A little update on Rob’s Operator. He has been shooting a lot since the last report but not so much the Operator, he says about 4K since I last examined it, meaning total rounds at this time about 112K. Most of those of course before the new slide.
Between training gigs he stopped by and asked me to put a new set of grips on the full custom gun I did for him in ’03. He thought he’d bought VZ’s but as a testament to how good VZ’s are, there are a lot of companies now making similar grips. I would not call these a VZ ripoff necessarily, but for what Rob paid, $30, I suspect they don’t measure up to what I like to say about VZ Grips: American made from American materials to original designs by Americans, made on Haas CNC’s by entrepreneurial Americans!
I thought the pattern came up a little short so I added some vertical lines before I fitted them to the welded-on magwell (made from scratch back in ’03).
I grabbed some pics of both:
Operator: when it needed a new slide it got a new Shield Driver rear sight. Rob is basically the guy the Shield Driver is named after.

The current (Kart) barrel.

The only thing that needed attention this time was the firing pin stop, which was cracked. Honestly, once this happens it’s pretty much done and I have not seen one “break more” but just the same I replaced it with an EGW part.

The Caspian’s mainspring housing, made from scratch by me. Rob and I agreed in ’03 to take a little weight out where it could be done…. but as I got to know him better I could see that he really, truly uses his guns and I was worried the aluminum MSH would take a real beating from reloads so I made this stainless insert.

A few weight saving measures, another window under the grips and a few cuts inside at the Pica rail.

Down the Caspain’s Kart barrel at about 30-40K rounds.

The magwell.

Overall LH side view with the new grips. I almost told him no deal, get some VZ’s, or not deal but then I figured, the money’s already in China, so…..
