On the left is an older worn unknown brand AR15 extractor. Note the chips on the groove where it holds a case rim. The extractor spring has a blue insert. It’s replacement on the right has a black extractor insert, and an O-ring. The rifle the old extractor was pulled out of was having some extraction issues. The new extractor should put an end to those issues.
The M16 used a blue extractor insert and a 3 coil spring. Later a 4 coil spring and harder black insert was adopted. Sadly some companies have produced blue strength inserts in both blue and black. Bravo Company’s Paul Buffoni has said that the durometer measurement of the blue insert is 60, and 80 for the black insert. This shows that the black insert is harder.
Now there are 5 coil springs. When purchasing new extractor springs for a carbine, I would recommend buying the new 5 coil springs. The additional O-Rings and D-Fender rings are generally not necessary, but they can aid in extraction if you are having issues.
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Kentucky: Comprehensive Pro-Gun Reform Legislation Takes Effect Tomorrow |
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This post is not easy to sum up with a short title. It contains my thoughts on the 1911 in its custom form, if the high end super pricey custom guns are worth it, And my thoughts on how they often give the 1911 a bad rap by people who do not care to take the time to understand some of the down sides of the tight fit match and carry guns. Apologies for the rambling nature of the post. Also I want to warn it is my opinion and you may not agree, If you can not handle that, I do not know what to tell you other than don’t bother posting in the comments complaining to me about how wrong I am. I have spent a long time with 1911s and have my opinions on them. Everything below is given as opinion and personal experience and observations only.
I am always having discussions with people about accuracy. Readers who check here regularly know that it is a topic I often write about. I give my thoughts on what guns I find to be accurate, the amount of accuracy you can expect from rack grade combat guns and the distance that those guns are capable of shooting to way beyond the common knowledge of the internet experts along with the fire arms magazines. I put great effort into showing that most factory guns are more capable than most people will ever know. A match barrel does indeed have it purpose and can give a great deal of improvement, but the barrel that comes from quality factory guns are a lot better one may think, despite the fact that the match barrel selling merchants would like you to believe them to be crap.
When it comes to factory barrels and accuracy, self defense is one of those times people would understandably want as much accuracy as they can use. Even if they can not actually use i due to their skill level. The model that in my opinion, gets the short end of the stick when it comes to higher accuracy demands for self defense is my beloved 1911. For the almost 30 years I have been using the 1911, I can remember being told that all this and that kind of work has to be done to the gun to make it accurate. No factory 1911 is all that accurate some said ( and still do) and a lot of specialty shops have popped up to cater to this idea. But this is often at the cost of reliability. The 1911 was made to work withing certain specs. It was made to work when filthy and muddy and with little cleaning, And the military models, when made to the correct specs and dimensions and with good ammo, will work. the problem I always see, are 1911s not made to the military combat specs.
To me, it is important to have one that meets the original specifications. I want it to always work and to be accurate. After a recent conversation about it for the 1 millionth time, I decided to show a little testing of what a nice loose, proper 1911 is capable of.
Using the V-Tac target, I fired a full magazine of just plain old ball ammo from 25 yards, off hand. The ammo is nothing special, it is not match or Black Hills or handloaded. It is just military ball. I fired at the head and the center of the chest.
While it is certainly not a tight pretty little group. Who would argue against this being acceptable for ball ammo, off hand no bags or rest, at 25 yards? All but one round feel in the box of the head. The “flyer” is not a great shot. But I would think it would be a good chance it would probably stop the fight anyway, or at least make the attack second guess his commitment…. Maybe not, but the other shots would have gave him pause. Note the between the eyes hit just happened to end up that way, not by any special effort.
In my mind, for a 1911 so loose it rattles, and ball shot off hand at 25 yards, this will do the job pretty well while giving me a gun I know will work every time.
The second mag was fired at the chest as seen above. Again this was within the kill box of the target using plain ball. All nine shots are good hits to me. The gun grouped a but better due to a large area to aim at and be able to see my front sight against it better, but not a drastic improvement. Three hits seem to be pretty good CNS hits while four hits are in the heart and lung area with at least another hit in the other lung.
the back side of the target has very hand Bullseye targets on the back that are exactly placed on the opposite of the head and chest. Compare the front hits with the scoring of the bullseye on the back. I think this is a great feature without getting the shooter hung up on worrying over some kind of score while they see the human anatomy on the front. Few bad guys are likely to have black bullseyes on them so I don’t suggest spending too much time on them when training for self defense.
