Polymer 80 Pro Series - Ejection & Extraction Guide

Full Video Transcript:

- All right, now it's time to settle our ejection issues, get us all squared away, get the casing out, get it extracted, and have a beautifully functioning firearm. What I'm gonna do really quick is cover some of the terminology that you're gonna hear me use in this video. I'm gonna be talking about ejectors. Now understand that this is the housing, right, this is the trigger housing. And when I'm talking about ejectors, I'm talking about this piece right here, looks like this. I'm gonna be talking about three different types of ejectors. I'm gonna be referring to a 336 ejector, which is what comes in your OEM parts kit. I'm gonna be talking about a 30274 ejector, which is mid to late Gen Fours. I'm also going to be talking about 47021 ejectors. This I'm referring to as the Gen Five 19X ejector, 'kay? So those are ejectors. Then I'm gonna be talking about some extractors. And when I'm talking about extractors, you're gonna hear me use the word MIM when I'm talking about an OEM extractor that comes in your OEM kit. Now MIM, M-I-M, is Metal Injection Molding. And basically what that means is they take a whole bunch of metal powder, they mix it into a feedstock, and they come out with a new piece that is infused, and it's called Metal Injection Molding. When I'm talking about MIM, we're talking about the extractor. I'm also gonna be talking about spring loaded bearings and I'm gonna be using a term like LCI and non-LCI. When I say LCI, I'm referring to a Loaded Chamber Indicator bearing. This is what comes in your OEM parts kit. When I say non-LCI, I mean a non Loaded Chamber Indicator bearing. This does not come in your OEM parts kit. I'm also gonna be talking about Apex Glock Failure Resistant Extractors, 'kay? And I'm gonna be talking about their springs, as well. So let's start to understand ejection and how we got here and why it's such a problem here in the Polymer80 community. I'm specifically again talking about nine millimeter and 40 cal. That's the family I'm talking about. We're gonna solve 90% of the problems right here, right up front, with ejection and extractor changes from an LCI system to a non-LCI system. And then the last 10% I'm gonna cover at the end for all of the other calibers to kind of diagnose, because chasing an extraction issue, you know, most people chase symptoms and I'm gonna help you methodically get to the root cause of your problem. So you know, brief history in Glock. Glock comes out in the early '80s, completely revolutionizes the firearm industry. I mean really, just makes a weapon that is just completely reliable and dependable and changes the face of what we know about the pistol market. In the late '80s, they made some changes to the aesthetics of the weapon. Again in the mid '90s, they made some more aesthetic changes. But they never recognized it as Gen One, Two, and Three. That was really us in the community. Every time they made a little change, we called it a different generation. But I want you to understand that Glock never really recognized that until they came out with the Gen Four and they actually started to change parts of the weapon, okay? And that's why they stamped the slides on Gen Four with Gen Four. But before then, they weren't really recognizing the different generations of Glock. That was really us in the community defining it for them. So Gen Four's really the first time that they're gonna begin to actually play with parts and swapping out parts and trying different things. As we get to the end of Gen Three and the beginning of Gen Four, Glock begins to suffer ejection issues at a very massive scale, extraction issues on a major scale. And you know, I want you to understand that while I'm gonna be tough on Glock, I'm not talking about Glock the firearm, I'm talking about Glock the corporation. And there is a difference between the two, 'kay? The firearm is fantastic. The corporation really doesn't take accountability. When I look at a company, I always say a company is judged by how well they perform when they run into an issue. And the reality is is that when Glock first runs into this issue in late Gen Three production, early Gen Four, they not only become unaccountable to their actions. They go a step further and blame the consumer, making it even worse. And to this day, they still have not taken accountability for what they've done. They know exactly what they're doing, they know exactly what the problem is. And they refuse to take accountability for it and fix it. All right, so with that said, late Gen Three, early Gen Four, well Gen Four rolls out and it rolls out to a complete nightmare for Glock, 'kay? It's a disaster. I'm talking nine millimeter 40 cal here, 'kay? Nine millimeter 40 cal is a complete disaster for Glock when they roll it out. Users are talking about brass to the face issues. They're talking about lots of stove piping. And Glock comes back with well, it's you, it's the user. You're limp wristing it, it's your fault. And you know, the weapon is fine. And it's not until their law enforcement and military contracts start to complain that they start to really take notice, right, because Glock's got an enormous percentage of their industry is tied up in law enforcement and military. And telling the law enforcement and military community that they're limp wristing it just wasn't cutting the mustard, right? So they begin to recall just law enforcement and military and resolving some of the issues around ejection. But as far as, you know, the consumer market, it was, "Go frig yourself," all right? They weren't really, they were still blaming users and weren't really taking care of the problem. It was just incredibly frustrating because we had known Glock to be so