Spherical Barrel Bushing?

Hello and pardon my ignorance,



I am new to this sport, only 1 season of an indoor police league, and have really come to enjoy/obsess it. After last years piss poor average of 130, i elected to make an investment into 1911 since they cut bigger holes. I purchased a kimber team match 2 (new) and it appears to be decent. i am aware that it a production gun, however i was thinking could it be improved on with a spherical bushing. Im sure most people would say to have a smith fit one, however i have a limited firearms allowance(which im am happy to even have). Im not even sure if the barrel busshing that came with the gun is just as good? Does anyone use or have experience with them... are they worth it and do they help?



Thanks!

Brownells sells a bushing made by Briley, that is a drop in match bushing, you just need to measure the end of the barrel and buy the one that is one thousand (smaller-larger) dont remember which but the instructions for how to measure is listed in the ad. Ive heard great reviews from shooters on this upgrade.

http://www.brownells.com/.aspx/pid=1828/Product/1911_AUTO_SPHERICAL_BUSHING

I think that it would be a better course to find out if & what might be wrong before spending good ammo money on repairs that may not need being made, There must be someone in the leagues you shoot in who can help you evaluate your pistol's accuracy before you start chasing points with your checkbook instead of range time.



steve

What Steve Said,

Ditto!

Al

Kimber 1911's are really well made! I've used one for work and have over 3,600 rounds logged down for it. The bushing will start to show wear at about 3,000 rounds and Kimber recommends replacing the spring at 1,500 rounds. Kimbers are very accurate and will be a great starter pistol. Save that $70 and buy some ammo and extra targets. Good shooting!

Scrum,
Welcome to an extremely frustrating and rewarding passion.

From your post, I'm assuming you're relatively new to pistol shooting??? If so, great! It means you have less to unlearn. If not, you just have to concentrate more on the fundamentals.

This is a very simple sport. All you have to do is align your sights with that portion of the target that you want your bullet to strike and move the trigger to the rear until the shot breaks without disturbing that alignment.

It is not an easy sport, no one has ever shot a perfect 2700, EVER. That is why I love this shooting sport over any I have ever tried. when I hear of shooters, in other disciplines, shooting a clean score it only tells me it was designed too easy. Don't get me wrong, I have a lot of respect for shooters in those other disciplines. Most of them have shot a lot more rounds than I have and have the patches and endorsements to show for it.

Enough blathering, on to your question. As others have suggested, you may not need a new bushing. Kimber's as a general rule are pretty good shooters out of the box. Will they take you to the master/High Master class? Probably not in the stock configuration, but thats ok. Right now you don't need a pistol that will hold 1 1/2" at 50 yards, you need one that will be reliable and serve you during the learning curve. And be a possible platform to eventually build into the gun you will want.

A miss or 4 or 5 is all part of the journey. When you get one, try to analyze why after the string is over. My suggestion would be to have a good Bullseye trigger put in first. A good trigger is by far the most important first step, in my opinion. You will fight to try and break a clean shot with a bad trigger. Often times that is what put you in the white. Make sure the gunsmith is a Bullseye gunsmith. Other smiths are capable of producing excellent accurate pistols but a BE smith knows how your trigger should feel and will know how to make it work for you. Ask some of the other shooters if you can try their gun. If you like the trigger, find out who did theirs.

Ask questions, lots of them there's no such thing as a dumb one. Ask the same question to several shooters, one of them will give you an explanation that clicks better than the way it was put by someone else. There's no point in reinventing the wheel. I'd be willing to bet the cumulative mistakes of us on this list are mind boggling.

The other item is ammo. You need to be shooting good ammo, and it takes a lot of it. Unless you reload or are flush enough to buy Federal Gold Medal Match there isn't a lot of commercially made target ammo, despite the "Match" printed on the box end. We don't need to make a certain power factor in our discipline. We do however need a very accurately made round that moves from 700-800 fps.

There is a very knowledgeable commercial reloader who posts here occasionally by the name of Neil at nsk. He produces commercial "Bullseye grade" target ammo at very affordable prices. I have never met the man but have had several phone conversations with him. FOR GODS SAKE' don't call him, unless you have an hour to try to listen and wrap your head around the volumes of information he freely shares. My brain hurts after having discussions with him and I've been in the reloading game for 35 years. Other than having phone conversations with him I've no connection with him. He freely shared in 30 minutes the same findings that I found after testing thousands of rounds in my Ransom Rest. I should have made the call sooner, would have saved me a bunch of component money.

If you haven't already go onto John Dreyers Bullseye website. Spend hours there, then go back every 6 months and re read what you read before. Things that made no sense the first time now do.

Ed Hall has an excellent site. (its the starreloaders link below) He is very 'handy' at building homemade creations that we use as well as being a hell of a shooter.

I didn't see anything you posted on the 22 you're shooting. Put a lot of your budget into that stage. The 22 will teach you most of what you need to know about BE shooting at a far lower cost. There are a lot of really good 22's out there. Rugers, S&W M41, Hi Standards (older Conneticut ones), Marvel conversions. Don't pass up the used ones. A normal shooter will never wear out a 22, although he may abuse the heck out of it. Let it be known amongst your fellow shooters you're looking for good used equipment. Even if they don't have anything they might know of someone who has gotten out of the game.


http://www.nsksales.com/
http://www.bullseyepistol.com/index.htm
http://www.starreloaders.com/edhall/index.html

Al,
Thanks for the post. A lot of has changed since I posted that back in august. Through practice and training, I've determined the problem to be the operator. The indoor season for me is looking to have a 100 point average improvement, and I have determined that unlike paper-puncher's misfortune with his kimber, mine is suited just fine for me and the 50' line. The biggest change since august is that I thought it was ideal to have the sights in focus and the target black blurred. Well they were both blurry. I have since discovered that I probably needed glasses 5 years ago. So, now that everything is in focus I hope to see some gains, and try and find some outdoor BE events sine I have one more trip for the indoor league before its all over

I started shooting bullseye with a Colt Gold Cup that was pretty inaccurate at fifty yards. It took some time before I realized that my gun/ ammo combo wasn't satisfactory. I was a sharpshooter before I realized that some of the shots that weren't on call weren't operator error. A new custom gun not only brought mechanical accuracy into the equation, it also significantly boosted my confidence. I would suggest, if you are going to shoot the long line outdoors, that you make sure that your gun/ ammo combo is reasonably accurate.