My Magazine is . . . Wonky!

Bruce – when I fully load my mag it’s fine . . .

But the last round or two won’t go all the way up and engage the lips – Help!

Must resist the “little blue pill” jokes – must resist . . .

First let’s look at what the spring has to do to function correctly . . .

This next pic gives you a rough idea of the little bit of space the compressed spring gets to live in – app. 7/8 of an inch or so – then when you fire and the slide reciprocates back and forth the spring must push the follower up fast enough to have the next round in place so that the slide can scoop it up and chamber it . . .

So let’s get the springs out – press the little button in the base plate with a punch or a small Phillips screwdriver and carefully slide the base plate towards the front of the magazine . . .

And keep your thumb over the bottom of the magazine to keep the bottom plate/keeper from taking flight and making a bid for freedom – they will travel a considerable distance across the house – don’t ask how I know – LOL! – and eye protection is a good idea while doing this as they can really take flight with considerable speed – Again – don’t ask . . .

The two used springs – the one on the left hung up every time – the one on the right hung about one time out of seven – if you have two mags the same age and one of them is hanging up just go ahead and replace both . . .

Here is the worst one . . .

And here are the 2 replacement springs from Brownells.com . . .

New spring ( top one ) vs the obviously bad one . . .

New spring ( top one ) vs the other used spring – not easy to see in the pics – but it is not “right” any longer – and no, you will never “re-bend” the old spring for it to be right again – trust me on that one – just throw them away . . .

Putting the mags back together? Have you cleaned the mags yet?? Might be a good idea while you have them apart – just saying. Cleaning them is simple – a little spritz of a CLP type product into the mag body and pull a cleaning cloth through them a couple of times. Just put the top of the spring on the bottom of the follower – slide it up into the mag – compress the spring into the mag – bottom plate/keeper on the spring – press it and spring into the mag with your thumb and slide the base on until the button pops into place – load and unload it a few times – the first time might be a little tough – the top of the spring has to settle into its “spot” on the under side of the follower – then get to the range and run each one several times to make sure that they will run when needed.

What you end up with is two basically new mags for about 30 bucks – $7.50 x 2 springs + shipping, handling, and taxes – beats roughly $32 bucks for 1 new mag!

If you take them apart and clean them once in a while magazines will last an incredibly long time – dirt and moisture are the things you need to be aware of . . .

And there you go – two refurbished mags – the way they came with this pistol is one has a flat plate and the other has the “pinky” extension plate – no extra round just extra real estate so if you have larger hands you can get a three finger grip on the pistol.

And a couple of short videos to look at and see just how mag springs are fashioned . . .

Have Fun! – Run the gun! – and remember – Fish Heads are Cheap!!

All Night Long : Frank Lovejoy Collection / Escape & Suspense

Frank Lovejoy is one of my favorites – radio – big screen – I always enjoy him – my favorite performance of his? In “Strategic Air Command” – he did a great cover of General Lemay with his portrayal of General Hawkes – a film well worth watching – Enjoy this collection from The Late Late Horror Show . . .

Have Fun! – Run the Gun! – and remember – Fish Heads are Cheap!!

43 Years Ago Today – and YOU Were Doing What?? – Friday Music on Thursday . . .

August 1st 1981 – MTV LAUNCHED! – Here is the first two hours – as broadcast 43 years ago today – I only hope YOU enjoy this video as much as I do . . .

Oh My God! – THEY ARE ALL SO YOUNG! -LMAO!!

Have Fun! – Run the Gun! – and remember – Fish Heads are Cheap!!

Round Two – Bluetti AC200L

From the round one post – everybody should be familiar with the office setup – – –

And on with Round Two . . .

So to make it all work – you also need the internet . . .

Mounted an outlet strip to the wall with velcro sticky tape stuff – then plugged the WiFi dongle / transformer for the router / corner table lamp into it – then plugged it into the wall socket where it all lives behind the couch . . .

Need to power it? Just reach your arm down behind the couch – unplug it from the wall – plug it into a 50′ extension cord – plug the cord into the Bluetti – easy peasy!

The 50′ cord runs out to the far corner of the front living room – the 25′ cord / cube tap / 15′ cord runs over to the office . . .

The Bluetti found a nice home on the bottom shelf of the bookcase – Plenty of room for airflow and the cord bag . . .

Round Two @ app. 2 hours . . .

Round Two @ app. 7 hours . . .

Round Two at the end of the test run – app. 9hrs 20min – 27% battery remaining . . .

There is the ac charging cable . . .

Behind the shredder and printer stand – unplug the printer stand – plug it in and recharge and it’s ready to go with 100% in about 1 1/2hrs . . .

Bruce – we have about a zillion questions! – And I have many, many answers – the majority of which you will soon realize that you are not emotionally prepared for. Stop right there Bruce – just talking about the Bluetti setup! Sure know how to spoil my fun – LOL!

