ShadowsDad
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Post by ShadowsDad on Sept 2, 2013 22:42:15 GMT -6
I've been looking at one of these for future acquisition, very soon.
The first one I saw, it was love at first sight. It's a mini 1911, my all time favorite fighting handgun. It's my 3" Kimbers made even smaller and in a useable cartridge, the 9mm NATO.
So far I've not heard anything negative about it from dealers who have gotten feedback from customers (so they say).
Has anyone heard any negative feedback?
Background... FWIW, I'm a John Browning 1911 kind of guy in .45 ACP flavor. While I don't like the 9mm a whole lot* I have at least one classic handgun in 9mm (but too large for CCW IMO, how times change) and one even smaller in .380 ACP flavor (TDE Backup) that was in fact my backup handgun when I was a LEO. But it has a terrible trigger pull which I tolerated because it was a backup gun. The bigger problem with the Backup is that it only digests ball ammo 100% reliably and frankly .380 ball ammo sucks as a stopping round. I love my 3" Kimbers and they digest any quality ammo, but sometimes they are just too big for CCW. Hence the tiny SIG 938 idea so that I no longer need to CCW the TDE Backup. I've heard they digest almost anything, and as I already wrote it's a tiny 1911, and that's my baby!
I've seen 2 so far and each one was tailor made for CCW. Mags drop free w/o drag, the trigger pull is a tad heavy, and I need to contact SIG to see if they have a custom shop to lighten it for me, but it isn't a deal breaker if they don't. At least the trigger breaks cleanly. Each example I've seen is well thought out and executed.
Other than the Springfield Micro it's the only 1911 variant in tiny format that I've seen, and I don't doubt that the SIG is a hair smaller than the Micro.
So if anyone has heard any negative feedback, could you pass it on to me?
TIA
* I understand that todays 9mm ammo works far better than the ammo I'm familiar with from 45 years ago, so I'll trust the folks who I respect and whose words I've been reading for the past 10 years. I still intend to test and verify the ammo for expansion and penetration before I carry it however. Particularly out of a 3" barrel which is a complete game changer for expansion.
FWIW, if anyone would like my .45 ACP expansion/penetration (in water) data that I generated 6 (? WAG) years ago out of 3" barrels just contact me. 2" less of barrel makes an incredibly huge difference to expansion in .45 ACP. If it expands in water it will expand in other mediums. One inexpensive and widely available round beats the pants off of other far more expensive rounds.
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papabear
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Post by papabear on Sept 3, 2013 8:52:52 GMT -6
You will be quite happy with the 938. The compact size and weight are truly a joy to carry. As far a 9mm penetration and stopping power, recent advances by Hornady and Speer make the 9mm a worthy self protecting round. I especially like the critical defense round made by Hornady.
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Post by wchnu on Sept 3, 2013 17:54:26 GMT -6
Have not shot that pistol. But every Sig I have ever shot was nice. Not a 9mm fan but have not been in the auto business for some time. I am wheel guy. Also a fan of lighter weight hollow points.
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ShadowsDad
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Post by ShadowsDad on Sept 3, 2013 22:01:49 GMT -6
Thanks guys! I think it's a done deal, it's just a matter of saving my pennies to consummate the deal. Maybe after the dust clears after this next credit card cycle and I see what remains in the acc't. Never having even shot a SIG I had to ask.
Rich, I was impressed with the Speer Gold Dot ammo for short barrels in .45. Another in .45ACP is the Federal Premium expanding FMJ (contradiction in terms I know), quite similar to the performance of the critical defense bullet I'm thinking. I haven't been in the market for store bought 9mm (I make my own but won't carry reloads for CCW today for legal reasons). I don't know what's available. Are there specific loads (bullet weights, etc) that I should try? Typically I get absorbed in testing and I'll buy oodles to test, but narrowing it down would be helpful if you can for me.
wchnu, I began shooting seriously with a wheelgun, but converted to auto as soon as I could. I think Jeff Cooper had an influence on me since I was ex-military. OK, I know what another factor was... they're thinner for CCW. I prefer big fat bullets and small cylinder revolvers weren't very concealable IMO 40 years ago. There was the Bulldog. I don't remember any others. I still have my .357 duty gun, but I haven't shot it in years. Students shoot it far more than I do. I just clean and lube it anymore.
