Fire Up the Dishwasher!

On a morning where I burned the toast...of course, as a guy, I cut off the charred parts and ate the rest, although the house totally smells of immolated designer bread...I am now officially a Certified Glock Armorer, courtesy of a one-day Glock Armorer Class taught by Glock-ee Chris Edwards for a whole slew of police armorers in Ft. Collins yesterday.

I have a mallet, a Sawz-All and a certificate! Bring on the Combat Tupperware!

In truth, Alf the Wonder Beagle could probably become a Glock armorer, because there's not a heck of a lot that can go wrong with the things. The Glock is a brilliantly designed gun — thank you, Mr. Glock! — standing as a testament to the "Keep It Simple, Stupid" philosophy. The gun disassembles by removing three pins — most of the gun can be overhauled with a pin punch and a ballpoint pin — there are no carefully fitted parts that can be reassembled in one of 25 different orientations, replacement parts are interchangeable without fitting, dirt cheap and readily available.

In fact, most of what usually goes wrong with Glocks falls into one of two categories — Lube Monsters and Assault Wiith a Deadly Dremel. If you gunk a Glock up, it will stop running. Especially, if you manage to get enough gooey stuff in the firing pin channel, said firing pin will slow down and fail to make the primer go bang. The Dremel Assault is self-explanatory and the reason why Dremels shoudl be strictly controlled by federal law...in fact, you should take mine away from me right now, before I finish grinding up the trigger on my ancient S&W revolver that's presently on my bench.

Besides, Chris Edwards — you've seen him on several SHOOTINGGALLERYS — is always entertaining. After 15 years with the company, he could probably gnaw a Glock frame out of a block of virgin (and yummy) polymer. He can also shoot a Glock amazingly well...much better than I can, in fact. Years ago, Chris told me the secret of shooting Glocks well was shooting Glocks to the exclusion of other pistoles, mostly, and learning to ride that long Glock trigger out to reset and no more. The first point is a function of the Glock grip angle...for dedicated 1911 shooters, the grip angle makes the Glock point high when the shooter changes guns.

Of course, the reverse is also true...take a guy like Dave Sevigny, Glock's world champion competition shooter, who has shot Glocks his entire shooting life, and other grips seem weird. BTW, if you get a chance, jump on a class from Dave. Like my buddy (and COWBOYS' host) Tequila, Dave is self-taught. Years ago, he bought a Glock for self-defense, then decided he needed to learn to shoot it. So he went out to a gravel pit in the Northeast and taught himself the Glockenspeil. He decided to shoot a local IDPA match to keep his skills sharp, and the rest is history.

I have a huge amout of respect for Dave, because as he rose in competition, he continued to shoot the same guns from the same plastic holster — one of Dave Elderton's Kytac creations. These days, it's pretty much acknowledged unless he's having a very bad day, Dave is unbeatable with a Production/out-of-the-box gun. Besides, he's a nice guy.

The one thing I learned in the class that broke my heart was that Glocks are NOT dishwasher-safe...maybe. Chris tells the story of a small department armorer who ran his departments' eight disassembled Glocks through his wife's dishwasher regularly for three years before they stopped working. Three years! And they only stopped working because the dishwasher powsder detergent he used clogged uo the firing pin channels. HMMMMM, said the police armorer sitting next to me...can you spell "liquid detergent?"

BTW, the Glock armorers' class is hopefully the first of what I think of as a year of "in-service training." I know 1911s and S&W revolvers, but I want to bring myself up to speed on the broad range of firearms out there. In my spare time...haha!