The Down Range Forum
Member Section => Handguns => Topic started by: Big Frank on August 06, 2024, 11:34:36 PM
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I was looking at Wicked Grips again and noticed their mailing address is just 10 miles from my house. And one of my friends I recently visited lives on the same road. Besides other 1911 grips, they make a baker's dozen for Para-Ordnance P-14.45s and other guns that use that frame. Plus they make a solid brass spike recoil plug. I'm trying to find out if they plan on making it from anything else, like stainless steel to match my gun, before I order one. I want to get a Falling Down T-shirt or at least a morale patch while I'm at it.
https://wickedgrips.com/1911-3d-metal-spring-plug-spike-government/
https://wickedgrips.com/gun-grips/1911-grips/para-ordnance-double-stack/
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They make AR pistol grips and rail covers too.
https://wickedgrips.com/gun-grips/ar-15-grips/?sort=priceasc&page=1
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Everything except clothing at Wicked Grips is on sale for at least 5% off, so I ordered a Brass Spike 1911 Government recoil spring plug. It was only 5% off, and our state sales tax is 6%, so it still wasn't a great price. Mammoth tooth grips and mammoth tusk ivory grips are 15% off, metal grips are 10% off, and everything else is supposed to be 5% off IIRC.
https://wickedgrips.com/1911-3d-metal-spring-plug-spike-government/
https://wickedgrips.com/gun-grips/?sort=pricedesc
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Man those are some nice grips. My wife has a Kimber Ultra II 9mm in rose gold. There's got to be some special grips that would really set that dude off. And I like the gemstone encrusted screws. All pricey but what the heck...I will have to sell a calf to get one for her and I'm tired of taking care of them anyway!
Well heck. I didn't see any of those cool mamoth grips for the Kimber Ultra II. I suppose I could have them make some easy enough if they have the stock. Does anyone know of an easy program where I could "lift" the color and pattern of their stocks and impose it on a rose gold kimber frame to evaluate the best color/texture mix?
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I've figured out how to cut and paste images in Microsoft Paint, and if I want to rotate a picture by any number of degrees I use IrfanView (pronounced "EarfanView"), a free program named after its creator, Irfan Škiljan, originally from Jajce, Bosnia,, now living in Vienna, Austria. Here's a pic of waterfalls at the city where he used to live in.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IrfanView
https://www.irfanview.com/
The guys at Wicked grips can't make the spike recoil plug out of stainless steel or anything like that. Too bad, but they only have equipment for working softer metals like brass and aluminum. If I can find a 6" one piece guide rod, I can sharpen the end of it like a pencil. :) Someone sells Glock guide rods like that, and you can use them as a standoff device.
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I got my brass spike recoil plug today. I already got it dinged up by turning the barrel bushing into the side of it before the plug was all the way in. The 20 pound recoil spring makes it difficult to push the plug in that far. I should have used a small screwdriver on the lip of the plug when I pushed it in, but was too lazy to get one from another part of the house. Several seconds of turning the gun and a small wad of 00 steel wool back and forth against each other fixed it up. Not perfectly, but good enough. I figure there's no point to it, no pun intended, knowing what abuse the gun will see. The place the spring plug was mailed from in Flushing is only 11 1/2 miles away from my house. I like it when I find something I want that's made locally. 8)
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I still don't know if the 20 round mags work or not. If not, at least I have something pointy to use as a weapon :D I haven't checked yet to see if the pistol still fits in the Bianchi M-12 holster, NSN: 1095-01-194-3343, that I have. Its ambidextrous design, when combined with modular accessories, allows the M12 to be worn in 14 different positions. The M12 is specifically designed to fit the Beretta M9 (and M1911) semi-auto pistol and was awarded 5 separate patents for its design. It also fits full-size SIGs, Glocks, CZs, etc. It has a removable flap and detachable thumb strap for closed-top or open-top use, and has a plastic cleaning rod in the front with a flap/strap and snap to retain it. It converts to shoulder or chest carry with accessories, and came with a hard plastic tube in it that keeps it from collapsing when empty, even if you pile other stuff on top of it.
