock into a class where you were competing against hot-rodded $3k custom 2011s. I do know one game where it might prove useful for me, though, and that's at local bowling pin matches....

Now, seeing as how the Glock is already a gun with a cavernous magwell and a tapered magazine, the real effect on reload times is going to have to await me getting some time in with my ShotMaxx...
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Sunday, Yummy Sunday...

Plans are afoot!

We will greet the day with brunch at one or another of the fine eateries here in Broad Ripple, and then hie ourselves to Indy Arms Co. to enjoy some range time in the air-conditioned great indoors.

Project Whimsy has a TAC Trigger from Overwatch Precision installed for T&E purposes, with an eye toward making it my bowling pin eliminator. (Of course, I punked out of bowling pin shooting yesterday because it was hotter than dammit yesterday.)

Looking forward to trying out the new trigger, and maybe getting started on the next 2,000-rd test. Tune in!
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Fifty more...

Ran fifty more rounds of Remington UMC 230gr FMJ through Project Whimsy today. (Well, I fired three magazines and Maj. Caudill finished off the box.) There were no malfunctions of any type to report.

The Glock 37 has now fired 1110 rounds since it was last cleaned or lubed, with one parts breakage. 890 rounds to go.
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Fixing a G-lock...

So, I bought this used Glock in a local gun store. It's a Gen 2 Glock 17 with a serial number that dates it to 1992.

It looked like a Robar custom, or at least a gun that someone really wanted people to think was a Robar custom, so I plunked down the dough for it. Close examination showed that the finish was really NP3 and confirmation on Bookface from some folks who would know pretty much made up my mind that what I had here was indeed an early Robar Glock.

It was pretty schweet except for one thing: That goofy Siderlock trigger. I refuse to believe that anybody savvy enough to send their gun to Robar would be derpy enough to put this useless dingus in it. I have to think that the guy who had it Robar'ed then sold it and the new owner dropped in the useless trigger. 

The new owner also did a bit of a trigger job, polishing all the bearing surfaces of the cruciform so that...B-BAM!...the gun doubled on the regular. Good thing I was only loading two in the mag, or I might have put more rounds into the overhead target carrier trackway than I did...

Off to Brownells.com I went, ordering a completely new set of fire control parts in a fit of excess caution.

I'll probably wind up putting the original striker group and firing pin safety back in the gun, since they're all slick and NP3'ed and the trigger itself was the problem part.

The stuff I learned futzing around with the G37 has proved invaluable. This 17 now has the same ZEV connector/NY1 trigger spring combo that I installed in Project Whimsy. A box of Blazer Brass and a box of American Eagle later, all is well.

Let this be a reminder that if you buy someone else's gun with Bubba Dremel's action polishing job custom trigger work, function check it while unloaded and then load only two or three rounds in the mag for the first few mags to make sure everything's working as it should.
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Halfway Point

I ran fifty more rounds through Project Whimsy after work yesterday. I was a little wild on that first magazine, but settled down okay. There were no malfunctions to report.

The Glock 37 has now fired 1010 rounds since it was last cleaned or lubed, with one parts breakage. 990 rounds to go.
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Rocky Start

Project Whimsy got off to a rocky start yesterday. I dug up some Tango Down/Vickers Tactical magazine floorplates amongst the crap on my gun cleaning table and figured I'd stick one of them on the G37's magazine, just because.

I have never seen a Glock floorplate so difficult to wrestle off the mag tube. I failed, and handed it over to my co-workers. I think it was the third contestant who finally beat it off the mag body by main force, possibly with the aid of a hammer. And then the new floorplate wouldn't go on because I didn't have a c-clamp handy.

The score so far is Glock:1, Me:0. I'll not be defeated so easily, however...
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Pew! Pew! Pew!

I don't mean this to be "All Gun Test Range Notes, All The Time" but... Anyhow, I've got these two tests I'm trying to step along while I'm feeling my way into the schedule of a new job, so bear with me.

Today was my day off at the shop, so naturally I showed up bright and early with my test heaters to get some shooting done. I brought a hundred rounds of Lucky Gunner's Fiocchi .380 FMJ to run through the Sig P250...

I've mostly got that trigger finger placement issue under control, but when shooting at any kind of speed, it can creep back in.

The gun experienced a failure to go into battery on round #47 of the day, #447 of the test. I got as far as the "Tap" of "Tap, Rack, Bang" and that was enough to jiggle the slide closed.

That's 500 rounds fired since the gun was last cleaned or lubricated, with one failure to go completely into battery (#447). 1,500 rounds to go.

I also had fifty rounds of S&B 230gr .45GAP that I ran through Project Whimsy.

Have I mentioned that I really like the ZEV connector/NY1 trigger setup?

Dang if this pound puppy of a po-po trade-in Glock doesn't shoot like a house afire, though.

The Glock 37 has now fired 320 rounds since it was last cleaned or lubed, with one parts breakage. 1,680 rounds to go.
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Project Other Whimsy

So, on to the next 2,000 round Glock test. Continuing the theme of special snowflake Glock chamberings, I'll be trying out the 32, Glock's midsize offering in .357SIG.

Trivial Pursuit, firearms category: I once had a very early Glock 33, the subcompact in the same caliber. Back then, the gun was still rollmarked ".357SIG", but this was before the court battle against Smith & Wesson over the Sigma. After that, Glock decided they wouldn't be putting other company's brand names on their guns, and so ".357SIG" and ".40S&W" became ".357" and ".40".

In the picture above, the pistol is in a Skeleton Gen2 holster from PHLster and is accompanied by the ever-present UpLULA, which is practically required to get the thirteenth round in those magazines when they're new.

The pistol was disassembled and a drop of Lucas Extreme Duty Gun Oil was applied to all lubrication points indicated in the Glock Armorer's Manual.

I brought two boxes of FMJ ammunition to the range: 124gr copper-plated from Fiocchi, and 140gr FMJ fromSellier & Bellot.

I did not chronograph anything yesterday, but the S&B definitely had more sturm und drang, with vivid fireballs at the muzzle and noticeably more muzzle flip.

The S&B also had one round (#65 of the day) that refused to fit in the Glock's chamber.

As a side note, the Gen3 Model 32 feels somewhat undersprung. This is unsurprising since, like the .40 cal Model 23, it uses the recoil spring assembly meant for the 9x19 Glock 19. The slide bottomed out hard in recoil with the S&B and trickled back into battery.

Usually.

On two rounds of the S&B, the slide required a nudge from the thumb to close it all the way.

Printing slightly high and left for me. God I hate the factory Glock "sights".

So, that makes 99 total rounds fired with two failures to go completely into battery (#63, #78). 1,901 rounds left to go.
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