In the video below, Bruce discusses his Bianchi Cup experience with Down Range TV’s Michael Bane after the match, and Michael discussed Bruce during his podcast posted May 31.

P.S. Yes, they did spell Bruce’s name incorrectly in the results…

The customer requested that we modify the ball cuts on the slide and the end of the frame to get the gun to look a bit more like the classic Sig Sauer pistol. We re-cut the ball cuts with a tight radius and straightened them to look as close as possible to a classic P226 or P220 slide without weakening the GSR slide.

We also cut the end of the frame vertical to line it up with the ball cuts and keep it more in line with traditional Sig Sauer cosmetics.

Follow or join in on the discussion over at SIGforum.

On to the pics… just click to enlarge.

This pistol has our beavertail conversion, 30LPI hand checkering, a bit of magazine well beveling, action work with an over-travel stop and modest reset reduction, Meprolight night sights, and is finished in SuperBlack.

As shown, these can be checkered but it’s far from easy, requiring more of a graving style and some specialized stuff to work with. After 35 years of this work you wouldn’t like my hands and elbows, unless you were my orthopedic surgeon.

Click any image to enlarge, and join the discussion on this topic over at SigForum.

The customer’s gun was sent for a salt bath nitride finish. The finish usually comes back a very deep black, for this gun we went ahead and re-blued everything after the refinishing in Oxynate #7 to give it a more classic looking blue finish, instead of the dead black appearance. The gun of course still retains all the excellent properties of the nitride finish.

It was fitted with Esmeralda grips, and test fired by Bruce Gray from just over 12 yards proving a super-tight group. You can check out the thread over at SigForum, with more completed photos and commentary starting on page 7.

Click on any image below for a larger views.

Our staff instructors have been on me to clear up these misconceptions as we get ready for our 2010 training season. It’s my pleasure to take a shot at clarifying our training philosophy, with your indulgence.

The key word is “fundamentals”. That’s a term that is often but erroneously confused with “basic” and “beginner”, but our course is not primarily oriented towards the new shooter. Rather, while our Practical Fundamentals course is perfectly suitable for newer shooters with demonstrable safe gun handling skills, that intense three days places the most rigorous demands squarely on the the most accomplished shooters.

Shooting is no different from other disciplines, in which he highest order of skill is attained by the fullest mastery of core, irreducible fundamentals. And, like any other discipline, the core fundamentals of practical handgun shooting have a hierarchy of most crucial to least crucial tasks to perform, and the skills required to accomplish them.

To develop this course program, I took the easy way out and made it simple: I looked to that hierarchy to identify each task and skill in a logical progression from bottom to top. This was obvious to me: 35 years of shooting taught me that nobody wins a contest for a trophy or a fight for her life by missing the target.

My philosophy of instruction follows naturally from that essential truth. At the top of our pyramid, the twin core skills of sight alignment and trigger control are used in coordination with the appropriate mental direction and attitude to solve the marksmanship problem at hand.

Every other task and skill is subordinate to, and supportive of, these twin core fundamentals of sight alignment (which, in the practical context, we define as seeing what you need to see to make each given shot) and trigger control. Everything else plays a supporting role.

Nobody hits the target with a fast reload or nifty malfunction clearance skills, yet few take the time to study trigger control and “seeing” in any real, well-considered depth. While we do cover presentation, gun handling and the firing platform in great detail, it’s only as a means to an end, to support the application and perfection of the core skills that actually accomplish the job of hitting stuff for you.

Thus, far from a “basic” class, our Practical Fundamentals course is really as advanced or basic as each student’s capacity for understanding and applying what are, in all truth, some very simple concepts and techniques.

Fortunately for me – as I’m no more agile or adept as the average guy – shooting is designed to be simple. If it weren’t, we couldn’t do it at all. But, it’s not “easy”. All the extraneous pressure and mental noise that our egos put in front of our performance makes shooting fast and accurately more of a challenge than it needs to be. Thus, it follows that mindset and attitude comprise the third core fundamental that we work on in our course. Our objective is to help you identify what you need to do to solve the problem at hand, how to do it, and how to think about it so that you can do it most effectively under stress.

There’s no mystery to it: that “what” is always trigger control. But our goal isn’t to send you out after three days on the range with a new set of durable, persistent skills. Rather, we will help you identify the skills and techniques you need to achieve your potential, and the methods you can use to develop these skills over the rest of your shooting career.

Wow, this sounds like everyone else’s brochure, except I haven’t used terms like “tactical” and “operator” yet. Thing is, anybody can jerk the trigger at a target 1,000 times in a weekend while somebody yells at them through a megaphone. That’s not what we’re about at all.

I’m not about the fight. I’m about the trigger. If you can’t hit everything you can see on demand at speed, our course isn’t too basic for you, and everything else is too advanced.

