Well last night I proved that the PM9 is not idiot proof. I was reassembling the gun after cleaning it while listening to my brother gab on the phone and watching some T.V. so I wasn't paying as much attention to the process as I normally do. Somehow I managed to insert the slide catch into the gun in front of the barrel instead of through the machined slot. Once the pin was inserted there was no way that I could get it back apart as the slide was locked into a rearward position. :banghead: I spent a couple of hours looking at the situation prodding, probing & racking to no avail. I eventually boxed the gun up getting it ready to ship out to Kahr today to see what they could do and went to bed. After tossing and turning for about 45 minutes thinking about the problem I decided the only way to fix it was to somehow cut the slide catch in half which would allow me to push the pin out. I knew I wasn't going to be able to sleep thinking about this so I got out of bed at Midnight, went down stairs, fired up the Dremel and proceeded to cut through the lever with a cutoff wheel. I was very carefull to mask up the gun with tape and stopped cutting leaving just a thin layer of metal. This allowed me to tap out the pin, easily breaking the lever in half allowing the slide to move forward so I could remove the rest of the lever. This morning I ordered a new slide catch from Kahr.
Has anyone else done this or am I the only knucklehead unlucky enough to manage this feat. It seems to me that this is a design flaw and at the very least should be noted in the manual in BIG red letters. I looked last night and the only thing they say is to move the slide slowly and insert the pin as soon as the barrel relief lines up with the hole. Nothing is mentioned that if you move it too far you will be totally screwed!
Okay, rant off.... I'm just happy to have solved the problem myself. Looks like I'll be carrying my P229tt more often until I get my slide catch in the mail.
Kurt
Has anyone else done this or am I the only knucklehead unlucky enough to manage this feat. It seems to me that this is a design flaw and at the very least should be noted in the manual in BIG red letters. I looked last night and the only thing they say is to move the slide slowly and insert the pin as soon as the barrel relief lines up with the hole. Nothing is mentioned that if you move it too far you will be totally screwed!
Okay, rant off.... I'm just happy to have solved the problem myself. Looks like I'll be carrying my P229tt more often until I get my slide catch in the mail.
Kurt