Serpa holster revisited

 

Non-disclosure agreements don't allow me to state whether I ever worked for Hoe-Point Firearms.

 

I am still screwing around with the Blackhawk Serpa holster. It is an engineer thing.

Old_NFO said that he personally experienced a lock-up after belly-crawling through sand. He examined it and there was sand packed behind the paddle that is depressed with the index finger.

I invested about ten minutes to make a wooden device to mimic a handgun. No sane person pours grit onto a working firearm. It just isn't right.

The red arrow indicates the path that foreign material follows before being trapped between the paddle and the side of the firearm

One thing that is not obvious is that there is a "window" behind the paddle that is depressed.

You can see the window in this image taken looking down through the top of the empty holster after the test.

I was able to replicate the failure AFTER covered the muzzle end of the holster with my hand. I was using ground "barn limestone" since that is what I had that was most sand-like. I think the material poured more easily than sand and pouring it in through the opening did not have the same packing effect that dragging it along the ground would.

The "fix" that I want to test is to glue a 3/8" thick pad of open cell foam with small cells to the back of the paddle. That will greatly reduce the likelihood of enough material getting behind the paddle to lock it up. It only needs to move about 1/8th inch to release the firearm.

Negligent Discharges

Negligent Discharges are a very big deal.

My brother went to a competition in Rockford, Michigan where they allowed Serpa holsters ONLY if the retention feature had been locked out with a 2" piece of surgical, rubber tubing.

And this is where I piss off some of my readers. How many people drawing a handgun from a holster keep their trigger finger pointed down the slide...nearly all of them. In fact, there are some instructors who teach students to "Point shoot" the first round before they have a sight picture with the intention of rattling the goblin and (hopefully) taking him out of the game early.

How is that different than where your finger is with a BH Serpa holster"

The fact that all of the Negligent Discharges seem to happen at competitions suggests that the shooter is not practicing enough outside of the competition. Slow is smooth. Smooth makes fast.

They are trying to prove Col. Jeff Cooper wrong. They are trying to "rise to the occasion" rather than operate within the envelop of their mastery.

The Wheels of Justice

The wheels of justice turn slowly but grind exceedingly fine.

It is too early to make any calls regarding the election but I don't know if Trump will get relief from the courts in time to help him out.

That old joke now leaves a bitter taste. You know the joke about conservatives telling their lay-about Liberal neighbors that the election had been extended for their benefit so they could vote on Wednesday and Thursday. It looks like some of that happened.

Liberals are still losing their minds even though they claim to have won the election.

It ain't over until the next President is sworn in.

On a positive note

The Kid had a great interaction with a grumpy old-guy on Wednesday.

He was fishing on a dock when one of the pedestrians started railing on him. The old guy accused the Kid of removing the tape and sign that closed the dock for the season.

I didn't see the conflict but I heard most of it. I was letting it be his.

I expected fireworks.

It didn't happen.

Less than a minute later I heard the old geezer telling the Kid that "...Yeah, I think it has bluegills and bass in it but I don't know about any catfish..."

Afterword, I told the Kid to replay what he had done with the old-man to change the interaction. I told him that most people put their failures on continuous-loop but really we should study our successes as much as our failures.

He told me that the first thing he did was get off the dock. Then he "yessir" and "nossirred" him. Then he asked for an opinion.

Today is a Mom day

I don't know how active the blog will be today.

One foot in front of the other

I took the Kid fishing yesterday. I am letting him pick where we go. He chose Sharp Park north of the Lansing Mall.

Yesterday was a gorgeous day. The young beauties took advantage of the weather by running through the park. At least that is what the Kid told me. I don't look at pretty girls.

I continue to be amazed at the number of people who wear head-phones and are completely oblivious to events going on around them. Somewhere, Darwin is rubbing his hands together in anticipation.

We survived several bombing runs by the Canadian Airforce (geese). When taking off they de-ballast and we were in their flight path.

Bonus pictures

I saw this one yesterday morning when I was running at Burchfield Park. The people I encountered had a very strange energy. More of an energy-suck than a super-ball bounce.

Student loans

I mailed in my first payment on Belladonna's student loan.

Because, as a retired guy, my income was so extravagantly high Bella was not entitled to much help. The Student Loan process is Byzantine in the extreme. The only "help" she was eligible for were "Parent Plus Loans".

Turns out I wasn't co-signing for those loans. I am the primary holder.

I was looking at one set of loans thinking Bella did well to get out of school with "only" $20k in debt. She was looking at an entirely different set of loans thinking she got out with $30k.  In actual fact, she owes $50k.

Fortunately, Bella is an industrious and honorable person and is paying me $250 a month to pay back the loans that I am the primary for. I should probably buy a term-life insurance policy for the $20k because I don't think it evaporates if she passes.

Water tanks

Sprite showed up today and collected her water tanks and feed buckets.

Permission-to-track letters

I handed out my yearly permission-to-track letters today to my neighbors who have property that touches mine.

I have only had one person exercise that permission.

The permission is not unconditional.

1. You must make a good-faith effort to contact me by calling my phone before walking on to my property. I may have hunters out there who are hunting. Also, I will probably want to help you track it and drag the deer off the property.
2. That you (my neighbor) be one of the tracking party. You cannot give this permission to a guest on your property.
3. That if a weapon is carried, that the party carry only one weapon and that there not be a shell in the chamber while it is being carried.
4. That you can point to physical evidence that you hit the deer. That would be blood or hair.

