Grinding Away

So yesterday I took two hundred and fifty rounds of Federal American Eagle 115gr FMJ, courtesy of Lucky Gunner, to the range. On arriving there, I bought fifty additional rounds of Fiocchi 115gr FMJ, for a total of three hundred rounds of ammunition.

Does it look like I'm trying to get this test finished up?

Upper hole is fifty rounds of Fiocchi at seven yards, lower is a hundred American Eagle.

I began experimenting with my grip. Specifically, I began crushing down hard with my support hand and relaxing the grip of my strong hand just a little bit. This seemed to make it easier to concentrate on my trigger pull at any kind of speed. This is something I'll be playing around with more.

Between that and paying more attention to locking my wrists, I was actually able to track the sights some, since they weren't flying around quite so much.

...and this is all American Eagle. Fifty and a hundred again.

Anyway, the gun ran fine, eating up all three hundred rounds with no malfunctions of any type to report.

The Canik has now fired 800 rounds without cleaning or lubing and experienced nine failures to eject and nine failures to feed in the initial fifty, as well as one failure to fire (#221), one failure to lock the slide back (#350), and two more failures to eject (#323, #379). 1,200 rounds to go.
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Overheard in the Hallway...

Trashomon: Tense drama in which everyone in the house remembers someone else saying they'd take the garbage cans to the curb.

— Tamara K. (@TamSlick) March 25, 2016

Weird dream...

I'm stuck with the fragments of this dream from the other morning. It was...strange. It was like a movie version of a novel, and the novel entirely took the form of letters between two brothers in the mid- to late-Third Century BC.

The brothers were Carthaginian, sons of an extremely successful merchant and each was manning a trading outpost for the family business. One was on the western coast of Africa, somewhere just south of the Sahara and northwest of the bight of Benin...maybe the current location of Freetown in Sierra Leone? The other brother was running the family's godown in western Britain, maybe Wales or the north coast of Cornwall?

Anyway, these men grew up in a cosmopolitan setting, they'd been to Athens and Tyre as kids with their dad, seen the shiny new model city of Alexandria, their family was among the movers and shakers of their society. Now their homeland...their civilization...was being dashed from its pinnacle by the expanding Roman republic, and they're watching this happen at one remove, out at the edges of the known world, getting messages about not-quite-current affairs via merchant ship and passing letters on to each other via the family trading routes.

There's a book in here somewhere.
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Wednesday Part Two...

After lunch, I ran the Canik TP9v2 over to Indy Arms company for a quick function check. I had fifty rounds of American Eagle 115gr FMJ courtesy of Lucky Gunner, and bought a box of fifty rounds of Fiocchi 115gr FMJ from the store. I wanted to see if either of these commonly available loads would run the Canik reliably, unlike Blazer Brass...

I tried the Fiocchi first. It seemed pretty warm, ejecting vigorously and cycling the gun fine. Next was the American Eagle. While not as hot as the Fiochhi, it ejected more strongly than the Blazer Brass; again the gun ran fine.

Seven yards, mostly at about a 1rd/sec pace.

So, no malfunctions to report with these hundred rounds.

The Canik has now fired 500 rounds without cleaning or lubing and experienced nine failures to eject and nine failures to feed in the initial fifty, as well as one failure to fire (#221), one failure to lock the slide back (#350), and two more failures to eject (#323, #379). 1,500 rounds to go.
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Wednesday Part One...

Took the Canik TP9v2 and two hundred rounds to Atlanta Conservation Club on Wednesday morning. Fifty rounds of Fiocchi 124gr FMJ, which I was pretty sure would cycle the gun; fifty rounds of Winchester's 147gr FMJ "Train" ammo (W9MMT), which I was less sure of; and a hundred rounds of CCI Blazer Brass 115gr FMJ, which I still had very little confidence in.

The Fiocchi 124gr functioned the gun with authority. There was one failure-to-fire on round number twenty-one of the day (#221 of the test). The round fired normally on the second attempt.

I chronographed a 10-round string of the Fiocchi:

LO: 1114
HI: 1163
AV: 1140
ES: 49.60
SD: 14.14

This was about the same ballistics as the Winchester 124gr NATO load.