Now, unless it's a single shot handcannon, all I shoot for handguns are 1911s and variants in a serious manner. I will shoot a students handgun if it's offered to me just to familiarize with it. I like to shoot handcannons because it teaches my hands and arms just what a pipsqueak the .45 ACP really is. .45 ACP is like shooting a cap gun afterward. During one training I had a TSA fellow student comment on how rapidly I could put accurate fire downrange. I guess it sounded like almost full auto with this tiny group on the target. The last training I was at the instructor commented on it too. Anyway, beware the man with one gun, as the saying goes. That's why I concentrate on that one handgun design today. Every 1911 I pick up has a "been here before" feel to it for me. Of course I have yet to feel a double action auto with a trigger I like even half as much as the SA trigger on a 1911. None are as good as the SA trigger on my duty gun though (or my handcannons). That has a really superb trigger. I used to shoot tennis balls with that gun at 75 yards (rollover prone position). I practiced with it so much that I could hit cans and such out to 25 yards with the gun held at the hip. I thought that technique could come in handy when I was a LEO. I'd burn up at least 1000 rounds a month back then and I'd get pissed if I dropped even 2 points out of a 300 point qualification. But it's so different from the 1911 that it just sits in the safe now.
Oh well, diahrea of the keyboard tonight. Sorry.
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papabear
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Post by papabear on Sept 4, 2013 7:02:19 GMT -6
Since I am limited on how much weight I can carry, I scaled back to my micro 9. I usually use Cor-Bon 115gr. +P, but I really like Hornady's 115gr. FTX (http://www.hornady.com/store/9mm-Luger-115-gr-Critical-Defense/) because it really shoots well out of my micro 9. A while ago some research was done and I believe this was the site, but I could be mistaken: www.ballisticsbytheinch.com/9luger.html
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ShadowsDad
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Post by ShadowsDad on Sept 4, 2013 21:16:14 GMT -6
Thanks Rich!
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RocketMan
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Post by RocketMan on Sept 17, 2013 8:51:20 GMT -6
I have always wanted to try firing a handgun but never have. It is a fair bit of work in Canada to get all set up and it is pretty limited where you areallowed to fire it so I have never got to that point yet. You dont really see many handguns up this way except for those held by gangs and bad guys.
I imagine you could drop a lot of coin if you got stuck on piling these up.
Very interesting thread though. It sounds like you fellers have a lot of experience. Good luck Brian with your penny piling for this one!
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Post by birdlives on Sept 17, 2013 14:49:31 GMT -6
I know the Sig Sauer Academy in Epping New Hampshire has a Pro-Shop on the premises....They could answer just about any question you might have about the 938... Heres their contact info: PRO SHOP HOURS: MONDAY - SATURDAY 8AM - 7PM SUNDAYS 10:00AM - 6:00PM 603.610.3456 PHONE The 938 does look like a beauty...have you seen the 938 'Nightmare'? Pretty Bad-a&$ looking piece of self defense right there...lol I know what you guys are saying, and I've never been a big fan of 9mm's either....But with modern bullet technology, the new 9mm rounds have caught up and over taken in some cases; with the 38 Super +P....And I've always really dug that round aswell as the guns made to handle it.... I share your affinity for the 45 ACP...in fact I was checking out a 3" S&W M25 as a CCW not too long ago....You know full moon clips are a fast re-load... and Smith's new 325 Night Guard looks pretty interesting.... I was a 1911 man for many years but became a born again revolver guy after my wife gifted me a 44Spl. S&W 696 a few years back....Turned out to be a game changer for me... ....Of course the YMMV factor is huge with handguns... Good luck and let us know what you decide....and of course some pics would be great... P.S., A friend told me that the folks at the Sig Academy were very hip about the new 9mm ammo choices and were very helpful in helping him and his dept. with narrowing down their selections...