Thank you for letting me explain what our Practical Fundamentals course series is about. And, thanks to our many students for six years of fun in the broiling sun, freezing snow and pouring rain. God willing, we’ll be miserable together on a range near you for many more years to come.

My philosophy: If metal rubs metal, it needs grease between the parts.

We lubricate guns simply to allow the parts that rub on one another to move smoothly. Modern combat handguns are not intended to be run without lubrication. One of our customers made this mistake recently and is now spending a lot of additional money to get his gun in working order after degreasing his gun and dry firing 1,000 times after it came back from Grayguns.

Application of grease
I had an empty “Shooter’s Choice” syringe sitting around so I filled it with my favorite grease. Any method of application will work just fine. I use about half-ounce of grease a day while working on guns. I was in need of a way to keep grease readily available without having to unscrew the top of a jar or bottle and I found the syringe to work perfectly for me. What I like best about the syringe is that I can put the grease directly where I want it, such as inside certain springs and the corners of frame rails.

Product options
Any gun-grade grease will do the trick. I personally prefer to use Brian Enos’ Slide Glide, Shooter’s Choice grease including a cool syringe for later use or Lubriplate found at Brownells.com. The grease in the following pictures is a lithium/moly-based grease that I’m experimenting with, details available soon.

I’ve applied most of the grease to the underside of the frame rail completely filling the top inside corner. This is critical along the length of the rails because most of the force of recoil lifts the slide and applies force backward and upward against the underside of the frame rails.

Notice how there is a greater amount of grease near the muzzle end of the gun than at the rear. This is intentional. There is only so much space in the tolerance of the pistol for lubrication to reside. Since the slide goes on back to front it’ll push the remaining grease to the back of the frame and bunch it up on the back of the slide when the slide it closed.

You can see that I didn’t use as much grease on the side of the rails as I did on the underside, this is purely because it’s not generally necessary.

The top also gets a layer of grease to protect against galling and excess friction.

More pictures and more information will be posted in the coming days, and I provided detailed shots on applying grease to the pistol’s internals as well.

Different mission, different approach
For my every day carry (EDC) I grease the rails, put the slide on, run the action a couple of times, remove the slide then wipe the rails off to remove the large amount of bulk. I leave the grease on the under side of the rails alone when I wipe them off, the slide normally holds enough grease to keep things running.

For an EDC, remember your gun goes everywhere you do and is exposed to everything you are, hot, cold, humidity, dust, taco shells from that ill advised taco you ate while trying to talk on your cell phone while driving last week….everything. So if you have grease squirting out of every crevasse on the gun, you’ll be attracting the general detritus of every day life into your gun. Generally, that crap doesn’t generally make it in far enough to do any kind of damage unless you’re irresponsible enough to never clean your carry gun.

For open carry EDC for law enforcement, you gotta start thinking a bit more. I’ve had a couple of cops bring me their duty pistols for work and I’ve been astonished at what I’ve found. When I cocked the hammer of one of them, I found three pieces off bitten of finger nail and a corner of plastic from a plastic ketchup packet….I mean WTF MAN! Clean your freaking gun.

I asked how long it thad been since he last cleaned it and he told me it had been a couple years, “I hardly ever use it, I figured it was still pretty clean” was his excuse. His gun was absolutely bone dry, I actually found dust on the frame rails as opposed to lube.

That brings me to another subject, cleaning. Here’s what I recommend.

Competition
Clean it after every 200 to 400 rounds. Most of the time a big match or a day of shooting will be enough of a work out that your gun will need cleaning.

EDC with frequent use including open carry
Clean it after every time you use it. If you’re going to depend on that gun to save your life, you want it to work the first time you pull the trigger, so keep it clean and lubed.

EDC with little to no use
Clean your gun at least once a month. More of the same of your gun being needed to save your life. Even without use, your gun needs to be cleaned and relubricated, so give it a quick bath and make sure it’s ready when you need it. There are 720 hours in a 30 day month, I think you can afford to spend 1/720 of a month cleaning your gun every month, it’s cheap insurance.

Far from a catastrophic failure, the problem proved to be as simple as it was preventable: the pistol was bone dry and dirty. The trigger bar had simply galled against the connector, preventing it from releasing the firing pin.

“My academy instructor said not to oil my pistol, since oil gets on everything and attracts dirt,” Louie protested. “Besides, Glock has that ad where they degrease the gun, drive a truck over it and shoot it a hundred rounds. Glocks are indestructible and don’t need oil.” This had me flipping to page 16 of the Glock Armorer’s Manual: “Most important is the drop of oil where the connector and trigger bar meet.” Louie was lucky his pistol went down at the range, not while trading rounds with Uncle Fester in a burning meth lab.