dependable, so reliable, and here they are not taking accountability, which added to the frustration. But the reality is is that we had undependable weapons at that time, okay? And you know, like everything else, people that had earlier models are like no, everything's fine, okay, but it wasn't. When we start to look at, well what did they change? Like what did they do, okay? And honestly the problem actually started in the late model Gen Threes, because Gen Three was fantastic, it was fine. There were no problems with it. But one of the things that they changed in Gen Four was the extractor with the 336 ejector. Now the 336 ejector had always been in the Gen Three model. So we weren't really looking at the ejector. We were looking at this new part that they put in, this new extractor they put in. It had a dip in it. It was no longer steel. It was a MIM part. And so this became, you know, something that everybody's looking at as maybe this is the culprit. Reality is is even back then, the aftermarket wasn't as big as it is today. There wasn't a whole lot of people making aftermarket extractors for you to try with, right? 'Cause Glock was so dependable, that's what you use. Glock from day one has always had weird ejection patterns, 'kay, always have had that problem. But the thing is is nobody really paid attention to it because it was so damn reliable, it was so damn dependable. I remember shooting my first Glock and seeing things, you know, flick out from the extractor, like wow, that was weird. But you know what? Every time you pulled the trigger, the gun went bang. And so I wasn't really concerned about going to the four o'clock position every single time because it was such a dependable weapon. And everybody else kind of felt the same way. But when this issue started to occur, we started to look at it and say hey, wait a minute, wait a minute. Not only are we having now a problem with erratic ejection in this generation, but now we're actually taking brass to the face, right? The casing's coming back at us. The rounds that aren't hitting us, a lot of them are going over our right shoulder. What's that about? My friends, I can't even really explain to you how much turmoil was going on at that time. I mean it was a revolt. And it was ugly, it was ugly. And Glock didn't do anybody any favors by blaming the community and blaming people. You can almost see exactly how it happened, right? You can almost look back and say what was going on at that time and it's probably some person sitting there in the Glock corporation with an Excel spreadsheet. They're making this new part out of MIM, right, cost saving, MIM, right? And they say hey listen Mr. and Mrs. Vice President. This will actually go in a Gen Three Glock. So why don't we, since we're making them for Gen Four, start to save ourselves money and start shipping these out and putting them in Gen Three Glocks, right? I mean you can almost see that happening. The problem is is that it caused, you know, brass to the face. Then comes along Apex Tactical. Today, a lot of the new users know them as making fantastic triggers. I always look at them as the American story, right, the American story. What Apex does probably the best, in my opinion, and it's not just in Glock, they do it for other firearm manufacturers, they look at the problems that users are having where the firearm manufacturer doesn't want to take accountability and fix, and they engineer the hell out of it. They fix it, and then they sell the consumer the parts that will make that firearm functional. They have built an empire out of being fantastic problem solvers, okay? And I mean that's just what it is. They really didn't play around with Glock back then. But they knew that this issue was huge. And they started to engineer it. They started to kind of reverse engineer it. They had this fantastic study. And I mean, when I tell you that everybody in the Glock community at that time was kind of latching on to what they were doing and paying really close attention, because listen, we wanted our firearms to work. And what they produced was an extractor, a fail-resistant extractor, and a spring. But the extractor specifically, they came down and said hey listen, this claw, all right, so if we look at an extractor, this is the part that grabs on to the back of the casing, okay, as it comes back, all right? And so they looked at this and said you know what, this is no good. And so Apex, let me just open this real quick, Apex comes along and they develop an extractor with a really good claw, okay? So as you can see here in their claw system, it's got this piece that sticks out that really latches on to the casing, 'kay? So if we're here and it's coming out, it's really got a tight grip on it, right? It's really holding it in place really well. And so I mean hey listen, you know, big up to Apex, fantastic, you know, doing what they do best which is solve problems that manufacturers don't want to solve. All right. So what does this all have to do with us today? How did this creep its way to us, since this was 10 years ago, 'kay? Well you know, back then we had some fixatives, we got around it, and we kind of moved on, all right? But then this very forward thinking, progressive company called Polymer80 comes out a couple years later, right? Ingenious idea. Build at home. You could use Glock parts. It's, again, improving completely upon the Glock design. Why? Because Glock doesn't listen to its customers. So what do they do? They not only give us a beautiful build-at-home design. They give us the front rail, they give us the double undercut, right? They do everything that we have been screaming about for years, they give us, and we can build it ourselves. Huh, wonderful. You know how we just talked about these parts that