Foiled!

Yesterday morning I made my way to Whidbey Island to do some pin shooting with Mr. Completely, KeeWee and the rest of the CWSA crew only to have my day interrupted by issues of a personal nature. I met Mr. C at his place, did some chatting and shooting at his practice range and then had to pack up and drive back home.

“Grrrr” doesn’t say the half of it. I had made the drive in good time, had not forgotten anything and on top of all that, the day that the weather-guessers had forecast as cold and wet had turned quite gorgeous as can be evidenced by this picture of the North Cascades and the Port of Everett taken off the end of the Washington State Ferry M.V. Cathlamet.

You can read Mr. C’s range report here.

Since I can’t show you the match myself, I will just show off my Ruger MKII-10 and a couple of accessories I picked up for it. I must ask forgiveness for the crappiness of the pics, as both of them are only halfway decent. But I figure if I give you two halfway decent pics, they add up to one good one, right?

Before

After      

As you can immediately see, I have a new set of grips on it. The stock black plastic ones were both too small for my hands and not aesthetically pleasing, both problems of which were solved by these Volquartsen Target Grips.

They’re “Shoot All Day” comfortable and somehow, exactly the right size for my hands. They are one piece, non-clamshell style grips that install by removing the two-piece stock grips and then slipping these up from the botton of the frame, which leads to one of my two minor complaints:

The holes on my grips didn’t line up properly and I had to contort the grip a bit to get the last screw in to place. Also, they only come with one washer per screw and the screws were so long that when I tightened them down all the way, I couldn’t get a magazine into the gun untill I backed them out. A quick run to the hardware store will fix that problem, but it would have been nice to have them either send screws of the correct length or extra washers.

I also installed this set of Williams ‘Fire Sights’. They’re 3-dot colored fiber optic sights and they were exactly what this pistol needed. The rear dots are day-glo green and the front is fire-red. When you line them up it looks somewhat like Christmas, which must have been why I had “It’s Beginning to Look Alot Like Christmas” stuck in my head yesterday afternoon. 

Two screws to get the old ones off and two to put these on. There are hash marks on the right hand side of the rear sight for easy elevation zeroing but none for windage. My only complaint is that they used the smallest flat-bit head screws they could find instead of allen wrench head screws, which would make the tightening down once zeroed situation less of a guess. But I’m going to the hardware store anyway, I might as well see if they have replacements for these.

All in all, the gun is even more of a joy to shoot than before. The only other accessories I’m looking at are an underbarrel grip (for more weight to reduce recoil) and this Volquartsen Adjustable Trigger (because the current trigger is crisp like the way a cinderblock breaks ‘crisp’ when it is dropped on pavement).

OK, and maybe a holographic sight with a quick release mount so I can shoot pins in two classes with the same gun (hehe).