Well I did it.....again....Kel-Tec P11

S

strange246

New member
Well after I've been an outspoken critic of Kel-tec's I broke down and bought one again, my first experience with one was aweful (jammed every round, friends P11 broke a piece off the frame etc)
I figured maybe enough time has passed that they got the bugs worked out of them (mine was 1st year production).... so I picked one up off Gunbroker.com NIB for $225+$20 shipping, and after $10 for my dealer to do the transfer brings the total to $255.00.....did i do good pricewise? serial number is in the 118xxx range, from what i've read on this forum, that seems to make it recent production?.....I have high hopes that this one will be better than my first one, the allure of weight/size/capacity was too good not to give them a second chance....pick it up saturday, range report will be coming by monday......
 
Good luck. Be sure to clean and lube it first. Put a light coat of grease on the slide rails and the hammer/slide interface and oil elsewhere.
 
I'm betting it's a "keeper."

I also had and early-early example which was a lemon. I don't think I'd hesitate about getting a newer serial, something in the 118-119 range. Again, I'll bet you will be pleased with your current one. I'm seriously thinking about another one myself.
 
Do not dry fire it without a snap cap!
Click to expand...
Why not? KT says the same thing, but why not?

I have a P-11, and I don't dry fire it without snap caps, but my first set of them was regular Pacmayrs, and the current set is A-Zoom (made by Pacmayr, of all things), and they're much higher quality. The point is that after a few hundred times of dry firing the original Pacmayr snap caps, it was as though there was no snap cap in there at all.

The P-11 is a modern DAO pistol with the firing pin restrained by the firing pin spring. The hammer has to overcome the firing pin spring (modeled after a front suspension coil spring from a '52 Buick in strength -- okay, maybe a little weaker) in order to move the firing pin.

What bad thing is it that either you or KT thinks is going to happen from dry firing this arrangement? A primer offers FAR less resistance than overcoming the firing pin spring provides.

Color me curious.... :confused:
 
dryfiring

I've always been told "it's bad to dryfire without snap caps" whenever i ask anyone, older stuff yeah i can see that, but newer stuff nobody seems to be able to give any more reason than "it's just bad".....
 
I've been looking into CZ Model 52 pistols, and I came across something interesting about dry firing. Those pistols have cast steel firing pins. They're brittle, and will break after very little dry firing. Makarov sells machined steel replacements.

That clears up the dry firing questions for me. Cast steel is just a bit better than gray cast iron for toughness and not quite as brittle. As many know, a thin section piece of cast iron or cast steel of about what a firing pin would be can be easily snapped in two in your bare hand -- about like snapping a pencil in two. The metal is great in compression and naturally hard, seemingly ideal for a firing pin. But it's really lousy in torsion or flexion because of its brittleness. Think of glass!

Anyway, cast steel is easy to work with if intricate parts are needed and machining a decent steel alloy isn't economical or practical for the desired part.

Kel-Tec firing pins are machined from SAE 4130/4140 ordnance steel. They're machined from bar stock and hardened. That stuff is very tough. I've made thousands of parts from 4140 steel, and there's no way it will fracture unless it's hardened to Rockwell C60 or so, and then it will take a tremendous force relative to its cross section to snap it. It is NOT brittle by any stretch of the imagination. Think of an individual needle from a needle bearing!

I'm satisfied that any gun with a machined firing pin is safe to dry fire without any risk of damage.

BTW, you can't machine cast steel in the small cross sections of firing pins. There's too much radial force necessary to make a cut so the stock will just snap.
 
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