Tag Archives: modern pistols

Parvusimperator Reviews the Walther PPQ

Posted by

Spectre premiers this week. What better time to talk about Walther’s fine modern pistol, the PPQ? In general, Mr. Bond arms himself with the Walther PPK, after a long and rather famous discussion between Ian Fleming and one Geoffrey Boothroyd.1 Yes, dear readers, there was a time when .32 ACP was considered to have plenty of stopping power. But that was then. I’m not very fond of the PPK, and don’t think it has any place other than possibly in my date’s thigh holster, if she’s wearing an evening gown. For a time, the Pierce Brosnan Bond used the P99, which is a right proper double stack service pistol in 9mm Parabellum.

The P99 is an interesting looking design, and is a double action semiautomatic pistol. It’s the direct predecessor of the PPQ, as it has a very similar shape, and shares magazines. Of course, being a double action design, the trigger isn’t good, and Walther made a couple of efforts to improve this. Interestingly, it’s striker fired, but Walther gave it that familiar double action feel.

Walther has a fine history of target weapons, in addition to service pistols. I first set about trying to learn pistol marksmanship seriously in a basement range, armed with an Olympic-grade Walther CPM-1. It’s still the nicest pistol trigger I’ve had the pleasure of firing. So Walther clearly knows how to make a quality trigger. One other historical note is that Walther had one of the earliest double action service pistols in the P38.

The PPQ is based on the latest models of the P99, the P99QA. It has the same sculpted grip, the same slide design, the same giant trigger. However, the PPQ has a somewhat different striker mechanism. It is no longer double action like a P99. Unlike a Glock, which has a partially cocked striker, the PPQ features a fully cocked striker. Since you don’t have to work against the striker spring, the trigger can be made very nice. Trigger travel distance is 0.4 in (9mm, conveniently enough), and has a sharp 0.1 inch reset. This is the shortest reset of any striker fired pistol around, and it’s very easy to feel. Trigger pull is very light, and there’s no ‘wall’ that you feel in a Glock trigger. So it’s pretty close to a rolling break. You can find that break point if you’re going slow, but it’s super easy to go right past it. This is the best trigger available on a striker fired pistol. But for the pretravel, it feels very 1911-like. And that’s probably the highest compliment I can pay.

The PPQ grip curves quite a bit. This looks a little strange at first, but it fits the hand really well. Again, it’s right up there with the 1911 in feeling very right. The 1911 does this with steel, wood, a single stack of .45 American Combat Pistol rounds, and a big slice of apple pie. The PPQ has to work with a double stack of 9mm rounds and a bunch of plastic. But those curves in the plastic mean the pistol fits your hand really well. Kinda like a certain fraulein I met on a trip to Europe not too long ago…

Moving on, the PPQ uses 15 round magazines. There’s also a factory extension available for +2 capacity. Since the model I got was a PPQ M2 Navy, Walther included one regular-baseplate 15 round magazine and one magazine with extender. The Navy model also comes with a factory threaded barrel. M2 denotes a switch from the lever release in the trigger guard to a traditional button style mag release in the handguard. The mag release catch is positioned well, and is easy to depress without being so raised that you’ll hit it accidentally. Much ink has been spilled on which mag release is better. I don’t really have a preference. I will say that the button is a little more familiar to me than the lever, and it’s more popular by far in America. Since it was in the case ready to go at the shop today, I didn’t agonize too much over the mag catch.

In my reviews of my Glock 17 and my M&P40, I mentioned market share. No getting around it, Walther doesn’t do a ton of marketing here in America, and as a result they don’t have a ton of market penetration. That said, the PPQ is popular enough that several of my favorite holster makers, including Dale Fricke, make holsters for it, and both 10-8 and Dawson make sights for it. Trijicon also makes their fine HDs for it. And my slide miller of choice, Mark Housel (L&M precision) will mill the slide for an RMR. So I should be set with whatever I need, though I don’t quite have the ubiquitous options that I had with Glock. I also have to suck up higher mag prices. Sizewise, the PPQ is about the same size as a Glock 19. Big enough to be very shootable, small enough to conceal easily. There’s also a long barrel version available.

