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The latest comp for a .50 GI (Guncrafter Industries). I was hoping to contain this job within the weekend but I kinda had to take Monday too.
I met my target weight of “same weight as mine but without scalloping the barrel”.

The first one I made, somebody directed me to a blog somewhere where they posted pics and there were a few negative comments, my favorite being, “1911 people digging the stupid hole even deeper” . I’ll grantcha these are not for tactical ninja wetwork special ops but if you want to shoot bowling pins to relax after the secret mission, these work OK .

I could polish these up and everything I suppose but... they're a tool with pretty much one purpose and... anyway I kinda don't mind the industrial look. Large radii are stepped on, not CNC'd. I could go finer on those, but that's a lot more time and, honestly, chances to grab a wrong number and mess something up.

Purpose driven design/construction. It do what it do the way it is supposed to do. If it is a success at that, then that is the only metric that has any weight.

The Shooting Gallery episode from January 16 had the Pin Match. It was cool seeing you blast pins with that Monster Comp. Looked like a lot of Michiguns were being used at that match

_________________
John Del Pinto

John, welcome back--! Have tried to reach you a few times in the last five years.

Yeah having them film at The Pin Shoot was fun. Michael Bane and his crew were a very cool bunch with lots of interesting stories. He's good at what he does, made me look somewhat less doofish than reality

BBBBill, quite right. Some people don't understand that sometimes, guns are for fun. And I believe it helps tip the balance in a shooter's favor when it's not for fun.

Exactly. no-one complains that a NASCAR ride is not really relevant to going down to the local store for milk and bread. Or to drive into a combat zone.

So what makes the tacti-cool mall ninja think his SOCOM-approved carry gun is going to win him loot in a match?

Careful now. I resemble that remark. I retired from SOCOM and I am tacti-cool!

Well thanks for that BBBBill. Wish we could get together sometime so I could get a few insights into that life.

So the pin shooting thing is starting to percolate a little, with June only a few months away. Went to a local pin match a month ago, another coming up in a few weeks. The .50 really rocks 'em but then the .45 never was a slouch and although I've done well with the .50 I still get beat with .45's so it's not magic.

I really wanted to plug this comp into my own gun and try it but the barrel has not yet been fitted to anything so it would not go. I'll have to wait until June to see it on the gun I reckon.

pinshoot.com by the way.

Today being May 4th 2021, means that 2021's The Pin Shoot is only 5 weeks away. I snuck in a little time (not as "little" as I'd hoped) to turn out another "somewhat larger that usual" compensator for a good friend / fellow competitor who has been after me for years to make him something for pins. When the old pin shoot returned as The Pin Shoot, and he started attending (having missed the last years of Second Chance), his urgency factor got bumped up a bit and he started reminding me more as to how long he'd been waiting. He bought a .50 GI-- that told me he was getting serious..... and when I started making noise about maybe making one out of polyoxymethylene (Delrin), well, he took to that idea right away! The final thing-- the thing that maybe made it happen, maybe it didn't, I mean, I might have got to it this year anyway, but-- there's just something about a Marine Colonel that kinda makes you want to do what he wants you to do. I think that's part of how they get to be a Colonel.....

There are still a few final details to be done.






My first attempt in years at safety wiring. Looks OK and will be effective (they are LocTited too of course) but to someone who really knows aircraft mechanics it leaves something to be desired. I do have safety wire pliers but they are cheezy and I'm not so sure they would work in these confines. There was difficulty getting the wire through the heads with them being so close to the comp body, and the screws were only drilled once so the angle of each hole is not optimal. Might try it again when there's more time and/or try to find some screws or make some that are drilled three ways.

No suprise that a Marine chooses a Trijicon product and, good choice, sez me:

I wanted the optic to be quick-on, quick-off but off course with no loss, or minimal loss, of zero. The range for bowling pin shooting is 25’ but the optimal part of the pin to hit is maybe 2 ½” wide. Of course there has to be some clearance between the optic mount and the T-slot if goes into, otherwise it’s not a slide fit. There’s probably about a thou there, and it's about an inch wide at the base. That gives a theoretical variance at 25’ of about 5/32” to either side, too much really, but I’m pretty sure that in practice it’s going to be much less.
I wanted The Colonel to be able just slide it in and have it click in place, then actuate “something” and slide it back out. I spent as much time coming up with a simple way of doing it as I did actually doing it. I had pictured a nice checkered Delrin button that the user could slide or pivot up or down that would withdraw a spring-loaded locator—I really wanted that but…. time! I wanted most of all that it would be a no-tool engagement and release-- or maybe something where a cartridge could be used as the tool. The problem with .50 GI cartridges is that they resemble cigar butts and as tools are no more useful. A couple times I said screw it, there’s just going to be a screw and I’ll give him a wrench to fit it. I know from experience that just leads to trying to find the wrench.
I finally came up with this. A headed pin with a lifter plate under it and a spring over it, the lifter plate protruding out the side. It works fantastically! Trying to keep things “1911”, the spring is made from a 1911 sear spring. The lifter plate? From the rear sight of a Winchester Model 1910 rifle that broke in rough handling. This is the semi-auto in .401 Winchester Self Loading caliber; Winchester called it the Hammer of Thor and indeed it’s a thumper. This one happened to be second-year production, so…. 1911. Nice tough piece of spring steel. The pin, I usually have some ejector pins around but could not find one in 1/8 so I had to make a head and silver it onto a pin I did have:


They wound up looking like this, and I have added the pocket to the mount where they all go:


And it works. Installing it, the pin snaps perfectly into its hole in the slide. When it’s time to take it off, push up on the lifter and slide it off.


