Glock Magazine Quick-Disassembly Tool

After struggling with the Otis tool, I wondered if there was a better way.

Real-Avid must have as well!

It works so much better!

You put the button on the post sticking out horizontally:

Then you push down against the bar, that levers the base off the little tabs.

Then you put the hole in the baseplate over the vertical post and slide the body back:

It drops the baseplate and locking plate into the little tray and you just lift the body up and the spring remains controlled.

You can reverse that last step to reassemble them!

Works with Glock 21 magazines too!

This is so much better than the Otis one, I highly recommend!

The underside is also a magazine unloader.

Glock Magazine Disassembly Tool

The Otis brand Glock magazine disassembly tool arrived today!

It works really well on magazines that have been disassembled before and not at all for the first take down!

For the first take down you need a flat-blade screwdriver and come in from the back.

This will deform the little retainer nubbins enough that the tool will have enough leverage next time. 

How it's supposed to work:  You depress the subfloor button with the nubbin of the tool...

Then you lever it against the front wall of the magazine until the floorplate clears the subfloor button.

It's much harder than it needs to be.

The newer magazines are much harder to get apart than the 1994 models I have here too!  Perfection! I guess.

I also found an older magazine loader in my pile of things.

The new one has a texture and is slightly shorter.

They moved the logo too!

Review

Widner's, who's done this blog a good turn or two in the past, has asked me to relay a review of the IWI Carmel they've done.

It's cool looking!

Looks like it scratches the same itch as an MCX-Spear, SCAR or Masada ACR.

At $1,800 it's a lot cheaper than the FN offering and cheaper than SIG as well.  Plus, still being made, unlike the Masada ACR.

Read the article and tell them I sent you, if they ask.

American Society of Magic Negroes

Meh.

It's not a horrible movie, the premise seemed like it could have been fun.

But I did not care about the main character, Aren.

It's a writing fail.

The white dude he's supposed to be magicking up, Jason, is unlikeable; that part succeeded.  He didn't deserve the assistance the ASMN was giving him with his job and certainly didn't deserve to win the heart of the girl.

But the main character didn't really do the needful about earning her love either.

She likes him because the script says she should.

Justice Smith is playing the same basic character he portrayed in D&D Honor Among Thieves.

I dunno if he lacks range or the director said do like you did before.

The big speech that's supposed to evoke white guilt fails to land.  What it really gets me thinking is Aren has been attributing how he's felt about himself to outside forces when it was from within all along.   The way he explains it to Jason underscores it and Jason's reaction to it pounds it home.

In the end, it's not bad, but it's also not good.

I'd skip it; but I already watched it.

My Week With Corolla

The Toyota dealer loaned me a '23 Corolla SE while they were working on The Beast.

It's chock full of nannies.

Lane assist is the most irritating.  It's like a stick shaker sort of deal that nudges you back into the center of the lane as Betty sees it.

There are many reasons to NOT be perfectly centered in the lane, and it gets old that Betty can't seem to perceive it.

One thing in particular was construction that had us crossing the centerline and Betty damn near yanking the wheel out my hand to stay on the right of it.

I am not a fan.

You can shut it off, but you have to shut it off every time you start the car.

Adaptive cruise control is kind of sort of neat once you figure out how it's supposed to work.

Nobody uses it as intended because the default settings hamstring the intent.

I read the manual.

People are out there using these features to thwart Darwin.

The infotainment system shows some signs of the future...  There's a nav function you can sign up for with just a small monthly fee...

But Sirius/XM works, the radio works.

The back up camera has laughably poor resolution.  The one I added to The Beast is SO much better, despite the much smaller screen on my car.

The AC takes forever to get going and waits for the "pay attention to traffic" screen to time out before firing up.  In Florida, this matters a lot.

Not surprisingly, there's a distinct lack of "go" from the small 4-banger.  Moxie is noticeably perkier.

