Category: wear

Categories
decocker EDC Grand Power Mk12 P11 wear

Grand Power P11 – One Thousand Rounds Shot Through The Barrel

I’ve now shot over one thousand rounds through the Grand Power P11.  It’s about time, too, as I’ve had the gun right at two years now.

How’s the wear/tear?  Here’s a video showing the internals.

Some other things relating to this firearm:

Someone thought that because my P11 didn’t have a decocker, it was a Mk7.  Mk12s were first produced without decockers.  They are now sold with decockers but a Mk12 can either have a decocker or not.

Secondly, I’ve asked Grand Power and Eagle Imports if decockers can be retrofitted to those Mk12s that were sold without decockers.  I didn’t get an answer but found it on their forums here.  Apparently, GP/EI doesn’t want to deal with possible legal issues if someone buys the parts from the manufacturer, doesn’t install them correctly, and later experiences an unintentional discharge.  If that’s the case, they shouldn’t want ANYONE messing with the internals…no one at all, yet they encourage people to do complete tear-downs of the firearm in every other case.  If they’re that afraid of legal trouble, make the process stupid-simple for some parts.  Beretta sells decockers on the side for their PX4 Storms knowing that everyday people will install them at home.  Beretta is a far bigger business than Grand Power and have much more to lose when it comes to lawsuits, yet Beretta empowers people to customize their handguns.  Glock does this as well, as does Ruger and Sig Sauer and Walther…and I can go on and on.

I do not believe in the black box mentality when it comes to such things.  That means you’ll always be totally dependent upon the maker when it comes to asking a bit more of your firearm.

This pains me greatly because I’ve trained myself around the GP P11.  That training was HARD work.  As well, I’d grown fond of Grand Power and had planned on getting a P1.  I still could (and a new P1 would have the decocker I’m asking for), but this is more about principles.  Not offering parts for fear of lawsuits…that’s a cop out if I’ve ever heard one.  I’ve heard such crap before in non-free states.

Because of this, I think I’m going to look at options to replace my P11.  Some of you may think that this is a trivial thing and that it’s being blown out of proportion.  IMO, there’s a bit of a Liberal scent to what GP stated (the “protect them from themselves and us” mentality).

So, I’m either going to start the process of making my P11 a safe queen and switching to a different EDC.  I could even get a PX4 Storm Compact like I initially planned (and even sell the P11 to finance the Beretta).

Categories
Century Arms dremel slide TP9SA warranty wear

Slide Scratches/Gouges – TP9SA

I’d noticed that the underside of my TP9SA’s slide has some unusual metal wear.  I couldn’t find what was causing it.  Well, someone else did:

At 1:18 and 1:22, he shows his slide’s wear…it looks very similar to mine.  He discovered that the magazine was scratching the slide!  My slide scrapes weren’t as bad as his (I’ve only shot 100 rounds through my gun).

I checked my magazines and some of the paint was missing from the very top of both…to double-check, I used a black Sharpie to coat the bare metal both of my magazines’ wear marks.  I also covered the slide’s wear in black Sharpie.  Then I placed the magazines into the gun and racked the slide maybe 10 times each.  I checked the slide and mags again.  The marker ink had rubbed off.

I used a Dremel to grind a bit of metal from where the ink had rubbed off…I removed just a tiny bit of metal with a grindstone.  I covered the ground areas with Sharpie again, then racked the slide with both mags again.  There was no more wear.  Fixed!

The guy in the video actually sent his gun back to Century Arms as a warranty claim.  He also had a trigger spring that was mangled a bit that Century Arms is going to take a look at, too.

I’m glad he posted his issue…I’d have never figured out what was causing it.

UPDATE:  I wanted to keep the readers informed on this issue.  I bought a tan TP9SA not long ago and performed the same grind of the mags that I did with my black TP9SA.  I took the tan TP9SA to the range on 4/3 and it performed flawlessly.  There are no more slide gouges.  It has minor scrapes due to dry racking while the mags were inserted…I covered them in black magic marker to determine if the scrapes would still occur and it hasn’t occurred.