>>14 (OP)
More .22 than anything else. I have a Ruger 22/45 Mk. III that has a nice trigger and is laser beam accurate when I do my part, but how fast it gets dirty and starts malfunctioning is annoying me. I know, it's a semiauto .22. I have a lot of time on my hands lately. I got a range membership that includes unlimited range time Monday-Friday. Winter isn't over where I live, and it's still too cold outside for me to go into the garage and hose it down with brake cleaner after it gets so gummed up with carbon that the bolt won't cycle.
I have a Taurus TX22 that I bought based on the hype. It's a lemon. It's been back to the factory twice for locking the slide open every few shots with rounds still in the mag and keyholing, and no, they didn't actually fix it either time. I'm about to send it a third time because the slide is really battered and looks like it's about to crack. It's fun to shoot--when it runs, which requires it to be absolutely white glove clean and dripping with oil. I also had to put aftermarket extra-power springs in the mags, and keep the mags white-glove clean and coated with dry film lube if I want to get more than three or four shots off without feedway stoppage. I think the design is sound but I should have known better than to buy a Taurus product.
I got a Turkish Beretta 92FS copy last year and have been tinkering with it. The roll pin holding on the right side safety lever kept walking out while I was shooting, so I got a Beretta safety and some 1/16" by 1/4" roll pins on eBay, and that seems to have fixed it. I didn't like the looks of the wear pattern on the extractor when I took it apart, so I got a Beretta extractor and a Wilson Combat extra power extractor spring and stuck them in too. It has a really nice trigger now and it runs like a sewing machine, so long as I don't get ammo with super hard primers (Fiocchi "Range Dynamics," I'm looking at you) and it doesn't disassemble itself while I'm shooting any more. It does shoot really low, 2" or so at seven yards. It may be that it's set up for people who "drive the dots" but having to cover up what I'm shooting at with the front sight is really frustrating for me. I have an LPA "adjustable" rear sight coming. It's a shame the 92FS pattern slide doesn't have enough meat at the muzzle for a dovetail mounted front sight. I could have just put a lower one on.
>but why don't ya just grind down th' front sight?
Three dot sight picture. If there were a way to take metal off the bottom and leave its shape and the placement of the dot intact I'd do that instead.
I should shoot long guns more but my eyesight is deteriorating. I can see a pistol's front sight, but not a rifle's, not well enough to shoot it worth a damn.
Let's see. What else have I been playing with?
I got a beat-all-to-shit Ruger P85 a while back. It's been shot enough that the trigger has smoothed up. I kept getting double feed stoppages. I called Ruger, and their tech actually told me on the phone to take out the extractor and "just bend it a little." The extractor, it turned out, wasn't fitted properly by whoever put it in, not necessarily the factory, and it took a lot of Dremel work to make it fit correctly. Then I got two pairs of pliers, wrapped the extractor in paper to keep from marring the finish (lulz), and bent it inwards, just a tiny bit back from the hook, to increase the tension. Now the P85, also, runs like a sewing machine. The double action trigger isn't half bad. The single action has ginormous takeup, ginormous overtravel, and a false reset. The break is crisp but it's at least seven or eight pounds, even with a reduced power hammer spring. The gun itself is fugly, with so much pitting and so many scratches and gouges on the frame and slide that black BBQ grill paint improved its appearance greatly. The sights are tiny and the trigger is so bad that I find it hard to shoot well and don't enjoy shooting it as much as I should.
And I got a Star 30PK that I've been tinkering with. Does anyone know where I can get a replacement recoil spring for it? The gun is as ugly as the P85, for all the same reasons. I think the design is sound, but soft steel and bad QC made them a crapshoot when they were new. And the recoil spring it has is absolutely shot, worn and peened. Someone told me to try such-and-such company's replacement recoil spring for Commander-length 9mm 1911s, but no, its external diameter is too large and it has at least half a dozen too many coils to fit on the guide. Trying to cut coils has resulted in lessons about why some springs have closed coils on the ends. The open end jumps off the end of the recoil spring guide and ties up the gun. It's also about .020" too large in diameter to fit in the channel in the slide without rubbing. Any ideas? It's 0.039" wire, two closed coils on each end, eighteen active coils in the middle, 0.39" external diameter. Yes, I've tried Grainger and McMaster-Carr. And I don't really feel like spending $300 on a custom wound bespoke spring to fix a $150 "gunsmith special."
>looking to buy?
Sometimes I think about an all steel, all stainless, full size 5" 1911 in 9mm, just as a range toy. I have occasionally gone to look at Caspian frames and slides and started to price out what it would cost. When the price approaches two grand for parts, before gunsmith labor to build up the gun, I get depressed and quit.
I also think about .357 revolvers in general, in particular something like an old S&W 65, or a 6" Highway Patrolman.
All the modern polymer frame, striker-fired 9mm service pistols look and feel exactly alike to me. They're plastic shooting appliances, as interchangeable as disposable ballpoint pens. I know that a lot of the designs are very refined, very reliable. But they feel soulless to me. The older I get the more interest I have in the old ways, the tools that were already out of fashion before I was born. Lever action rifles. Exposed hammer coach guns. Cap and ball revolvers, even. One of the things holding me back is that I live in an area sufficiently urban that there are no outdoor ranges within practical driving distance, other than some dying members-only clubs that are going to get bulldozed and turned into "low income housing" when the last Boomer skeet shooters die off, and no indoor range allows blackpowder. And you can shoot a shotgun, but you have to use slugs. I think about shooting 12 gauge slugs in a six pound coach gun with a bead sight and a metal buttplate, and, hmm, let me think about that, NO.