Next was the Winchester 147gr "Train" load. All fifty functioned fine. Ejection was reasonably vigorous, and recoil felt normal. Ten rounds over the chrono gave the following results:

LO: 947.9
HI: 1011
AV: 974.1
ES: 63.79
SD: 18.30

The top target was fifty rounds of Fiocchi at 41 feet and the bottom was fifty rounds of Winchester at 51 feet. The business of the rear sight was no aid to shooting at any sort of speed out past ten or so yards. Also, the dot does not appear to be exactly centered on the front sight blade, maybe? I need to mic that thing.

On to the CCI Blazer Brass... I let Mike Grasso run a magazine through the gun; watching him shoot, the ammo's difficulties cycling the slide strongly were evident. Brass mostly just dribbled over the right side of the ejection port to lie at his feet, except for the couple spent cases that bounced off his head and the one that decided to be a rebel and dribbled over the left side of the gun.

That lack of vigorous recoil impulse meant...

Round one hundred and twenty three of the day (#323 of the test) was a failure to eject and...

Round number one hundred and seventy nine of the day (#379 of the test) also failed to eject. Also, the weapon failed to lock the slide open on round number one hundred and fifty of the day (#350 of the test).

The Canik has now fired 400 rounds without cleaning or lubing and experienced nine failures to eject and nine failures to feed in the initial fifty, as well as one failure to fire (#221), one failure to lock the slide back (#350), and two more failures to eject (#323, #379). 1,600 rounds to go.
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More steam...

So, about the Winchester 124gr NATO that cycled fine in the Canik...

I didn't think to save a box of this stuff for chrono purposes in the Canik, but when fired out of the Ruger 9E, the NATO FMJ (product code Q4318) averaged 1145fps.

Comparatively, CCI Blazer FMJ averaged the same (well, 1144fps) out of the P320, and that's with a 115gr bullet out of half an inch more barrel. I don't see why the Blazer Brass would be loaded much hotter than the aluminum-hulled stuff. This is similar, ballistically, to Federal's RTP 115gr and Remington UMC 115gr FMJ bargain ammo.
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Doing Better

Back to Indy Arms Co. on Tuesday morning with the Canik TP9v2 and another hundred rounds of ammunition. This time I brought fifty rounds of Winchester 124gr FMJ "NATO" Q4318 that I had lying around, as well as a box of fifty Sig Sauer Elite Performance 115gr FMJ, courtesy of Sig Sauer. While not as spicy as the Federal 9BPLE, I wondered if these would have the Wheaties to function the gun properly.

I started with the Winchester and then moved to the Sig Sauer loads...

The gun functioned fine for all one hundred rounds with no stoppages of any kind to report.

The Canik has now fired 200 rounds without cleaning or lubing and has experienced nine failures to eject and nine failures to feed. 1,800 rounds to go.
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SAVE US!

The television is abuzz with talking heads wondering aloud what further indignities they could suffer to make the danger go away.

— Tamara K. (@TamSlick) March 22, 2016

Inauspicious Beginning

So, Monday morning was the Canik TP9v2's inaugural trip to the range to fire the first of two thousand rounds.

I showed up at Indy Arms Co. with the cased pistol, my trusty UpLULA , and a hundred rounds of ammunition: A box of fifty CCI Blazer Brass 115gr full metal jacket rounds and a box of fifty Federal 115gr +P+ 9BPLE jacketed hollow points.

It turned out that the UpLULA was a fortuitous addition to the range gear. While made by Mec-Gar, the feed lips on the Canik's mags were sharp enough to shave with, and getting rounds 16-18 into the mags the first few times took some effort.

We opened the ball with the Blazer Brass, and immediately encountered problems...

Round #1: Failure to eject...

Round #2: Failure to eject...

Round #6: Failure to feed...

Round #15: Failure to feed...

It was shaping up to be a long day.

All told, the gun experienced eighteen total malfunctions in the first fifty rounds, nine each of FTEs and FTFs. The hot +P+ 9BPLE, on the other hand, ran through the entire box without a hitch.

Now, granted, the Blazer Brass is pretty weak tea in the recoil energy department, but I've been using ammo from this lot in my other nines for months. It's the stuff I took to the Langdon class in my M&P 9 and experienced no malfunctions and was shooting in my Glock 35 (with Lone Wolf 9mm barrel) last Tuesday, again with no issues. This is the stuff that's used at IAC as the standard range 9mm ammo. It's weak, but within SAAMI spec.

This Canik seems to come out of the box dramatically oversprung. We'll see if a couple hundred rounds settles the spring in enough to run on normal ammo...