....and there are still a few things to do. I don 't like having things held together with screws so at the least there has to be some sort of extra measure to keep that little 2-56 screw holding the spring from backing out. It will get LocTite of course but it'll get something else too. I still need to get a little more weight out of the reciprocating mass. Right now with the optic on I'm at 3oz over that of my own pin gun. Probably OK but I want to be sure as time is tight. I know I can count on The Colonel to thoroughly test it but if he needs to return it for trimming that's a speed bump we don't need.

Well it's in The Colonel's hands now and..... what!? No way.... look what he's done to that beautiful Delrin carving!

well of course you posted pic of these space guns on may the 4th.....be with you

...without realizing it, but maybe something bigger than me was directing my actions?

Ned. I remember when the 50 GI first came out. The cartridge slapped plates so hard they spun around at my little backyard range. The ultimate pin gun. Never pursued it further. Medical, work and a few other things changed my priority.

The caliber is a sleeper.

Hit the target like a bowling ball traveling at 850 FPS.

If the ever developed into a defensive cartridge WOW

_________________
Be safe and keep the brass flying

Terry Peters

Do your research but you get what you pay for front end or back end
http://www.pt-partners.com
@ptpartners_tx

Defensive cartridge, you say.....



There is also a 185 at 1200!

Now that cartridge is a "Defensive" cartridge. The bullet design will allow expansion and penetration and sub sonic speeds. I am a HUGE proponent of the Black Hills "Honey Badger" and other cartridges by Black Hills. Been selling off all my other "stuff" to fund all the upgraded Black Hills for the coming "Zombie Apocalypse"

_________________
Be safe and keep the brass flying

Terry Peters

Do your research but you get what you pay for front end or back end
http://www.pt-partners.com
@ptpartners_tx

"Eeez gon, eez meant to be shot." Good for him, actually getting in some practice before a match.

Me, I'll be lucky to have all my ammo loaded before packing the car for the drive.

Well I got it back today, it needs a little more reciprocating weight taken out. TC's load is a tad lighter than my own, that could be part of it but there are many things it could be. This time I have the complete gun and some of his ammo so I can test fire whatever I wind up doing. The objective is to get it working with a not-less-than 16 pound recoil spring.

Got it running. Took a little more weight out, went to a slightly lighter mainspring.

After its first season of shooting pins, and a considerable number of rounds in practice before and after, the Delrin comp has some erosion. We knew it would happen and as expected it got to a certain point and rather stabilized—like, slowed way down— it maybe would have gone another season or two but I wanted to get it right for, well, longer than that. Something like this is like my 1974 CZ 400 motocrosser was: built for performance, not longevity, no guarnantees.

The first blast face is taking the brunt of it so I did what I figured from the start I might have to do—give it a flanged sleeve of aluminum. Why not steel? Probably could have been but I have gone to a lot of trouble to get cycling mass out of this thing; I stayed with that theme. I know from the other three “Big ‘Un’s”, made from aluminum, that it will hold up for maybe ten times the round count of Delrin—anyway this sleeve is easily duplicated.

First, how to bore the pass-through hole with the least trouble? I made some tools to align-bore the Delrin to the barrel. I didn’t want to separate everything, so I made a cutter, a mandrel/pilot to ride in the bore, and drove it with a 5/32 hex rod.


Here the Delrin is bored and you can see there is some erosion left. No issue, it gives me the clearance to have a nice radius in the sleeve where the outer diameter meets the underside of the flange:


The tools. The mandrel or pilot is made from a piece of steel I found on the street—no, really. It turned out to be Ledloy, leaded cold-rolled steel, very easy machining. The cutter was made from O-1 but since I was only cutting Delrin, I did not bother to harden it.


Not related really, but just for comparison later, the freebore and throat area of this gun’s eight-groove barrel:

The sleeve and snap ring. I used a heavy-duty one….. supposed to hold 4000-lbs plus which will never happen here, especially since it’s just holding it from sliding backward. The sleeve is a light press fit but that’s not something I would count on even with each round keeping it pushed forward.


Sleeve installed, rear view.


And, from the front. Yes, I expect the snap ring to get sooted and leaded into place but it’s not something that is meant to come out until maybe such time as it needs to be replaced:

I am truly amazed at your work, while I have no intentions of ever pin shooting the sport amazes me. Your work on the comp and the sleeve are truly cutting edge.

