Action Pistol Match 10/15/12

So another night of Action Pistol at the Wake County Fire Arms Training Center on 10/15/12. 

Had a good match, finished 6th out of 26th.  Not a bad night of shooting.  Finished 3rd in two stages.

IDPA Match 10/13/12

On 10/13/12 a couple of my buddys and I decided to venture out and get a different experience for Action Pistol.  We have been shooting at the Wake County Range for a while now and a couple of the guys there kept telling us to checkout some more of the local fun matches in the area.  So we headed up to Fowl Farms in Dunn, NC for a Fun Match.  Let me tell you we had a great time.

I did not shoot to bad for my first real experience with IDPA rules.  I took my time and focused on making my shots count. I had a couple of hicups along the way, but overall I did pretty well.  You can see my scores at the link below (look for Glenn Martin).  I finished 3rd in my division.

H2O Fowl Farms Scores 10/13/12

Action Pistol Match 9/17/12

On 9/17/12 I had another night of action pistol.  We had a lot of fun so lets watch the video.


Stage 1

Stage 2

Stage 3

This was on OK kind of night.  Finished in the middle of the pack.

Mag Pouches Upgraded

So I have decided to shoot an IDPA match this coming weekend and started to review the rules to see how they compare to what I have been shooting at the Wake County Range.  My current action pistol matches are a little laid back then what the IDPA rules are.  I pulled up the IDPA rule book and found lots of interesting things to read, IDPA Rule Book 2005.  I checked out the rules for the equipment that I was going to bring and my take away on equipment was that my holster that I made the other weekend will be ok, however the magazine pouches that I made a while back will not.  The scoring seems to be pretty straight forward thanks to this link that I found, IDPA-Scoring-For-Dummies.  So now that I know how the scores work in simple terms.  So now what to do about those magazine pouches.

 

The criteria for the magazine pouches is that it must cover 2" of the magazine and the entire front face.  I don't think that anyone would give me to hard of a time with what I originally made (image below), but I decided to create the second generation of my design.



Original Design



I needed to figure out how I was going to go about doing this, so after some thought I decided to use a wrap technique.  This is very similar to the speed loader pouches that I made for my Dad last month except these would be rectangular instead of circular.

 So all I needed to do now was figure out the size of my template and start cutting them out.

   

Templates Laid Out

  



Templates Cut Out



 Now that the templates were cut out I heated up the portion that I was going to wrap around the magazine and began forming this rectangular shape.  Once the wrap was complete I needed heat up the bottom and use the press to mold the shape that I wanted.  In order to do this I had to tape the wrapped shaped around the magazine and also set the height of the magazine inside the holster.  When I heat this up the tape will allow only the bottom part of the pouch to be molded and will also keep the magazine where I want it.  Once the end was heated up it was into the home made press.

Taped Up Shape & Mag Height Set

 

In The Home Made Press ($10 To Make)

 After removing this from the press (just a couple of minutes) I needed to trim the end of the mag pouch off.  I used a scroll saw to do this and give me a niece clean cut (thanks for the scroll saw Dad).

Once the end was cut off I taped up the bottom of the mag pouch to retain the shape while I heated up the one side to make it flat.





Bottom of Pouch

Once that side was flatten all that was left to do was to trim off the extra and make it smooth.

Need to Trim Excess

Flattened the Side

Now the mag pouch was complete and just needed to fold the loop for my belt.  Once the loop was formed I adjusted the tension by heating up the fully wrapped side and squeezing it in until I had the tension that I wanted.

So all that being said here are some pictures of the final product.



Finished Product



Wearing Finished Product



Sig 229 Kydex Holster

So I finally decided that after making numerous mag holders for myself and my dad it was time to make my own holster for my Sig 229 9mm.   I have tried this before my using "the sandwich" method.  This is sandwiching the gun between two pieces of kydex.  This however did not work so well.  When I was finished with it and put it on my belt I could not get it out of the holster.  So, this time I thought I would try my luck at wrapping the kydex around the gun "the fold".  I looked around at many different holsters to get some ideas on what I wanted to do.  After lots of ideas I gave it a try.  Below is the steps that I used to create my holster.

The first thing that I needed to do was to prep my gun to make the mold.  Since I was doing the fold method I needed to maintain the front site post down the length of the gun.  To do this I used a wooden dowel that I had laying around and taped it to the top of the gun.

Next I had to figure out how I was going to attach the holster on my gun belt.  I decided to take the belt clip off of my BlackHawk holster.  Since I was going to use this belt attachment I had to figure out how I was going to attach the holster to the clip.  I needed to figure out some way to indent the attachment point inside the holster in order to not scratch the gun.  I found some furniture leveling sticky pads that I thought would work.  I cut them into circles and stuck them to the side of the gun in the same pattern as the belt clip.

I was now making some progress.  I also wanted to put a tension screw behind the trigger guard.  In order to do this I need to create a block out so that when I molded the kydex I would have a void in this location.  I took some wood scraps from the garage and created the shape that I needed and attached it to the bottom of the trigger guard.

Now I had everything ready to start the molding process.  I cut out a piece of kydex big enough to fold over my gun.  I preheated the oven to 350 degrees and put the piece of kydex on a cooking sheet (don't tell my wife) for about 5 mins.  Quickly moving it to the press I folded it over the gun and set it in the press.  Once I took it out of the press I had a perfect mold of my gun.

