1st
Cheap and bombproof: the Glock pistol
The rare ingredient required to supply the ‘bombproof’ part of our equation is extreme durability testing. Since this is invariably difficult, time-consuming and expensive, we must plum the depths of esoteric fanaticism, following where ever it may lead. The “flashlight-nut” subculture illuminated earlier can’t hold a candle (sorry, pun allotment now used) to the fertile ground tilled by our next group: gun-nuts.
Their nuttiness is our gain. Debt acknowledged, I bring you the amazing story of the Glock pistol.
History
Glock began its corporate life making curtain rods but branched out into manufacturing plastic utility items for military contracts in the 1970s. In the 1980s, they designed and introduced a new pistol, the Glock 17 in response to an Austrian military contract.
By outward appearances, Glock’s first attempt at firearm design was not auspicious. The pistol was exceptionally ugly, its metal slide perfectly block-shaped. The frame, sights and internal parts were made almost entirely of plastic (to this day, new Glocks come from the factory with a mold line running the circumference of the frame). The frame and slide were so poorly mated that you could see daylight between them. The crude, spring-driven trigger mechanism felt uncannily like a toy cap gun.
However, it was cheap, light to carry, held a lotof ammunition (17 9mm rounds per magazine) and was incredibly simple to maintain and repair- the pistol contained half the number of parts of other pistols. Slowly, shooters began to experiment with it.
First hints of ‘bombproof-ness’
The first widely acknowledged indication that the Glock design may have been ‘exceptionally robust’ came from (in)famous gun writer Chuck Taylor. He purchased one of the controversial new pistols in 1990 and set out to serialize his experiences in the pages of “Combat Handguns” magazine (archived here).
In 1995, he summarized:
”…after having fired a total of 100,000 rounds of virtually all kinds of ammunition…
Nothing has changed! The gun looks the same, feels the same, functions the same as it did before. I’ve done everything within reason to this gun. I’ve carried it all over the world, quite literally in every environmental condition known to man— the steaming jungles of Latin America, the windblown deserts of the southwestern U.S., the 40-below zero tundra of Alaska in the winter.”
For some context: the contractually-mandated service life of the U.S. military-issue Beretta M9 pistol is 5,000 rounds.
Further food for though:
- The retail cost of a Glock 17 pistol: $500.
- The retail cost of 100,000 rounds of generic 9mm pistol ammunition: $20,000.
Transfering this same formula to the automobile, your average $25,000 car would consume $1,000,000 worth of gas without breaking down.
(note: In 2003, Taylor reported that the pistol had by then fired 168,000 rounds without major failure.)
In extremis
In 2005, a gun forum user called BigBore began posting about the prolonged torture of his Glock 21 pistol. The forum posts have since disappeared, but his testing has been archived here at theprepared.com. Below is but a mere summary of the testing.
(the already-abused pistol before formal testing)
For almost 10 years I’ve been abusing and neglecting my Glock 21. Its been a running joke among some friends and I. Nothing was planned or documented. As I tell people what it has been through, most simply don’t believe me. I guess I wouldn’t either. If someone told you their Glock has at least 150K rounds through it and has gone almost 15K rounds with no cleaning or maintenance would you believe them?
I want to do this so I have documentation, of what has been done, and how it worked. I don’t care about 500rds without a FTE, or FTF. Once it was buried in the mud w/a full mag, and when I dug it out the next day it went bang the first time I pulled the trigger but the weight of all the mud on the slide kept it from cycling. I scraped off most of the mud on my boot and fired the remaining 12 shots without a problem.
(formal testing begins)
note: he also documented the process in video snippets, to which I’ve linked through this summary:
The testing began simply. The Glock was dunked in sand, dirt, baby powder paste, mud, sand blasting media (little glass balls), and then a slurry of all of the above.
It was then immersed in a rock salt bath.
It emerged heavily rusted, inside and out, but cleaned up fine.
Having failed to stop function or damage it during the first round of testing, BigBore decided that more kinetic means were in order.
It was tied to a rope and dragged behind a pickup. Then he ran it over with said pickup. Tasting blood, he ran the tests again (drag, run over), on concrete.
It was a little dinged up.
Hammering the sights back into place sparked more inspiration.
“Its been boiled before , no ill effect.”
He shot his Glock. With another gun.
It was covered in a wet, salt-encrusted sock for a week.
He dropped it from a building, a couple of times.
Again, sensing a thread of torture to be followed further, he dropped from a moving airplane at 500 feet…
then recovered and tested the pistol.
I will note again and finally that the above testing was performed on the Glock model 21, which noted firearms design consultant, trainer and former member of Delta Force Larry Vickers has called “the worst gun Glock makes,” which it strikes me as kind of like saying “the least attractive model at the Ford modeling agency.”