How does she shoot? Great. Really, really great. That fabulous trigger really makes precise shots or fast shots easy. It makes up for less than perfect trigger control on the part of the user. My one objection is that the texture could be more aggressive, which seems to result in a flippy 9mm. Nothing that bearing down on the grip won’t cure, though. This is also a very early review. I may come to prefer the less texture; some professional shooters like a less grippy gun so they can correct a non-ideal grip from draw as they bring the gun up.

Bond should carry this gun, and not some lame pocket pistol. It’s that good. Accurate, fits nicely in the hand, conceals easily. It really works with the shooter to get great results.

1.) Fleming originally thought fit to equip Bond with a Beretta 418, a .25 ACP pocket pistol that you probably never heard of. It is a phenomenally wussy handgun, and I shall waste no more characters discussing it.

Pistol Project Plan: Rock the Glock

Posted by

I’m a Glock guy. The first handgun I ever got, after getting a stupidly-hard to get NY State pistol permit was a Glock 19 Gen4. And I love it. Since then, I’ve gotten a bunch of other Glocks. I’ve got a Glock 17 Gen4, and I wanted to make this my latest project gun. First, let’s talk a little Glock history, and why I like them so much.

Gaston Glock designed his pistol to meet the needs of the Austrian Army for a new service handgun to replace the Walther P38. Gaston brought in a number of pistol experts to help him with his design; he was not a pistolsmith by training but brought extensive experience in advanced synthetic polymers, which would go into the construction of the pistol. The fancy glass-reinforced plastics used in the frame of the Glock pistol helped drive costs down, and since there are only four small points of metal-on-metal contact between the slide and the frame, Glocks don’t require much lube. Gaston also introduced ferritic nitrocarburizing as an anticorrosion treatment. The result was a pistol whose reliability and durability would become legend. The Glock 17 (so called because it was the seventeenth design), beat out the HK P7M8, HK P7M13, HK P9S, SiG-Sauer P220, SiG-Sauer P226, Beretta 92SF-B, an updated FN Hi-Power, and the Steyr GB. The Glock 17 was also accepted into Norwegian and Sweedish service shortly after winning the Austrian competition. The US DoD was even interested in trialing the pistol in their competition, but the DoD requirements would have meant retooling production in a short timeframe, so Glock declined.

So that’s why everyone loves the Berreta 92, right? The US Army called that gun the M9, and it became the most popular 9mm semiautomatic in Ameri–oh, wait. No, it didn’t. How did Glock do it? Once they had a whole bunch of NATO member military contracts in the bag, they went after the American law enforcement market with gusto. And their timing couldn’t be better. See, it was the 80s, and it was starting to dawn on the police forces of America that six rounds of .38 in a wheelgun and another six in a speedloader in your pocket wasn’t quite enough firepower1. Officers were looking to trade up, and Glock was ready with a super reliable pistol that was tolerant of neglect and could be made way cheaper than the steel-framed competition. Plus, Glock (possibly to overcome the language barrier or something), set up a pretty savvy marketing department, sending plenty of friendly reps to departments. Many of their reps were former police officers, and they brought tons of new pistols to try out on the range, along with plenty of swag. They offered low cost guns and top dollar for trades to appease the accountants, and were easy to get in touch with. So they captured market share in a big way. Currently, something like 65% of US Law Enforcement uses Glocks, including the FBI. Glock pistols are also super popular among the competitive shooter crowd, being the most popular brand by far at USPSA matches.

Glock currently makes pistols in about any reasonable pistol caliber you could want, and a couple oddball ones like 10mm Auto, and they’ve updated their pistols to bring new features to the consumer. Their current models are the Gen4 line, and it brings a bunch of notable improvements. Let’s take a look, and I’ll compare the Glocks to my M&Ps where appropriate. The Gen4s have backstraps now, with two different sizes (medium and large, “small” is accomplished sans backstrap), and they also have two backstraps with a beavertail, in case you get slidebite. Or you may just find those suit you better. Some people (including Fishbreath) aren’t really a fan of Glock’s grip angle. I personally don’t really care, though I’ve actually found myself getting back on target faster with Glocks when compared to other polymer framed handguns, so maybe it helps me keep muscle tension or something. In any case, you can change it now. The backstraps aren’t quite as good at changing the gun size as the M&P ones are, as they do nothing about the girth of the grip. This is not a problem for me, as I have large hands (I use the ‘large’ size backstraps). Others may find this an issue.

