General on TriggerMeister.com

Dillon 1050 Bin Supporter...STOP THE SAG!

Tue, 21 Dec 2021 13:45:59 -0500

Many years ago, when I purchased my first Dillon 1050, I fabricated a support arm extension to stop the sagging of my Acrobin. It was tedious and required the drilling of holes through the original Dillon 1050 support to mount the extension. Hence I never made or installed one on my second 1050. Fast forward to 2021 and thanks to the use of 3D printing I have the capability of making highly customized parts that would be hard or difficult to do via injection molding. Let me introduce you to the Dillon 1050 Bin Supporter!

2021 Kimber Stainless II 9mm review..

Wed, 20 Oct 2021 23:55:03 -0400

If you love to assemble guns, this is the gun for you! I just picked the gun up today from my local FFL. You guys/gals know the magical moment when the FFL puts your new gun on the counter... Yeah, the one that you waited a whole 5 days for, thanks to SMGA's fast shipping. So, my magical moment went something like this:

The case was opened, and the Kimber was lovingly wrapped in an oversized Zip-lock bag that might as well could have been an evidence bag. At that moment I was greeted with an awesome machine oil smell, if you ever worked in a machine shop you know the smell, and I instantly knew the magic was over.

I racked the slide a couple of times and noticed that it didn't lock up occasionally. It stopped about a 1/4" short of full lockup. Having built several 1911/2011's myself, I instantly went into diagnosis mode. At first, I thought it was the hood, which is generally an easy fix, so I decided to take it home vs. just rejecting it and letting my FFL deal with it.

At home, my first objective was to get the cosmoline/machine oil off and replace it with some nice smelling Weapon's Shield. While I had the gun apart, I removed several burrs from the barrel and the breach as well as some peened over corners. I reassembled the firearm only to discover that the gun still had the same issue. This time, I eliminated the barrel as culprit. After taking the slide back off, I found a nice burr on the firing pin disconnect. The sharp edge from the plunger had dug into it, so if impacted just right, it would stop the slide dead in its tracks.

Time to rip the slide back apart, pound out the rear sight and get the disconnect plunger out. Reshape the plunger by beveling the edges. For good measure, polish the face. Rip the lower apart and get that little plunger pusher out and remove the burr and polish that as well.

Time for reassembly! After getting the gun back together, I was finally able to test fire it for the first time. It ran great. What an exciting evening, working on a brand-new gun!

The good news is that the trigger is quite nice. Generally, that is the one thing I expect to work on in a 1911, but I may not actually do that on this gun.

Once I get out to the range, I'll update the review on accuracy.

See you at the range,

TriggerMeister

Smith & Wesson 77A Pump Pellet Air Rifle

Sat, 24 Jul 2021 21:46:36 -0400

I picked up this little abused rifle at a gun show in Missouri. I had never seen a rifle like this and I heard that antique air rifles can be fairly expensive. Knowing nothing about it asked the seller to educate me. He said that he had one as a kid, that it shot great and he wanted one. Then he finally found this one and within a couple of weeks he found a better one. He said that there a rebuild kits available for about $30. Anyway, it looked rusty, the receiver was flaking and pitted. I appreciated the lesson and was ready to walk away when he cut the price by a 1/3rd. So I took it.

How to make a SKS firing pin

Sun, 04 Jan 2015 04:10:41 -0500

For all of you that have a lathe handy with some 1/4" stainless steel, here are the dimensions to turn a SKS firing pin that uses a s&w revolver return spring. This design was jot my idea, but I did figure out the dimensions on my own through trial an error...

How to modify a S&W sight for a Taurus M44

Tue, 18 Nov 2014 13:31:25 -0500

Fortunately, this was such a quick job, I forgot to take pictures of the process itself. I started with a extra SDM S&W sight I had laying around. The S&W sight had a square mount and then I overlaid the Taurus sight and scribed the radius onto it. With a belt sander I reshaped the sight to scribed line. Then with a file remove some metal from each side, just enough for it to fit the mount on the M44. Now take a drill bit that is smaller than the pin and start a hole through the pin hole into the sight, just enough where you can see it. Then take the sight out and finish drilling the hole on a drill press. A little cold blueing will cover the bare metal and reinstall. I added some loctite red to give it a little extra hold and a gunsmith recommended it as a general good practice when staking sites. Remember to let it cure and the gunsmith went as far as not returning the gun until it was cured!

