I recently had a friend ask me how to set up the CR Speed holster he'd bought for his Sig X-Five. We were going to try to go over it while I was last in California, but we ran out of time. So... out came the video camera, and away I went. To save on bandwidth, I popped them onto YouTube and left them unprotected, so that everyone can see them - and they seem to be useful for folks.

So, here's the vids... Yeah, plural. The whole thing was about 17 minutes long! However, this pretty much covers the bases on the Hows and Whys on setting up a holster - CR Speed in particular, but the reasons for the adjustments apply to every holster out there. Some will be more or less adjustable than others, but the principles are the same.

Enjoy!

I mean, really... Are you? I'm not. I'm fairly handy with tools - even the dreaded Dremel. I can read plans and specs, and I have a pretty mechanical mind, so I can grasp how most of our competition guns actually work internally. But when it comes to taking a set of parts and making a properly working, accurate, reliable firearm out of them, I know better than to delude myself about my abilities.

What's had me curious lately is the seeming large number of folks who think they are gunsmiths... Oh, they don't run around telling people that they're gunsmiths or anything like that... What they do seem to do, though, is to decide how a gun should be built, and then they go tell some 'smith to do it their way.

Hit the jump for some thoughts on building guns, the insanity we impose upon our gunsmiths, and the side effects we can introduce in doing so...

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We spend a lot of money on this sport, and if you're active at bigger matches, a decent portion of that budget goes towards match entry fees, hotel, gas, rental cars, airfare, food, etc, while attending those big matches. We all want to go to a big match and do well, don't we? Why else would we spend that time and money, and do things like, I don't know.... practice? And yet, many of us travel to those matches with a big weak link in our shooting bags, and many times we do it cause we're just flat out cheap!

So, with the match season getting into full gear, and with folks approaching their first or second big match of the year, it seemed like a great time to discuss a subject that everyone seems to be thinking about around this time of year: Match Ammo!

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In addition to introducing you to the new machine, let's chat a bit about evaluating new equipment. This subject has come up in recent conversations - seems to be a theme.

First, the new "toy"!! Back in late 2006, shortly before the Open Nationals, the range where I practiced was shut down, leaving me without a venue to hone skills for the impending match. I was bummed pretty seriously. A couple of folks came to the rescue - Karl Rehn at KR Training and Bob Londrigan at Brazos Custom Gunworks. Bob and I ended up squadded together at the following Florida Open, and he invited me up again to practice whenever I was able.

Long story short, we eventually had a discussion about equipment, and I lamented that, while I felt I had an accurate, reliable gun to shoot, I felt that in absolute terms, it wasn't as flat as it could be, and that was hindering my ability to excel in long range splits. Most of the time, this is a shooter issue, not a gun issue, sure. The current gun was built for "old" major, though, and using the current power factor is not as efficient as the modern racegun can be in this regard. Bob offered to let me try a few things, and if something worked for me, he offered to sponsor my shooting in the next year. We did find something - more on the evaluation, and how it applies to you, too, after the jump. He did sponsor me ;) And here it is - a Brazos Custom Gunworks Pro Series 5"....

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