I recently acquired a Sig P6 built circa 1979, which was well before they redesigned the ramps to feed hollow points.
Of course, I didn't know there was any HP feeding issue with these guns until I took it to the range: At least one round per mag FTF'd. No surprise for the HPs, but I also had a couple of round nose cartridges do the same thing.
All the FTF rounds went straight out of the mag and hit the bottom edge of the feed ramp pretty much dead-center, and stuck there. This happened with all five of my mags, three of which are new (ProMag) and two Sig factory mags.
My local gunsmith polished up the ramps and the chamber before he realized how exactly the rounds were hanging up, then he tuned the feed lips of two of the mags to tip the noses of the rounds up a bit.
I have yet to get to the range, but after manually cycling the slide a couple hundred times with four different types of HP ammo, the tuned mags haven't had any failures.
But here's what's bugging me: I'm having a hard time accepting that all five mags need tuning. And since the same thing happened a few times with round nose bullets, I'm thinking maybe the mag latch in the frame just isn't keeping the mags high enough.
All five mags when latched into the frame, can be easily pushed up at least 1/16 of an inch. I know there's always going to be some wiggle room with mags but pushing up on a loaded "un-tuned" mag puts the noses of the bullets up higher than a tuned mag that's hanging on the latch.
The mag latch doesn't look worn. Maybe it's just out of spec?
I hope to test my theory by simply pushing up on the mags with my support hand when I get to the range (this weekend if the snow stops falling soon), but if that works... Is there some way that I could build up the top of the mag latch as a more permanent fix without buying a welder?
Of course, I didn't know there was any HP feeding issue with these guns until I took it to the range: At least one round per mag FTF'd. No surprise for the HPs, but I also had a couple of round nose cartridges do the same thing.
All the FTF rounds went straight out of the mag and hit the bottom edge of the feed ramp pretty much dead-center, and stuck there. This happened with all five of my mags, three of which are new (ProMag) and two Sig factory mags.
My local gunsmith polished up the ramps and the chamber before he realized how exactly the rounds were hanging up, then he tuned the feed lips of two of the mags to tip the noses of the rounds up a bit.
I have yet to get to the range, but after manually cycling the slide a couple hundred times with four different types of HP ammo, the tuned mags haven't had any failures.
But here's what's bugging me: I'm having a hard time accepting that all five mags need tuning. And since the same thing happened a few times with round nose bullets, I'm thinking maybe the mag latch in the frame just isn't keeping the mags high enough.
All five mags when latched into the frame, can be easily pushed up at least 1/16 of an inch. I know there's always going to be some wiggle room with mags but pushing up on a loaded "un-tuned" mag puts the noses of the bullets up higher than a tuned mag that's hanging on the latch.
The mag latch doesn't look worn. Maybe it's just out of spec?
I hope to test my theory by simply pushing up on the mags with my support hand when I get to the range (this weekend if the snow stops falling soon), but if that works... Is there some way that I could build up the top of the mag latch as a more permanent fix without buying a welder?