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ShadowsDad
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"It's not the bow, it's the Indian"
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Post by ShadowsDad on Sept 17, 2013 22:12:29 GMT -6
I researched the P938 on the 'net. I want to say right up front, that a tiny semi-auto magnifies shooter error so that if one limp wrists a full size gun that condition will be made worse with a lighter smaller handgun. This handgun while it can be shot limp wristed, will manfunction if shot that way. Any semi-auto requires something to push against and if limp wristed the recoil vector is changed and all sorts of bad things happen. I ran into alot of that in my research. That is, armchair experts bad mouthing the gun when it's something they simply can't shoot because of their personal malfunction. I never realized how many gun experts who know nothing exist on the 'net. It was an eye opener for sure. YouTube is loaded with them, but they give themselves away pretty quickly. Anyway... I bought the 938, the Extreme model. I like it a lot. It's a fine handgun. It won't be my everyday carry gun, but rather used for those times when a 3" 1911 is too large. I actually wanted a less expensive 938 model, but another dealer had the Nightmare for $100 more than I paid for the Extreme and the NM is just a hair less gun. I did not need the front cocking grooves on the slide or the multicolor G10 grips of the Extreme but it's what the dealer had in stock and the price was right. Plain black grips would have been just fine. I know that I didn't want rubber grips since IMO they have no business being on a CCW handgun. Unless one wants slow acquisition and possibly have the shirt ride up over the gun as the sticky grip "holds" the shirt. Not what I want at all. Is it pure 1911, just smaller? No. But it's close. There are some things I'd like to change. The trigger is crisp enough, but I'd like to get the trigger lightened to 5#. I checked the SIG custom shop and they specifically state that they won't work on the trigger on a 938. Anyone wanting full specs can get them from the SIG website. One thing I have changed already... The 7 round mag comes with a base pad that extends forward with a pinky finger hook. That's fine, and a bit more hook would be even better. But it extends even further back toward the butt to blend in with the butt of the handgun grip. It looks pretty, but it's completely disfunctional. What happens is that since the grip is so small, the pad of the palm of the hand wraps under that extension and prevents the magazine from ejecting. No problem. A bit of work with a hacksaw removed the extension at the mold mark as seen from inside the projection. Then a minute with a sanding drum on a Dremel smoothed it up just fine. Now the mag ejects as it should. I need more mags; the 2 that were supplied are just a start. I'll modify most if not all the 7 round mags I purchase. The gun shoots fine even with the, IMO, too heavy trigger. It's probably to SIGs stated spec of 7.5-8.5#. It's much less of a handful than I thought it was going to be. I've had no malfunctions of any kind and at 25' it will make one ragged hole on the target when I do my part. With a lighter trigger and an overstop travel screw (if possible) I have no doubt that this tiny handful could easily be capable of 25 yard shots and further. The gun also comes with a polymer holster. I have egg on my face about that. When at the dealer I put the handgun in the holster and dang if I didn't have a heck of a time to get it out. It just wouldn't budge. Then I realized that the holster has an adjustment screw that tightens the holster on the gun. That means that the holster flexes. I was squeezing the holster onto the handgun. The more I pulled the tighter my grip on the holster forcing it to grip the handgun tighter. :-) my first polymer holster with retaining screw. All my other holsters are leather. I'll get a Yaqui slide holster for this gun too if I don't have one that fits it already. The real problem now is finding modern ammo. I do have a few HPs from 30 years ago and I tested expansion in water today. Even out of the short 3" barrel it produced a beautiful mushroom that went over 5/8" and I got a soaking. But I still want to find some Federal Premium expanding FMJ since winter is coming and the FP XFMJ has a "HP" that can't fill with clothing. There really aren't words to describe what this bullet has since it's a contradiction right out the gate. It just works great in all of my testing in .45 ACP. I can't see it not working great in the 9mm. There's the Hornady Critical Duty also (thanks Papabear) but I need enough for testing and ammo is extremely hard to find right now. Let me post this quick reply and then get some pics into it. I'll leave the pics for a few days only, then I'll remove them. So no one should be surprised when it happens. Here the P938 is being spooned by a full size 1911 .22LR target gun to show scale. This still might not do the 938 justice. Any given cartridge can have a gun so small and no smaller. This 9mm is a minimum dimension gun. A 9mm simply can't be made smaller in semi-auto. It's a hair larger than a minimum dimension .380. Here it's shown with the flush 6 round magazine. The grip allows 2 fingers on the frontstrap, the pinky curls up below. The modified 7 round magazine looks something like the magazine seen on the 1911. The modified base pad stops short of extending across the full bottom the the 938. I removed possibly 1/4" of base pad. The 938 is just large enough to fit on my open hand, fingers and thumb tight together not spread and I don't have large hands. The mushroom from the bullet test today. Fired at maybe 15-20' into water jugs. I found it in the 2nd jug and there was a dent in the back of the 2nd jug. I got sprayed with water. It began at .355" (less than 3/8") and expanded to over 5/8". Obviously expansion was complete and violent. Vintage Win' 125gr HP Silvertip (edit: correction, 115gr). For those who don't know expanding ammo is far preferable becasue it's retained in the target, and dumps it's energy there where it was intended. Ball ammo (non expanding) sheds very little energy in the target and can travel through the target and the unintended target(s) beyond the intended. Ball ammo just drills holes and loses energy very slowly. Not good at all in a social situation. I hope I never need to use it.
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papabear
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Post by papabear on Sept 18, 2013 7:05:20 GMT -6
Well done Brian. Careful of those two spooning, you may get a .32 or .380. Nice mushroom of the bullet. The rounds should do fine for its intended purpose.