Glock is not accountable for? What are they sending you? 336 ejector, junk MIM part. What does that mean? You have to understand something here, my friends. Polymer80 has completely revolutionized the 80% market. Polymer80 has made Glock millions and millions of dollars in OEM kits because let me tell you for sure, before Polymer80 came along, nobody was buying these Glock Gen Three OEM parts kits. You know why? Because we knew that these pieces were absolutely useless to us. We knew that. And here's the thing. People are ordering OEM parts kits. And this is exactly what Glock is sending them, right? This is exactly what Glock is putting in their OEM kits, knowing that there are faults with it, knowing that it's not right, and making millions of dollars selling OEM parts kits for people to put in their 80% build. Now, let's get something straight, my friends. They're loving this. They get to sell you these parts, the cheapest parts they made, the parts that don't work, and they don't need to warranty them because they're not going in their gun, right? So for them, it's a win win win win win situation. Except for us the consumer, it's lose lose lose because when you buy a nine millimeter of 40 cal, especially in the compact model, you are suffering stove pipes. You are suffering from brass to the face. And Glock knows it, doesn't care. But you know what, that's another whole issue. So now let's solve the problem for you. Let's recreate kind of what happens here with ejection, 'kay? So the bullet is in here, 'kay? The trigger is on top of the shelf. Your striker is here. You pull the trigger back. It disconnects, and bang, bullet comes out, kills your target, 'kay. So that's kinda how that works. At the same time, this recoil, that energy, is coming back on your recoil spring, 'kay? So let's understand it from this angle for a second, 'kay? So bullet went out, 'kay, casing is locked onto this claw of our extractor. It's coming back here, hits the ejector, okay, and then the extractor, holding onto it with the claw, flicks it out, all right? So that's general extraction of how it works. So a lot of things need to go right, as you can see, in order for good ejection. One of the things that needs to occur is that we gotta get a good hit on the ejector, right? It's gotta have a good hit. The second really major thing that has to happen is the claw of the extractor needs to have a good hold in order to flick it out properly, okay, in the direction it should be done. So now, let's look at the different ejectors that we have. So this, again, is the 336 ejector that comes in an OEM parts kit, all right? And this is a 30274, which is a Gen Four. And right away, you can start to see some differences, 'kay? Number one, the 30274 is a little bit thicker, which obviously means what? It's gonna hit more impact on that casing, right? Where this is just kind of comes to a point, right, doesn't have a lot of good hit. The 30274 has a much better hit. On the right hand side, this is the 336, this is the Gen Four 30274. So the next thing that we can look at is the curvature. Okay, so the 336 curves this way, right? So if you think about it, casing's coming straight. The casing's not coming on an angle. So as it's coming, it's gonna hit, right, it's gonna hit that curve. It's trying to push it that way. The other issue with the 336, though, that is, you know, first of all, there is stove piping and then there is what we see here in the Polymer80 and what we saw and when Gen Four came out and they started using these parts in late Gen Three is boom, vertical stove piping. Holy hell, it's like what the hell is that? 'Kay, so if we look at the 336, it's bent this way, right, it's curving that way. You look at the 30274, okay, it comes up, over, and then straight, all right? So it's still got a little bend, but the way they do it is to really hit it dead on, okay? It's moving it to the right to get out to the extractor. But once it comes here and hits, not only does it have a hell of a lot more, let me turn these around so you can see 'em, not only does it have a hell of a lot more surface area for it to hit. It's also gonna hit it dead on, 'kay, where this is gonna hit it at an angle, 'kay, so boom. Then we have, I'm gonna keep the 336 out for a second. Then we have the new 19X, okay, so this just came out, the Gen Five 19X, so this is a whole new way to think about ejection that didn't exist before, 'kay? This one says hey listen, we like that curved design. We gotcha, we liked it. But the reality is is that you needed a little more bite. You needed that thickness still, okay? And so I want you to understand that the 30274 works great and it did solve it, but it wasn't thrusting the casing out. It was getting it out, that's the most important. But it wasn't thrusting it out, okay? And so with the 19X swap, you start to see, you know, better ejection, more forceful. I had 1473 rounds right now using this ejector as a test with fantastic results, you know? Can I sign off on it 100%? No, I don't think I can. The 30274, I can, because I probably have, I don't know, tens of thousands of rounds over the years using that. But this design, from a geometry standpoint, makes complete sense and it has been performing really well. So you know, I've got no complaints on that. All right, so what do you gotta do? Well look, you've got this OEM trigger housing and you've got this 336, 'kay? Now when we look at a 30274 housing or even the 47021, the 19X housing, they're the same. See how the housings are exactly the same? The thing is is these housings don't fit into your Polymer80 frame. They're not gonna fit in here. And the reality is is that we don't really need the housing. All we need is the ejector itself we need to replace. And by the way, you know, understand