The 27 mpg is nice, but it's matched by Moxie and The Beast isn't too far behind it.

Hole In Paper

Widener's was kind enough to let me pick out some ammo to review and this is part one of that! 

 

Federal Premium Law Enforcement Tactical HST 124gr (P9HST1).  At the time you could buy single boxes of 50 rounds, there's just the 1,000 round bulk pack available right this second.

In my M&P 9 2.0 Compact is shoots to the same point of aim as the 115gr FMJ practice ammo I've been shooting.

The astigmatism makes the front slight look a little tilted and I shoot a little left when I have dry eye.

Look at those sharp holes!  This load isn't +P pressure, but it definitely has more thump than the PMC Bronze we shoot most often.  The muzzle flash was making a nice ring around the front of the slide and ejection was energetic.

The Lovely Harvey commented that it kicked just a bit more and I caught her in full recoil.

 She found that it hit the same point of aim as the 115gr stuff too. 

 

That's handy because you can use the cheaper ammo to practice and reserve the hot stuff for when it matters.

Surprisingly my little Shield Plus shot a better group than the compact sized M&P!

Here you can see what muzzle blast and flip there is in a subcompact:

 

 

The disappointing group was from my P320.  And even that wasn't TOO disappointing.  Palm sized instead of fist sized.  And the picture didn't get taken!  Damn phone.

It functioned flawlessly in both M&P compacts, the Shield Plus and P320.

Harvey's compact has been notoriously finicky about what hollow-points it will eat and to find another brand that it likes is a bonus!

I would buy more of this ammo for daily use.

Review Coming

Widner's reached out and asked if I'd like to give them a review.

Since they let me pick my own ammunition to test, I'm thinking that there should also a be a review of the purchasing experience.

First, there's their web page.

It's clearly navigable!

I can't say that about every vendor I purchase from.

The left sidebar lets you narrow your choices down to JUST the ammo you want to look at in short order then it's a simple matter of adding it to your cart and giving them your payment information.

In this case, my payment information was mostly a gift code they provided, but after taxes I had to add a few bucks of my own.  I could have bought less and put it all on their gracious gift, but that seems really skeezy.

Shipping is down to two choices, FedEx and UPS.  Pick the one which does a better job in your area.

There's nothing to keep you from making a purchase.

That makes it difficult to review.

Reviews are based on what goes wrong, not from everything going like it's supposed.

Well.

One thing is wrong.

Not one round of 105x617mmR in stock from any manufacturer.  :)

It Makes It Hard To Support Them

I needed some parts for Brenda.

KE Arms is the source of those parts, and I wanted to support them in their legal battle.

So I ordered direct instead of through Brownell's.

A week ago.

They didn't hesitate to take the money...  That took two days.

So five days since they took my money and nobody has bothered to drop my parts into an envelope.

For an item listed as "in stock."

Long Taper

A while back I converted the M951 light on Valentine from incandescent to LED.

Malkoff promised 1.25 hours plus a taper period for continuous use.

Just after Battery Day I found some 123 batteries which were past the expiration date.

Since I wasn't going to trust them for reals, I decided to see how long they'd run the M951.

The light went out after about 2 hours, dimming significantly at about an hour.

The bell of the light was quite warm to the touch, but nothing you could brand with.

It Can't Be That Much Better Can It?

I'm noticing that the M&P 9 Metal has hit the shelves.

For a solid $200 more than it's plastic progenitor.

On one hand, that's still $400 cheaper than a new FN High-Power, on the other; one has to ask if it's 1/3 better than the polymer frame because that's what they're asking for here.

This tracks with S&W's MSRP when I compare like features to like features so as to get as close to an apples to apples comparison as I can.

The truth will be in the shooting, but I'm not going to be shooting one unless S&W happens to be reading this and drops me an email.

I will happily take one to the range and see how it compares to their older versions of the gun.

Assuming they want an honest review.

I'm never sure.