The Gen4 Glocks also have introduced a new texture on the grip. It’s much more aggressive than the old texture, or than the texture on the M&P grip, and I find this a significant win for the Glock. I like grippy, aggressively textured guns, and Glocks currently oblige me. If I wanted, I could have the grip stippled, but the current Gen4 texture serves me fine. It’s also not so aggressive that it will tear your hands apart after a long day of shooting.

Glock sights are, frankly, awful. They’re the white-dot-in-a-U design, which I guess is popular in Europe. I do not like them. They are cheap, and are bad enough to make some kind of sight replacement almost a requirement. This might almost be a service to the consumer, as there are many far better sight options out there. In this case, I’ll be getting my slide milled for an RMR, because red dots are awesome, and my M&P proved how good the setup was. If I wanted something else, I could get it for a Glock.

Ubiquity is something that’s great about Glocks. Anything you want for them, you can get for them. Holsters and sights and other accessories come to Glock first, because they’re so common. And Glock magazines, being made of metal-lined plastic, are stupid cheap, and easy to find on sale. More mags is always good, because magazines are a disposable commodity item. Mags wear out. Stock up.

While Glock beats out the M&P in terms of ubiquity, the M&P still takes second place, and is by no means bad (Seriously, compare prices of M&P40 mags with those for, say, a PX4). However, the Glock soundly beats the M&P on the stock trigger front. The M&P stock trigger, as I’ve mentioned, is a mushy mess. The Glock trigger is perfectly reasonable, especially considering that it has to be safe. There’s takeup, which is decently smooth. There’s some mush here, but it’s not altogether bad. Break is somewhere between the crisp and rolling variety. Finally, the reset is crisp and offers both audible and tactile feedback. The Glock trigger is not as good as a 1911 trigger, full stop. On the other hand, it doesn’t have a manual safety like a 1911, and it’s a lot cheaper than any actually worthwhile 1911. Technically, it’s a very light double action only trigger, that’s about two-thirds of the way precocked. Some trigger weight and resistance comes from the fact that you’re still doing a little bit of the cocking work on the striker with your trigger pull. Despite the downsides, the Glock trigger is firmly in the ‘good enough’ camp, and is more or less the standard for comparison.

There are a ton of fancy light competition triggers out there, as well as some parts to make the pull heavier if you want it to feel like an old school double-action only revolver (like the NYPD). I don’t much like making my triggers worse, and I shoot the stock one fine. Since I like to carry most of my Glocks, I won’t switch to a lighter trigger. The stock one is safe. I may try one of the fancy competition kits on my Glock 34 though.

On the M&P, I ended up swapping out the mag release for an extended one. The Glock Gen4 comes with an extended magazine release which is about perfect. It’s long enough to be easily pushed without switching your grip, but short enough that you won’t accidentally trip it when it’s in the holster. It’s a good compromise between a giant competition button and the tiny things that usually come on handguns. I see no reason to change it.

The Glock slide stop is a touch smaller than the one on the M&P. It is not ambidextrous, which isn’t as nice. Not shooting lefty most of the time, I don’t care. And I can always trip it with my trigger finger or slingshot the slide if I’m shooting weak-side. I will say that despite the minor-looking change on the factory “extended” slide stop that comes on the Glock 34 (really, it’s more of a reshaping than anything else), it’s actually a big improvement over the stock one for manipulations. I’ll probably get that upgrade for the rest of my Glocks.

Okay, I know you’re dying to know: which do I like more? That’s tough, but I think the Glock wins out overall. The stock trigger is better, even after applying the upgrade kit to the M&P. There are a lot more possible trigger upgrades for the Glocks, even though that’s not really my thing. Plus, I like the grippier frame better.