that these ejectors I'm talking about are five to six, seven, eight dollars, in that range. So we're not talking about a big investment to fix this ejection issue, 'kay? So basically what we do is this. Rather than try to, this is our 336, your OEM. Rather than try to manipulate this whole trigger housing to kind of line up with your pins and all that other stuff, we're gonna just sneak this ejector out, okay? We're gonna take the ejector out of this one. I'm gonna use a Gen Five here for demonstration purposes. I'm gonna take the ejector out of here and I'm gonna put that ejector into our Gen Three housing, okay? Pretty good, right? So all you have to do is take a small screwdriver here, okay? You don't want to come in from the front and pull this out, although it will come out. But you don't want to bend your ejector. So in the back here, you can see it sticking out a little bit, 'kay? All I'm gonna do is I'm gonna take a small screwdriver and I'm gonna go ahead and I'm gonna start it moving out, 'kay, and it's just gonna come straight out like that, 'kay? Then I'm just gonna take a small punch and I'm gonna push it completely out and through, just like that. This is the 336 I just took out of your OEM Gen Three housing, 'kay, and we don't need that anymore. But now we need to put our upgraded ejector in. So here's a 47021, a 19X Gen Five. Come from the back here and push that out just like that. Take my small punch and push it out the rest of the way, just like that, 'kay? So I don't need the other housing, so I'm gonna put that aside. Now, we're gonna take our original trigger housing for our Gen Three, and I'm gonna place this new ejector into the housing from the front like this. I'm just gonna put it in and I'm gonna start to slide it back in nice and easy, 'kay? Now when it comes to these ejectors, you need to make sure that they become very flush with the housing. A mistake that is often made with ejectors is that you don't get completely flush. I come in longways with the screwdriver and I make sure that it fully seats up against that trigger housing. So that's how we do a swap. Now look, we got a perfect, beautiful new ejector in our trigger housing, and it's ready to go, 'kay? So that's gonna solve most of your ejection issues. It's certainly gonna help solve your stove piping issue. If you have a stove piping issue, that, my friends, is now gone. So now we've solved the ejection portion of it, we're gonna get the casing out of the gun, right? That's the most important because we want the casing out of the gun. The next piece, though, is well where does that casing go? Extraction, right? And so while this fixes the stove piping issue, we're now still prone to getting brass to the face and that casing hot brass hitting us. And we don't want that either, okay? So now, we need to tackle the extractor piece of it. And as I said earlier, Apex has delivered us a fantastic solution. The piece with Apex, though, is Apex uses a non-LCI system, right, so there's that word again, Loaded Chamber Indicator. The spring that you get in your OEM kit, so let's look at this right here on our plunger, you have a spring and you have an LCI bearing, a Loaded Chamber Indicator bearing. That works with their MIM extractor, okay? So we're gonna change the extractor, and you can tell that this is flat, right, you see the Apex is flat compared to the MIM, which is beveled in, right, 'kay? But the Apex uses a non Loaded Chamber Indicator. And that is this right here. That is this bearing right here. Now just by looking at it, I'm just gonna put it in the spring for a second. So one of the things that you can see right away is that a non-LCI is much bigger than an LCI, okay? You know, these little plungers, by the way, these non-LCIs, they don't come in the Apex kit. You've got to get them separate. But they're $1.50, okay? Buy 'em all day long, all right? But you're gonna need a non-LCI bearing to go on to your spring that Apex gives you and onto your plunger. Extractor, non-LCI, non Loaded Chamber Indicator. Fail resistant Apex product, genius. Non-LCI bearing and spring on your plunger. And you, my friends, are not gonna have brass to the face anymore. It's that simple, it's that simple. So this clears up the ejection issue, again, nine millimeter, 40 cal, completely. You're now gonna get the round out because you've got a better ejector in your housing and you've, the direction of it is going to be out and to the right. I will say this. You know, I know I've been touting Apex here. This is kind of expensive. Okay, this little kit here is 50 bucks, all right, and then you know, you need to spend another $1.50 on the bearing, okay? And people are like how can you charge $50 for you know, an extractor and a spring? You know, that's crazy. Listen, they spent the time and the money doing the research and the engineering and the geometry around fixing that problem. And so you know what, they should get paid for it. Good for them. And I don't complain about that at all when somebody does quality work, all right? So again, expect to pay anywhere from five to 10 dollars for the ejector, $1.50 for this. So you're like 12 bucks or so. And somewhere in the $50 range for this kit. And actually they sell I think an expanded kit even with their great safety plunger and their trigger and maybe you can get it all together for a deal, okay? So before we tidy up this here, I want you to understand how the aftermarket plays into it. We are very very fortunate, my friends. We live in a time of abundance. And I'm gonna give a big shout out to Polymer80 here because you know, you didn't just create a fantastic forward-thinking product. What you did was you created an entire industry, right? I mean when we see the amount of people now, the amount