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Let us know if the mags work.
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Let us know if the mags work.
I don't know when I'll get around to it. Maybe I can go out in the woods and dump several mags on my way home after Labor Day. They're ProMag magazine tubes that I replaced the followers and baseplates with Para-Ordnance factory parts, and extended springs, either ISMI 13 coil 170mm springs or Wolff Custom Capacity springs with 3 extra coils, I can't recall which but they're both good.
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I took my .45 apart and oiled it yesterday. I put an aluminum .22 caliber cleaning rod over the tip of the spike and pushed down on the handle. I had to tip the rod slightly to allow the barrel bushing to turn, and reassembly was the same. I used the same little bit of steel wool as before to shine up the spike when I was finished.
Besides this pistol, I'm taking my Contender with the 9" .223 Remington barrel on it next weekend. Along with the pistol, I'm taking a .22LR - .223 Chamber Adapter, a tin of 14.4 grain Crosman Copper Magnum Domed .22 Pellets, and a box of 100 Ramset CW Series .22 Powder Loads. These are the Yellow Level 4 loads, the highest power of the 3 levels available in .22 caliber. The Winchester W stamped "blanks" drop right into the adaptor. Unfortunately, the pellets fall right through. I may poke a small bit of toilet paper in before I load the pellet, then push both forward with the powder load when I chamber it. I just tried it with 1/16th of a sheet of toilet paper and it's like a self-contained cartridge as long as it's pointing down. :) Since the chamber adaptor will stay in the gun the whole time, it should work just fine. The tip of the blanks are small enough to fit partway into the skirt of the pellets keeping them centered and positioned as close to the breech as possible.
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The chamber of the .22 adaptor is so loose the pellets will fall right through it. Instead of keeping the gun pointed up I decided to use a bit of toilet paper in front of the pellet. But when I went to shoot it, my toilet paper was packed away somewhere in the back of the truck, so I tore little bits off an old surgical mask that was in the console. I rolled it into a loose ball and poked it partway in with a metal rod/tool. Then I put a pellet in and rammed it home with a blank as I chambered it. I only shot it 6 or 7 times because the head of the case was missing when I ejected the last one. :o I didn't know it until today but the brass was flowing into the centerfire firing pin hole to some degree on every shot. It ranged from nearly invisible, to a hole blown through the center of one, and the whole rim missing on the last one. There was a scorch mark on the upper left of the barrel face at the breech end. I don't know yet if there's brass jammed inside the action somewhere.
Since I couldn't shoot that anymore, I spent the rest of the time shooting "Spike", the .45 with the brass spike recoil spring plug. The 20-round mags worked well enough with ball ammo and CorBon Pow'RBall ammo that has a plastic ball in the tip like the Glaser Safety Slugs in the 4th pic. I had one Pow'Rball round that I pulled the ball out of last year. It hit so low on the feed ramp it had no chance of feeding and just set there. Triton Quik-Shok Hyper-Stressed bullets that split into 3 pieces were completely hopeless. So was Super Vel ammo, that's also shaped like a truncated cone with a large hollow point like the Quik-Shok. The 5th pic is of Super Vel ammo, and the last one shows manufacturing stages of a Quik-Shok bullet. The Quik-Shok ammo wored in my 15 round mags and deliver 572 ft./lbs at the muzzle. Super Vel is actually 100 fps slower and has 544 ft/lbs ME. That's a 165 grain bullet at 1,150 fps, and the other is the same weight at 1,250 fps.
http://www.45super.com/Triton%20quik-shok.html
https://supervelammunition.com/
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It's a good thing I bought a new helmet last year. This one has holes in it. ;D A few from .22 caliber pellets, 17 grains at God only knows what velocity. The rest were from +p Super Vel, +P Quik-Shok, +P Pow'RBall, 185 grain Speer Gold Dots, 185 grain +P Remington Ultimate Defense (Golden Saber BJHP), 230 grain FMJ-FP DoubleTap, 185 grain Taurus Hex Bullets (99.95% pure copper), G9 Defense +P 165 grain Woodsman and +P 117 grain External Hollow Points (1480 fps) :o, 230 grain ball Aguilla, and 185 grain BEB (Brass Enclosed Base) Winchester white box.