1. See: the 1980 Norco shootout and the 1986 Miami shootout, which I’ll probably do a write-up of someday.

AAR: M&P40 Project

Posted by

This is a new one for me–I’m talking about the results of a project gun rather than the planning phase. So I’ll try to give you planning bits too, but they’ll almost certainly be hindsight tinted. I’ll also make this partially a review, but that’ll be hard to do because I do love to tinker, and this is hardly a stock pistol anymore.

I picked up a Smith & Wesson M&P40 for a few reasons. I had given them a shoot over at the Gander Mountain Expo, and rather enjoyed the experience. Plus, I wanted to try something a little different from the usual “Glock 9mm” that I had tended to shoot up to that point. I debated the M&P in 9mm, but those had some issues in the not too distant past. The M&P was designed first for the .40 S&W round though, and those hadn’t had problems. Plus, I always wanted to give the .40 S&W round a try, and what better platform to do it with?

The .40 S&W round is an interesting one. It occupies an intermediate position between 9mm and .45 ACP. You get more rounds in the mag than you would with a .45, but you give up a couple to a 9mm pistol. It can still fit in a 9mm frame though, so those of you with small hands won’t gripe as much about fit. Oh, and the .40 S&W is a hot round. The .40 S&W grew out of the 1980s dissatisfaction with .38s and 9mms from the FBI. Initially, the FBI went with the 10mm auto, but this required the same sort of big frame as a .45, and was a really hot round. Female shooters and the recoil averse weren’t very happy, so the FBI had ammo makers make them a lighter loaded 10mm auto. From there, someone realized they could shorten the case somewhat and fit it in the same frame as a 9mm, and thus the .40 was born. It’s a super popular round for law enforcement. Modern ballistics being what they are, 9mm hollow points have caught up, and now (joy of joys) you can get good hollow points in all major calibers that pass the FBI gelatin tests. 9mm has a small advantage in magazine capacity, and is a bit cheaper. But there’s nothing wrong with .40; it certainly won’t get smaller when it hits something. It maintains it’s energy edge, and some have called it ‘snappy’ or ‘hard recoiling’.

When Smith & Wesson decided to challenge Glock properly in the polymer-framed striker-fired pistol market, the resurrected one of their most storied brands: M&P. The original Military and Police, also known as the Model 10, was an extremely popular service revolver for police officers and various militaries, as well as being a popular pistol in the civilian market. It’s the most popular centerfire revolver of the 20th century, with some six million being made. There are a number of things to like about the current-production M&Ps from design and user standpoints, and I also have a couple gripes.

First, the good stuff. The M&P is wonderfully comfortable in the hand. The interchangeable backstraps are the most comfortable that I have played around with1, and they do a really good job of accommodating various hand sizes. The backstraps change both length and width of the grip, which is super helpful. The backstraps are held in place by a handy pin/tool thingy that is inserted into the bottom, behind the magwell. We’ll get to this later, but it’s pretty handy to always have a gunsmith manipulation tool with your pistol. The slide stop is ambidextrous, and it’s well positioned to be far enough back to be easily reached with your strong hand thumb, but not so far back that you might be tempted to rest your thumb on it and prevent the slide from locking back on an empty mag. It’s also not so far forward that you might rest your support hand thumb on it and do the same thing. Sizewize, it’s big enough to be easy to manipulate, but small enough that you don’t hit it accidentally. It’s a really solid design. I’ve also noticed that it drops the slide automatically if I insert a full magazine with gusto. I’m not sure if this is a design feature, but I like it.

There are a whole bunch of minor things that I like too about the M&P. The slide cocking serrations are really good. They’re sort of a fish-scale design, and they’re quite grippy. I really like grippy. Plus, they look cool. Also, in the minor details that I like column is the dovetailed front sight. I much prefer front sight dovetails to the stake/screw method, especially when you put nice aftermarket sights on your pistol. Dovetails are the way to go. I also rather like the rotating takedown lever much more than the pull tabs of Glocks or HKs. It’s a really little thing, but hush, I still like it. One of the niftier little things is a small internal lever (that you can trip with that tool in the back of the grip) which is used to release the sear for disassembly so you don’t have to pull the trigger. Since plenty of accidental discharges occur on the disassembly phase from complacency, I sort of like this feature. Even though I tend to disassemble my M&Ps with a trigger press, because I’m lazy.

