Warning: Long-winded post ahead. Proceed at own risk.
Finally picked my SIG Sauer (GSG) 1911-22 up from the dealer on Tuesday. Boy is it a beauty!
Love the dark walnut grips, although I may get a pair of low-profile grips. Problem is, no one stocks 'em locally and all I can find online are ugly and/or expensive ones. A lot of the grips out there are ugly and the ones that don't make me puke to look at 'em are easily $85 or more. Sad I don't need 'em that badly to lay that kinda cash out on 'em. Especially seeing as it turns out that I'm gonna need to buy the expensive ammo...
Got to the indoor range late on Tuesday night and the place was packed, so I only got to put one 10-round magazine through the pistol.
The good news is that those 10 rounds (Winchester Wildcat) cycled through the firearm beautifully, without a hiccup. The bad news is that I've got a long road ahead of me when it comes to getting accurate with a handgun. Up to that point on Tuesday night, I had fired less than 100 rounds through a handgun, and those rounds were spread out over a period of 5 years and with 5 different revolvers and semi-autos. Out of the 10 shots, only 9 of 'em hit the paper at 20 yards.
I don't even remember how many of 'em hit the actual target on the paper. Needless to say, it was a rather large grouping.
My first two shots were in the 9 ring at 11 o'clock, and then the rest were all way low and traveled counter-clockwise from about 8 o'clock to about 4 o'clock. It was definitely not the gun's fault, but rather the shooter's fault because, due to the fact that the most exercise I usually get is typing on a keyboard and moving a mouse, my stabilizer muscles are quite weak and holding a pistol steady out at eye level becomes quite difficult after the first couple of shots because I start to tremble ever so slightly. As you shooters all know, a slight movement at the gun can turn into a long distance from point of aim by the time the bullet travels 20 yards. Nothing but lots and lots of practice and some focused exercises are going to help me because I need to build some muscles that I don't normally use in my day-to-day life.
Fast forward to yesterday (Saturday) and I find myself at the club's outdoor range. My uncle and I decide to use the 10-yard pistol range to just work on fundamentals. I loaded my two 10-round magazines from the exact same 50-round box of ammo I used on Tuesday night (Winchester Wildcat) and immediately got stovepipe after stovepipe after stovepipe, with a few misfires thrown in for good measure.
Strange. the exact same ammo ran flawlessly for 10 rounds just a few days ago. I haven't touched the pistol since then. After putting the initial 10 rounds through the firearm, I trigger locked it, put it in my range case, and took it home. I never even opened the range case again until grabbing it to head to the range on Saturday. Same gun, same ammo, different result.
I grabbed another brick out of the four 500-round bricks of Wildcat ammo I have and loaded another magazine. Stovepipe, stovepipe, failure to chamber, stovepipe, misfire, stovepipe, etc...
My uncle happened to have some .22LR cartridges with him, so he ran a bunch more rounds through the pistol. Federal American Eagle: stovepipe, stovepipe, stovepipe... CCI Blazer: stovepipe, stovepipe, failure to chamber, stovepipe, etc... Remington Yellow Jacket: bang, bang, misfire, bang, bang, bang, bang, misfire, bang, bang... The misfires all had one thing in common, regardless of brand: they were barely marked at all. The cartridges were simply scratched, rather than dented/pinched.
I had cleaned and oiled the action and barrel and lubed the slide with some white lithium grease that came with the pistol before firing it on Tuesday night, and it worked flawlessly on Tuesday night so it's obviously clean and lubricated. I added a little lubrication to the slide rails it worked the action manually a few times anyway, just to be sure, and ran some more ammo through it.
Wildcat: stovepipes, failures to chamber, and a misfire. American Eagle: stovepipes, every single one. Blazer: stovepipes, mostly. Yellow Jacket: for 4 or 5 consecutive mags, it would fire 2 or 3, misfire one, and then fire off the rest. I finally got through an entire 10-round mag of Yellow Jacket (in about 3 or 4 seconds) where I had no misfires. I decided that I had had enough frustration for one day and put the pistol away, knowing I was going to have to look for some Yellow Jacket ammunition before taking my 1911-22 to the range again. (I found some at Canadian Tire later that night, but it's pricey. $5.49 for a 50-round box. That's $2.50 more than I paid for the Wildcat ammo... damn near double the price.
)
After putting the pistol away, my day proceeded to get better. My uncle handed me a beautiful Cooey Model 60 (Ranger) and told me it was his gift to me for finally getting my Firearms Licence after years of him poking and prodding me to get it. I now know what I'm going to do with the 2,000 rounds of Wildcat I bought.
What a great firing little rifle. The only thing I need to do with it is paint the front sight a bright colour or mount a little scope on it. I keep losing the front sight and find it hard to find it again because it just blends in with the rear sight.
After putting 40 rounds through the Cooey, I finished the afternoon off by firing a couple of my uncle's gems. A Just Right Carbine with a red dot sight and a Norinco M4 with a peep sight. Both were fun to shoot and I managed thumbnail-sized grouping with each at 10 yards.
Anyway, I'm hoping that my issues with the 1911-22 are just "break-in" issues and that it will improve as more rounds are put through it. I going to try a couple of 50-round boxes of Yellow Jacket and, once I've put at least 100 rounds of Yellow Jacket through it, I'll try the Wildcats again. I'm a cheap bastard
and I really want to be able to use the Wildcats in my pistol, especially seeing as others with the same pistol are using Wildcats with no issues.