I saved enough DoubleTaps to fill 2 mags after shooting 10 rounds, one magful of each type of G9 ammo after shooting 5 rounds of each, and 10 rounds of Remington ammo after firing half a box. I think I only had 10 Quik-Shoks, 10 Hex Bullets and 10 Gold Dots in a plastic bag after shooting the other half some other time. I shot however many rounds of Aguilla were left in a 50 round box. I think it was 80% full but don't really know. I have 10 rounds of the WWB left because I didn't feel like filling another mag 2/3 full just to get rid of them. That, the Gold Dots, and Aguila ammo were only 18 years old. The Pow''RBalls and hex bullets are 3 years older than those, and the Quik-Shok is 3 years older than them (Y2K). I don't know what happened to the Super Vel box but it was probably close to 24 years old. The DoublTap is maybe a year old, and the G9 and Remington are new. A few rounds of various ammo fed most of the way but needed a little push on the back of the slide to nudge them in. But most of it worked in the 3 15-round mags.
The 20 pound recoil spring isn't really necessary, and the 18.5 pound spring I had before seemed to be a little more reliable overall. But 20 pounds works well with the +P ammo I shoot a lot. If I shot mainly ball ammo I'd go back to the 18.5 pound spring recommended by Para when I bought the kit 36 years ago. I run a Shok-Buff in it and wish I knew about them sooner. Maybe it wouldn't sound like a maraca when I shake the gun. Aluminum frames can't handle the beating they get from +P ammo and no Shok-Buff as well as steel does. When I was shooting and noticed how the recoil was I think I finally realized why so many people buy 9mm pistols. But I don't see myself switching to a .35 instead of a .45 because of the kick.
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Looking at the emty boxes again before I throw them in the trash, I think the Aguilla ammo was all 50 rounds n the box, but it was loose ammo, not in a plastic tray. I think I dumped it in the box last year or the year before. It also could have been 45 rounds, 3 mags full, and I dumped it in after unloading them.
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On the picture below I marked with yellow arrows where the rim is cut out almost even with the extractor groove. That's to help get the .22 brass out of the .223 adaptor. The whole area I marked with red arrows is where a piece of the rim has a piece missing that's even shallower than that. It looks like half the thickness of the rim roughly 30%of the way around is gone. The rear face of the barrel on the opposite side has a carbon deposit on it from about the 8 o'clock to 11 o'clock position. Between that and the pierced cases, I think the ramset blanks have a higher chamber pressure than a .22 Long Rifle cartridge. The pellets I was shooting weigh less than a nail, and the wadding I used wasn't a tight fit in the barrel. Even if it was, it was right up against the pellet, which was up against the end of the blank. It wasn't like a bore obstruction in the middle of the barrel or anything like that. The only thing I can think of is that the wad and pellet should have been slightly farther ahead, to where the end of the case will be when it opens up, to give it more room to open up with no interference from the pellet.
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Frank, the nail set blanks are much stronger than loaded .22LR, I seem to remember a warning on some I had that specifically said not to fire them in a firearm as it could cause damage.
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Thanks, Majer. I saw someone else online shooting pellets in a .22 rifle with ramset blanks or regular blanks, I can't recall which, and he didn't have any problem. Maybe I wouldn't either if I used the lowest power blanks instead of the highest. I could buy some level 2 blanks and find out.
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I never got around to taking any pics of the Wicked Grips box until today. I couldn't put it off any longer because I put a gift for some friends in it, and it will be gone in a week or so.
1. Bottom with small logo.
2. Top with main logo.
3. Front of the box.
4. With the flap open.
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My part was wrapped in several layers of black tissue paper. It kind of blows my mind that these guys are just a few miles from my house.
5. Inside the lid.
6. Inside the back of the box.
7. Inside on the bottom.