_________________
And this eternal resting place Is known as Fiddlers' Green.

Well the Colonel (TC as we call him) is a dogged, dedicated competitor. And not only is he everything a Colonel should be, he's everything a great American should be, even if you don't count his many years of service. He used this thing to very good effect this past June and had many walks to the prize table.

Here are a couple of YT's showing him burning down some pins using the .50 both in "Pin Gun" and "Stock" forms:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FHnA_80UbOc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hbmdUHK0Z0Q (two-man team, both .50's and a third one in the background)

Each of these comps as I have built them, I have either named or asked the owner to name the gun. Mine is Pingelder. Next was Pinwhacker. #3, the owner never named it so I declare its name to be Pinrender.

TC broke the pattern and gave his a simple first name, the color white having led him to choose it. Bowling pins being white, the Delrin of the compensator being white. The name refers to an individual who was certainly a good shooter and in Finland's Winter War, became known as The White Death: Simo Hayha. TC's gun is named, simply, Simo.

Patrick Sweeney sent me this pic of the TC shooting Simo. These loads are not, repeat not, smokin'-hot, razor's edge by any means. There is not a ton of recoil, noise and flash. Having fired and seen fired, now, thousands of rounds of .50 GI in competition, I have never seen muzzle flash. We are using fast-burning powder (Bullseye) so.... it's there but it's not a big white bloom and it comes and goes in a..... well, you know. It took Sweeney and his camera and a lot lot of tries to capture this.

Got a bunch with smoke, but only the one with flame. Getting muzzle flash is an interesting photo technical problem. You've got to be slow enough to capture the flame, but fast enough that everything isn't a blur. And since the flame might last 1/100th of a second, if you're off by "that much" you miss it.

Pin gun calamity! Details in a moment. First, a story.

I did my first compensated .38 Super in 1988. I did it in record time as I needed it to shoot the Steel Challenge, this is back when it was at the Piru range in California. I got it done, it turned out well, and I used it at the match. One thing I did not have time for was developing what would be a typical SC load, which would have a very, very low power factor-- after all, we were not having to knock down steel plates, just hit them-- put a lead smudge on them. As I recall there was not a Power Factor floor, but getting a 1911 to run on very light loads was, pretty much, the limiter. .38 Super was the caliber of choice for a couple of reasons. One, it could be loaded to a Major PF more easily and safely than 9mm-- which has nothing to do with SC other than, a guy could use his IPSC gun for SC, and his IPSC gun likely was chambered for .38 Super. Two, it was conventional wisdom at the time that 9mm could not be reliable in a 1911 (which I feel safe in saying, is no longer the CW).

So-- a low PF. Some of the top shooters were able to afford guns that were built for SC only-- still in .38 Super, but really specialized for the light loads-- straight-blowback 1911's in .38 Super! Locking lugs removed, barrels hard-mounted to frames. I even looked at just making a .380 for SC only, for the following year but there was something in the rules like "minimum caliber 9mm".

This Super of mine, having had no time to develop a specialized SC load, and then tune to gun to run reliably with them, and this being essentially my first go-round with the caliber, I ran it with factory 130 FMJ's at the match. I had many comments from RO's that the gun was extra loud and really whacked the plates hard! Well there really was nothing especially "potent" about that gun, RO's were just accustomed to the little pop-gun loads that most guys were using. I did, later, use the gun quite a bit with factory .38 ACP loads-- same "everything" but with less powder, about 225 FPS slower. This load was for the old Colt .38 Autos like the M1902. That gun with that .38 ACP load was verrrry easy to shoot fast.

The immediate reason for my doing this gun for myself was the Steel Challenge, but the main reason was for use in IPSC, loaded to Major. I used it for 3-4 years, even into the beginning of the period where, to be competitive you needed a hi-cap gun with a red dot on it.

So.... why the .38 Super story in a thread about .50 GI pin guns. When I got that Super done, before I had it blued, I realized that .38 Super cases could very easily drop into the comp's first port. Thinking about IPSC stages and how you might often be shooing through a barrel or other prop, I saw a somewhat increased potential for ejected empties being bounced into that port. When you're double-tapping just about everything, with split times at or under 1/4 second (not bragging, 1/4 second is not fast), one could drop in there and even if you saw it, the message to press the trigger could not be recalled in time. Before I had it blued I put a 3/32" pin across the port, going fore/aft, this was enough to make it impossible for a case to drop in.

"A case to drop in". Well, guess what happened to Simo, the Delrin-comped .50 GI with the gaping-maw ports?


Damage was minimal-- the bullet must have barely nicked the case. I certainly could have been a lot "catastrophic-er". I mean, I would certainly have expected it. Yes, as I made this comp I recalled the .38 Super line of thinking but being as how this gun is rather specialized for bowling pins and would not be fired through barrels, etc., I didn't take measures. It will work as-is indefinitely but-- after The Pin Shoot this year we will be addressing it.