A collection of posts often on colt E- and I-frame revolvers: pythons, model 357s, officer model specials, etc. Topics not limited to: action jobs, fixing Bubba-gone-wrong gunsmith mistakes, and revolver porn. And sometimes I'll wander off the reservation and type random nouns and verbs that have nothing to do with our sole purpose, because who the hell can really pay attention that long?

Sunday, May 31, 2009

Upcoming project: sherman roller bearing action.




A project I'm hoping to do soon is replicate the Sherman roller bearing action. Rather than have the strut and trigger sear in direct contact, he put a small roller bearing on it with the intention of reducing friction.

Given the right bearings, seems like a straightforward project (though the exact placement is perhaps slightly tricky). Unfortunately I've been having difficulty finding ones that look right; hopefully can chase some down this week.

It will be interesting to see how much it helps. For a well fit hammer strut, most of the movement happens when the friction is fairly modest. But, it's a fun thing to try. It's a shame there aren't writeups of all the old colt guys. Most have retired or worse. I've started buying guns just b/c they have had work done by someone good I haven't seen before. Not the cheapest way to learn.

Here's a photo that was helpfully sent to me by someone else showing the basic setup.




Here's the point I'm at now. Obviously I can't use an edgefinder worth a damn. Also, I was putting it in the hammer strut itself in the hopes of preserving the SA function. However, as things currently stand I think the bearing is too large. One option is to mill a groove in the back so the pin can sit there since the strut itself is too thin to support the necessary hole.






Saturday, May 30, 2009

Part II: tuning a (now very tight) 2.5" python


NOTE: the stuff below is just for entertainment. I am not suggesting this is what you should do or how you should do it. Consider it a fast way to ruin your gun: DO NOT DO IT ON YOUR COLT! If you see something where I am messing up, please point it out!

So, after fixing the snubby in Part I
http://coltpython.blogspot.com/2009/05/part-i-fixing-most-loose-25-python-ever.html we try to do something about it's really bad action. Heavy, uneven, and gritty.


Smoothing it is pretty easy.

This is what we have to work with:



Anything that touches anything is a candidate for causing grit. And from the looks of the parts its not mystery why it could feel like there was dirt in there. The corrosion level is impressive. And the tooling ridges aren't anything wimpy either.

Bad day for: finishing the job

Oklahoma druggist shoots one robber in head, chases the other, goes back, gets another gun and shoots the first one in the body multiple times. Result = 1st degree murder charges.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090530/ap_on_re_us/us_pharmacy_shooting


There is video here, which adds to the excitement:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DSBBlEhmWNQ

Hat tip, jd1911.

What values of X,Y,Z ==> happiness?

Interesting article on a 50+ longitudinal study of a group of harvard men that was trying to get at what predicts living well. An excerpt:

What allows people to work, and love, as they grow old? By the time the Grant Study men had entered retirement, Vaillant, who had then been following them for a quarter century, had identified seven major factors that predict healthy aging, both physically and psychologically.

Employing mature adaptations was one. The others were education, stable marriage, not smoking, not abusing alcohol, some exercise, and healthy weight. Of the 106 Harvard men who had five or six of these factors in their favor at age 50, half ended up at 80 as what Vaillant called “happy-well” and only 7.5 percent as “sad-sick.” Meanwhile, of the men who had three or fewer of the health factors at age 50, none ended up “happy-well” at 80. Even if they had been in adequate physical shape at 50, the men who had three or fewer protective factors were three times as likely to be dead at 80 as those with four or more factors.

What factors don’t matter? Vaillant identified some surprises. Cholesterol levels at age 50 have nothing to do with health in old age. While social ease correlates highly with good psychosocial adjustment in college and early adulthood, its significance diminishes over time. The predictive importance of childhood temperament also diminishes over time: shy, anxious kids tend to do poorly in young adulthood, but by age 70, are just as likely as the outgoing kids to be “happy-well.” Vaillant sums up: “If you follow lives long enough, the risk factors for healthy life adjustment change. There is an age to watch your cholesterol and an age to ignore it.”

The study has yielded some additional subtle surprises. Regular exercise in college predicted late-life mental health better than it did physical health. And depression turned out to be a major drain on physical health: of the men who were diagnosed with depression by age 50, more than 70 percent had died or were chronically ill by 63. More broadly, pessimists seemed to suffer physically in comparison with optimists, perhaps because they’re less likely to connect with others or care for themselves.