If you are thinking about whole house back up power supply go find yourself a contractor who is familiar with solar – and most importantly electrical code for your area! You really don’t want to have something go wrong and then find out your insurance won’t cover the oopsie!

If I were truly concerned about whole house power supply in the event of a grid down occurrence – I would go with with a big name company ( Kohler / Cat / Generac ) for a natural gas fired liquid cooled generator – but I’m just talking some office equipment for my Blushing Bride and a couple of radios and a laptop for yours truly for how long? – a few minutes? – an hour? – the longest power glitch we have had in a year was maybe 3 seconds total . . .

Start by getting a watt meter – $12 or $14 dollars on Amazonia . . .

Then take a pencil and a piece of paper and check everything you want to run – add it up – add 20% or 25% to that total – then start multiplying by hours of run time you want to cover. mine was figured this way – 150 watts total ( not counting the surge when the little freezer starts ) x 10 hrs = 1500 watts rounded up by 25% = 1875 watts – the Bluetti with a 2048 watt hour battery reserve landed right in the sweet spot – with about 25% battery to spare.

Why Bluetti? – out of the box ease of use and the physical size was right for where I wanted it to live / sleep / play – and the dogs know the book shelves are verboten! – sometimes you just have to talk German to them – LOL!

You can set the Buetti up as a UPS ( Uninterruptible Power Supply ) if you want to – there is an app for your phone – which I downloaded then opened it – looked at it it then closed it – and didn’t even screw anything up! – LMAO!

As far as solar – certainly not a fan boy – but if you need to charge up your – and I loathe the term simply because it doesn’t “generate” anything! – it’s a storage battery with a pure sine wave inverter to convert DC into AC – solar generator it’s pretty seamless to do that as well.

Here’s a couple of videos you can watch – the first is a deep dive into the Bluetti AC200L and the second one looks at the various UPS modes available with Buetti products.

I have had a little Jackery for a long time – it’s great for fishing / camping stuff – but it simply doesn’t have the reserve ( 280 AH ) to do very much for very long . . .

I’ll run the Bluetti for a day the first week of every month – unless it needs to be run for a power outage – so – is a Bluetti product right for your perceived needs?? It works for me – the best thing I can tell you is research the available products thoroughly – But Bruce – This one from ABCXYZ Corp will run everything for just about forever!! – but if you need a fork lift truck to move it or you really don’t have room to store it where it is readily available . . .

If you really want to see next generation “stuff” – research Yoshino Solid-State Portable Power Stations – just about too cool – and still pricey – a Yoshino with a 2611 watt hour solid-state battery will set you back about $3300 – about the same as a Bluetti AC200L with two extra 2048 watt hour batteries – but Oh My My . . .

Have Fun! – Run the Gun! – and remember – Fish Heads are Cheap!!

a lot of folks wonder why i tag a lot of my posts as “funstuff” – let me ask you a serious question here folks – if you’re not having fun – then why are you doing it???

Smith & Wesson M&P 45 Compact

This little ( compact? – that’s what S&W calls it ) darling came to me looking for a new home – What was I to do?? I couldn’t turn it away – I mean really folks!

Needs a bath and some TLC – the two magazines are wonky, more on them later – I have pretty much stopped buying firearms – but when they come looking for me – I just can’t turn them back out in the wild . . .

Talon grip tape on it and no extra back straps or box . . .

Lock the slide back – lever down – release the slide – pull the trigger – ready for bath time just that easy . . .

This Breakthrough solvent has just about replaced Hoppes #9 for cleaning stuff for me, but I sure miss the smell of Hoppes #9 . . . I wonder if I could talk my Blushing Bride into putting just a dab of Hoppes behind her ears? Hmmmm . . .

Scrub scrub – brush brush – wipe it down . . .

It really wasn’t very dirty – just needed some light cleaning . . .

Ready for a final wipe down . . .

A wee bit of lube – this is the best I have found . . .

All better now . . .

Compact? It is smaller physically than a 1911 Government model – 4″ vs 5″ barrel . . .

Empty weight for the 1911 – 30.2oz . . .

Empty weight M&P compact 45 – 20.2oz . . .

Both are eight round magazines – it will be interesting to see how they shoot next to each other – 1911 has a longer sight radius and a much better trigger and 10oz more weight to soak up recoil – the S&W M&P line have decent ( for a striker fired pistol ) triggers and unlike the Shield side of the house, they don’t have that “damn this grip is narrow” feeling. I will have to look around and see if the grip strap set is available as a separate item(s).

I picked up two magazines from Gun Mag Warehouse so I’m good there – I’ll order two magazine springs from Brownells while I have the page pulled up and then I will take a look at the issues that afflicted these factory magazines – and what to do to avoid just about most magazine issues – hint – clean and LIGHTLY lube – the newer coil inside themself magazine springs are prone to failure through neglect – more on that later . . .

And yes this is in the queue to get to the range and get test fired . . .

Have Fun! – Run the Gun! – and remember – Fish Heads are Cheap!!