of talent every day that's coming in to our community between machinists and everybody else creating wonderful parts, companies coming in that are creating fantastic slides for us, they're creating fantastic battles for us, and they get to live the American Dream, too. They love firearms, they love to be machinists. And because this 80% market is so big nowadays, they get to come in and do the work that they love everyday. I mean it's a fantastic thing. And with that, though, I want you to understand some things about the aftermarket, some of the issues that I observe that have bothered me, to be quite honest with you. One of the things about Polymer80 here is that they get blamed for the ejection issue all the time. I read threads all the time where they're like hey, I put my PF940 together. I went out shooting. This shit stove piped on me, it's junk, I threw it in the garbage. And it's like dude, that had nothing to do with Polymer80. It's directly related to bad OEM parts. You change the OEM parts, you change the direction. And again, you put these OEM parts in a Glock OEM Gen Three frame, same problem, same issue, 'kay? So I want you to understand that Polymer80 took a, and continues to take, a really bad rap for that. But outside of them, so does the aftermarket. We've got these great people out there, creating machinists that are creating these fantastic slides and barrels and great springs and you know, great firing pins or whatever. And they say hey, okay, well why don't we sell, this is what we specialize in, right? We specialize in this stuff, right, the metal. But why don't we create a package so that it's kind of one stop shopping for the consumer, right? And again, we love that. I want to be able to buy my entire upper parts kit. You know, I want to buy my slide, my fancy slide that's been window cut and looks beautiful. And I want to buy it. And hey, if it comes with the upper parts kit, as a consumer, I love that. And so look, these aftermarket companies, that's what they try to do. They try to service their consumer as best as possible, right? So they create the slide and they say hey, you know, your slide comes with a parts kit. Now, they're not making every piece of that parts kit, right? They're making the metal pieces, their star components. And then they're going ahead and ordering and getting in mass production the OEM parts. Got it? And then so I can't tell you how many times I see that. I see an aftermarket company which I know makes a really solid product but has put their product and mixed it with OEM parts. And the user goes and puts that product together with those OEM parts, specifically the extractor, okay. And they get frustrated and think that it's the company. And it has nothing to do with them. And understand that I'm talking to you now and you might be thinking to yourself well, how does the firearms aftermarket company not know this, Marine Gun Builder? It doesn't make sense. Well listen, you have to understand that I'm old . Right? This stuff happened 10 years ago, all right? And so that 25 year old entrepreneur right now that's coming in and doing some great machine work, they were 15 when this issue was happening. Realistically, they just probably don't know about it. They weren't aware of it. Or it could be somebody who's creating stuff that wasn't Glock related but this industry, this 80% industry blew up and they've transitioned over to Glock. But you know, you can't go off the expectation that they know about it because unless they were involved with Glock for 10 plus years, religiously, by the way, they weren't just a passive user, it's quite likely they don't know about this stuff. Again, I just want to kind of bring that up because I see that. And by the way, if you are an aftermarket company and you're watching this video, I would you know, maybe just a piece of advice here if you want to take it from Marine Gun Builder, that's cool. If you're not using an OEM MIM extractor, you need to market that. I think that's in your favor, right? I think it's in your favor to talk about that. It'll also help educate our community, okay? But you can see I never use MIM extractors in my guns, right? I mean I'm not gonna use this beveled piece. I'm only using the solid piece. And by the way, let me actually talk about one more thing, which is this. You want to talk about a disappointment, right? Again, I refer to MIM as cost saving junk, all right. And people give me heat about that all the time and they're like oh, you're too hard on them, and this, that, and the other, blah blah blah. You know, the reality is is that when MIM is done correctly, it is good and it's durable. But when you use MIM, you have too many layers of quality control issues that can come up. And so when you start to see the same problem over and over and over again and it's always a MIM part, realistically as the manufacturer, you've gotta know that you have a quality control issue. This MIM extractor might save Glock some money in the long run, but it's really at what cost? Because they're all steel extractor is 17 bucks retail. So really, how much money are you saving here, to put this at risk, to put your company at risk? It just doesn't, and then worse, blame the user. It just doesn't seem like it makes sense to me. But you know, who am I, right? I'm just a guy trying to help you. And so look. You know, one of your other options, again, I understand that this is 50 and this is 17, okay. But this may not solve all your problems. I'm just saying that, okay? It does, and it has for me. In specific types of rounds that I use, this works extremely well, okay? But either way, it's light years ahead of what they switched to. All right, so now that takes care of our nine millimeter 40 cal family. Let's kind of talk