3-gun noob advice kilothread

If you aint bleedin' you aint practicing enough!
It took several sesions to get rid of all the sharp corners on the Benelli. In the Remington, the shell stop (?) is one thing that will slice you right open, seeing how it's simply a stamped piece of spring steel. All of the shotguns can use a bit of smoothing up internally.
 
Dan S said:
If you aint bleedin' you aint practicing enough!
It took several sesions to get rid of all the sharp corners on the Benelli. In the Remington, the shell stop (?) is one thing that will slice you right open, seeing how it's simply a stamped piece of spring steel. All of the shotguns can use a bit of smoothing up internally.
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The gun has more blood then oil on it. I can only think on one time I have shot it when I wasn't bleed at the end. It hates me, I'm seriously thinking of trading it for a 930
 
Mike,
Talk to Ed about the 930. He's the trailblazer for the area. If you get a 26" or 28" vent rib barrel, shortening it, and cutting for chokes gets rid of the ports, and a 26" will finish up at 22".
 
Dan S said:
Mike,
Talk to Ed about the 930. He's the trailblazer for the area. If you get a 26" or 28" vent rib barrel, shortening it, and cutting for chokes gets rid of the ports, and a 26" will finish up at 22".
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Once I get all my parts in the mail and run few rounds through mine, I will do a short right up on it.
 
Dan S said:
Ed,
Did you get the long skinny part in the mail?? You better have!
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I have not yet, [sad], but I did not get any mail yesterday, and I am not even shore if the Post Office went out due to the weather. It would be nice if it is waiting for me when I get home tonight though, I would like to run a 100 or so rounds through it before I head out to sea on Monday. If not, no big deal, it will give me something to look forward to while I am freezing and watching the fat heads puke. [wink]
 
edmorseiii said:
I have not yet, [sad], but I did not get any mail yesterday, and I am not even shore if the Post Office went out due to the weather. It would be nice if it is waiting for me when I get home tonight though, I would like to run a 100 or so rounds through it before I head out to sea on Monday. If not, no big deal, it will give me something to look forward to while I am freezing and watching the fat heads puke. [wink]
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That got sent by Priority on Monday! Please let me know when you get it.
 
Changing topics....

I scored 5 steel 40 rounders. What are people doing to them to make them more reliable? Will the Magpul followers work with the more pronounced curve?

Right off the bat I noticed they don't insert as easy or drop free like the rest of my 30's do, does anyone else have this experience? I think with some rough sand paper I can smooth it out a little.

Someday I will get some Pmags with the extension. [rolleyes]
 
I've real good luck with CMMG stainless steel followers in the 40+ round mags. I had some Bushmaster mags, and had to work on them to get them to work. 2 of the 3 do now...I've had them for quite a while. I wouldn't recommend them now, especially with more options available.
You might want to squeeze them slightly in a vise, rather than make the metal thinner right off the bat.
 
I have a question about the BCGs.

On one hand people advocate the FA BCG because of the heavier mass, but the consensus here seems to be the lightened BCG is the way to go.

Why do you guys prefer the lightened carriers in your competition guns, and do you suffer any ill effects from running the lighter carrier vs. a full auto?

Also, would you run a FA BCG in your home defense/fighting rifle?
 
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Most proper Competition gun are 18"-20" with rifle gas systems, which is the softest, most reliable system. So its the easiest one to modify and still have great reliability and still be smooth.

The lightened carrier has less reciprocating mass, The recoil impulse will be sharper but less duration since BCG cycles faster. This will causes is less disturbance of the sights. You get movement when the BCG hits the end of the extension, but very little when it closes. Now if you add an adjustable gas block, it reduces the velocity of the BCG, so the carrier just kisses the extension end, it makes it shoot even softer. This works great with rifle length gas systems as they run on lower pressure.

With Carbine systems, it runs on 2x the pressure and its just to much for a lightened carrier. so the idea is to slow everything down. This makes the recoil impulse longer but heavier and with a impact of BCG closing causing more sight movement. It seems soft, but its just drawn out over a longer time.

Once you set up everything correctly, making sure it is tuned as a system, then there is no issue with reliability, its when you make changes without regards for the rest of the system, thats when you run into issues

For my comp 18" rifle with a rifle length gas system, I run a lighten BCG.
On my 16" carbine length I don't, but do run an adjustable gas system.
For a HD, I would run a standard BCG if you have a correct sized gas port. But most are oversized and there need the extra weight of a FA BCG and Heavy buffer to slow everything down. Plus the extra weight will help close the bolt when things are dirty.
 
I am running a 16 in carbine length barrel in my AR. I had some extraction problems (at a match, of course) and thought slowing down the unlocking process might help. I added a gas tube "pigtail" that wraps around the barrel to lengthen the distance the gas had to travel from the port to the BCG. Boy did it work! The gas impulse was now so slow that the gun was short stroking, causing FTFs. A JP low mass buffer cured the problem. The gun is now 100% reliable (I hope) and there is no apparent movement of the dot when shooting. It is amazing how much trouble you can get in when you mess with the gas system.
 
Gammon said:
I am running a 16 in carbine length barrel in my AR. I had some extraction problems (at a match, of course) and thought slowing down the unlocking process might help. I added a gas tube "pigtail" that wraps around the barrel to lengthen the distance the gas had to travel from the port to the BCG. Boy did it work! The gas impulse was now so slow that the gun was short stroking, causing FTFs. A JP low mass buffer cured the problem. The gun is now 100% reliable (I hope) and there is no apparent movement of the dot when shooting. It is amazing how much trouble you can get in when you mess with the gas system.
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This is interesting, I have seen those gas tubes, and thought they were like the fishing lure that is guaranteed to catch fish.