Safetywise, I got my M&P just like my Glocks: No external safety. Since they’re going for the law enforcement market though, Smith and Wesson is nice enough to let you choose what safeties you want. If you’re like me, and don’t like external safeties, you don’t have to get them. If you’re like Fishbreath, you can get them on your M&P, and they’re even frame mounted as God and John Moses Browning intended. If you’re mental, or an overly-paranoid police department, you can also opt for a magazine disconnect safety in addition to the external safety (or lack thereof). Fishbreath and I do agree (you’re shocked, I know) that magazine disconnects are stupid.

So the M&P feels good in the hand, and has a bunch of nifty features. What don’t I like? Well, two things. One is minor: the mag catch. Or more precisely, the bit of plastic behind the mag catch. It makes me reach a little more to get to it, and makes pressing it a little uncomfortable. It’s a really minor gripe, I know, but it bothers me. I’ve ordered up an extended mag release, and that’ll probably fix it. More troublesome is the trigger: it’s not very good. The stock trigger has a rather mushy takeup, a really hard wall to release the sear, and then a soft, weak reset. UGH. While I could send it off to a gunsmith, it’s much easier to buy an Apex trigger kit and put it in yourself. The end result is a trigger with more pretravel than a Glock, but a very respectable reset and a somewhat less obnoxiously wall-like break. The Glock trigger is still a trifle better, but that might be just because my test glock at hand has lots of rounds through it, polishing everything up inside the slow and fun way. Without the Apex kit, the M&P trigger is annoying. With it, it’s a pretty good polymer service pistol trigger. It’s nowhere near as good as my 1911, but it was a whole lot cheaper too. It does bother me that S&W can’t make their triggers suck less though, but it’s a simple fix away.

I should also point out a significant advantage of the M&P (and to an even greater extent: Glock): ubiquity. These pistols are everywhere. Finding parts, accessories, or a factory certified armorer is easy. Magazines are cheap. And new sights come to you first. Finding holsters is easy. It lets you pick what you want to experiment with, and run the gun the way you want to, rather than the way that you can find accessories to accommodate you.

So let’s go over the pistol. I’ve already mentioned that I put an Apex trigger kit in. Specifically, it’s the duty/carry kit. There’s also a competition kit available if you want a lighter trigger. Fringe benefit of installing this myself is that it really helped me get a good understanding how this pistol (and other, similar striker-fired pistols) work. It wasn’t a very hard install. I also am going to try out an extended mag release, see how that goes. I also sent the slide out for milling to install an RMR. Why RMR? Because it’s tough. It’s built right. The adjustment dials are in good places, and battery life is excellent. I had the milling done by Mark Housel of L&M precision, and he did a really great job. I also have suppressor-height Ameriglo iron sights mounted as backups. These are there in case the battery dies at a bad time, or Murphy and his law find a way to make a bother of themselves. They also help find the dot if my presentation isn’t good.

I’ve already discussed the mini red dot academically; now I’ll talk about what I’ve found. The red dot will make any issues in your draw and presentation painfully obvious. It’ll also wobble a bit, picking up on all those tiny little twitches. And, it slows you down initially, because you’ll often find yourself wondering, “where the hell did that stupid little dot go?” But after some practice, I found that it made me faster. It made me more accurate. It helps in dry fire, because it makes errors in your trigger press a lot harder to ignore and ‘cheat’ through. Oh, and if that’s not enough of an endorsement, I sent another slide to Mark to work his magic on.

1. I’ve heard HK and Walther’s newer designs are as comfortable as the M&P, if not more so, but I don’t have serious time on either, so I could not possibly comment. A PPQ of some flavor is probably the next pistol I get though, judging by all the rave reviews its trigger gets. So stay tuned.