On the other side of things, being honest, the M&P 9 2.0 Compact is so much better than the M&P 9 1.0 Full-Size that I'm seriously considering trading the 1.0 for a 2.0 full size.

The Sheild Plus is definitely a big improvement over the OG Shield.

They do make improvements with each iteration which are generally worth having.

Though, I don't know if I like the gray on the metal version.

Gun Jeebus Explains It All

Hey, Gunwriters, was this so damn hard?

Quite Happy

On a whim, I bought this:

30 ounce stainless tumbler.

I'd just been using it for water from the cooler and noticed that it kept things cool for a while.

But since our water delivery has been delayed, I decided to use tap water and the ice I laid in for the storm.

I filled it with ice and tap water at about 7pm.  Then let it set on the desk because I left to have a beer with friends.

There's still a lot of ice in it.  It's been 8 hours and there's still ice in it.

Not bad for a whim.

Sadly, I cannot find this design on their web page.

I bought mine at the local Ace Hardware, so it might be exclusive.  Might be discontinued.

Dunno.

The Plus Is The Minus

Doing my normal thing and watching the reviews of a recent purchase after I've made the purchase and played around with it.

Something that comes up many times about the Primary Arms SLx 1x Cyclops Gen 2 (which I call MicroPrism) is that it's not a red dot.

That's got implications that they even explain most of the time.

The big one, and it was a major selling point for me, is that red dots are red smears to someone with astigmatism.  Etched glass means I get a clear aiming point.

This is not insignificant if you've a real astigmatism issue.  It's hard to aim when your aiming point looks like an exaggerated photon torpedo from Star Trek: The Motion Picture.

For me if the dot is small enough in MOA, my glasses can compensate and it's all good.  My, very expensive, Aimpoint M4S has such a dot and I can still use it.

Big dots like the StrikeFire II and MD-RGBII tend to wash out and get bloomy.

But since I very rarely stretch past 100 yards with guns intended for home defense, it had not been a problem.  Until the other day with the StrikeFire when it REALLY bothered me.

That led the the experiment with the MicroPrism.

After you get past the "it's not a red dot" there seems to be a lot of commenting about how you can get it bright enough to use in the day time.

Guys.  I know you go shooting on 2-gun ranges all the time and expend thousands of rounds more than I do, but...

One of the advantages of an etched glass reticle is that it's visible in the day in black.  It doesn't need to be red at noon if you can see the black!

I've been using Primary Arms 5x ACSS scopes for a while and doing the outside ranges too.  You don't even need to turn it on during the day except for rare occasions where the target is against a dark background and then your night setting is working fine again and you see the illumination.

I think they're just not accustomed to shooting with an illuminated etched reticle.

I can't think of many until fairly recently and with the rising popularity of low power variable optics, we're going to see them more often.

Shaken Faith

My little "Behind Every Blade of Grass" carbine, Brenda really tested me with this optics and irons thing.

I really like her and she'd become my favorite AR.

The right weight and balance and...

Because I didn't completely think through how the optics work I got worried she had a major wandering zero problem.

My Mini-14 days came back to haunt me.

Chasing that wandering zero ruined many days of shooting and kept us at the 50 yard line when we should have been stretching our legs and shooting at the 100 or 200 yard lines at the Ames, Ike's range.

I didn't want to do that again, and I know that Palmetto State Armory has a bit of a reputation for getting it wrong then making it right once you complain.

Doing the re-zero of the irons today and discovering that something about the light-path means you can't use the irons through the scope restored faith in my little Brenda.

I didn't want to be unhappy with my favorite.

No-Witness Sight

Took Brenda to the range to see what the fuck.

Removed the MicroPrism 1x and zeroed the BUIS.

Yes, I am still blind, but the 25m group is OK.

Once it was zeroed, a miracle seems to have occurred!  The rear sight is no longer all the way over to the left!

Huzzah!

About here I got busted for using ADI F1A1 ball, which has a steel core like M855.