More than 80 percent of the Grant Study men served in World War II, a fact that allowed Vaillant to study the effect of combat. The men who survived heavy fighting developed more chronic physical illnesses and died sooner than those who saw little or no combat, he found. And “severity of trauma is the best predictor of who is likely to develop PTSD.” (This may sound obvious, but it countered the claim that post-traumatic stress disorder was just the manifestation of preexisting troubles.) He also found that personality traits assigned by the psychiatrists in the initial interviews largely predicted who would become Democrats (descriptions included “sensitive,” “cultural,” and “introspective”) and Republicans (“pragmatic” and “organized”).

Fact-filled amicus Heller brief

Interesting: http://www.davekopel.org/Briefs/07-290bsacreprintIntlLawEnforcementEduc&Trainers.pdf

awesome OMS!



Just won an amazing looking officer's model special (OMS). It was not cheap. But has Roy Fishpaw grips (which I very rarely see for sale) and a Sherman roller bearing action, which I've been wanting to dissect. In my weirdo world it's well worth what it cost; I'm more excited about this gun than any in a long time.

Hasn't even been shipped to my FFL yet, so no inspection, but the seller has good ratings. Expectations are high...




blurry pics + low-traffic auction site = a steal on grips



I've gotten my best deals from auctions with horrible photos and/or bad auction titles.

Today one of the best deals so far arrived in the mail: some colt silver medallion stocks from an AA auction that had blurry photos. The final price was $31.25 shipped! In person they turn out to be excellent condition and exactly what I needed for a m357 that had no stocks. While silver medallion grips are not as pricey as the fully checkered gold medallion (python) grips ($250 to $300+) this is still much lower than the going rate.

A pretty good day.

Mispelled titles are great for low prices.

Or correctly spelled, but incorrect model designations. The best one I got was where the seller had written "officers model target" rather than "officers model special." Fortunately put the right year down so a google search of "officers model 1949" turned it up.

Or when they misclassify the piece. Recently, someone put a m357 in the single action part of gunsamerica. That has since been bought for way less than it should have been.

Of course, the big subtext in all of this is that if I just *worked* my normal job for those number of hours, I'd have made way more than the money "saved" by bargain hunting. But that wouldn't have been nearly as much fun...





Part I: fixing the most loose 2.5" python ever.


The stuff below is just for entertainment. I am not suggesting this is what you should do or how you should do it. Consider it a fast way to ruin your gun. If you see something where I'm ruining mine please point it out!

I recently came into possession of the all time most loose python ever. At rest the cylinder shakes more than white trash going through meth withdrawal. It's the worst of any colt I've seen and not by a tiny amount. Oh, and the action sucks too.

Fortunately, it was all fixable, though dealing with bolt/rebound issues took around 6 hours. (Unbelievable!)

Here's the beast. As you can see, somewhat worse for wear: a lot of blueing off, wrong stocks, and (as will be revealed in part II) the insides are pretty messed up:




Thursday, May 28, 2009

Blast from the past: Frank Glenn's tricked out XP-100


Frank won a bunch of stuff, and is a serious accuracy nut, so bulids some pretty cool pieces. He trains with a group of people that includes "Robbie" Leatham, among others.



Frank Glenn of Accuracy Unlimited, builder
of this heavily modified XP-100, was the 1992
Handgun Master and for years placed second
or third at the PPC National Championships.
Converting the discontinued Remington XP-
100 requires three to four months and $1,910
to $2,400. McMillan makes the forward-grip
stocks.

To be successful in one of the most challenging handgun matches currently being competed—the Masters International Long Range Handgun event—shooters are turning to a heavily modified version of a now-defunct gun model. The base model, no longer being manufactured by Remington Arms Co., is the XP-100; the tricked-out XP-100 that makes it possible to hit and knock over 6-inch, 9-inch, and 12-inch steel plates at 200 meters is made by Accuracy Unlimited, Frank Glenn’s precision-gunsmithing firm based in Glendale, Arizona.

