WB
Daddy Boomer confounds youth shooter
Friday, December 30, 2022, 09:25

My son Roman and I have a running argument. He bought himself one of those fancy FN 5.7's and just loves it. Paid a King's ransom for it too, his money. While it is a very sinister looking round the 5.7 is just barely ahead of the .22 WMR. Handgun velocity with a 40 gr. bullet is nominally around 1600 fps or less. (.22 WMR is about 1400 with a 40 gr.) I bought a G23 to goof around with, do some barrel swapping. I already ordered a 9mm barrel and will later try a .357 SIG just to say I did. It only requires a simple barrel swap, but the G19 won't do it for the bigger and wider rounds. That's why I started with a .40, the barrel hoods are wider and fit into the G23/33 slide mortise. However my next purchase is for a .22 TCM kit (for my birthday). The .22 TCM9R (a shorter 39 gr. bulleted version to fit 9mm mags, simply UGLY) shows velocities of 2000 fps easily. It's actually based on the 7.62x25 Tokarev case. Looking on ballistic charts for a .223 and 40 gr. bullet the .22 TCM and 5.7 parallel that performance of a .223 at 400 yds. (TCM) and 500 yds. (5.7) respectively. Slowed considerably but I'd not want to catch one myself. Still in the .22 Hornet class as fired from 100-200 yds. distant.

The standard Glock spring assy. is about 18 lbs. (same as a 1911 .45) and the TCM kit comes with an 11# spring to function semi-auto. I do NOT want mine to function semi-auto typically. I want to capture my brass and shoot pointy bullets single shot. I have plans for my custom 43 gr. HPGC cast bullets too. The kid just don't get it. My type of fun.

My 9mm G19 barrel came in Sat. It of course drops right in. I got this funky gold colored "tin" coated stainless barrel for only $50 delivered. I need some dedicated G19 mags now as the .40 mags do work well but the 9mm rides about 2mm higher in the factory mag lips. But I figure the G19 mags will complete the conversion. The light colored barrel shows contact grease marks very easily if that bothers anyone.

I hope to get the .357 SIG barrel too. I've never shot one actually. Just sounds fun. Several times I thought of a 9x25 Dillon barrel for the G21 but the reloading dies stopped me short.