No shooting though. Several inches of snow/ice on the ground and raining most of the weekend. Mid 40's and rain is pretty darned cold. Sat by the stove, read a book (some of it) and looked over a couple pistols my cousin bought/brought up.
First was a Rock Island double stack .45 acp. It came with 10 round magazines. He had a Para Ordnance double stack .45 acp magazine from the days before his marriage (the P14 ended up being pawned to pay credit card bills and house payments). He'd bought an additional 14 round magazine and was having problems getting it to insert/lock in or pull out of the frame.
I field stripped the pistol, took the mags. apart and did some insert/lock in/release testing. The P14 magazine worked smooth as silk.
While I was fiddling with the non-working magazine I mentioned, "Hey, don't ever buy a magazine made by ProMag. Too many horror stories on the internet of people having problems with them." He looked over the top of his glasses and replied, "Well cousin, that's a ProMag, it's all they had in the store when I bought the pistol."
The magazine was too wide right at the top, just down from the feed lips. I little work with a pair of vise grips to slightly squeeze the to of the magazine in resulted in it inserting, locking in and releasing just fine. Put the guts back in it and the top round wasn't at the right angle. The ProMag was made different at the top, in front of the curved section of the lips. The metal was both taller and extended further to the front than on the P14 magazine. Had to do some more bending/spreading work up front and got that one loading/feeding like the P14 magazine. I told him to take it out and shoot it some before he trusted it.
Then I told him CDNN had P14 magazines on sale fairly often. He told me he had two magazines now, he didn't need another one.
?? Oh well, if he's happy with only 2 magazines, I'm happy for him. After almost 50 years of being around him, I know not to waste time trying to convince him once his mind is made up.
The second pistol was a new XD in .357 SIG. He said it was shooting off to the left some. I was going to use my VISM rear sight tool to move the rear sight a little and then let him go out in the rain to shoot it and then report back to me. Guess what? That VISM rear sight tool that has changed sights on one M&P and seven or eight CZ's wouldn't budge that XD rear sight. I quit before I broke the sight tool.
I tried a couple times. Oiled up the sight channel, too. No luck. I figured that VISM tool would work on most everything. Oh well.