Again, while not good enough for Camp Perry. Not bad at all for ball. Of course this would be a different matter with my chosen self defense carry load. My daily carry ammo preforms better than ball. but, my gun is still a looser fit gun that gives me the combat gun reliability I demand.
This bring me to another of my pet topics about the 1911. I DO NOT believe or recommend a hard, tight fit gun for self defense or combat. I know you can find plenty of people out there who will want to argue with me about this. But you don’t have to spend much time on gun forums to see some guy complaining about how is multi thousand dollar custom Ed Brown or Les Baer 1911 let him down at a training course. Well. there is a reason for that. the 1911 is a combat gun meant to go to war, to be in mud and gore. rain, snow and with little cleaning. It was originally meant to be loose. Those tolerances allowed mud and carbon to get all in the gun while giving it enough room to breathe and move. A gun with the slide/frame so tight you have to beat it open, is not going to give you that.
That is not to say I think a 1911 should look like the original with no upgrades. I am not a follower of the “don’t put anything on the 1911 JMB did not put there.” I think ambi safety and better sights are a must have, among a few other things, but the the gun I use to protect myself will never be “tightened up” or a “hard fit”.
Tight fit guns have a place, and if you want one thats fine. But, if I was not going to be shooting a bullseye match at Perry, I would not carry one for self defense without a very long testing period. It is not that these guns are not quality. Because they are custom guns and they are made to a high quality. But sometimes that works against you when things get dirty. It is one thing to have something to pass down to your kids and show off at a BBQ and be a investment. But, I do not believe the super expensive, custom 1911s to be better choices for self defense over a 1911 with a looser fit. They are beautiful to be sure. but to me, that is not good enough.
The gun I carry every day, is a Colt XSE. It comes from Colt as you see it expect for the grips with gold medallion. The reason I love the XSEs so much, is that they have a lot of the upgrades a custom gun comes with but is not a hard fit 1911. The barrel locks up tight enough to improve that accuracy over a USGI issue. but it is not so tight to cause any possible problems if it gets very dirty. I have used this gun a long time and shot it so much I could not even count. It has never failed me. The first year I got it, I left it soaking in a silty creek for eight hours and fired it, I froze it in a freezing rain and snow. I opened it and poured powder fine dirt in it and one day I fired 1,000 rounds though it in about 30 minutes after not having cleaned it for many rounds before it, except to oil it. The gun became too hot to hold but still worked. It is also so loose that it rattles like a pebble in a empty milk jug. But it still works and I can make the hits well within what is needed.
My personal standard for a 1911 is to be able, off hand, to keep all my shots on a human head at 25 yards. all in the chest kill zone at 50 yards, and to be able to hit a man at 100 yards with my quality self defense loads at a minimum. I don’t expect it to do all that with ball ammo or sub par plinking rounds, but it does not need to. It has to be comfortable and have ambi safeties and sights big enough for me to see.
That is not too much to ask with modern guns. but due to the flood of 1911s made by so many companies trying to cash in on the guns popularity, it is not as common as it would seem. All the crap copies have given it a bad rap among some, that it does not deserve when made to the specifications originally meant for a pistol to be used in muddy trenches, volcanic sand on Pacific Islands, snowy mountains in asia and the Jungles of Indochina. The USGI 1911 lasted so long because it works when made right with combat in mind. And in my very personal opinion, the hard fit 1911 is about as useful for fighting as the cheaper coat tail riding knock offs from other countries and even quite a few made here. When it comes to tight, hard fit 1911s sometimes there is such a thing as too much of a good thing. Save the 2,500-5,000 dollar custom guns for family heirlooms, Bullseye or hanging on the wall or just shooting for pleasure and the enjoyment of having an investment grade gun. If you do choose to have a custom high end, tight fit 1911 made and decide to carry it. test it until you know it will work no matter what. For your own sake, get it filthy., abuse it within reason, if you are afraid of a blemish, then you are already going down the wrong road. Beat the hell out of it to make sure it works. If you ignore all I have said, at the very least, when it fails you at a training class when it is subjected to a high rate of fire and round count for the first time. at least tell the Trainer/instructor that looseorounds warned you.
