Cleaning helped the P-09, at 100 yards, 3 min video

[Joe L]

I shot the P-09 last week at 100 yards and the gun was fine until the last 20 rounds or so out of 60.  The last 10 rounds were scattered.  I went home, borescoped the barrel, saw some uneven carbon levels in the grooves.  Gun had about 300 rounds without cleaning, but the barrel has some very shallow pitting so I wasn't sure what effect cleaning might have.  So I gave the barrel a medium cleaning effort this morning (no abrasive pellets, just brush, solvent, patches) and took it back to the range to shoot 40-50 rounds. 

https://youtu.be/CkkYR6iqtOg

Gun is fine once again!  I've never shot 4 10 ring hits in a row before, and, for the day, I had 3 five sequential shot groups of around 4 inches.  But my eyes were getting fatigued after 30 good rounds so I went home at 50.  Lesson learned, this old barrel needs a little attention more often than some of the lower round count striker pistols I have.

I'm about ready to go back to the P-10S for a few range visits next. 

Joe L

[Joe L]

I put together a short vido showing the borescope videos of the barrel before and after cleaning, and then added the first 10 shots on target 2 from Wednesday.  (Target 1 is covered in the video in the post above) 

https://youtu.be/zGoydNacGaM?si=Cpzs-C8dQQVGmN5s

I'm not sure what to conclude about the borescope results.  It looks like the carbon buildup in the grooves isn't evenly distributed around the barrel in the before cleaning video.  There is also some spalling (?) of the thin carbon layer in some of the grooves.  It looks like maybe the carbon built up enough to where the bullet would start shredding the thin layer in some of the grooves.  I don't know. 

A little solvent and brushing with some patches had removed enough of the carbon to get the grooves looking about the same all around the barrel, enough so that the underlying metal (and pits!) were visible with the borescope.  The targets after this light cleaning were about as good as I've ever seen for this pistol at 100 yards, good enough so that the group size results became limited by my eyesight and concentration and not by the gun.  When I know the gun went off with the dot high or low and the hits are high or low, the gun is good and the shooter needs work.  This started showing up in last few shots on target 2.  I shot 10 more rounds on target 2 after those in the video, and I could not get another good sequence, so I packed up and went home, confident that the gun was good again and that my limit is 30-40 shots per shooting range session before eye fatigue takes over. 

This is fun.  This is not easy.

Joe L