Glenn’s gun is dominating the Masters Long Range Handgun event because it is uniquely suited for the difficult course of fire. Sixty seconds are allowed for five shots on five steel targets and ninety seconds for ten shots on ten targets some of which weigh as much as 23 pounds. The event is run in six strings of fire, three of five shots in 60 seconds and three of ten shots, at alternating distances, in 90 seconds. One shot is allowed for each of the total of 45 targets. The distances include targets at 75, 100, 150, and 200 meters, and the first fifteen and the last five targets must be shot from an offhand (standing) position. The middle 25 shots are freestyle. If the course of fire isn’t challenging enough, there is also a significant noise factor in the event. While you are shooting your handcannon, eleven other people are doing the same thing. Besides the incredible noise level, each shot from your gun and that of the other eleven shooters hits you with a concussion you feel throughout your body.

Glenn’s XP modifications don’t make the targets bigger, the wind settle, or the muzzle blast lessen. But they can make a handgun accurate and shootable enough to knock over 42 of 45 steel targets, as Jerry Barnhart did in 1994, or to drop only four targets, as I did in 1995. They are also a kick when used to hunt prairie dogs, which can hone your ability to judge distances and shoot from difficult positions. Here’s what Glenn does to the XP-100 to make it perform at top levels.

The Forward Grip
Some shooters use the standard XP stock, which is called a center grip, for competition. It’s terrific for shooting from the Creedmore or other rested position, but it is difficult to stabilize the gun when it is shot offhand. Others have tried the Thompson Center Contender, which has a rear grip, and discovered the same results. It is easily stabilized from a rest, but wobbly offhand.

Glenn started modifying the XP’s grip after he and other top Masters competitors got tired of practicing on the Long Range event targets and took out their .38 Super action pistols to play. After a few shots, they found their holds and could reliably hit the 12-inch targets at 200 meters. “Then Brian Enos commented that maybe the grips were on the wrong end of their guns,” Glenn said. “I went home thinking about the comment and commenced to cutting up some center and rear grip stocks and then whittled a prototype out of a 2- by 8-inch chunk of maple.”

Thus the forward-grip stock was born. It allows the placement of both hands on the one grip that extends below the stock and allows the rear of the gun, where the bolt and chamber are located, to rest on the shooter’s forearm. “I took this sample stock to the SHOT Show in 1989 to get the impressions of Enos, J. Michael Plaxco, and some other shooters,” Glenn said. “There were favorable opinions expressed because of the stability offered by the stock.”

The forward grip stabilizes the gun, but there are some tricks to shooting it well. First, the shooter must not apply pressure to the grip. It is vital to allow the gun to simply rest in both hands. Applying muscle to the gun makes the rear of the gun jump during recoil because tensing the forearm muscles makes the gun move.

The next trick is to form a flat platform upon which to rest the stock. This is done by holding the strong hand out at arm’s length with the fingers spread and the palm facing inward, and then rotating the palm upward without bending the elbow. Paying special attention to the forearm, make sure the muscles have rotated and you will see that an area that was formerly about 30 degrees off horizontal, just forward of the elbow, has now become parallel to the floor. This is where the rear base of the stock will sit. Now rotate the hand back to the shooting position moving only the forearm, not rotating from the shoulder, and the position is complete.

Hope for anacondas, king cobras, and trooper MKIIIs that have heavy actions.

Lighter springs can be bought here.

Unfortunately, if that doesn't solve the problem, about the only thing you can do is send to colt or cylinder and slide and wait.

The problem with these guns (all the revolvers Colt made after they stopped w/ v-spring actions) is that they are made from sintered metal --- you can't really polish or alter any parts w/o ruining them. As a result, there's not a whole lot you can do to the action other than swap springs.

With that said, if you send your gun to Colt or Cylinder and Slide they might actually be able to improve things beyond what you can get by just spring swapping. The trick they can play is that while you can't modify a given part to improve the action you can do "bin fitting" to improve the action. Bin fitting = you have hundreds of copies of the same part, and manufacturing differences will be such that some will fit better or worse together. You can swap parts in and out until you get a better result. Both Colt and C&S are the only places I know of that have enough parts to do this. (I'd be happy to be wrong though!)

A trenchant diagnosis of the current crash + response by someone who doesn't suck with money.

John Allison, CEO of a bank that made money when others begged for it on what caused the crisis.

Sometimes the nuclear option does not work as planned.

Probably not a good idea to call 911 when mcdonalds (purportedly) jacks up your order.

Hat tip, Volokh.

Interesting article on harvard losing $11Bn and what will happen.

Article is here. One unsettling detail: Larry Summers had a big hand in the destruction. He's now directly involved in the Obama running amuck escapades.

