1911Tuner
Moderator Emeritus
Ran down to the ol' shootin' place yesterday to give the New-To-Me Norinco a go. I've decided to tear the gun down after every range session to inspect for peening, battering, premature wear, or impending parts failure. So far, none has been noted. Total round count since taking possession of the gun...approximately 900-925 rounds without cleaning.
As is my habit, I install a King's Drop-in wide grip safety before a long range session...300 rounds or more...to protect the web of my delicate
little mitt...so I won't be able to evaluate any wear or damage to the stock
grip safety at theis point. Future range tests will allow for that whenever I take it along (in stock form) with another pistol and split the round count.
Yesterday, however, was a pure "Rinco" day.
600 rounds went downrange. The ammo was a mixture of handloaded/reloaded, mostly thrice-reloaded brass of various headstamps...mostly PMC...with a hundred or so rounds of once-fired
Winchester from Wally World.
Bullets varied from mostly 230-grain cast lead RN, with about 75 rounds of
200-grain SWC that was contributed by a friend who loads nothing other than that bullet over 5 grains of Red Dot for an accurate 870 fps load.
The balance was 230-grain jacketed ball...Winchester manufacture...over
the standard "Hardball Equivalent" charge of Unique.
There gun wasn't punished as brutally as the GI Springfield...but it wasn't handled with kid gloves either. There were no failures to feed/extract/eject until near the end of the session, when I got two failures to return to battery with the 200-grain SWC ammo during a reload on a full magazine. One required a brisk bump to put into battery, while the other only a light push with my thumb. May have been due to fouling...May have been ammo related. No other problems were noted for the balance of the ammo...which I saved for last to test for function with a less-than-optimum bullet shape when the gun was good and dirty...and it was.
I never allowed the pistol to get too hot to hold, but it did get rather warm on a couple of occasions...just to the point of discomfort, but not to an "OWEE" level. The session started with the gun in the condition that it was in from the first session...about 300 rounds of jacketed hardball..but with a drop of FP-10 in the rails, locking lugs, and on the link. No further lubrication was used.
The accuracy wasn't anything approaching "Match Grade", but was entirely adequate for the gun's intended purpose...as are most ordnance-spec 1911s. It was, however, fully as accurate as my Colt
XSE Commander..and that one was pretty impressive for an out-of-box
production 1911, even before the bushing upgrade. 10-inch discs on the
falling plate machine were duck soup if I was reasonably careful and didn't
try to emulate Mickey Fowler or Rob Leatham in their machine-gun style on the exercise.
At 25 yards, the game was a little tougher, mainly due to the fact that the gun shoots a bit low, and I was hitting the frame of the machine until I adjusted my hold for the POI, but the gun was accurate enough to knock'em down as long as I did my part. The 200-grain SWCs seemed to be the most accurate of the day, but I didn't put any groups on paper in order to prove it, so it may have been just my impression or me settling down and shooting better at that point. Sometimes it takes a while for the effects of the Turbo Coffee to wear off...and I drank 3 big mugfuls before I hit the road.
Rapid-fire drills, including shooting from the leather with controlled doubles on steel, scaled-down B-27 shaped plates at 25 feet turned into a boring
exercise, as the quick hits were easy, with misses generally attributable to
a fouled draw.
I did get a chance to take the original sear by tolet my bud put it to the Rockwell test...he called me with the results late last night. The sear hit 52 on the C Scale...which is 2 points higher than maximum ordnance spec...
and 9 points above minimum. Since I've noticed that whenever a steel part fails prematurely, I usually find that it's a little harder than it should be...
I decided to do a truly scientific stress-test on the sear. I laid it on an anvil and hit it with a hammer in several places. Backside down with curve facing up...three medium healthy whacks with a 6-ounce ball-peen hammer didn't break it. Two whacks on the sear laying sideways with the bias of the force directed at the legs produced a slight bend on one leg...but nothing broke. The third whack bent the leg further, and the fourth cracked it very slightly. A control stress-test on a Colt MIM sear produced about the same results, but the OEM Springfield sear cracked the leg on the second hit. MIM sears are pretty tough!
Stand by for another 'Rinco Sress Test. It might be several days, since Ivan is probably gonna rain on my parade for the next few...The final test will start with a clean, oiled pistol, and I'll go through 2500 rounds without cleaning, with only a drop of oi prior to the session in the rails, lugs, and on the disconnector/cocking rail...in the interest of not wearing things too badly. The final phase will be evenly divided into 500 round sessions,
hopefully over not more than two weeks.