The rear sight, with its vertical post at the bottom of the notch as well as dots on either side of it, makes for a fairly busy sight picture, but the gun shot okay despite that.

The Canik has now fired 100 rounds without cleaning or lubing and has experienced nine failures to eject and nine failures to feed. 1,900 rounds to go.
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Rabbit People.

Matt Lauer is on my television screen, warbling and emoting about the terror attack at Brussels airport. "The bomb went off in the departure area of the airport, which would have been packed with thousands of people, everyone carrying packages and bags and briefcases, and of course this is before anybody's gone through security."

One gets the feeling that this herbivore would prefer that the government station a TSA probulator just inside the front door of every residence in the nation to make sure nobody's out in public with a suspicious package that hasn't been checked to make him feel safe.
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Mencken on Democracy

"When a candidate for public office faces the voters he does not face men of sense; he faces a mob of men whose chief distinguishing mark is the fact that they are quite incapable of weighing ideas, or even of comprehending any save the most elemental — men whose whole thinking is done in terms of emotion, and whose dominant emotion is dread of what they cannot understand. So confronted, the candidate must either bark with the pack or be lost... All the odds are on the man who is, intrinsically, the most devious and mediocre — the man who can most adeptly disperse the notion that his mind is a virtual vacuum. The Presidency tends, year by year, to go to such men. As democracy is perfected, the office represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. We move toward a lofty ideal. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron." -H.L. Mencken

I guess that was technically a nightmare...

Spent my dreams last night mostly changing planes in several different airports, all of which sported bewildering architecture and half of which were under varying degrees of remodeling-related construction. Also, I was constantly getting separated from the people with whom I was traveling and trying to re-link up via a cell phone with a battery that wouldn't hold a charge worth a damn.

Ugh.
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Big Deal

Federal 147gr HST jacketed hollowpoints at $24.95/50. That's a screamin' deal on some no-kiddin' serious defensive ammo.
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And then there were nine?

Apparently a "Constitutional Carry" bill is on the governor's desk in Boise, which would make Idaho the second state this year to go to permitless carry, following West Virginia. The usual "blood in the streets" worries are being floated by the usual people, such as Boise's chief of police. Bless their hearts.
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Important Safety Tip...

If you are waving a fake gun around, people with real guns might not be in on the joke and will react accordingly.

People are not going to wait for you to shoot at them to determine that it's not a toy gun.
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Gratuitous Gun Pr0n #141...

Steyr C9-A1. Next up for the 2,000-round shoot-a-thon after the Canik.

I suppose I should be honest and admit that I think Steyrs are the skinny jeans and man-buns of the pistol world. For when someone doesn't want to go all AC/DC t-shirts and Levis and get a Springfield Armory Range Officer or Sig P229, but is still too much of a special snowflake for a Glock 19 or M&P 9...

I'll bet that if they only came in .41 Action Express and .45GAP it wouldn't hurt their sales one bit.
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The problem with YouTube gun reviews...

From discussion elsewhere:

"For example, go watch the PT1911 video and do a shot every time he points the gun at any part of his body. When you come to tomorrow morning, post up the last thing you remember before you blacked out at about the three-minute mark of a nine-minute video..."

Overheard in the Car...

Overheard in the Car: "They were out of Fever Tree Naturally Light Tonic Water, so I had to get Fentimans, dammit." #firstworldproblems

— Tamara K. (@TamSlick) March 19, 2016

Decisions...

I'm wondering if it wouldn't be a good idea to stop at Mickey D's on the way to the fun show? I mean, you want to be at the fun show as shortly after 0800 as possible in order to get a non-atrocious parking place, but the food at the concession stands, even the little cafeteria, borders on inedible to my Broad Ripple-spoiled palate. How you screw up a simple sausage/egg/cheese-on-toast that badly remains a mystery to me.

That's one thing about Mickey D's breakfast; barring an unusually bad franchise, it's about as known a quantity as there is in fast food. A sausage McMuffin's a sausage McMuffin, from here to Kyoto. Well, maybe not in Kyoto...it might be something weird there.
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Quickie trip.

Ducked into Indy Arms Company with a box of fifty rounds of American Eagle 185gr FMJ on Friday morning before heading over to set up for the fun show.

The gun worked fine, and there were no malfunctions of any kind to report.

The Glock 37 has now fired 1,660 rounds since it was last cleaned or lubed, with one failure to feed on round #1,589, and one parts breakage. 340 rounds to go.
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