He’s right when he says, size matters, but sometimes there’s not a whole lot of difference.
A .45 is a .45 not a 9mm. or a .380 – but this is just an excuse to post pics.
Note that there’s no bumper-pads on the magazines. On the old one (1943) it looks inappropriate, on the new shiny one it looks like a goddam zit. And this text is even smaller, too – that’s where size really matters, legibility.
I got The Old Sig because I figured that if I had to actually use a gun I’d probably never see it again, and I didn’t want to lose my historic 1943 GI Colt, a touchstone-relic, like that.
So then I bought another Sig and then another, following the reductive equation of two=one, one=none…until that work was complete.Then I made the mistake of touching The Philosopher’s Gun.
We find our way rather blindly in life, tumbling through the haze of reality while our neurons respond to the shape of scents, a stew of chemicals that unlock receptors and trigger sensations from salty to sweet, metallic to acid. Strands of our DNA twist and writhe in a long dance of experiences, absorbing and remembering physical sensations that fit ancient designs scraped in harsh stone beneath a leaden sky – of skeleton keys unlocking a magical world just beyond our grasp. The thick and ancient Lizard Brain is constantly flicking its tongue to find a pathway out of danger, a way through all the chemical signals to the heart of I WANT and MINE...
Touching it rendered me mute, blind, and deaf to reason. The receptors in my arm all clicked shut at the same time when my grip closed on the textured cocobolo panels. I was doomed until I had it. SHINY! My Precious – I had become the Gollum of Guns.
Now I don’t even want to shoot anybody at all. If I did I’d just buy a Glock.
Instead I want to launch perfectly arcing golden tumblers of lead-elixer that drip faint whisps of copper and nickel through distant white hoops beneath a sun drenched sky and the shadows of towering clouds…while keeping a safe distance from 40-foot flying crocodiles.
The cobra is an ancient beast of the forest. I have seen a skeleton that was close to forty foot long and wrapped all around the upper cove-molding of a small museum. The jaws that un-hinge to swallow man-sized prey were still considerable, a shoulder-width across. It would have stood ten-feet tall in the jungle path, with the rest coiled beneath itself. Poised. No wonder it was worshiped as a God by the early settlers of a wild, jungle land.
In the ongoing saga of Holsterstuffs, I received this little 2nd-hand Milt Sparks beauty from The Packing Rat (AKA Derek). Woot! It’s fairly comfortable even walking around empty. Now I just need some 1-3/4″ belt loops, so I better give ’em a call.
UPDATE: Belt loops are coming – very nice folks up in Idaho there, one of my favorite places of all time without a doubt.
Prompted by reading deeper into the most excellent Larry Vickers 1911 article in Military Times (H/T Jump the Stack), I started messing about with the old 1943 Colt. It justifies everything about my old gun, including 7-round magazines, but I am a bit concerned that this old warhorse has 1943 steel and all that that entails, that things wear out when they’re old…
Since I’ve been on something of a magazine hunt lately, a name popped up that I had to go take a look-at, Tripp Research. They make a 7-round colt magazine with a follower that looks a LOT like the one on my Sig P220. Woot!
This is the first time I’ve seen such a thing – anybody care to venture an opinion?
One of my older gun-club compadres has been going up to Susanville since the late 90’s and attending gunsmithing classes at Lassen College, and he’s going to take it to play with in Armorer’s School, and give it a quick and thorough cleaning…
He once had a match where he and Carlos Hathcock shot, he lost but he later beat him in smallbore. They were shooting instructors in the same group at Annapolis.
Here’s mine, what does yours look like?
1943-’45 Colt on the left, same-era High Standard on the right.
The upper one is the HS – as seen on the tang of the link-lug – or whatever it’s called.
The ramps-view: Colt (l.) High Standard. (r.).
Not Clauswitz 