Detail-stripped, cleaned, and oiled..It's ready to go as soon as weather permits.
As is my habit, I install a King's Drop-in wide grip safety before a long range session...300 rounds or more...to protect the web of my delicate
little mitt...so I won't be able to evaluate any wear or damage to the stock
grip safety at theis point. Future range tests will allow for that whenever I take it along (in stock form) with another pistol and split the round count.
Yesterday, however, was a pure "Rinco" day.
600 rounds went downrange. The ammo was a mixture of handloaded/reloaded, mostly thrice-reloaded brass of various headstamps...mostly PMC...with a hundred or so rounds of once-fired
Winchester from Wally World.
Bullets varied from mostly 230-grain cast lead RN, with about 75 rounds of
200-grain SWC that was contributed by a friend who loads nothing other than that bullet over 5 grains of Red Dot for an accurate 870 fps load.
The balance was 230-grain jacketed ball...Winchester manufacture...over
the standard "Hardball Equivalent" charge of Unique.
There gun wasn't punished as brutally as the GI Springfield...but it wasn't handled with kid gloves either. There were no failures to feed/extract/eject until near the end of the session, when I got two failures to return to battery with the 200-grain SWC ammo during a reload on a full magazine. One required a brisk bump to put into battery, while the other only a light push with my thumb. May have been due to fouling...May have been ammo related. No other problems were noted for the balance of the ammo...which I saved for last to test for function with a less-than-optimum bullet shape when the gun was good and dirty...and it was.
I never allowed the pistol to get too hot to hold, but it did get rather warm on a couple of occasions...just to the point of discomfort, but not to an "OWEE" level. The session started with the gun in the condition that it was in from the first session...about 300 rounds of jacketed hardball..but with a drop of FP-10 in the rails, locking lugs, and on the link. No further lubrication was used.
The accuracy wasn't anything approaching "Match Grade", but was entirely adequate for the gun's intended purpose...as are most ordnance-spec 1911s. It was, however, fully as accurate as my Colt
XSE Commander..and that one was pretty impressive for an out-of-box
production 1911, even before the bushing upgrade. 10-inch discs on the
falling plate machine were duck soup if I was reasonably careful and didn't
try to emulate Mickey Fowler or Rob Leatham in their machine-gun style on the exercise.
At 25 yards, the game was a little tougher, mainly due to the fact that the gun shoots a bit low, and I was hitting the frame of the machine until I adjusted my hold for the POI, but the gun was accurate enough to knock'em down as long as I did my part. The 200-grain SWCs seemed to be the most accurate of the day, but I didn't put any groups on paper in order to prove it, so it may have been just my impression or me settling down and shooting better at that point. Sometimes it takes a while for the effects of the Turbo Coffee to wear off...and I drank 3 big mugfuls before I hit the road.
Rapid-fire drills, including shooting from the leather with controlled doubles on steel, scaled-down B-27 shaped plates at 25 feet turned into a boring
exercise, as the quick hits were easy, with misses generally attributable to
a fouled draw.
I did get a chance to take the original sear by tolet my bud put it to the Rockwell test...he called me with the results late last night. The sear hit 52 on the C Scale...which is 2 points higher than maximum ordnance spec...
and 9 points above minimum. Since I've noticed that whenever a steel part fails prematurely, I usually find that it's a little harder than it should be...
I decided to do a truly scientific stress-test on the sear. I laid it on an anvil and hit it with a hammer in several places. Backside down with curve facing up...three medium healthy whacks with a 6-ounce ball-peen hammer didn't break it. Two whacks on the sear laying sideways with the bias of the force directed at the legs produced a slight bend on one leg...but nothing broke. The third whack bent the leg further, and the fourth cracked it very slightly. A control stress-test on a Colt MIM sear produced about the same results, but the OEM Springfield sear cracked the leg on the second hit. MIM sears are pretty tough!
Stand by for another 'Rinco Sress Test. It might be several days, since Ivan is probably gonna rain on my parade for the next few...The final test will start with a clean, oiled pistol, and I'll go through 2500 rounds without cleaning, with only a drop of oi prior to the session in the rails, lugs, and on the disconnector/cocking rail...in the interest of not wearing things too badly. The final phase will be evenly divided into 500 round sessions,
hopefully over not more than two weeks.
Detail-stripped, cleaned, and oiled..It's ready to go as soon as weather permits.