Notice the 3 protruding circles in the picture on the left.  This will be were I would attach the belt clip.  Those little furniture stickies worked great.  You can also see the block out below the trigger guard where the tension screw will be.

Now that the mold was done it was time to start cutting the kydex into the shape that I wanted.  I knew that I wanted to leave the backside of the holster tall, so it rest against my side. 



Once I had the general shape that I wanted I needed to check the fit to make the final adjustments.

Now I had to drill the holes to attach the belt clip.  I needed to lay the belt clip out on the back side of the holster to make sure that the holes in the correction location in order to fit properly.  Once the holes were drilled I attached the belt clip and noticed that I needed to add a couple of washers to the back side of the holster to get it to sit right on my hip.

Next I needed to add a rivet to the bottom left of the holster to keep it the kydex from separating.

The only thing left to do now was to install the tension screw at the bottom of the trigger guard and tighten it up.

So it is all finished up now and it works great.  I can't wait to take it to the range and test it out.

GoPro Camera Test

The other day at the range my buddy brought his GoPro camera to test out.  He had this head mountable attachement for the camera so we decided to give it a try.  Not real exciting, but a successfull test non the less.  Enjoy the comentary.

CLICK THE LINK BELOW

GoPro Test at Range

Kydex Revolver Speedloader Pouches

A couple of months ago I made some Kydex mag pouches for my Dad's 9mm pistol.  When he got the pouches he took them to his next action pistol match and he loved them.  Since those worked so well for him he asked my to make some pouches for his revolver speed loaders.  So he sent me his speed loader and I got to work.

I wanted to let you know the step by step of what I did to make these kydex pouches.  The first place that I needed to start was coming up with the best way to make the pouches.  I came up with a couple of different ideas and tried them out.  Eventually I came up with what I think is the best way to go about it and started making templates to fill my Dad's order.

I took my template and traced it out on a piece of kydex and tried to minimize the waste. Once I had my pieces marked out on the kydex it was time to cut them out.  Dad wanted 8 of these pouches so I took a little bit to cut them all out.

The next step was to use the dremmel to shape the pieces so that the were all fairly close to the same size.  Using the dremmel I shaped the corners and areas where the folders were to occur.

 

Next I used a piece of wood to help me shape the bottom fold.

 

Now that the bottom was shaped it was time to wrap the arm around to hold the speed loader.  I used a pieces of 1" PVC that I had laying around the garage.  This was the perfect size because it is just a little smaller than the diameter of the speed loader, which gave me the tension that I needed to keep it secure.  It was also a round shape, which made molding the shape easy.

Now all that was left to do was to make the fold the material to make the belt loop.  Again I found a piece of wood lying around that was the same size as my Dad's speedbelt.

The last step was to take the dremmel out and trim the bottom pieces so that it fits the rounded shape of the pouch while the speed loader is in it.

So now I just had to repeat the process to make all 8 pouches.

Here is a video clip all the pouches on my speed belt and how the speed loaders go in and out of the pouches.  

HOPE YOU ENJOY THEM DAD!

Action Pistol 8/20/12 "BUG MATCH"

On 8/20/12 the Wake County Firearms Training Center held another action pistol match.  This match was a little different then the rest, it was our first "Bug Gun" match.  As soon as a saw that I knew it was going to be fun.  We had 6 stages to run thru, targets no more than 7 yards, had to draw from concealment, reloads broken up in 5 round chunks for people with revolvers.  There were 34 people that signed up and it took a while to get thru all the stages with that amount of people.  It was a great time and they are planning on doing it again before the year is out. 

I finished 3rd in my catagory "compact", which was pretty good since the Friday before I took the plastic packaging off of the holster that came in the box.  I did some practicing with drawing from this new holster in the garage, unloaded of course, over the weekend before the match.  Hit the range for some target practice and got comfortable with drawing from concealment.  Overall, I would say that I performed well and can't wait to do this again.

Stage 1.  "Strangers at the door"
9 Round Count
Right hand on door knob
Engage first target, 2 in the body and 1 in the head
Engage second target, 2 in the body
RELOAD
Move to cover and engage next 2 targets, 2 rounds each

Stage 2. "Gas Pump"

8 Round Count

Move up to cover, engage 2 targets from either side of cover, 2 rounds each

RELOAD

Move to second cover and repeat

Stage 3. "Moving Target"

7 Round Count

Engage moving target minum of 3 rounds

RELOAD

Move to box and engage large plates, 1 round each

Stage 4.  "Warming Up"

10 Round Count

Virginia Count

Engage front two targets, 2 rounds each in the body

Engage far target, 1 round head shot only

RELOAD

Repeat

Stage 5. "Counter Clerk"

8 Round Count

Gun loaded and extra magazine on table

From sitting position, engage 4 targets, 1 round each

RELOAD

Repeat with strong arm only

Stage 6. "Up Close and Personel"

5 Round Count

Virginia Count

Engage target with 5 rounds, shoot from the hip



Action Pistol 2 12/19/11

Action Pistol 12/19/11n - Wake County Range

Let's get started!

Gentlemen, here we go.