Robots, guns, backwoods inventors.

Very cool article in the New Yorker (though I can't recommend much of their cringingly spiteful recent writing). Unfortunately you need a subscription.

ABSTRACT: ANNALS OF TECHNOLOGY about gunsmith Jerry Baber and the remote-controlled armed machines he has created in partnership with two robotics companies. Jerry Baber, an engineer by training, is an expert in investment casting. He lives in Piney Flats, Tennessee where he operates a small foundry which manufactures gun parts. A few years ago Baber started producing, from start to finish, his own weapon: a fully automatic shotgun called the AA-12, which has the power of a twelve-gauge shotgun but none of its bruising recoil. Baber spent a dozen years and upward of a million and a half dollars of his own money perfecting the gun. Not long ago, he decided that his gun was so reliable and accurate that it could be mounted on unmanned vehicles. Armed, remote-controlled robots, Baber believes, could offer crucial assistance in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Last year, he met with engineers at Robotex and at Neural Robotics. Together, they created prototypes of small, remote-controlled armed machines. Describes three of the machines, a five-foot-long white helicopter Baber calls Junior, and two ground robots. The AA-12, unlike most military weapons, can shoot a variety of ammunition, including non-lethal pellets and mini-grenades. Writer observes a demonstration of Baber’s robots. Discusses the military’s use of some remote-controlled weaponry, such as Predator drones. The Pentagon has approached the subject of armed robots with considerable wariness. Tells about a 2006 incident in which a fried wire caused a demonstration robot to malfunction. Baber, for his part, seems baffled by the military’s worries about deploying armed robots. Writer observes Baber making gun parts in his foundry. Baber grew up an only child in Covington, Virginia. He enlisted in the Army and then obtained a degree in engineering from Virginia Tech. During the Vietnam War, he and a partner found a lucrative niche making bomb springs. Tells how his friend Max Atchisson first presented him with the plans for an automatic shotgun that could harness recoil, called the Atchisson Automatic Shotgun. After some two hundred modifications to Atchisson’s original design, Baber finally built a working gun, christened the Auto Assault-12. After failing to sell the gun to the military, Baber decided that there was only one way to convince the government of the gun’s usefulness: robots. Describes his work with Neural Robotics and Robotex to produce working prototypes of robots armed with AA-12s. Mentions interest from foreign governments. Two of Baber’s guns are being tested by Pentagon R & D centers on their own unmanned vehicles.

Today's tax factoid

Hard to seperate correlation (with recession) from causation (with jackass politicians and the economic illiterates who elect them), but still, from the WJS

Here's a two-minute drill in soak-the-rich economics:

Maryland couldn't balance its budget last year, so the state tried to close the shortfall by fleecing the wealthy. Politicians in Annapolis created a millionaire tax bracket, raising the top marginal income-tax rate to 6.25%. And because cities such as Baltimore and Bethesda also impose income taxes, the state-local tax rate can go as high as 9.45%. Governor Martin O'Malley, a dedicated class warrior, declared that these richest 0.3% of filers were "willing and able to pay their fair share." The Baltimore Sun predicted the rich would "grin and bear it."

One year later, nobody's grinning. One-third of the millionaires have disappeared from Maryland tax rolls. In 2008 roughly 3,000 million-dollar income tax returns were filed by the end of April. This year there were 2,000, which the state comptroller's office concedes is a "substantial decline." On those missing returns, the government collects 6.25% of nothing. Instead of the state coffers gaining the extra $106 million the politicians predicted, millionaires paid $100 million less in taxes than they did last year -- even at higher rates.

To say anything causal, you'd need to look at the other states that *did not* raise upper income taxes and see what happened to the number of millionaire filers.


Wednesday, May 27, 2009

good used equipment buying advice.

I've been trying to find a good quality lathe and a bridgeport. It's been an adventure (thus far fruitless).



Monday, May 25, 2009

matching bullet diam to chamber throats for best accuracy.

Interesting article: Grant Cunningham on chamber throat and accuracy.

nice grips


Collection of the all the nice colt grips I know. If I missed something please send a pointer!


I really like these oversized ebony grips from eagle, though they often require fitting before they meet precisely. I've bought six pairs...



The similar grips on the bicentennial python are really nice too, but I don't know where to get them other than buying another bicentennial...