When I browse the gun boards on the internet, I still see the claims by bench rest experts about how a carbine has to have the barrel free floated, preferably with a 400 dollar match stainless steel barrel. Or even more laughable. with a cold hammer forged barrel. Otherwise you are gonna be stuck with a 4 MOA or worse, gun. Last year I took a rack M4 out to 1,000 yards on a man sized target to show it could be done, but that was not the same as setting down from a rest and squeezing all the accuracy out of it I could get for pure precision.
So today I took a 6920 Colt ( M4) and slapped on my trusty Leupold 18x target scope, and grabbed some ammo to do some accuracy testing. The only thing different about this gun, is it has the SSA trigger to help with the groups and a Gunfighter Charging handle along with a standard Colt ambi safety that has no effect on its barrels accuracy. The gun still had the side sling swivel, and I even left a sling attached, and the factory hand guards. Other than the trigger and scope to help on my end, the gun had no other upgrades to the barrel. It was as it comes from Hartford. Gun was fired from a bench with front and rear bags using the Leupold 18x target scope I use for accuracy testing.
I drew a few dots and set the target out at 100 yards and got to work. Above is a 18 round group fired with M855. It is not a bad groups actually if you look at it in context. Some of the rounds obviously were not consistent with the rest, but the rest did give a group not bad at all for military ammo. I have seen M855 do better, but it is not match ammo.
Then I moved to shooting match quality ammo. The first group on the left, is 5 rounds of MK262 ammo, This is 77 grain Sierra HPBT’s. I only fired five rounds, because that’s about all I have left. I find this to be a normal group for MK262 though. Middle group is the Hornady TAP ammo, in .223 pressure loading, not the 556 NATO version. This is a ten round group. And it is normal in my experience with TAP. It is pretty good stuff but not as great and super accurate as a lot of people think. But it is nothing to sneer at by any means. Its terminal performance makes it an excellent round, especially if you get the 556 pressure stuff. Last group on right is Norma Match ammo I recently started buying and testing. Man! I did not expect to see this group. I knew it was good stuff because I knock crows out of trees at 200 yards with it all the time in a target AR15, but this was the first time I had shot it in a carbine for accuracy. I fired ten rounds of the Norma Match. It uses the same Sierra bullet as the MK262, but obviously more care goes into the making of this ammo. Norma has long been known for super high quality brass, so it should surprise no one that any ammo they make would be outstanding.
There have been probably a million accuracy tests of carbines on the web over the years, but it is always worth repeating since few actually put in the real effort to see what I plain rack grade barrel will do. You can do very good work with a factory carbine despite what you will read from internet experts, and the companies trying to sell you something. Your skill and practice are much more important than a FF tube when the gun is quality to start with. It is important to realize that rack grade does not mean just any Ar brand that looks like a plain M4 though. There is more to making a quality gun than just looking the same as another. But a proper made gun, made to last and be tough, will offer up enough accuracy for just about anyone if they dedicate themselves to becoming a real marksman, and not just a dirt clod blaster who burns up 15 rounds a second from 15 feet.
Rob Pincus made this great little video showing rounds being deflected when hitting a hard surface.
A while back I picked up a used old Colt AR15 upper. After I received it, when I first cleaned it I considered replacing the gas rings and extractor spring due to the clear fact that this upper had been used a good deal. I talked to Shawn about this, and he suggested since it wasn’t going to be my go to gun, leaving it and seeing what happens.
Well a broken gas ring happened. The upper functioned fine, and I have no idea where the broken section of gas ring went, but when I went to clean the upper yesterday I found one of the rings had failed. So all the gas rings got replaced and a new extractor spring was dropped in.
So while this parts failure didn’t stop the gun from running, it is a good example of why we need to do preventive maintenance on anything our lives depend on.
The machine gun has been a major force multiplier in infantry combat. Unfortunately many unit leaders do not know how to employ assets like Snipers, Machine Guns, and Indirect fire effectively.
The rise of portable belt fed machine guns pretty much eliminated the tactic of the mass human wave attack. This also allowed for smaller elements to suppress the enemy with fire so other elements could flank.
It drives me nuts when I hear people say that machine guns have no practical use. Besides being fun they are also a cornerstone of modern infantry tactics.
