I was looking for something else and found the certificate for my first gun class:

The instructor, Carl Zmuda, now, 20+ years later, frequently attends Boomershoot.

Yesterday I picked up a new gun to replace the old one which died at a match on April 19th.

It’s another STI. This time a DVC Limited. Again it’s chambered in .40 S&W.

I didn’t realize it but this gun was just introduced at Shot Show this year and they are hard to get. I was going to get another STI Eagle but I saw this on the STI website in mid March and called around trying to find one.I asked the local gun shop if they could get me a good deal on one and after calling their distributors and STI found they could not. Only authorized dealers can get them. There are only three dealers within 100 miles of me. One told me I could get delivery in September. Another told me delivery “by the end of the year”. Another dealer told me they were on sale if I ordered by the end of the month and I would get it “in April or May”. It would have been nice to just “go pick it up” but April or May was a lot better than September or the end of the year. And getting it below MSRP was a big bonus. I ordered the gun and then less than a month later the STI I purchased in 1997 and carried almost daily died.

Getting the gun was a big thrill and I checked the holster fit before I getting in my car. It fit both my competition holster and my IWB carry holster. It was a little tight in the carry holster but not a big deal. I loaded it up and it felt so good to have a STI on my hip again.

I had been carrying my Ruger P-89 in the Alien Gear IWB holster but after a few hours it was uncomfortable. And when I bent over to lift something the gun would pop most of the way out of the holster. I used to have Kramer holster for it but couldn’t find it.

I stopped off at the range before coming home. I shot factory ammo which I had known to be accurate in my old STI but it was a huge disappointment in this gun.

I bought a different brand in a different bullet weight and tried that. Still horrible.

I was about to give up and go home and decided to just empty the magazine. The last couple of rounds went about six or eight inches right of my point of aim on a target 21 feet away. Oh! I need to check something.

I tipped the gun to the left as I brought it closer to look at it and the front sight fell off:

That happened with my first STI after a few hundred rounds when I first got it.

I put a 0.004 shim of plastic under the front sight and carefully tapped it into place just like I had done with my first STI.

I went to the range again today and the results were much better. I adjusted the sights for a 25 yard zero and tried it again at 7 yards.

This is five rounds, off hand, from 7 yards away with some of my Montana Gold handloads:

This is five rounds, off hand, from 25 yards:

Okay. That’s more like it! Most of the group dispersion is probably just my aging eyes in the relatively low light of the indoor range and the tremors in my hands and arms.

It’s been many years since I could get groups like that with my STI Eagle. I had been wondering if it was my aging fire control system or the gun. I’m pretty sure I can say it was the gun. The slide to frame fit on the Eagle was never very good. The gunsmith who assembled the kit had deliberately put it together with loose tolerances for reliable carry. After 40K rounds through it the tolerance probably increased enough to make the difference that I suspected were aging of the flesh rather than wear of the gun.

The first thing I did with the DVC Limited, assembled by STI, was check the slide to frame fit. I cannot detect any movement at all. It has to be on the order of 0.001” or less gap. Same with the barrel. No detectable motion when I try to wiggle it.

I’m very pleased now that the front sight is staying in place. I can’t wait for the next match.

This post delves deep into technical esoterica, so unless you have a specific interest in percussion revolver shooting you may as well move on.

Continue reading →

I’ve been thinking about doing this anyway:

Memorial Day Sale May 20-26

Repeat any class June through August and get 30% off! Because once just isn’t enough.

Call Jenna at 888-958-0884 or email info@InSightsTraining.com to sign up. This offer does not include Tactical First Aid or Shooting Leagues and may not be combined with any other discounts. This is for repeat classes — you must have taken the class previously.

Visit InSightsTraining.com and find a class that fits your schedule. Stay safe and we’ll see you in class!

Maybe now is the time to go through one of the classes I took nearly 20 years ago. I’m thinking maybe Intensive Handgun Skills.

As I reported last month the barrel in my STI Eagle attempted to spontaneously disassemble. I couldn’t get the slide open and figured I would just put the gun on the shelf that way. But Jacob said he was interested in doing a professional metallurgical evaluation of it. So I put some effort into extracting the barrel from the gun.

First I used a punch and drove the slide stop out far enough to get a finishing nail partially under it so that it was exposed:

Then brother Doug used an air powered cutoff tool to cut the slide stop almost in two and then pried the slide stop out:

The slide then easily came off. I then used a hammer (and other tools) to tap on the barrel to remove it from the slide.

The end result is that I was able to discover the barrel split about three fourths of its length:

As I looked at this barrel I remembered something. That flat spot on the bottom of the barrel was not there when it came from the factory. That was machined by an STI gunsmith so that a Recoil Master would fit. This would have weakened the barrel.

Via email from InSights. Highly recommended. I’ve spent thousands on their training over the years. Both for me and my family.

20% Off Selected Classes for the Whole Family

Limited time to sign up — April 29 – May 1, phone orders only:

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As I posted earlier my participation in a USPSA match today was cut short by catastrophic equipment failure. Even having only completed three and zeroing three stages I still didn’t come in dead last:

For some reason they have me listed as being in Open class instead of Limited. I sent them email asking that they correct the error.

They had a very “interesting” stage where you ran about 15 yards to the first five paper targets then ran about another 15 yards to some more paper targets and around the corner there was a Texas Star and three poppers 31 yards away:

A Texas Star is challenging under most any circumstances but 31 yards is almost obscene. Without going to Idaho I don’t have access to a place where I can shoot targets at 31 yards. This was evident in my performance. It took me several shots to discover I needed to hold at the top edge of the plates to hit them. Many people left some and at least one person left all of the plates as misses.

This was another “interesting” stage. The start position was facing up range with your hands on the X’s:

It was very awkward. And the taller you were the more difficult it was.

I went to a USPSA match today and my gun barrel fractured and locked up my gun. This is a cropped version of the picture I tweeted about shortly after the incident:

Robb Allen almost immediately asked the obvious question, “Your own loads or factory?” And of course the answer was they were rounds I had loaded myself. In many situations this would be the end of the story. The shooter had a squib (a round with no or insufficient powder) which resulted in a bullet stuck in the barrel and the next round set off the automatic self-destruct sequence of events. Another way it could have happened was a round got double charged or the wrong powder was used. In any case it is relatively easy and frequent that handloaders blow up their guns through their own carelessness.

But as Ry pointed out the head of the shell casing is still there which probably means there wasn’t an over pressure event involved. I was able to hammer the gun open far enough for the shell casing to drop out and confirmed Ry’s suspicion:

This is a perfectly normal looking piece of brass. Even the primer looks normal so there was no overpressure event involved. I tried putting it in the case gauge and it would only go in about halfway. The chamber of barrel is now, of course, large than spec and the brass expanded just a bit more than normal even though it can’t be seen with the naked eye.

I tried for quite a bit to get the gun open in the hopes that I could remove the barrel but I wasn’t able to get it open any beyond this:

You can’t see it in the photograph but the feed ramp also split.

I finally just closed it up:

I don’t know what the root cause was. I wonder if it wasn’t a timing issue which caused some abnormal stress because I had a broken link with this barrel once before.

Something that is interesting to me is that I had the lugs break on the original STI barrel after about 20,000 rounds and this barrel failed after almost exactly the same number of rounds. I have known the gun was living on borrowed time for nearly six years now so I can’t really complain a lot.

I’m not going to try to get the gun repaired. As Barb, essentially, and Gay_Cynic said, I used the gun up.

Update: I should have said that the shot sounded and felt almost normal to me. The recoil cycle wasn’t quite right but there wasn’t a greater than normal impulse or BOOM!