TargetTalk

I have never heard of alternative springs. Just what happens when yours fails to cycle? It's rather difficult to offer suggestions from a distance... Is the hammer cocking reliably? It might be that the sear spring pressure is insufficient to retain the hammer every time. This spring is the flat spr...

Hi Mika, Glad to hear that you were able to sort out your problem. Unfortunately, it's the breech position that's at fault in my misbehaving 69. AFAIK, the 69 is not known to be fussy about ammo. Both of my 69s cycled perfectly reliably on any ammunition I tried. Lapua 'Magazine' and the similar (id...

It is wrong to think that this subject has not been researched and that it is mysterious and poorly understood. Good work has been done with instrumented guns, demonstrating the causes of barrel vibration and ways in which the problem can be attacked. For various reasons to do with tradition and man...

It's all to do with the axial force of recoil not being reacted in line with the bore axis. Also asymmetry of the receiver contributes, because asymmetry causes it to flex as it stretches. These, and other, minor effects induce multiple modes of vibration that propagate along the barrel as transvers...

Regarding synthetics: I've just put up an interesting link in the Synthetic Oil thread on the Olympic Pistol forum. Caveat emptor!

More relevant to airgun users... I remember reading a warning about possible oil-seal incompatibility with synthetic oil, but age and the passage of too much time (possibly alcohol too) means I have no idea where it was, nor what the precise information was. Therefore Google... http://forums.noria.c...

I use a very thin smear of an 'assembly paste' (Molybond GA50 - I'm sure Rocol do an equivalent) which is a thick grease containing 50% Molybdenum disulphide. It is designed to prevent fretting and galling. I'm careful to keep it away from anything but the threads. Alternatively, dive shops will sel...

Interesting. Was your occluder translucent or completely opaque? I ask because if your non-aiming eye was not receiving as much light as your aiming eye, its pupil would dilate and this would cause the aiming eye's pupil to dilate also. I'm sure you know that the eye's optical performance is worse w...

Have you got it back together yet? Mine self-disassembles (!) from time to time because there's too much clearance between the circlip and the rotating ring that it retains. One day, I will make a shim out of plastic shimstock. Reassembly is tedious. I place the pin of each leaf in the fixed ring ho...

Auto engine oils contain all sorts of additives which are irrelevant to the benign conditions they face in a pistol. Years ago, engine oils trumpeted their detergent content. This was to keep particulates in suspension, so that they would be carried to the oil filter and trapped. Once, I had some ne...

...just to avoid confusion: I'm OK with my P44 grip, and don't shoot 'cross-eyed'. kbc - you really need to borrow a P44 and try it. The point I'm making is that I would not have enough adjustment to shoot 'cross-eyed', should I want to, but others might. Assuming my eyes are about as far apart as m...

When you are dry firing against a blank wall, the only judgment you have to make is to ensure that your sight alignment is perfect, then you operate the trigger. Easy! However, when there's a distracting target, you have to concentrate on the sight alignment and the alignment of sights and aiming po...

I think that, all other things being equal, I'd be more scared of an armed person than an unarmed person, particularly when beyond reach of the other person's hand. Here, in sleepy little NZ, where gun ownership is common, but gun crime is rare, there is pressure (from the police) to arm the police ...

The P44 has approx 6 degrees total rotational adjustment. A quick experiment shows that I would need about 4.6 degree adjustment for cross-eyed aiming. Therefore it sounds as though it might be OK for you. HOWEVER, if you assume that I have the grip centred, I have only 3 degrees adjustment for cros...

I sympathise - I've been there (and back again...) The critical problem is that, when shooting prone rifle and pistol, your head position is so different. Although shooting frames can accommodate the radically different required lens positions, setting up the frames each time you change discipline i...

I'm glad someone wrote to the Minister. I didn't even know such a law change was being considered until it was a done deal. Who is going to institute a judicial revue, I wonder?

Hey, don't tell the moronic legislators that ISSF air pistols are also PCP, and you can get repeaters!

FWIW, someone once suggested to me to pretend that you were actually pulling the front sight back through the rear notch.

Dry fire, dry fire, dry fire...

I'm not looking for the answer "It's personal preference." I'm asking a scientific question. So far, the books I've read do not really have any answers to this, if they address it at all. Oh, what a relief - someone else who's looking for the science in shooting! Let me know if you find a...

OK, things are going to get confusing unless we are careful. It's potentially misleading to think about the speed of sound, because one is tempted to think only of the speed of sound in the free air around the gun and I apologise for my sloppy use of the term. The combustion gasses certainly exit th...

the gases expand at the speed of sound if that's any help... Just to clarify, lest anyone is misled... The pressure waves , including the shockwave previously mentioned, travel at the speed of sound in whatever medium they propagate through. I don't know what the speed of sound is in red-hot combus...