I agree, that a limp wrist can cause massive issues for a shooter. A good friend of mine purchased a Kel-Tec PF9 and had numerous issues with stove pipes and other battery malfunctions. She sent it back for repair twice which didn't help. She asked me to give it a try. I shot three magazines of different ammo through the PF9 without a problem. She was amazed. Then I duplicated her error in grip. To her amazment, the firearm stovepiped.
I worked with her that afternoon, and needless to say if the werewolf shows up against this 5'2" blonde, he will be in a lot of trouble.
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ShadowsDad
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Post by ShadowsDad on Sept 18, 2013 14:11:19 GMT -6
RM, gangs and the bad guys have them here in the US also, but for the present, and for the rest on my life, we allow the good guys to have them to counter the bad guys. Consider us sheepdogs that keep the wolves at bay for ourselves, our loved ones, and the flock. The flock doesn't always like us because at times we can appear as wolves to them, but when a wolf really does show up who do they call ? ... A sheepdog with a firearm. The flock mostly know about the uniform wearing sheepdogs. But some of the smarter sheep (they are sheep however- no insult intended to the wool bearing sheep ;-) ) are beginning to recognize the existence of the human sheepdogs.
I'm retired so I can choose to do what I wish to do. One of the things I choose to do is to train others in being sheepdogs.
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papabear
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Post by papabear on Sept 19, 2013 9:45:44 GMT -6
I'm retired so I can choose to do what I wish to do. One of the things I choose to do is to train others in being sheepdogs. Amen! I refuse to be a sheep, but rather a sheepdog with an attitude. Remember when seconds counts, police are minutes away.
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ShadowsDad
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"It's not the bow, it's the Indian"
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Post by ShadowsDad on Sept 20, 2013 14:11:21 GMT -6
Where we live they're maybe 20 minutes away. I am the first responder. When I get a new gun for social purposes I test, and then test some more. I think that's just common sense since it doesn't get more "serious" than a personal protection handgun. So with that in mind I decided I'd compare .45ACP slugs to the the mushroom from the other day. What I expected to see was not what I saw. Can you pick out the 9mm slug? By size alone? Or did you need the arrow to find it? Yeah, me too if I was just looking at the mushroom. Just looking at the size of the expanded bullets it's quite difficult. The .45 slugs are a hair larger, but just a hair. The 9mm was a 115 grain slug and penetration of the .45 slugs was more (but they all were heavier slugs), but IMO that's meaningless as long as the energy was all dumped in the boiler house. I'm not done testing 9mm ammo, when I can find some, but I'm not unhappy with this result.
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Post by birdlives on Sept 20, 2013 15:31:07 GMT -6
Wow...thats a very effective comparison photo of the expanded bullets...Thanks....And thats the 115 grain...wow...It will be interesting to compare heavier rounds... Thats also a very impressive looking 9mm delivery system you have aswell....and sounds like you can send quite abit of lead down range in a short amount of time.... I know the only way you got that together, is the same way cats get to Carnegie Hall....PRACTICE!!!
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ShadowsDad
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Post by ShadowsDad on Sept 20, 2013 22:20:52 GMT -6
Bird, I've been shooting handguns in one form or another for almost 50 years. My first was a Crosman 600 semi-auto .22 cal CO2 Pistol. I wish I had gotten professional instruction as a child, but I knew of no one doing that back then. I don't think it existed on the east coast at all. It started on the left coast in the '50s. (Modern Technique) I learned of it in the '70s, and all I had to instruct me were books. Of course that's all changed today, and I'm the instructor and there are at least 10s of thousands of other instructors. But to change the subject... I've started to modify the handgun. Well. maybe not the handgun itself, but the grips. When I hold any handgun I take as high a hold on the grip as possible. Tha means my shooting finger. when not actively readying the shot lies against the frame of the gun and points forward (off the trigger). The ambi safety has a portion that when flipped down would catch my skin repeatedly on my trigger finger. OUCH! the safety is under spring pressure to stay down and it was quite painful. The solution was simple. Just bevel the portion of the grip that formed the pinch point with the safety lever. The area I beveled is to the immediate right of the safety lever. The different layers of the grip can be seen forming vertical lines in the picture. That is the bevel. It didn't take me 5 minutes to bevel it. Now when I flip the safety down with my finger on the side of the frame the safety lever pushes my skin out of the way rather than pinching it. It's already happened a number of times, except now it's only brought to my attention and there's no pain. I called SIG to tell them of the problem and the solution that Hogue could make when the grips are manufactured. I'm surprised no one else has had the problem yet. I think the gent I talked to was set for a crappy call, but he soon realized my intent was to help fix it.
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