about other ejection issues that happen and how we go about diagnosing and getting to the root cause of that issue. All right, so let's now get into the nitty gritty of all our other calibers and trying to diagnose methodically and logically what our ejection issue is. And what we have to understand here first is that we can't always apply Glock logic, okay? Because the reality is is that this is a completely different weapon system, okay? It uses a different locking block and rails system, it uses a different pin system, it's a different polymer, it's a different overall dimension, and it's a different weight. And so therefore, we have to start to apply Polymer80 logic to what we're doing. Now with that said, I want you to also understand here is that almost everybody, right, I mean at least 90 some odd percent of the Polymer80s we see are using aftermarket slides, custom cut slides. Some things are with windows, some have RMRs, right? I mean so many different types of slides. Some taking machined off the front, machined off the back, front serrations, back serrations. I mean the amount of outstanding slide work that's out there is amazing. So the first thing that we have to do in diagnosing is check our build quality, okay? And specifically, we want to look at our number one culprit, which is usually the channel, okay? And there's three things that we need to check with the channel. Number one, is it smooth enough, right? Do we have that first time quality look? Now again, if you have scratches in here, you know, this is something you're gonna have to smooth out, okay? You're gonna have to take a piece of sandpaper. And you know what works really well is if you take the sandpaper and the milling bit that Polymer80 gives you and you wrap it up into the sandpaper, that works perfect in here and acts as your RSA coming back and forth. It's a beautiful way, 'cause you know, it can get kinda tough if you've got big hands or stuff to get in there and sand. It's a beautiful method to go ahead and get that all smoothed out. Now you always want to do that wet, obviously, 'cause we're dealing with the polymer, 'kay? But then the next thing is are we wide enough and are we deep enough, okay? Now when you watch my channel videos, or you know, if you're a member of the Polymer80 Master Builders Goup on Facebook, which by the way, there's a nice plug, you should be. I'll leave a link in the description. You'll see whenever I do my live builds, I always put the front locking block in at the end when I'm trimming the sides. Why? Because I want a nice guide to make sure I'm wide enough. You know, there's nothing like I go ahead and do my work, I go to assemble, and then realize hey, I got to take everything out and then widen it more and do all that. So a good practice is when you get to the end of this channel to completing it, put in your front locking block and go ahead and do all your little fine trimming with that in there, 'kay? But the question is is are we wide enough, right? Are we wide enough to get our recoil spring in and out of there, right? That's always the question, 'kay, how wide do we need to be? All right, so it's very simple how we understand or see if we're wide enough. Now I'm doing a whole video for you folks on exactly how to check every portion of your build, 'kay, but basically this is what I do. I get my digital calipers out, 'kay. And if we take a regular OEM spring here and we put it in, we know that an OEM spring runs basically, yeah, between 10.5 and 11, okay? I see them sometimes at like 10.58, okay? Let me just get it here, 'cause the coils stretches out a little bit. So 10.72 is what this one is. Which means what? Which means I need to be at least that wide where? In my channel, 'kay. And so if I take my calipers here and I come here, I am that wide. See that, see how that works? So I'm good. Typically between the two rails, you're anywhere between 11 and 12, okay, which yep, we're right there. These calipers are fantastic, by the way. If you're gonna do any type of gunsmithing, I recommend them upside down and backwards, you know. Tools are in the description. They're only about 12 bucks, but they make measuring every piece of your build, not only here, but when I do ARs and every other type of build, they come in so so handy to check dimensions, 'kay? And so okay, so we're wide enough, we're deep enough, we're smooth enough. Hey, that's the channel. That's the number one thing that gets users, especially new users, right, 'cause they're always trying to get down there. You know, basically if you don't have calipers, you want to be able to look down through the front locking block, through the channel, and you should not see any polymer on either side. And then straight down the channel should be as smooth and straight as possible all the way down the gun, okay? So that's how we could visually inspect it. The next thing I want to talk about is the recoil assembly, though. Okay, so the recoil assembly, there's so much debate out there when it comes to this about spring rates and all this other stuff. So I'm not gonna talk too much about that. But I do want to talk about getting your recoil spring sitting correct. So believe it or not, a lot of times I see people not understand the difference between the two notches that are on our battle, right? We have our one notch and then we have the other notch. And basically what happens is you put it on the first notch for assembly, and then when you rack the slide, it drops down to the second, okay? So we never want to install that wrong on the second one from the beginning, okay, we want to put it on the top when it's in assembly mode. When we look at this recoil spring, and before I assemble, once I have the frame assembled, I'll take the recoil spring and I'll make sure that it's not getting stuck on anything, 'kay? This is just like a best practice, okay, and I'm pretty good. All, it doesn't take much to get one of these little coils hung up on something and you know, just cause you a nightmare when it comes to ejection. Now with recoil assembly springs also, we have, well hey, so when do I change 'em, why do I change 'em, and all this other stuff, okay? And again, we cannot apply Glock knowledge here when we're talking about recoil springs. We have to apply Polymer80 knowledge, okay? The reality is is that all of these slides that are making, that are coming out for the Polymer80 are fantastic, but they're all a little bit different. They all have different weights to them, okay? They're all, you know, manufactured to the tolerances of a Gen Three Glock, but the reality is is that they're all gonna play very different for two reasons, okay? The first reason they're gonna play different is based on what you are putting with it, okay? So do I have an optic on it? Am I running comps on the front? What are my window cuts? What are my serrations? All of these things are gonna play into the overall weight. Now there's a lot of information out there that says hey, you don't ever have to change your OEM spring, even if you put an optic on because the window cuts and the serration and the metal they took away is going to compensate for the weight of your optic. My friends, that's just false, plain and simple. It's just false. And because the truth of the matter is is that a lot of the times we're taking away the weight from where? From the front, right? Got these fancy window cuts, got all this stuff. And where are you adding the weight? In the back, okay? So the distribution, maybe the overall weight is the same, but the distribution of that weight is very different, 'kay? I'm gonna do a whole video on that to show you how to check that and how to make sure. But pretty much the rule of thumb is this, okay, when it comes to do I need to change my spring rate, when it comes to an OEM spring, 'kay? The first is you'll hear you don't ever have to change a spring rate because Glock, you know, tests thousands and thousands of rounds and they'll know that it doesn't have to be changed. And the truth is is that again, we can't apply Glock knowledge to Polymer80 because the reality is is that we are for the most part, a lot of us are rodding optics on our slide. And we have fancy slides, right? Well guess what? Back in Gen Three, there was no MOS system. So they're using a single coil spring, okay? You know, when they moved to Gen Four, they moved to dual, correct? So we can't just say this spring, this OEM spring from Glock Gen Three has never been tested for use with an optic because they didn't make it then, okay? We take away all the weight, hey, you know, this is another thing that they're not testing for. Glock's not out there saying hey listen, I'm gonna test our recoil springs for what the aftermarket slides would be. They don't care about that. They're testing the springs under their weight and their dimensions only. And in the world of the Polymer80, you know, one of the most beautiful things about our Polymer80 community is that what? Is almost every one we see is a little different. They're very unique, they're not all the same. And so we can't just apply that logic. Now again, am I saying go out and change your spring rate? I am absolutely, positively not saying that. But this is what I am saying. Things will play into ejection feel, 'kay? Things like a comp, things like an optic, things like you know, am I running a cane at the end. All of these things will effect potentially the spring rate that you need in your recoil spring assembly. So here's kind of the rule of thumb. You put your weapon together normal. 'Kay, you put your weapon together without all the fancy stuff and you fire it. And if it works great, great. But once you start adding stuff on, if you start to now have an ejection issue, well this is how you know it's your recoil spring, right? Because it works fine without it. And the same, the opposite is true. If you've already assembled everything, put your optic on, you put some type of suppressor on or you put a comp on and you go out to the range, you start having all these ejection issues, well then what you do is you start pulling things off, okay, and seeing back down to a regular strip slide with just normal sight and see if you are having that ejection issue. And if you're not, then you know it's because of distribution of weight, and you're gonna then have to start to play with changing your recoil spring. Now, I will say this along with that. You don't want to change your recoil spring rate up front. In other words, when I'm doing my build and I'm like okay, hey listen, I'm gonna go to this pound spring, because you can actually cause a lot of ejection issues if you do not have the right spring rate, 'kay? So you start with OEM and you go from there, all right? So that's diagnosing that. So first of all, it's gotta come in here nice and good. And second of all, it's gotta match with whatever customization you have to your slide and to your weapon. All right, so that's recoil assembly. So let's talk about some of the slide stuff. My friends, there's just so many different slides out there and while they're all made to fit the Gen Three tolerances, what I want you to understand is that they're all a little bit different. A lot of them come with different size roofs, right, these hoods here. These hoods are different between where the hood comes up and the top of the frame is. That happens a lot. Well that's gonna affect what, because what's coming out of there? The casing, okay. So you want to start to look at some of that stuff, too, if you're having