The excaliber grips (from ajax?) are nice and are what got used on later model python elites. grips4guns has them, though apparently at a $30 to $40 markup compared to what colt will sell them for to you.




Of course, the colt medallion pachmayr grips. I don't believe anyone sells these so I've had to buy them off of GB or various forums. Going rate is edging up to $50 apiece. I don't like normal pachs; these seem somewhat larger.











I don't have the rest of these, but am planning on fixing that.



Everyone loves Herret stocks. Inexpensive yet high quality hand made, though be prepared to wait a month or two. You trace your hand, send it in, they make custom grips. Jordan troopers come highly recommended for controlling the recoil on anacondas with full house loads:
























Fully checkered aftermarket grips; they claimed they'd have gold medallion ones in a couple of weeks.


These pricey custom badger grips seem to look really nice on bright polish (can't find a photo: they look much better than in isolation):


And this guy has some great grips, though apparently only does colts as custom requests. From a recent post at the colt forum, here they are on a colt:



cool: search firearm forums with google.

The software that is used to run most forums really sucks w.r.t. search.

Google custom search engines are a nice hack around it: you can configure them to just return results from a given site.



The book.

If you've read this far and don't have it, I'd suggest opening another window and your wallet...


Saturday, May 23, 2009

Removing stacking in the bull barrel python


NOTE: the stuff below is just for entertainment. I am not suggesting this is what you should do or how you should do it. Consider it a fast way to ruin your gun. If you see something where I'm ruining mine please point it out!

After a few hours of messing around I was able to fix the bull barreled python previously discussed here.


It was like a rube goldberg contraption with a bunch of different things wrong but cancelling each other out. Unfortunately, if you fixed one thing, there was nothing to cancel the others.

In any case, if you have a bull barrel and no action work it don't make no sense. So we get to it.

Here's what we have to work with:



To eliminate stacking and cut a couple pounds off of DA we are going to install a trigger with a curved sear (trigger modified by Frank Glenn). A standard colt trigger is next to it for comparision:







First we "drop it in" to see what we have to do. Of course it's always the same thing: cut a groove in the hammer toe. As you can see, the end of the sear is lower (since the entire sear is curved) which prevents the hammer strut from resetting. If the strut can't reset, you have no DA since you'll pull the trigger and it will go up, but not bring the hammer with it.






The solution is cutting a groove in the hammer toe where the sear meets it so it sets lower. So we remove the strut to make it easier to file. From left to right: the bench block we use to knock out the strut pin and the tool used to do so (made by Frank), the strut, spring and hammer. The point of the tool is to knock the struct pin out halfway so it stays in the hammer, which which makes it a lot easier to get back. We'll use the round file to cut the groove:




First pass:






A fair amount of material gets removed, but less than we will probably need. However, since you can't put metal back, it makes sense to put reassemble the hammer and figure out how much more there is to do.

A nice trick for getting the hammer strut spring to stay is to use a heavy grease on the end to make it stick where it should be:






Ok, not as bad, but still more to go:


After another round we get:


Which lets the strut reset:


Note that without the rebound the hammer is tilted slightly forward more which means that the strut may not reset even though it would with the rebound in place. However, I like to leave a bit of space since DA is often rapid fire, and if the fit between strut and sear is too tight, you'll get failures to reset pretty easily.

OK. So now the strut resets. Of course, since it's a I frame, if you change one thing, you have to change 10.

For example: since the trigger has a slightly different resting place it can throw off bolt/hand interplay. In our case, the rebound no longer picks the bolt up instantly, which means the top hand starts pushing on the cylinder before the bolt has withdrawn:




Also the hammer can't get cocked since the lower hand locks up on the cylinder before the sear can go in the cocking notch.





The wrong thing to do at this point is to start filing on the hand. This may be necessary at the end, but the first thing to do is to fix the problem in the lower red rectangle above: the trigger must raise the hand up fairly high to get around the top of the hammer before the sear eventually gets into the cocking notch. Unfortunately, when the sear reaches the cocking notch the hand will be significantly lower. Thus, if you try to solve the problem by merely filing the bottom hand, by the time the sear reaches the cocking notch there will be a gap. This means the cylinder will be supported more by the bolt, rather than the bottom hand, which is not a good setup.

First, we'll stone the trigger, which we have to do anyway since it's edge is a bit sharp after the torch. Stoning will make it shorter and the problem above less pressing. We'll then take some material off of the end of the hammer toe before messing with the hand.