Motorize! ...your RCBS Trimmer

Sat, 08 Nov 2014 04:05:38 -0500

I'm just starting to appreciate the art of benchrest rifle loading. So I figured I'd share my conversion of my hand powered RCBS Trimmer to a motorized version.

2014 USPSA season is on it's way...

Mon, 09 Jun 2014 22:30:25 -0400

Sorry, I've been neglecting the the blog lately. Work, Family and USPSA has been keeping me very busy. Most of the video's from the matches have been posted on my Youtube channel, but here are a couple of playlists for the year so far:

Rob W:

Craig B:

Aaron K:

Roy N:

A Cheap 2011 Build?

Sun, 02 Mar 2014 14:52:46 -0500

Cheap is relative term when you look at a 1911. If you're considering buying a 1911 you can pick one up brand new for about 500 dollars, but if you want a decent quality 1911 you are in the $800+ price range. If you are looking for a 2011 handgun your new price is approximately 1800 dollars and higher. Custom builds run 2500 dollars and more. So, I was wondering what it would cost to build a 2011 with quality parts, but not go overboard? Here is my attempt at building a 2011 for approximately 900 dollars.

TriggerMeister's FastFire III Bikini Mount

Thu, 09 Jan 2014 01:08:10 -0500

Since I'm building a open gun, I've had to weigh a lot of options. For the optics I was tempted to go with the same old stuff everyone else is shooting. You know what I'm talking about, the C-More with a mount from Dawson or Cheely. However, the C-More just rides so high above the barrel, which changes your POI depending on distance. I had this FF III handy with a really narrow base, so I decided to build a mount for it. At first I wanted to build it out of Aluminum, but then I went for stainless steel for esthetics and the weight difference was negligible.

1911 Single Stack Build

Thu, 26 Dec 2013 05:31:12 -0500

Just a quick update on my previous Sarco Inc blog post. After testing the parts on my Colt Gold Cup I decided to make it into an entire gun. I picked up a Caspian frame from Great Lakes Firearms and Ammunition. Here are some details around the build:

Polished and blued all kit parts
Polished and blued barrel
Brazo's fiberoptic front sight
Bobbed hammer to reduce weight
Hogue 1911 grips
Caspian extractor
Custom sculpted Colt slide with lowered ejection port
Polished slides

So here is the completed 1911 completely blued:

2011 Open Gun Build

Sat, 21 Dec 2013 23:23:44 -0500

It's that time again. Today I started with Craig on my 2011 open build. As usual I started out with a design in my head and then several cuts into it the creative juices took over. I really like the way the slide turned out, so without further ado here is the start of my new gun...

2013 USPSA Matches in Review

Mon, 11 Nov 2013 13:20:38 -0500

Rob's Matches:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLXRslSQ_IQb1k6SMvusY2xXcVeqOtIIPE
Craig's Matches:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLXRslSQ_IQb3Sq81OOQkcjNSBst2W8SmF
Aaron's Matches:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLXRslSQ_IQb3bBN69Qmr12ZXolevu3oUK

Kimber Stainless II: The Overhaul

Mon, 11 Nov 2013 05:49:13 -0500

I'm not quite sure when my wife fell in love with the idea of owning a Kimber. Nevertheless, in order to support my wife's dream, I went on the hunt for a Kimber. After some time we found a Kimber Stainless II. My wife loved it from the start as it met most of her requirements. To customize it, she bought some grips that she liked. Everything was fine except one issue. This gun shot horribly low (4" at 7 yards). In an attempt to fix the issue I replaced the front sight with a lower Hi-Viz sight, but it was still shooting low. After never being quite right, I finally convinced my wife to let me customize Kimber to fix that annoying issue and give the 100 year old design a facelift. Before we jump into the alterations, here is a picture to remind everyone what a stock SSII looks like:

Trick Shots

Sun, 10 Nov 2013 16:09:17 -0500

My new hunting rifle: AR15 in 7.62×39 (Part 2)

Sun, 10 Nov 2013 02:42:07 -0500

Here is my accuracy test right before hunting season:

My new hunting rifle: AR15 in 7.62×39 (Part 1)

Mon, 18 Mar 2013 02:37:26 -0400

Here is the video from when I first built the rifle: