Category: All About Guns

A COLLABORATION OF GUILDS …
WITH A BIT OF ‘BADLANDS’ TOSSED IN

Brownells has, for some years, teamed up with custom gun builders of all sorts to build what they call “Dream Guns” showcasing the work possible using parts available through Brownells — along with the talents of the craftsmen. I like to think of this being something like the various craft and art guilds of the Renaissance teaming up to build a special building or piece of art. In our case, this very special custom Smith & Wesson;P C.O.R.E. 9mm by Apex is one of those dream guns. And, I felt it was so compelling — and eye-catching — as to warrant a closer look.

The second gun, a S&W Shield, is along for the ride, more as eye candy than anything else. A sort of Yang to the big M&P’s Ying. But it too showcases what might be done with some imagination, and the wizard-like team at Apex Tactical Specialties and their friends.

Because They Can

Randy Lee — founder and co-owner of Apex Tactical Specialties — was an electronic engineering student at California Polytechnic State University. To make “side” money, Randy worked on guns for friends who were moving into law enforcement.

According to Paul Erhardt, the marketing guru for Apex, “Randy remembers his gunsmith work spiraling out of control and into a full-fledged business in 2000. Through 2007 Randy worked on a variety of guns, including 1911’s, Hi Powers and GLOCK’s.”

But in reality, Randy’s now almost legendary revolver work put Apex on the map. He was one of the original users of titanium cylinders in stainless revolver frames — and the first to break the magical 5-pound mark in trigger pull weight. According to Paul Erhardt, an Apex trigger can now go as low as 3.5 pounds!

Apex rose to become one of the top revolver gunsmithing businesses around, and most smart revolver competitors made sure Apex did their work — and this work was done by Randy Lee. His experience and reputation built the foundation for Apex.

As might be expected the work load grew fast and soon Randy was faced with needing help. Approaching Scott Folk, an experienced gunsmith, Randy offered Scott a stake in the company rather than much money, since a stake in the company was pretty much all he had to offer.

In October of 2008, Scott joined Apex as co-owner, helping the small shop make the shift toward manufacturing. Folk brought a much-needed wealth of experience and industry knowledge about production work and machining. The two had an instant hard-hitting team and it lit a fire under Apex.

And, as success after success presented themselves because of the innovative, problem-solving attitude which developed as Apex grew, they adopted a new motto: “Because We Can.”

Enter The M&P

Apex flourished doing gunsmithing, but S&W’s introduction of their M&P polymer pistol soon had shooters demanding improvements in triggers and actions. And, having a reputation being problem-solvers, customers flocked to Apex crying out for help. If they could do triggers on revolvers, why not on the auto? “Well, can you?” they demanded.

Randy focused on a simple solution so they could cut down or eliminate the hassle of labor-intensive gunsmithing to manage a trigger job. The first of a soon-to-follow host of Apex custom-engineered parts was a drop-in sear, shortening over-travel and reset while ripping trigger pull from an ungainly seven pounds to a reliable but light four pounds.

Cue the crowds cheering.

But at a time when putting up the $900 to get those first parts made meant going without food or sleep, the guys tightened their bets two notches and spent the money. Symbolically leaping off the cliff, like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid did in the movie, plummeting, arms flailing into a raging river below a ragged rock face because they had nowhere else to go.

When the sear arrived (called the Fully Machined Sear), they put them for sale on-line in the late afternoon of December 23, 2009 and by 7:00 am the next day — they were sold out.

This continued, with more parts developed, listed and sold and almost suddenly — Apex was in the parts business.

Rapid Growth

Apex has continued to add parts to their line-card, with the Ultimate Striker Block (USB) introduced about seven months after the sear. Shooters snapped them up, and customers often bought the sear and the USB together, bumping-up sales. This was followed by a standard trigger weight set, well-received by concealed carry, self-defense shooters and especially by cops.

The list of custom, well-engineered parts continues to this day, enhanced by Apex’s ready-willingness to partner with others in the industry to innovate and grow the market. Today, Apex is proud to point at a growing line-up of patented parts, developed to meet the needs of shooters, usually at their customers’ urging.

Around 2011, Apex moved from their very modest 500-ft2 shop to a new 6,000-ft2 facility, buying their own CNC machine to bring manufacturing in-house. Apex reached out to big re-sellers like Brownells, Midway and others as their customer-direct business became almost too big to handle on their own.

Apex has had good luck marketing their wares, and now a long list of internet/catalog houses, distributors like RSR and retailers like AIM Surplus, Dillon Precision, Dawson Precision, Speed Shooter Specialties and G&R Tactical, as well as traditional gun-store retailers, are proud to stock Apex brand parts.

The Apex team has grown too, with new members filling slots helping with shipping, gunsmithing, tech support, sales and more. A far cry from the dream Randy Lee and Scott Folk had all those years ago.

The Collaboration

I felt it was important to set the stage, as it were here, to help understand how this dream gun came to be. The history of the company is as important as what they do, since one doesn’t survive without the other. In the case of The Dream Gun, it’s a clear case of Apex Tactical Specialties’ ability to form a team, often with outside artists/vendors, to take something to places others usually don’t dare to tread.

The magic behind this dream is a group of custom gun builders and accessory makers who worked together on another Dream Gun build for the Brownells Dream Guns Project series. Originally, our test gun was shown at the 2016 NRA show, in the Brownells booth, but we’re fortunate enough to have gotten our hands on it, and actually tested it. If ever there was a one-of-a-kind S&W C.O.R.E. you’re looking at it and we got to shoot it.

Starting with a basic C.O.R.E., Apex joined with Doug Presson of DP Custom Works, Mike Sigouin of Blown Deadline Custom and Damon Young of SSVI. These over-the-top gunsmith-artists are the brainiacs behind the edgy, gamer-based, high-performance, end-of-the-world look of the C.O.R.E.

As might be imagined, this gun is chock full of ground-breaking Apex parts. Included are the company’s patent-pending Apex Grade 5.00″ Gunsmith Fit Barrel, patented Flat-Faced Forward Set Sear and Trigger Kit — with the “Red Flatty” anodized trigger sold exclusively by Brownells — the Failure Resistant Extractor, patented Reset Assist Mechanism and Apex 10-8 Performance Polymer Base Pads.

Apex gunsmiths also fitted a Catalyst Extended Magazine Release from 21st Century Gunfighter and a slide-mounted Viper Reflex Sight from Vortex Optics. Weapon light manufacturer Inforce supplied one of their popular and Transformer-looking APL 200 lumen pistol lights.

XS Sights, justly famous on their own for their innovative sights, “imagineered” a set of high, suppressor-friendly, “Big Dot” tritium sights for this very special pistol, just for its appearance in Handgunner’s pages. It went from a “Hey, can you do sights for this?” by me at a trade show, to design, prototyping and final production in just weeks. Amazing work, and the sights are bold and fit the concept perfectly. Well done, and they are catalog items now!

Eye Candy

From what Paul Erhardt told me, the over-all look of the Dream Gun mirrors a famous game called “Borderlands” — something younger people might be more savvy about than many of us older shooters. But these video/on-line games draw a huge crowd and many followers are both gun-savvy and demand authenticity on the screen.

DP Custom Works machined the slide — this lightened it — and added side and top scales. Then, drawing mightily from a Cerakote color chart, Blown Deadline Custom opted for NRA blue (since the gun was originally shown at the NRA show), a custom mixed blue, midnight bronze, graphite black, titanium and a custom yellow, creating a finish recognizable to fans of the popular game. There is a fictional weapons manufacturer in the game — Torgue — who might have made a gun looking like this, at least in the digital wild-lands.

The distinctive look of SSVI’s 360 degree texturing, hard-edge bordering, trigger guard texturing, undercutting, as well as forward reference point texturing, really ramps the game up. It may look a bit like a “game-gun” but I can attest this M&P performs as well as it looks.

When you add it up, the customizing and upgraded operating parts turned a modest-looking, stock S&W M&P C.O.R.E. into an eye-catching crowd-pleaser worth a bit over $3,000. And to me, I think it rocks every penny of the investment.

Red-Scaled Back-Up

I wanted to balance the over-the-top looks of the Apex C.O.R.E. with something a Borderlands hero may keep stashed as a back-up. The custom S&W Shield might just be the ticket. The scale-like finish and custom parts and fitting have turned a simple Shield into a high-performing pocket rocket launcher.

Full Bore Firearms came up with the simple, yet distinctive red, six-sided scaling. It’s almost like the famous “Dazzle” cammo put on ships during the wars. It doesn’t exactly hide the ship, but it does make the eye hard to focus trying to find the outline of the ship on the horizon. Ditto for the Dazzle on the Shield. Is it a gun lying on the table or not? You decide.

Apex massaged the Shield with their Flat-Faced Action Enhancement Trigger and Duty/Carry Kit. XS sights rallied to the rescue again with a set of their XS Big Dot Night Sights and now, when you look over the slide, all you see is a huge white tritium dot resting solidly in the shallow “V” of the rear. They’re fast, sure and accurate. I used them on my duty SIG when I was a cop.

Back-up or primary carry? Either or both, I’d say. It’s handy when you’re in the Borderlands.

Shooting

The M&P takes the platform to an entirely new level. We’ve all shot polymer guns and they tend to be, well … eh. Triggers flex, the break is more like a gritty thump when it lets go finally, and the guns run and feel like something mass-produced — which they are. Those wizards who laid hands on this Dream Gun really did perform magic. Those factory-gremlins haunting many stock polymer guns have been laid to rest, and everything which wasn’t a custom gun before — is now pretty much gone.

The result is a crisp trigger, updated ergonomics, fast slide operation, more accuracy, better “iron” sights, lights, a bullet-proof red-dot and looks to draw the eye regardless of your attempts to look away. It’s like those gun-camera images you see where the crosshairs in the gun sights sort of wander around then lock onto the target — “Dit, Dit, Dit, Dit … Ping.” That’s what your eyes do when they spot this gun. Ping — target lock. Followed by the immediate need to have one of your own.

The Dream Gun shot like, well … a dream, if you’ll forgive me. The Big Dot front lined up beautifully with the red dot, the trigger was crisp, reset with a soft click and the grip texture/profile was spot-on for me. I think it will be for anyone. All the cookie-cutter feelings of a production poly gun instantly disappear. It offers the sort of pleasure a genuine custom 1911 offers. Not only satisfaction of ownership, but actual increases in real-world performance — while looking good doing it.

I won’t bore you with group sizes and such. It fed whatever we fed it, and from a wrist-rest at 25 yards it shot boringly consistent 1.5″ groups, a bit smaller or bigger now and again, thanks to the wonderful trigger, but I honestly don’t think I shot up to the level the gun can shoot. But who really cares? It shoots well enough to accomplish any job you’d ever ask of it, from competition to defense and everything in-between. And there’s the style, of course, too.

The Shield was interesting. I’ve fired many stock Shields (this one is a 9mm too) and I’ll be the first to say the triggers usually are in need of help. The Apex action kit made it sharp, with a clean reset. It’s an eminently useable trigger and makes the small gun much easier to shoot accurately. It also ran fine, which sometimes doesn’t happen after custom work.

Should You?

I think with the Apex brand being well-founded, roots deeply set in high-performance parts, customer service and service to the industry well-known, a partnership with them to help you create your own Dream Gun would be fun, and the result sure to please.

Also, Apex has announced a line of parts they’re calling their “Thin Blue Line” series. They will donate 25 percent of each sale of these parts to Concerns of Police Survivors (C.O.P.S.), benefitting the families of officers killed in the line of duty. This is community involvement, and care, and deserves to be supported. So don’t just dream on. Make your dream happen.

*Last week I was talking to my old friend Andy Stanford on the phone.  For those of you new to the shooting game, Andy was a pioneering instructor in the 1990s and 2000s.  He focused a lot of his classes on handgun skills and operating in a low light environment.

Back in the days before the internet was popular, Andy was well known in the field because he wrote books about subjects that most of us were trying to master.  I still have the original first edition copies of Andy’s books from the now-defunct Paladin Press.

Andy’s most notable book was Fight at Night, the first book ever written about low light operations.  His book Surgical Speed Shooting was also quite innovative for the time.

In our conversation, I mentioned that I was planning on attending an upcoming private training class taught by Larry Mudgett.  Larry spent 35 years with LAPD,  During his tenure there, he radically improved the police department’s (and the SWAT Team’s) firearms training.

He, somewhat like Andy, did the majority of his fine work in the days before YouTube, Instagram, and Facebook.  That means most Gun Culture 2.0 folks have no idea those guys even exist.

I’ve always found Andy to be both superbly intelligent and intellectually curious.  He’s a bit of a contradiction in the knuckle-dragging world of atavistic firearms instructors.  If you don’t know anything about him, I think this short article Andy Stanford: Former shooting instructor hits the high notes in the Ridgecrest, California Daily Independent characterizes a lot of his personality.

In our phone conversation, Andy told me about one of his friends whose accomplishments at Bakersfield, California PD rivaled those of Mr. Mudgett.  In fact, Andy’s friend was once Larry Mudgett’s instructor.  Unfortunately, this man, Mike Waidelich, passed away a few years ago.

I did some research on him and found that he and I would probably have gotten along quite well.  He was a student and friend of Jeff Cooper, serving as Range Master at Gunsite Academy.

In one of Cooper’s monthly Commentaries from 1995, he mentioned Mike in the following entry.

“Family member and Orange range master Mike Waidelich has now become a firm advocate of the Glock pistol. This has puzzled me because I consider that trigger action is the most significant single element in the precision efficiency of any firearm, and the trigger on the Glock is customarily so bad as to be practically unworkable. But Mike does not agree. He explained to me that pistol engagements within the law enforcement establishment customarily occur at such short range that precise bullet placement is not important. He maintains that he can teach anybody to center a human adversary with the Glock trigger at any reasonable range – say 10 meters or less. The other points that recommend the Glock to the police establishment are low cost and readily available modular parts. The Glock people will furnish you with spare parts immediately, where most other manufacturers hem and haw. These points are important. They are not enough to turn me into a Glockenspieler; but then, I am not a police range master.”

An appreciation for Glocks in the Gunsite world back in 1995 was considered heresy.  I decided I liked Mike’s style.  I liked it even more when I read his letter to the editor published by The Bakersfield Californian titled Don’t leave home without one back in 2012.

“In response to the May 2 letter “Consequences of NRA’s assault on gun laws”: I was a police officer for 30 years. I was assaulted several times during that time and had contact with many assault victims. All manner of weapons, knives, clubs, guns, and a bunch of other things were used.

I have been retired for about 14 years now and I still never leave the house without a gun. When you can assure me that I will never be attacked by anyone, armed or otherwise, I’ll leave my gun at home. Until then, you should hope that I, or someone like me, is around if you are ever the victim of an assault.

I hate violence. I hate it so much that I am willing to kill if necessary, to keep anyone from using it against me.”
 
Mike Waidelich

I think if modern day officers shot the same 10-round course Mike developed twice a month, our police hit rates would change in a dramatically favorable manner.  We’ve known how to solve the problem of cops who can’t shoot for almost 50  years now.  The problem is that most modern police firearms instructors don’t take enough interest in their craft to study the methods used by past innovators.

I hope Andy’s article provides you all with a little perspective and historical context that you might not have otherwise been exposed to.  Enjoy.  Thanks to Andy for allowing me to reprint his work.

-Greg

R.I.P. Mike Waidelich

Requiem for an Unsung Hero

Lyle Wyatt just called me with “bad tidings”:  Mike Waidelich died today.  I first met Mike in 1977 through the South West Pistol League, where he had won the B-class Championship the year before. The last time I saw him was probably in the early 1990’s at the Soldier of Fortune 3-gun Match, where Waidelich was a longtime staff member.  He had Hollywood good looks, and Lyle confirms my impression that Mike was a genuinely nice guy.

Mike was born in 1942, and served in the U.S. Army Special Forces (he fought in the Dominican Republic in ’65, if I recall correctly).  One of the first Gunsite instructors, Mike taught during the API 250 class attended by LAPD SWAT icons Larry Mudgett and John Helms.  But his biggest claim to fame was the too-little-known story of his success as the Bakersfield P.D. Rangemaster.  By some miracle, I spoke with him several times in the last month or so, and got the details.

Mike joined the BPD in 1967 when it was an agency of 50-ish sworn personnel (now several hundred).  At that time patrol cops carried .38 revolvers in clamshell holsters.  A year or so later they had eight on-duty shootings with zero police bullets hitting the suspects.  The Chief asked Mike if he could solve this problem.  Mike said “yes” but only if he could do it his way.  A couple of hours explaining the particulars of “his way” and the job was his, 12 years total.

Pretty quickly the switch was made to 9mm Smith and Wesson Model 59 auto pistols, and later, in the 1980s, to the 1911A1 Colt 45’s that Mike initially recommended (in Milt Sparks leather no less).  Then, approximately ten years after that, the department switched again, to Glocks, first in .40 S&W, now 9mm.  But the hardware is not generally the most important factor in a gunfight.  It’s usually “the nut behind the bolt,” and that is where Mike made his bones.

In-service transition training was five days long.  So was academy firearms training for recruits.  Paul Trent, Mike’s friend and protege, relates: “When I went to the Gunsite 250 course in 1980, I got an Expert ticket.  I realized Mike had taught my 1976 academy class virtually the same material, plus some additional tactics.”  Trent attended the BPD academy a year before Waidelich actually met Jeff Cooper, and prevailed in an on-duty gunfight his first day on the job.

The standard BPD course of fire (with Mike’s rationale) was as follows, all from the holster:

2 rounds in 1.5 seconds at 10 feet (“No one should be closer than that.”)

2 rounds in 2.0 seconds at 20 feet (“The length of a car.”)

2 reload 2 in 6.0 seconds (8.0 for revolvers) at 30 feet (“From the curb to the front door.”)

2 rounds in 3.5 seconds at 60 feet (“From the opposite curb to the front door.”)

Mike told me the 10-point scoring zone on the silhouette target was, as best he could recall, a 7-inch circle, with the next zone (9 points) measuring 9×13 inches.  A hit anywhere else on the silhouette scored 6 points. Departmental competitions were held as additional motivation for skills development. As for the rest of the system, I’ll let his words speak for themselves (from an 11 March 2021 email):

“I forgot to mention the somewhat unique method for scoring the basic drills.  The time was flexible in that there were penalties for overtime.  The penalties were 1 point per quarter second over the time allowed for the string.  So, if you fired 2 in 1.5 seconds at 10 feet, you got zero penalties.  At 1.6 seconds you lost 1 point.  At 1.8 you lost 2 points, etc.  I had shooters all over the place. 

One sergeant never made the time but never missed the 10 ring and his times were not long enough to disqualify him.  Others always made the time, but were all over the target.  It was quite interesting to get them to balance the speed and accuracy appropriate for their abilities and I think it gave them a proper mind set for actual combat. 

Of course shot timers didn’t come along until 1982 so initially the timing was done to tenths of a second with a stop watch.  The course was administered with 6 shooters on the line and the RM would walk down the line and each shooter would shoot individually.  A run through all 4 stages for 6 shooters took less than 10 minutes so the first half hour of a 2-hour training session was basic drills, followed by additional drills covering and teaching specific skills and techniques.     

How good were BPD officers?  85% hits when the national average was 15%.  (Lyle says this number would be higher but for one outlier shooting in which an officer missed with his entire first magazine.)  Anyone who has studied the matter knows how significant this is.  Most cops can’t shoot well, and the few who can are usually self-motivated enthusiasts.  Not one officer was killed in a gunfight when Mike was BPD rangemaster.    A few anecdotes flesh out the tale:

The new regional FBI agents based in Bakersfield usually shot the BPD department qual for familiarization.  Mike’s course of fire quickly humbled the mostly cocky G-men.  (The Bureau actually used some of Mike’s written documentation as source material for their own efforts.)

Once, a visiting firearms instructor expressed skepticism when Mike described the BPD standards:

“You mean to tell me EVERY officer in your department passes this course?”

“Everyone from the Chief on down.”

“I’ll believe it when I see it!” 

Mike got on the radio. “Dispatch, please send two officers to the range.”  Shortly, two random BPD cops arrived, and both shot better than 90% scores, cold.  “I can call two more but the results will be the same.”

In 2016 — long after Waidelich retired — Kern County law enforcement killed more people in the line of duty than any other county in the country, many much more populous.  (Bakersfield is in west Kern County.)  I believe this statistic is the result of three factors:

1) a relatively conservative political district where cops don’t automatically get fired for using their weapons,

2) a target rich environment full of gang bangers and oilfield roughnecks, and

3) the lasting influence of Mike Waidelich’s cutting-edge training.

That’s my story and I’m stickin’ to it.