an ejection issue. You'll want to strip down the slide and you'll want to start to see am I hitting the roof here at all? Am I hitting the side? This is a good way to tell whether it's actually the slide. Because again, you could be changing all this stuff and then still have an ejection issue and the whole time it's because the slide was milled improperly. So that's basically how we kinda want to tackle the logic. Right, build quality, recoil spring, then recoil spring assembly mixed with whatever components we have with our fancy slide, and then we want to actually take, at the very end if we haven't been able to solve any of that stuff, you know, strip everything down and look in here. Now when you do do this, I just want to bring something to your attention. Typically when we clean a slide, so this would be like if you've got an ejection issue. You hadn't had one, it was fine, and now all of a sudden you're developing one, right, it's getting sick. If you're all of a sudden developing one, it's either this 'cause this is gonna be the first part you ever need to replace in your Glock. This spring wears out before anything else, okay? This is like changing oil in your car. You know, every couple thousand rounds, it's a good idea to just change that out, okay? I always bring a couple with me whenever I go to the range. You know, they're very cheap to have anyway. I throw them in my bag and I got 'em. But if I change that out and I'm still having an ejection issue, a really big spot that gets extremely disgusting when you're firing a weapon is in here. Now a lot of times when folks are cleaning their gun, you know, they don't disassemble all this, right? I mean they come in here with a brush, they scrub, they clean, use their little CLP, do their oil, and they're back in business. But this area right here is heavily filled with gunk, you know, and I'll tell you if you've fired a Polymer80, I would even say hey listen, take this out and take a look in there. You're gonna see what I'm talking about. This is just like a collection place of dirt. So if you're firing and all of a sudden, you start to, you know, this weapon has run fine and now I'm having an ejection issue, well you know, it might not be the spring. It could be, but it might not be. And if you take this apart and you see it's all filled with gunk, that's most likely what it is. So we need to talk about weight, because weight is everything. And in the world of pistols and firearms and gunsmithing, ounces mean everything. And in the world of ejection, the same thing is true. Ounces mean everything. And what we have to understand, again, we're applying Polymer80 logic to everything that we do, not Glock logic. Polymer80 logic, everybody's using different setups, okay, so it's gonna be different for everybody, all right? But I want to just kind of show and illustrate something. You know, we have a standard aftermarket barrel you know, that's crowned, all right, with an OEM spring. And if we put those on, we can see that the total weight here is 3.7 ounces. Now I want you to remember again, every ounce is major when we're talking about ejection, okay? So now I'm gonna do the same manufacturers, a very precision, but with a threaded barrel and same pound spring rate, okay, but just an aftermarket solid. 4.7, that's a whole ounce in just these two pieces, okay? Actually, 4.8. And the same thing is true when we get to slides. You know, once we start getting cuts and windows, these slides are all gonna weigh different, okay, they're all gonna weigh different. And then that's going to also come in with whatever type of barrel or spring that we're using. And so last but not least, let's talk about well how do I check things, okay? And so if you have your slide on, okay, this obviously has to go back nice and smooth. You have to have really good action. And this, if it's not having perfect action, is going to cause what? It's going to cause some type of ejection issue, right? 'Cause it's not going through the whole motion. And so how do I know if I'm getting, you know, really good action here? Well number one, we can feel it, okay? But number two, and this is actually just some self diagnose for you folks that you know, first assemble and you're little sticky, also. Here's what you want to do is take a red dry erase marker. 'Kay, a red dry erase marker. And you can start to color these areas in. Right, I can kinda color in where my firing pin is. I can color in along here. On here, I can color in all back here, right? It's red dry erase, it just wipes off. I can put it on, rack the slide a couple times, take it off, and I'm gonna see where my wear spots are. Maybe I'm too high somewhere. Where am I rubbing? Okay, that's not creating a nice, smooth action. So this gives you an exact idea right away visually of where your problem exists. And I see a lot of folks that have trigger problems and they really are like well I don't know exactly what it is. I'm telling you, my friends. Just color that in you know, red dry erase marker and put this on, and you'll see exactly how that striker is hitting the top of that seer, okay? And you'll see exactly how that moves forward, how it's striking forward, and you'll be on the path. Same thing with the rear rails. We have a lot of people that have issues with them. You know, color them in. Again, I'll do another plug. If you're part of my Polymer80 Masters group, I'll show you how to check that even before you put this in. Okay, but the reality is you can color that in with a red dry erase marker, put it in, and you can kinda start to see where I'm rubbing a little too much or if I'm a little too high, all right? All right, my friends, that's it. That is ejection, perfect ejection, beautiful ejection, first time quality ejection.