My good friend The_Katar (Jay) has posted some very good advice on dry fire practice. While some people are religious about their devotion to dry fire, most of us — myself included — don’t do it nearly enough. Jay spells out a simple set of drills you can do to get into the habit without losing your mind. In particular, I think his advice about not watching the clock tick by was really insightful.
By the way, for anyone who has ever taken an Aim Fast, Hit Fast class and enjoyed it, you owe Jay a thank you. Without him, the first AFHF never would have happened. So thanks, Jay!
Train hard & stay safe! ToddG
Thanks for the kind words Todd. I must admit, up until about 1.5 years ago I dry fired sporadically at best. In the last year I have made a very determined effort to dry fire every day if possible.
Thanks, Jay!
Glad to know that I’m not the only one who find’s dry-fire practice to be a labor of love.
I should also pipe in here and let folks know that Jake DiVita (USPSA GM) has a great Crossfit-style blog that has daily dry fire exercises posted.
Every day, a different technique… Very challenging!
Jakedivita.com
Ben Stoeger also has a great dry-fire program and he’s got scaled-USPSA targets for use (I take ’em to Kinko’s and have ’em printed on card stock…)
ToddG,
Curious from reading Tam’s thread on dry fire how often you have seen cracked Glock breech faces…
Cuious how common of a problem that is…
Less – Rarely. But then the number of folks who dry fire their Glocks tens of thousands of times is pretty small to begin with. It happens often enough that I don’t think it should surprise folks.
Hmmm… The reason I ask is because I’m one of those dry-fire a lot kinda folks. Due to all this back and forth, I actually went down, stripped my gun and examined my FP. I can actually see a bit of peening on the “Y-cut”-thingy… Kicker is that this FP is only a year old at this point…
(I replace FP, and springs once a year when I actually clean the gun)
I guess I’ll be using a snap-cap, as Og has recommended…
I just asked a roomful of gunsmiths (4) with thirty some odd years of bench time.
None have seen a cracked breechface from dry-firing, at least in person, nor have I, although we’ve all seen pictures.
We’ve seen plenty of them killed from “wet firing”, though. (Cracked slides, frames, busted springs, extractors… you know the drill.)
People who think guns don’t break don’t shoot guns enough.
This is why I carry a backup.
Tam: “People who think guns don’t break don’t shoot guns enough.”
Exactly this.
I was telling a buddy just the other day, for every pistol I’ve seen reach the 50,000 round mark, I’ve seen literally dozens that had major component failures within the first 10-20,000.
Hi Todd,
I saw a Glock 17 down here in Jamaica with a cracked breachface, belonged to a friend of mine and fellow IPSC shooter. First clue was a circular hairline crack in the breach face; that round piece eventually fell out of the gun giving really good access to the firing pin channel. Glock replaced the slide OK, but I am sure the recommendation was to use snap caps in future if he planned to do a lot of dry firing.
Al Stewart,
Was it this one, or a different one?
Heard of it? Yes. But in fifteen years of slinging guns across the glass, I’ve never seen it in person.
While the chance is non-zero, it’s finite enough that I’d put it in the “acceptable risk” category.
Hi Tam,
the one I saw looked very similar, it was a G17C owned by a friend of mine here.
I guess you hang around shooting circles long enough you’ll probably see everything. Took me a long time to experience a cracked Beretta locking block, but been there and done that!