Here's the stoning fixture. Frank does it freehand, but I don't trust my filing abilities to that extent:



And here's the rough angle you want:



Unfortunately I didn't take clear pictures of before / after so you'll have to use your imagination.

We now enter the NEVER DO THAT EVER part of the programme. We're going to modify the cocking notch. If you do this to your gun it's going to get ruined. For stock sears the shop manual says to throw away hammers with cocking notch alterations. So does dfariswheel.

However, since we are using a curved sear things a slightly different. The angle is different enough that often if you don't do anything to the notch the SA will usually really suck (creep, heavy, bad). If you make the notch more like a right angle and cut the lip of the hammer down, it can escape easier and you can make it as light as you like.

However, again, don't do this at home. For example, Grant Cunningham doesn't do this when he installs such triggers because of concerns about liability. And there are NO GUARANTEES THAT I AM DOING THIS RIGHT. So consider this just entertainment.

However, since I'm not going to sell this gun, we can not worry about most of the above. First put the hammer in a small vise and use a sharpie to mark the general area so that it's easy to tell how much got removed (and whether it was even):



Now file some. Unfortunately, I filed more than is a good idea. It is far from getting push off, but it's not really the right way to do things. I should have been more careful. In any case, here's the hammer:





And as compared to a stock one:


In the end I also had to take some off of the top and bottom parts of the hand, however it was just a few strokes of the file.

After putting everything back together the nice result is that with no other modifications the DA drops from 8.5-9lbs to 7lbs (and with the cylinder open is consistently 6.2lbs) and there is no stacking. Feels much nicer:



There's probably some room left to fuss with the mainspring and such, but that will get left til another time.

oversize bolts


I've been getting bolts from Popperts with oversized cams.

If anyone knows how to fit these I'd be interested in hearing about it. I've ruined a couple. While the last two worked it'd be nice to have a method. The shop manual seems to assume the bolt cam is already pretty much how it should be (with minor modifications).

Here's some pictures comparing to a bolt I pulled out of a python. You can see the cam is bigger in every way.






Thursday, May 21, 2009

Amusing way to get free miles on your credit card.

US mint selling $1 coins at face value + free shipping.

Hat tip: Oren, volokh.

Forensic photos: bull barrelled python


Recently came into possession of a bull-barrel python (I know I know, but looks fun to shoot!). Had a really amazing trigger: SA felt feather light and DA very smooth. So of course we took it apart to see what things looked like. This is a short post about that, but it doesn't come to any definitive conclusions, unfortunately.

Now the first thing was a bit unnerving: when measured w/ a trigger scale, the DA was OK and the SA at around 3lbs is pretty good, but not outer-space weird:


I've pulled a lot of different python triggers but this was the largest difference ever between subjective feel and measured reality. I'm still not really sure what the deal is.

In any case, here's a couple of the aristocrat rib:




And like many early, non-safe queen guns, it has "INS" stamped on the frame handle:



I think this is the fourth INS colt for me. I thought it meant "immigration and naturalization service" but the general consensus is that it just means "inspected".

As you probably can't see, the latch is purple:


From this post, it turns out that this does not necessarily mean it was reblued, but just that the blueing tank was a bit off:
Dfariswheel on purple

Now the second major surprise (which the trigger weight should have told us) is that the trigger sear is stock, completely uncurved! I had thought from the pull that there was minimal stacking:



If you look above at the INS stamp again, you can see the severe kink in the spring, closer to the V than I believe the colt manual suggests (though it's where I've tended to put it, too).

OK, so the sear is normal. Why exactly is the snake so smooth?! Looking at the hammer, you can see the lower end is polished compared to a take off one (right) --- most hammers have black marks on the lower end:



Looking at the sear, it does appear polished, though this could also be wear:


The hammer strut too appears polished (as it should be):



And the hand seems polished as does the rebound:





But these are all the normal places to polish. I've done it a lot, and still this python felt noticably nicer than usual.



The strut angle is pretty damn good, but still.


Unfortunately, here's one problem: the bolt spring is completely the wrong one:



If we do rapid DA the cylinder spins past the bolt. And weirdly, this is with the bolt slipping off the side of the rebound. After bending the bolt so it goes off the front of the rebound cam it stops returning at all. I'll spare you the details, but I'm still a bit stuck on what to do. Perhaps a nights sleep :)



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