Ever look at how much dirt and debris ends up in your pockets each day? From bits of taco shells, coffee creamer and donut frosting to fibers, mud and blood, these artifacts from your working environment will also find their way into your equipment. Properly maintained, modern service pistols are as reliable as any tool made by man. Just as anyone who carries a defensive handgun requires regular range practice to maintain life-saving shooting skills, duty guns require regular cleaning, lubrication and maintenance to deliver as-designed reliability and service life.

Whether fired or not, your duty pistol must be cleaned at least every month. This includes your magazines, which are natural collectors for all sorts of crud. “Dirty, bent or improperly assembled magazines are the leading cause of malfunctions in modern service pistols, after operator error. It’s estimated that fewer than 5% of officers practice shooting of their own accord, so we can assume even fewer properly maintain their weapons,” according to veteran law enforcement training authority Michael Boyd.

Coming Clean
Modern service pistols are designed to be easily maintained, so there’s really no excuse not to take thirty minutes a month for a thorough job. Our six-step maintenance regimen is simple: Make safe, disassemble, clean, inspect, reassemble and test. Think of lubricant as a critical component of your pistol which wears out periodically, whether fired or not. Everything you need to remove that “broken lube” and replace it with new protection is readily available at any sporting goods outlet.

Before proceeding, make sure your weapon and magazines are completely clear of ammunition, and that no ammo is anywhere in the vicinity of your cleaning area. Read this again: Make sure your pistol and magazines are completely unloaded and remove all ammunition from your cleaning area! Next, prepare a brightly lit, well ventilated area with supplies, and wear eye protection and solvent-resistant gloves. It’s a good idea to work over a plastic tub to control the mess and catch loose or broken parts.

Start with your magazines; disassemble, clean and reassemble each one separately per manufacturer’s instructions, taking care to note how the springs fit. Springs and followers can vary between mags of the same brand, so avoid the temptation to simply disassemble and clean them all at once.

Brush out the mag body, and use some powder solvent on a patch to remove fouling and gunk from the follower and base plate. Straighten out twisted mag springs one coil at a time by hand until the follower sits squarely, but never stretch a shortened, “dead” spring as this only fatigues it further; replace instead. Magazines do not require lubrication, though you may run a silicone gun cloth inside the magazine tube if you work in a high-humidity environment where rust is an issue. Reassemble each cleaned, dry magazine carefully; damage usually results from careless cleaning, disassembly or reassembly, not from normal shooting or handling.

Now, verify clear once more and carefully field strip your pistol, laying each part out in order as you go. In particular, note which way the recoil spring assembly fits in the slide. Some pistols (such as this SIG P-226) use one tight end coil to retain the recoil spring on the guide rod, and the action will bind if it’s installed backwards. Using an old toothbrush and a powder solvent such as Hoppe’s No. 9 or Shooters Choice, scrub the breech face, feed ramp and other heavily fouled surfaces. While the frame and slide assemblies soak a moment, work the bore with a soft brass brush and solvent to fully clean fouling from chamber and rifling. Don’t scrub back and forth, as this will damage the rifling; just make complete passes each way.

When the powder solvent and brushing have done their work, remove the major crud with a paper towel or shop rag, scrubbing with more solvent as required. Then, spray each assembly with Gun Scrubber to remove all traces of solvent, fouling and old lubricant. Once dry, look for obvious parts breakage. One quick check: the extractor should hold an empty case in the slide against moderate shaking.

Proper Lubrication
For on-duty use, your pistol should be lubricated with a light film of oil to insure reliable function on demand. Break Free spray foams on contact, efficiently coating interior parts stripped by the Gun Scrubber. Don’t overdue it! Just a quick shot to the lockwork is enough. Accessible surfaces can be “painted” using a cotton swab dipped in oil. The bore should be dry, but place an extra drop on locking lug surfaces. Reassemble and hand-cycle the action several times, wiping off any excess lubricant that emerges.

However, if you are going right to the range for a training session, RIG or Shooters Choice grease can be used on slide rails and barrel locking surfaces. Pistols don’t wear out as much as they hammer themselves to death, so judicious use of a high-viscosity lubricant for practice only will definitely extend service life.

After cleaning your holster and magazine carriers and checking them for positive retention, static test your pistol for safe and reliable function. First, manually cycle the slide with each empty magazine in turn, setting aside any magazines that won’t positively lock back the slide every time. Next, make sure the decocking lever or other safety systems operate as designed. Finally, dryfire with a standard lead pencil, eraser towards the firing pin, in both double and single action modes. The pencil will fly vertically a couple feet in most pistols, verifying correct firing pin block timing, mainspring tension and firing pin protrusion.

Get in the habit of reloading your pistol and magazines in a specific place, not where you clean, dry-fire or securely store your unloaded weapons. Be safe, be smart, stay alive.

This article copyright 2005 Grayguns Inc. Originally published in Primedia Handguns 2003