{"id":4942,"date":"2010-07-19T08:08:35","date_gmt":"2010-07-19T13:08:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.downrange.tv\/blog\/?p=4942"},"modified":"2010-07-19T08:08:35","modified_gmt":"2010-07-19T13:08:35","slug":"slicking-up-a-stock-gun","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.downrange.tv\/blog\/slicking-up-a-stock-gun\/4942\/","title":{"rendered":"Slicking Up A Stock Gun"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve never been one to make changes to my guns. After an unfortunate experience involving my dad&#8217;s favorite wristwatch, I&#8217;ve left complicated machinery pretty much alone. It&#8217;s worked out better for everyone that way.<\/p>\n<p>Since a no-nonsense drill instructor during an ROTC summer training camp told me &#8220;if you reassemble this firearm incorrectly, when fired, the bolt will travel to the rear in a rapid manner. It will continue to travel rapidly backward until it lands in the squishy stuff that was your right eye. Gentlemen, I can assure you this will leave a lasting impression on everyone who views your corpse at your funeral&#8221; I have left the innards of firearms strictly alone.<\/p>\n<p>That doesn&#8217;t mean I have never disassembled my guns; just never one ten-thousandth beyond the point where the manual advises further work should &#8220;be performed by a qualified gunsmith&#8221;. Other than grip panels, my pistols are always stock &#8211; or worked by &#8220;a qualified gunsmith&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>Recently, Lisa Farrell and the team at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.apextactical.com\" target=\"_blank\">Apex Tactical<\/a> sent me a <a href=\"https:\/\/apextactical.com\/store\/product-info.php?pid36.html\" target=\"_blank\">Competition Enhancement Kit for my Smith &amp; Wesson M&amp;P Pro pistol<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Using the word loosely, that M&amp;P Pro is my &#8220;competition&#8221; gun. I used it at this year&#8217;s Bianchi Cup and a couple of local steel matches since then. A long sight radius and a stock fiber optic front sight mean I can see -and shoot- better and faster.<\/p>\n<p>The M&amp;P Pro already has a pretty darned good trigger. But, Lisa assured me the Apex kit would give me a smoother action and sub-three pound trigger pull.<\/p>\n<p>At this point a caution: a sub-three pound trigger pull is NOT for concealed carry, home defense, or duty guns. Under duress, fine motor skills diminish. You&#8217;re capable of creating an accidental bang when you mix adrenaline and an uncontrolled situation with an ultra-light trigger.<\/p>\n<p>Taking a trigger pull down to a competition level also means you need to practice until you&#8217;re totally aware of the light pressure necessary to initiate the firing sequence. A few negligent discharges in dry-fire practice will cause an enhanced awareness &#8211; it can produce tragic outcomes anywhere else.<\/p>\n<p>That having been said, I found myself conflicted about pulling perfectly good working guns apart. Flying springs didn&#8217;t hold much attraction to me; neither did the thoughts of showing up at the gun shop with a frame, slide and sandwich bag of parts.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_4943\" style=\"width: 260px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-4943\" class=\"size-full wp-image-4943\" title=\"2022858\" src=\"https:\/\/www.downrange.tv\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/07\/2022858.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"250\" height=\"175\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-4943\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Cautiously describes the entire process of changing out parts in my M&amp;P Pro pistol. The gun&#39;s for speed, the tools are for deliberation. <\/p><\/div>\n<p>But, Lisa assured me that even I could make the changes. So, I decided to try &#8211; with some help from a friend who will readily disassemble virtually anything.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m not going into how deliberately we worked. If you&#8217;ve seen &#8220;Hurt Locker&#8221; think slower- with the same anxiety level.<\/p>\n<p>A tip when working: have your manual handy. The schematic may be designed to help you order parts, but it&#8217;s lets you know where the parts are located -before you start backing off screws or releasing springs.<\/p>\n<p>A bit of work that a &#8220;competent gunsmith&#8221; might have accomplished in about a half-hour, assuming a couple of interruptions along the way, took just over an hour. And a quick inventory revealed the same number of pieces outside the pistol as when we started- and no leftovers from the inside. It looked finished.<\/p>\n<p>Reluctantly, I racked the slide and very tentatively squeezed the trigger. After &#8220;tentative&#8221; -but before &#8211; &#8220;squeezed&#8221; the trigger broke-like a proverbial glass rod. And it worked that way through several dry firing sequences before I worked up enough nerve to take it for a test firing. It ran -like a race-tuned machine &#8211; with a trigger pull that measured roughly at about 2.8 pounds, more than two pounds lighter than before.<\/p>\n<p>That makes a big difference -and not just in the pistol.<\/p>\n<p>With the Apex Tactical Competition Action Enhancement Kit, I have the ability to break my first shot faster and subsequent shots as quickly as I can bring the sights onto the targets. Apex can&#8217;t help there, but they&#8217;ve made my equipment capable of breaking more smoothly when I get there.<\/p>\n<p>Apex Tactical&#8217;s kit has taken away any pistol excuse. The rest is up to me.<\/p>\n<p>Watch this space.<\/p>\n<p>&#8211;Jim Shepherd<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.shootingwire.com\">www.shootingwire.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve never been one to make changes to my guns. After an unfortunate experience involving my dad&#8217;s favorite wristwatch, I&#8217;ve left complicated machinery pretty much alone. It&#8217;s worked out better for everyone that way. Since a no-nonsense drill instructor during an ROTC summer training camp told me &#8220;if you reassemble this firearm incorrectly, when fired, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":4943,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[266],"tags":[489,872,267,436],"class_list":["post-4942","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-shepherd","tag-apex-tactical","tag-competition-enhancement-kit","tag-jim-shepherd","tag-shooting-wire"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.downrange.tv\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4942","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.downrange.tv\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.downrange.tv\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.downrange.tv\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.downrange.tv\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4942"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.downrange.tv\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4942\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.downrange.tv\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4943"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.downrange.tv\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4942"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.downrange.tv\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4942"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.downrange.tv\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4942"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}