Originally Posted by Malamute
I agree! The last time I was shooting in Nevada before I moved back to California I stretched out my still new Gen 4 G17 out to 300 yards onto a half gallon water bottle.
I didn't hit it often but I was shocked how close the shots were consistently.
Oh, don't be like that, Bill; it's beneath you.
I will say that designing the average handgun to go 250k+ rounds is like designing the average car to last 2,000,000 miles. I'm not sure that's cost-effective.
Further, by the time we're talking six-figure round counts, the cost of the pistol starts becoming a rounding error. ("How about you make it with half the lifespan, and I'll buy a second one on the off chance I wear the first one out?")
Yeah, the part about putting a mag all over a six-foot square target was the most believable part of the whole ad copy. I've seen someone stand flat-footed on their hind legs with a 9x19mm P99 and hit a rock maybe half that size a lot more often than they missed at 500yds, once they walked the first couple in to get the holdover.
"My people are destroyed from lack of knowledge."- Hosea 4:6
And judging from the incredulous looks I get from other shooters at the range witnessing me shooting objectively skunk-tacular 7" patterns at 25 yards, there's a lot of folks lacking some shooting knowledge. Which is good news for Mr. Lippards income statement.
The Minority Marksman.
"When you meet a swordsman, draw your sword: Do not recite poetry to one who is not a poet."
-a Ch'an Buddhist axiom.
Never mind
Perhaps...........but if we read the posts, and apply the "Words have meanings" philosophy, we would note that Mr. R stated that "250,000 cycles isn't exactly a high number of cycles for most machines."
I did not see firearm/gun/weapon mentioned. I saw, read, and interpreted "machines", and applied the definition of "machine" as it best applied to the context.
I am quite sure my truck engine, a machine, has far exceeded 250,000 piston cycles.
Back on topic........
I have tried to take my 1911's out past 400, but have yet to find anything that could be called success. At 200, I can usually go somewhere in the 75-80% range. Drops to about 50/50 at 300. By the time I get to 400, it is more like 10%. I have no practical need to ever shoot a pistol at 200, 300, 400, or further, but for pure concentration on the basic fundamentals of marksmanship, I have found it to be a nice alternative to shooting groups at paper once in awhile.
As for the record tying feat at Camp Matthews...........not nearly as impressive as 600 yards with a 1911. There is no shortage of Marine recruits who step onto the range and tie the range record. Edson Range at Camp Pendleton has 4 KD ranges for recruit rifle quals. At one point prior to the USMC changing the rifle qualification course of fire in the mid-90's, 3 of the 4 ranges had records of 249/250. The fourth had a record of 250/250. Since "V" rings are not scored for qualification purposes, who actually shot the highest scores is debatable. In my company alone, there were 11 shooters who tied the range record (248/250 at the time) on Day 1. Two of them tied to set the new record of 249/250 on Day 2, followed by 6 others who shot 249 by the end of the week. One of the first 249 shooters shot a 250 on the final day, Day 4.........however, it was decided he had one late round fired during one of the rapid fire stages, and had 5 points deducted from his score, leaving him with a 245. According to USMC rules at the time, he should have been allowed to re-shoot the stage, as he had a malfunction, which, if the shooter makes every attempt to properly clear the malfunction, but cannot, he will be allowed to fire however many rounds remaining, based on the time/round ratio of the stage. Since he was the current range record holder, the DI's didn't give him his alibi.
I ran into said shooter several years later after he had gone double distinguished, and set a new range record of 250/250...........shooting the entire course of fire off-hand. That kind of marksmanship always impresses me.
Last edited by Odin Bravo One; 04-13-2014 at 09:35 AM.
Since hitting a 3x5 at 7yds on demand is sorta hit or miss for me, I choose to believe that this long range pistol malarkey is unpossible.
Ok, serious question then - how do you wear out a gun?
Crack the frame? I'm looking at Todd's 1911 with 65k+ on it right now. The hammer-sear engagement surfaces look basically new. The locking lugs look like they were just cut on the machine. The slide to frame fit is tight. The barrel feet look unused. In fact, aside from the near lack of rifling, the loss of Armory Kote, and the beat to shit mag well - this gun might as well be brand new....at basically 66,000 rounds. If I sand blasted it, then re-sprayed it, put it together with the new barrel, I'd put my lunch money on it being indistinguishable from new.
My point is - 250,000 rounds is a heck of a lot of rounds. But that is a testament about the person, not the gun. 250,000 cycles for a machine, that is properly lubricated, isn't much. And especially so on a modern 1911. Because with modern materials, it's grossly overbuilt.
You can do silly stuff such as make the slide out of free-machining steel so you can hog out material easily, give it a hard surface (carbonitriding is popular) so you don't have to through harden, make most of the internals out of stamped medium carbon steel, and so on. But even then, the actual wear points are pretty low stress. Heck, I bet the HK and 1911s would have seen 250k w/o much more than they saw getting to where they stopped.
I'm not trying to put you on the spot Tam, and this was the purpose of my original statement concerning # of rounds. That said, I've not actually seen a gun I'd have said was worn out from shooting. I've seen abused guns that were not lubricated, shot with broken recoil springs, and all other manner of abuse. But I've never actually seen a worn out gun.
Last edited by BLR; 04-13-2014 at 10:23 AM.
Using Todd's endurance guns as a sample population...
GEN4 G17 - slide (breechface erosion)
P30 - frame (small piece sheared off)
M&P9 - slide (crack)
To be fair, in each of those cases, I understand that the pistol remained functional, but the endurance test was ended as a precaution.
Your point about the 1911 is well taken; I was always impressed with how PWS continued to rebuild the MEU (SOC) 1911s year after year. I'd be curious to know how many rounds have been through those frames.
"When the phone rang, Parker was in the garage, killing a man."
That'd count. Or tear metal rail tabs loose from their polymer moorings. Maybe get to a point where replacement parts costs have exceeded the cost of just buying a new gun.
Duh. The 1911 is so overbuilt that you can make the frame out of aluminum without changing any of the dimensions and it'll still hold up to a bunch of shooting. It was designed in an era when Materials Science consisted of saying "That looks about right."
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