Here's a write-up I did for the /r/guns community over at Reddit. I go pretty in-depth into my entire experience with the gun thus far. Some vulgarity present.
http://www.reddit.com/r/guns/comments/qmjza/range_report_cz_p01/Edit: PG version below.
After having the pistol in my possession for about a month, I finally got a chance to shoot it last night. I just finished cleaning it and thought I'd write something up. I know people love pictures, so I'll start with them.
http://i.imgur.com/iUdCQ.jpghttp://i.imgur.com/0kRAw.jpghttp://i.imgur.com/Fn26r.jpghttp://i.imgur.com/HdTZM.jpghttp://i.imgur.com/JayAh.jpgI'm a tinkerer at heart, and love to personalize things that I own. While I haven't had a chance to shoot until just last night, I've had plenty of bonding time with my pistol. After doing some googling, I came upon the unofficial [CZ forums](
www.czfirearms.us), where there is a wealth of information on everything CZ. Sure enough, I found myself learning how to disassemble my gun down to its [most basic parts.](
http://i.imgur.com/64FBj.jpg)
**Here's what I did:**
1) Polished all internal contact surfaces with 3M 1 micron - 30 micron polishing paper. 30 microns equates to 400 grit sandpaper, so 1 micron is some pretty fine stuff. There were plenty of tutorials on the forums that showed which parts to polish to mirror finishes.
2) Replaced the stock hammer spring (19 lb) with a 11.5 lb
Result: Greatly lightened up the DA action pull.
3) Replaced the !@##ty stock trigger roll pin with a floating steel pin
Result: Stock trigger pin is a soft roll pin that is pretty much kaput after removing it once. The hardened steel pin makes it much easier to remove the trigger pin in the future; it's held in place by the trigger spring.
4) Replaced stock trigger return spring with a lightened one.
Result: Reduces SA trigger pull by approximately 8 oz.
5) Replaced stock firing pin retaining pin with one made of hardened steel.
Result: Allows me to dry fire without fear of damaging the pin. Probably not too necessary, since I use snap-caps anyway, but I figured I might as well.
6) Added grip tape to the frame.
Result: Grip.
All these parts, minus the grip tape, were obtained from David Milam of cajungunworks.com. He's very professional and helpful and would never hesitate to endorse his business and his products.
**Did anything go wrong? Yeah, it did.**
First off, the decocker/sear assembly is an absolute pain to put back together. It would have probably been impossible without a slave pin to put the entire mechanism together outside of the gun. Fortunately, cajungunworks sells such a slave pin. It is worth its weight in gold. (I promise I'm not shilling!)
After disassembling the gun completely and polishing all the important areas, I went to reassemble everything. Putting the decocker/sear back together took approximately 45 minutes the first time. I knew where everything was supposed to go, but I soon learned that settings springs in place is a !@## ton harder than it looks. After putting it back together, I sighed with relief, only to notice that my firing pin lever was looking awfully limp. While disassembling, the lever spring went flying somewhere in my room, never to be seen again. David was kind enough to send me one at no charge.
The lesson? Disassemble it in a plastic bag.
**The Range**
I went to [Wade's Eastside](
http://www.wadesguns.com/) over in Bellevue, Washington and put 150 rounds of [Freedom Munitions bulk ammo](
http://www.freedommunitions.com/9mm-115-gr-RN-B-p/b9r115r.htm) down range. The reloaded brass of the "Blaster" series looks ugly, but it's cheap and seemed to shoot fine.
It's known that if you lighten up the hammer spring too much, the firing pin does not have enough force to set off the primer. I only had one FTF the entire time. I pulled the trigger: *click*, pulled it again, *click*, pulled it once more, *boom*. Because of this, I'm led to believe that it was because of a faulty cartridge and not the lightened spring.
The gun was a blast to shoot. As I've said before, it just feels right in my hand. All in all, I've learned a ton about how my gun works and can pretty much reassemble it in my sleep. It's been a great learning experience and has been a ton of fun. I'm looking forward to building my first AR.
Anyways, here're the last 6 rounds of the night on a fresh target. Keep in mind that this is only my third time shooting and I've only had limited dry firing practice
)
Edit: Here's the target I shot at. The groups are in numerical order. They seemed to get better as I shot more. 7 yards.
)
Also, I played around a bit more with grip tape last night. I ended up only putting a small 1" long strip on the back. I found it hard to get any longer of a length flush with the surface of the backstrap.