Then I found out my S&B 55gr M193 is bimetallic jacketed and, thus, also forbidden from the range.

So I got a couple of boxes of PMC X-TAC 55gr FMJ.

It shot the same size group to the same point of aim as the ADI, so I moved on to zeroing the SLx MicroPrism (again).

Piece of cake.

Now the fun part.

Flip up the Magpul BUIS and line the sights up through the scope.

WAY high and right from the point of aim.  Parallax, maybe?  Dunno.

What I now know is that I cannot use the irons through the scope.

American Defense AD-B2 STD QD mount is in my future!

I also forced myself to remember all those basic rifle marksmanship lessons and get an OK group at 100 yards.  I used to be better, but I'm knocking the rust off!

All in all, a productive day!

Odd

I took Brenda to the range with the new MicroPrism.

I'd dialed it to match the irons that I'd recently zeroed the other day.

It shot significantly to the right of aim.

When I got it zeroed, it did not match the irons at all.

Matching the irons to the scope now has the rear sight pegged all the way to the left.

Something is not right.

I think I might take her back to the range and see if the irons are way off and it's some sort of optical illusion from a prism sight that keeps them from being co-witnessed.

If so, that will mean I need a QD base for the scope so I can chuck it if I never need to use the back-up iron.

Bonus Feature

The MicroPrism has an epic battery life.  29,000 hours.

The StrikeFire II only has 7,000.

Neither is telling the true story.

Both have an automatic shut-off.

The StrikeFire II shuts off after 12 hours and all you have to do get the dot back is hit either button.

The MicroPrism has "shake-awake" and turns back on automatically if you jiggle the sight (or weapon it's attached to).

Auto shut-off extends the battery life a lot, and the MicroPrism has more life to give.

It also means that I don't need to remember to turn it on before bed or flail at it if I forgot because something has gone bump in the night.

So far I'm liking the MicroPrism more and more each day.

Being smaller and lighter on top of it doesn't hurt either.

I've Seen This Before

Something neat about the mount holes on the MicroPrism.

 

Every hole comes pre-Helicoiled!

I've read about this in several mil-specs.

Helicoils are stronger than cut threads in a lot of cases, so this means it should be harder for clueless morons, like me, to strip them out.

Very cool.

Hypothesis

The Primary Arms SLx 1x MicroPrism arrived today!

Using the medium height cantilever mount mounted backwards allows the LaRue Po-Boy to continue to have a useful function.  It also makes it an ersatz first focal plane 2.5x LPVO!

I like the Cyclops Gen II reticule a great deal.

 

Though I don't have it cranked near bright enough to see the red illumination here, you can see that you don't need it to use the scope when it's bright out.

That's a feature of etched glass reticules I really like in addition to it being crisp and clear for my astigmatismatic eye balls.

You can also see that it's not a true 1x with the ocular cranked for focus with my eyes.

The 1x MicroPrism is lighter than the StrikeFire II it's replacing.  0.5 lb. vs 0.7 lb.

Something else interesting is this, in GURPS terms, a collumating sight in terms of benefits even though it's real behavior matches a telescopic sight better.

The reticule works like a red-dot, but the optics and illumination are more like a telescopic sight.

So it should give a +1 to Guns/TL8 (Rifle), like a collumator.

But the glass nullifies a -1 for darkness penalties and the illumination another -2.

A collumating scope gives a -3, so same effect at the end of the day.

I think I need a new kind of scope rule...

Damn technology not holding still for game rules.  Again.

45 Pictures

 

Top Row (L-R) M1911A1, Star PD, SIG-Sauer P220, S&W 625-3 Model of 1989.

Bottom Row (L-R) Glock 21, CZ 97B, Kahr CT-45, S&W M&P 45C. 

 

Only the Glock and Kahr have no factory means of altering the grip.

To be fair, we're going to have to go shooting.  .45 is a bit hard to come by at the moment.