|
36,263 rounds |
0 stoppages | 1 (*) malfunctions | 1 parts breakages |
An uneventful week of teaching and practice, the HK45 is driving on with no drama. Unless you could the drama of shooting and carrying the HK45 for half a year straight. Time flies…
One issue I’ve been dealing with since day one but never think to mention: .45 ammo is brutal on front sights. The picture to the right is what the front sight looks like after just 1,000 rounds. Not only does the orange paint (see JohnO DIY High Visibility Front Sight) get completely covered, but the night sight lens too. After each session, I take a toothpick and scratch the tritium capsule’s window clear. If that is not done, the tritium dot on my Heinie Straight Eight rear sight glows nice and bright while the front sight is somewhere between “subdued” and “invisible.” This issue isn’t unique to the HK45, of course.
As part of the quest to master 3×5 cards, this week’s results:
- 2 on 3×5 card at 7yd in 1.8 seconds: 81.5%
- 5 on 3×5 card at 7yd in 2.5 seconds: 71%
That’s another week of incremental gains. However, my cold F.A.S.T. time when teaching this weekend was a 5.08 (clean), which remains essentially unchanged. Translating practice speed into performance speed will take more time.
No teaching this weekend means more time to practice, so look for a nice solid jump in round count by next week’s update. See you then.
Train hard & stay safe! ToddG
Previous HK45 Endurance Test posts at pistol-training.com:
- Week Twenty Five
- Week Twenty Four
- Week Twenty Three
- Week Twenty Two
- Week Twenty One
- Week Twenty
- Week Nineteen
- Week Eighteen
- Week Seventeen
- Week Sixteen
- Week Fifteen
- Week Fourteen
- Week Thirteen
- Week Twelve
- Week Ten
- Week Nine
- Week Eight
- Week Seven
- Week Six
- Week Five
- Week Four
- Week Three
- Week Two
- Week One
- Announcement
Todd can I ask how many rounds did the original trigger rebound spring before you replace..and when the time you change the original trigger rebound spring its still servicesable?
dj — I replaced the TRS once just after 12,500 rounds; then replaced it again at about 31,000 rounds so that one went more than eighteen thousand rounds without a problem. Both of those springs were still usable and were replaced solely as a matter of planned scheduled maintenance.
I don’t suppose your magic gunsmithing skills could have influenced the spring that broke could it? 😉
Todd, how many spare magazines do you carry with the HK45?
RE — Anything is possible, but I doubt it.
Irfan — I began the test by carrying two spares while out & about, but the size and bulk of the mags made it uncomfortable, especially when driving. So now I’m usually down to just one spare.
I get the same schmutzing when I shoot .45 ACP through any polymer gun…although, curiously enough, not through a 1911.
TC, might it be a function of barrel length? I had the same issue with my Commander length 1911.
My G22 has AmeriGlo sights on it – when I first started noticing it, I thought that the paint ring around the capsule was chipping…
John Krupa, my AmeriGlo dealer, told me to try cleaning it with a toothpick…
He was right…
“After each session, I take a toothpick and scratch the tritium capsule’s window clear. If that is not done, the tritium dot on my Heinie Straight Eight rear sight glows nice and bright while the front sight is somewhere between “subdued” and “invisible”.”
Which is one of the reasons I like a gold bead on my front sights. It’s still visible at dusk, even when dirty and it’s so easy to clean up.
Forgot to add that I like my rear sights to be black with no tritium that tends to end up glowing more than a dirty front sight after many rounds downrange.
The issue I have with the gold bead and plain black rear is that it works fine under nice artificial range conditions, then falls apart when you start dealing with more realistic and dynamic lighting conditions. Students only need to see a heavily backlit target once to realize that there are identifiable threats which might require self-luminous aiming devices to hit…
Strangely, for me, the gold bead didn’t work that well (well enough but not great) in a well lit indoor range. It came into its own outdoors in most weather/lighting conditions. So long as there was ambiant light, even at dusk, I could see the gold bead (it is spherical and thus catches light from all sides).
It didn’t work well in the situations where tritium really comes into its own in my non expert opinion (i.e. so dark that it’s getting hard to make out the outline of the front sight). In these cases, using a flashlight (mounted on the gun or in hand) generally solved the problem.
I’m in no way advocating that tritium is useless and gold beads are all that and a bag of chips. It’s just that, so far in my progression as a shooter, a gold bead mounted on the front sight has been a lot more beneficial than I had been led to expect .. and it’s easy to clean 🙂
Hello from Athens, Greece, dear ToddG. I’ve been using a green front Tritium fiber sight from Truglo. It’s made for the USP, but I’ve managed to fit it on the HK45 with some minor adjustments. It helps a lot and I’ve had no problems with the powder residue. I’ve also trimmed my “carry-on” magazine with a Dremel and it looks great… I can post some photos if you like. Keep on shooting, I admire your work!