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Bullseye Training log

Shaking off the rust – September 21-24, 2005

 

Work begins on sorting out the .22. I’m off to the local nimrod gathering place, also know as the State Game Lands range. In all seriousness, it only takes a couple of bad experiences to really crank up the old stress meter for me; in all fairness, most of the time the range is a rather pleasant and entirely free-of-charge place to get some shooting done.

 

First impressions - this is a nice little gun! All aluminum, Morini designed grips, and a very low bore axis relative to the shooting hand. I like the balance, and the grip is a close-enough fit that I don't need to fiddle around with it until I get a lot more comfortable with the new toy, and put a couple of boxes of rounds through it. It came with two magazines that I inspected fairly closely, as there have been reports of quality control issues with early versions. There were no apparent signs of abnormal wear, and I did a quick clean and lube job on them. Upon closer inspection, there is enough difference in the feed lip width between the two to be detected with the naked eye. There is a groove around the edge of the magazine base for a rubber o-ring, probably to provide a sure grip on the mag; one of the magazines is missing the o-ring. I therefore dubbed one mag "silver", the other "black", and made a mental note to see if any problems were more prevalent in one or the other.

 

Back to the range, it is a mid-week afternoon, sunny and about 80 degrees with very little wind - just enough to keep the bugs away, but not enough to get you waving the pistol around in the breeze. Thankfully, there is a good crowd at the range today; everyone knows the drill well enough to keep things moving along at just the right pace, with the proper regard for safety.

 

Digging through my ammo box, I came up with a decent selection of match ammunition to get started with. I skipped past bricks of CCI Blazer and PMC Scoremaster, figuring a high-strung Italian might get insulted and stop working forever! Into my shooting bag went Federal 711B and UM1; Eley Pistol Xtra, Pistol Match, and Tenex; RWS R50, and CCI Pistol Match. I didn't expect to get around to shooting all of these different brands and types of ammunition until I had the pistol sighted in and sorted out. To this end, I decided to stick with Fed 711B until I had a decent baseline to work from. It didn’t hurt that I had a full brick of this, but only two or three boxes of each of the others.

 

Initial impressions were most favorable, as the first few magazines went down range without a hitch. It was readily apparent that this pistol was an altogether different beast compared to my Ruger slab-side. Recoil was far less noticeable, and the dot seemed hardly to move between shots. I was shooting in the low 90's without a great deal of effort - no great shakes, to be sure, but encouraging as I hadn't even sighted in yet, hadn't adjusted the grip, etc.

 

But as they say, into each life a little rain must fall. Two problems cropped up, repeatedly and seemingly out of the clear blue. First, the Federal ammo was proving unreliable about 1 in 10 shots. Upon inspection, there is a clearly visible imprint from the firing pin, but no earth-shattering-kaboom as Marvin the Martian would say. As this was only practice, and not a match, this was merely frustrating and annoying - not a total show-stopper. I stuck with the Federal 711B figuring it would not do to introduce multiple variables when trying to solve the more serious issue - extraction problems.

 

This is, of course, the all-too-well-known bugbear affecting these pistols. I've read a slew of forum posts and the like on this issue, without any real consensus regarding a solution. Beginning at the beginning, I broke the pistol down and gave it a thorough cleaning, lightly lubed, and re-assembled. After a few dozen shots, I had more failures to extract. I decided to concentrate on the ammo and chamber first, as the problem didn't seem to be isolated to either magazine.

 

I tested the following series, two magazines of each:

wipe down the ammo, clean the chamber after every magazine

wipe but don't clean

clean but don't wipe

do nothing

 

There seemed to be major progress towards solving the problem; as long as the ammo was wiped clean of excess wax, I didn't have another malfunction. And then, out of the blue, the problem returned - worse than even without wiping or cleaning. After freaking out for awhile, doing some advanced experimental cussing, and spending a few minutes totally dejected and confused, I noticed that the grip was loose! No, the grip isn't loose, the flipping frame screw has backed about halfway out, and everything is loose as a goose!! One Allen wrench and a little dab of Loc-Tite Blue later, and I’m running and gunning again. While I had the pistol apart, I also re-lubed the slide rails a bit more heavily than last time around. I would have preferred not to make more than one change at a time, but I was going a little nuts at this point, and wasn't taking any chances.

 

Every story needs a happy ending, and fortunately this chapter has one. As long as I take a moment to wipe down my ammo, the pistol functions flawlessly. The ammo, unfortunately, does not. Fed 711B is definitely not ready for prime time, at least not in this pistol. The 10% dud rate was pretty consistent through a full brick of ammo spread out over three shooting sessions. In every case, the previous round fired and ejected properly, and the slide was in full battery. The rim shows consistent contact with the firing pin and the same indent between fired and dud rounds. Now to find out was does work in this gun...

 

One quick note on the ammo I've been testing with - it is all at least a year old. I'll be giving some fresh rounds a try in the near future to see if the need to wipe down the ammo remains.

 

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