Very cool, I might look into that in the future.
 
I have one of the pigtail gas tubes, it can help with problematic rifles. I installed one on my Remsport barrel that was severely over gassed. It helped a little, I added an adjustable gas block and the rifle was tolerable to shoot, but it was nicknamed the Beast for a reason. Eventually the over pressure erroded a hole in the gas block while shooting. So the pigtail can help but it is a band aid to an underlining issue, usually an over sized gas port.

I tried the pigtail on my carbine gas Lothar barrel, to see if it would shoot softer, made the gun unreliable and didn't do anything for its shootibility. Went back to the standard tube with an adjustable gas block
 
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Supermoto said:
I have one of the pigtail gas tubes, it can help with problematic rifles. I installed one on my Remsport barrel that was severely over gassed. It helped a little, I added an adjustable gas block and the rifle was tolerable to shoot, but it was nicknamed the Beast for a reason. Eventually the over pressure erroded a hole in the gas block while shooting. So the pigtail can help but it is a band aid to an underlining issue, usually an over sized gas port.

I tried the pigtail on my carbine gas Lothar barrel, to see if it would shoot softer, made the gun unreliable and didn't do anything for its shootibility. Went back to the standard tube with an adjustable gas block
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How did the pigtail affect reliability?
 
Gammon said:
How did the pigtail affect reliability?
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Not enough gas pressure was making it back to the BCG. The rifle would short stroke, Fail to feed and not locking back. But this was on a rifle with a proper gas port, so there was no need for it, but since I already had one and wanted to see what would happen. The pigtail can help if the rifle is over gassed, but it can hurt if its not.
 
Supermoto said:
Not enough gas pressure was making it back to the BCG. The rifle would short stroke, Fail to feed and not locking back. But this was on a rifle with a proper gas port, so there was no need for it, but since I already had one and wanted to see what would happen. The pigtail can help if the rifle is over gassed, but it can hurt if its not.
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That was pretty much my experience. The low mass buffer I installed solved the reduced pressure problem.
 
Drifting back to the shotgun topic, I found this over on BE, and thought I would post it here. Keep in mind that I am not a Mossberg fanboy, I happened to have had a 930SPX sitting in my closet for a year and then stumbled upon all the attention it was getting over on BE and decided to go with it.

http://thetruthaboutguns.com/2011/02/foghorn/stress-testing-semi-automatic-competition-shotguns/

I don't think that this is a be end all test, just food for thought for someone who maybe considering a 930.
 
This test doesn't make a lot of sense. What about slugs? Also, a gun that is set up to handle slugs may be less reliable with softer shooting bird shot. I'm not a fan of either gun, I own an 1100, but I think the FN's problems could be due to the ammo used.
 
That's what the test makes it look like. Like I said, not the be all end all, just a documented test. To be honest with you, as I was reading through it, the part where they were talking about the metrics and whatever else, the Meow Mix theme song started playing in my head until it made sense to me again.
 
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I've shot with some of the "Awful Shooting Squad", they are pretty accurate in the name.
Ammo is pretty much what makes or breaks a shotgun in terms of reliability. The cheap Winchester is the WORST for it's crimps. Crimp is a term loosely used on this stuff. I've had some that I have had trouble chambering it in an Over/Under. The end of the shell is mushroomed, almost to the diameter of the rim. Because I have several cases of it that I purchased for trap, I'll use it ocassionally for some practice, but, only after running it through an old Mec 650 that's been stripped down to only crimp operations. Winchester AA is great ammo, but, you pay for it, much like Remington STS. Both are high quality competition ammo. If you want cheap ammo from Walmart, get either the Remington, or Federal. Both are pretty consitent in the crimp area.
A gas gun should run slugs just fine. For 3 gun, everyone runs Low Recoil/ Managed Recoil slugs, which are just about the same as the target loads that we use for knocking over plates and breaking clays.
If your shotgun isn't feeding properly, even with good ammo, look at the entrance to the chamber. Is there a sharp edge in the area of the extractor? If so, break the sharp edge, the gun will feed much better.
 
My point is that a shotgun set up to handle full power slugs might not be reliable with light loads.
 
Gammon - I'm with you. The FNH and Winchester SX2 can be finicky with ammo if the wrong piston is used as Dan mentions. They don't run crap reliably with the heavy piston. They run great with the sporting clay (light load) piston. The winchester cheapo rounds are still hit or miss but I've never had any issues with the federal stuff. Hundreds and hundreds of issue free rounds down range. Game loads run 100%.
 
Guess I have been lucky with my 11-87. It runs the ammo I use with no problem. Now that I said that it will puke all over the range next match

I use Estate 3dram 8s and Federal reduced power LE slugs. I have used other slugs also including B&P with no problem. I do run 2 o rings so maybe that helps with gas. Who knows.

As far as reloads, with my hand problems, 4 and 6 shell strippers are difficult for me to use even with practice. I am looking at a shell belt now as a possibility and will wear it above my CR speed belt if I can get it to work for me. Not totally giving up on the strippers but I need to be realistic too. I also made my own 2 shell carrier from a Safariland 2 shell holder and a Kydex belt loop Mike from Talon Tactical made up for me. It seems to work. We will see.

I am enjoying this thread and have gained a lot of info from it. Thanks
 
I must be lucky with my 11/87 too it runs flawlessly with 3' slugs or skeet loads and everything in between. It was a waterfowl gun in a former life and had thousands of 3" steel, bismuth and tungsten shells through it so its well worn in :) Lots of good info in this thread for sure.
 

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