So far, this kind of letter has generated good karma with my neighbors. There are some yahoos that might try to take advantage of my generosity but they are the same ones that would trespass and poach regardless of any letter. 

The point about the blood-or-hair requirement is to prevent them from using this letter as an excuse to LOOK for deer on my property that have not been shot.

Just how astronomical are the odds?

Just how astronomical are the odds of 139,000 votes that are ALL for Biden and not a single one for Trump?

Assuming that the population of voters submitting the ballots are split 50:50 Biden:Trump then the odds are about one-in-one-followed-by-four-thousand-zeros. Those are the same odds as flipping a "fair coin" 139,000 and getting the same side each time.

That number defies human comprehension and cannot be processed by normal humans. Judges are humans and trying to impress them with the number of zeros will bounce off of them.

A proposal

Make it concrete by handing each justice a "fair coin" with one side painted blue and the other side painted red. Then, tell the nine justices that all Republican challenges will be dropped if any of the nine justices flips forty "blue" sides in a row. Take as long as you want.

What are the odds of that happening?

The odds of flipping forty-blue-in-a-row is about one in a trillion.* At one flip a second, nine justices would make a trillion flips in 3500 years if they did not sleep, take off weekends or stop to eat or go to the can.

Forty-in-a-row is a HUGE amount less than 139,000-in-a-row.

*Ten-in-a-row is 1:1024. Twenty-in-a-row is 1:1,048,576. Thirty-in-a-row is 1:1,073,741,824

Blackhawk Serpa Holster: Red-headed step-child of holsters

 

The Blackhawk (manufacture) Serpa (model name) holster is the red-headed step-child of the holster world.

Without going into excruciating detail, two issues have been identified with this holster.

One issue is that if you don't have sufficient repetitions, there is the possibility that your trigger finger might drop into the trigger-guard and discharge the firearm when drawing it under stress. I consider that a training and lack-of-proper-repetitions issue.

The other issue is (possibly) design or assembly related. It involves the holster locking-up and not allowing the user to pull the firearm from the holster.

Yesterday, I had an opportunity to get a close look at a Serpa holster and the firearm it was carrying.

I was wrong

My initial assumption that I would see a roll-pin pressed in as the pivot for the retention feature.

I was wrong. It was a solid pin. So much for assuming the groove on a roll-pin was the issue.

The only other moving part...

The only other moving part is an injection molded detail that is intended to "snug up" the firearm in the holster and eliminated rattling and the relative motion that can scuff off blueing.

That piece is far more interesting.

For one thing, the anti-rattle feature is retained by a single screw and can be installed/misinstalled by flipping it over. There is no inherent "error-proofing" in the design.

If installed in the direction shown in the illustration shown above, there are two features that can interact with the grooves on the bottom rail typical of most, modern semi-automatic handguns.

While the features might not interact EVERY time, the polymer used for the anti-rattle is flexible and clearly not glass or mineral reinforced. Given the nature of polymers, the surface contour can creep and conform to the sharp steps at the fronts of the grooves, effectively locking the handgun in place.

Another failure mode might occur in cold weather. The end of the anti-rattle feature could break due to glass-transition issues and the blunt, broken end could lock into the grooves.

Finally, if the anti-rattle piece is a nylon material, it can become brittle under very low humidity as experienced in deserts or in houses in cold climates when heated.

Great Big Giant Disclaimer

You are on your own if you modify an engineered product, especially if it relates to items that can kill you or bystanders.

That said, if I carried a defensive handgun in a Serpa holster I would strongly consider removing the anti-rattle feature. I cannot definitively say the anti-rattle feature is the culprit because I haven't had a chance to examine "failures" in the field. But as Asimov once wrote, "In an infinite universe, the improbable becomes inevitable."

This is a case of packing your own parachute. 

Comments will be appreciated.

Bonus picture: What the anti-rattle feature looks like when flipped over. This is when the part fracturing could come into play.

Early results

Early results based on proprietary, CNN expert-analysis indicates that Joe Biden is ahead of Donald Trump by unbeatable leads in every....

I voted

 

Voters were parking on the west side of M-99

Big turn-out so far. My tiny precinct had 90 voters by 9:00AM. The other precinct in my township has more voters.

The line to get into the fire station where the polling is held was only ten voters long while the other precinct's line had fifty voters.

Everybody was civil. I chatted with the gentleman standing in line in front of me. It was a pleasant way to pass the time waiting for my turn to vote.

He was curious about how much Covid-19 would change social behaviors in the long-term. Will people stop shaking hands or will it actually mean something more than it did pre-Covid...i.e., will it be a sign of mutual trust and a tangible sign of a willingness to share risk?

I saw this car while driving home. What a ride! I love the gritty, industrial-looking background.

If you are looking for some serious Detroit iron to drive, it is probably for sale. It is in front of the onion-sorting barns on Bunker Road.

Belladonna update

She informed me that businesses along the M-43 business corridor are boarding up their windows in preparation for possible "festivities".

Are states with late counting "irrelevant"?

One scenario for states that allow ballots received long after Nov 3 is that their votes become irrelevant.

At one time, Michigan proposed moving its primary to before Super-Tuesday. The thinking was that the major decisions had already been made by the time Michigan had its primary. Why incur the expense if it does not materially impact the outcome?

The major parties said "Have it any time you want, but it won't count at OUR convention"

If the contest has already decided before Pennsylvania and North Carolina count all of their ballots, then their results will be an enormous anti-climax.

If the ballots in Pennsylvania and North Carolina flip the Electoral College decision, the two states will be embroiled in recounts and other expensive imbroglios.

Not a good position to be in.