I agree with the Keltec. Something to also consider is that nothing this small is going to be fun to shoot. Tiny handguns specifically for concealment purposes hurt and can be quite snappy with the recoil. If a gun isn't fun or comfortable to shoot, you won't go to the range as often as you need to and won't become as proficient with it. I recommend something a tiny bit larger like a Glock 26 or a Springfield xDs either in 9 or 45 ACP. If you don't like a striker fired gun, I recommend a small sig P938 or a Beretta sub compact model. A 380 round sucks and is only worth it if you get a 38 spl. But thats a different conversation for a different gun all together. The thing about these Walther PPKs is that they have a cool factor(James Bond gun) but they are currently made by Smith and Wesson and had a recall on the hammer in 2009. And for that price, there are much better guns to be had. The older German made ones, if you can find one, will probably run you over a grand. And for what you seem interested in, that seems like more of a hassle than anything else.
The Glock 26 is a LOT bigger than the Keltec, when you're talking about compact & concealment. The 26 is not a single stack, but I don't think even the Glock 42 is as flat as the Keltec, is it? How you're carrying it, and whether or not you want dual action or single action, cocked & locked carry, etc. I love my Colt Mustang 380, and it's very comfortable to shoot. But, it is not lightweight. I have a wallet holster that fits both it and a Ruger LCP. My buddy has the LCP and it is a very noticeable weight difference comparing them together. If you're going to carry it up on your waistband in a Fobus or something, I'd agree with the Glock 26 all day. (I have a big hands, but I don't have any trouble feeling comfortable with my Glock 26.) But, if you're really looking for concealment, I think the Keltec is the better way to go.
I shot my cousin's PPK .22lr a lot when we were together over the holidays and it was a nice little handgun in some ways but I would expect more for the cost. It was accurate but had stovepipe jams with most ammo we tried, even after it was broken in and well maintained- something my much cheaper Buckmark didn't do (which are nice .22s, by the way). His girlfriend had a Ruger LCP .380 and I was not a fan of it. Like Xray said, a gun that I would not want to shoot much at all. I don't have a carry gun (yet) but feel conflicted about size between concealment and my big hands. Gotta try some different guns the next time I got to the indoor range. Side note, my local gun shop has had their ammo shelves fully stocked for a few months now and it is awesome. Plus a fellow shooter is letting me buy several bricks of good Eley .22lr match ammo from him at 2010 prices. I had to limit my shooting last year because of shortages. Never again.
I think anything in .22 (LR or WM) should be avoided for carry. .22 is a dirty round to begin with and then combine in a relatively unreliable ignition system and you have a recipe for disaster. From stovepipes to dirty/stuck firing pins I wouldn't risk my life on the gamble of if a 22 was going to go off once let alone enough times to stop someone. I alternate between a S&W Shield .40, Kahr CW .40 and a S&W Bodyguard .380. The Shield and Kahr are normal daily carry, while the BodyGuard is a deep concealment carry. .380 in that small of gun is a not a pleasant time at the range, but it's small, reliable and works for what I need it to. There are plenty of cheaper carry guns that fit the role much better than the PPK.. As FlatRate said, the PF9 is a good choice for minimal cost (just make sure it's reliable, Keltec is a great choice as long as you get one that works). The Shield, Kahr CW or CM, Ruger LC9, LCP, Bodyguard are all great single stack carry guns in the $3-400 range. I think the XDS is a little overpriced for the market but if you want to spend the money it's another great choice. The Glock 26/27 or 19 or M&P 9c/40c are great carry guns as well but are almost twice the thickness of the others above and can be a poor fit in smaller hands. If you want it for the James Bond factor, get it in .32 the original caliber.
James Purdey Co. celebrated their bicentennial by building a trio of ridiculously fine double guns. A 12-bore side-by-side game gun, 20-bore damascus over and under game gun, and .470 Nitro Express double rifle. Enjoy. I finally settled on the design for a custom Remington 40X .22lr stock laid the pattern out on the Australian walnut blank too. Spoiler This blank has flatsawn grain, so what I'll end up seeing in the final shape of the stock is a mystery of sorts. However I did my best to lay out the stock so it has the best grain flow from end to end and will eliminate most of the sapwood along the bottom of the blank (is a little lighter colored than the rest on the right side). Next step is taking it to a friend's cabinetmaking shop where I can bandsaw and joint the top flat, establish a centerline and drill takedown screw holes, then bandsaw the profile out and go to town inletting and fitting stock hardware with hand tools. The KIDD .22 rifle project I'm working on is nearly completed but I still have range testing to do with the barrel. After two disappointing range sessions and over 500 rounds downrange, I noticed the residue marks around the crown were lopsided (red flag) and it was decided to send the barrel back to Shilen. They determined the crown was off and the bore needed re-lapping too, and I have the re-worked barrel back in my hands. Crossing my fingers it's good to go now, but at least I am happy with how Shilen responded (I will seek them out again). These .22s can be finicky bastards, so I hope it turns around after the barrel work and pillar bedding the stock- it has to shoot as good as it looks.
Last night I gathered the courage to think "hell with waiting, I'm gonna dig into this stock now" rather than waiting to take it to a buddy's shop. Fuck it... I've got tools too! So... kicked things off by drawing the pattern onto the stock one final last time and lopped almost 5" off the tip end with a chop saw. Judging by this end grain revealed by the cut, we're gonna like what we'll see down the road. You see the benefits to a tree growing very slowly in a dry climate here- tight growth rings and super fine pores. Lovely. Next step was flattening the top along where the stock will be, which I could have done by hand with a planer but it would have taken hours. So I pulled out the table saw and cut a thin slice off the top. Spoiler It's a lot of fun once you remember you're pushing a chunk of wood equal to a month's rent into an old table saw. Talk about pucker moment. Yeeeeehaw!!! After that, it took me less than 10 minutes with the hand plane to flatten down the top and have it dead flat and smooth (or close enough), constantly checking alignment to the sides of the blank with a square all the while. You can NOT fuck things up with getting angles off and things out of alignment when you're just starting the stock inlet, or there will be hell to pay down the road. That means it took me about a half hour to drill the two takedown screw holes in the top of the blank. I marked out the inletting and screw hole locations on the top of the blank after scribing a centerline down the whole thing and went to work setting it up in my drill press. Check alignment, check level, adjust, check, level, adjust, over and over and over again 'til you can't get it any better. I was drilling holes for 1/4" screws so I started with a fresh 1/4" bit- had I screwed up a bit, I could bump up to a 17/64" bit for some wiggle room (but it turns out that wouldn't be necessary). It can be a pain in the ass to get things right with my simple setup, but bottom line I can still do it. Case in point, I nailed drilling the holes on the first try. To test the fit, I made a pair of guide screws by sawing the heads off some 1/4x28 bolts and filing the ends round, and when I tried the first test fit it just sunk right down and snapped into place. A shitty picture, but here's a sight that makes me happy: That was good enough for one night. Now I can start the process of hogging out the inlet with gouges and chisels, and plan on taking it to my friend's place to bandsaw out the profile soon. Off to a good start.
I can carve black walnut all day long without my hands getting sore and stopping to strop/sharpen my blades maybe once every few hours, but this Australian walnut is a completely different story. I had to stop and re-sharpen my gouge every 10 minutes and my right hand (which pushes the tool) was feeling shot after just a couple hours of work. My hands will pay for it, but more importantly this stuff really does work like a dream... cuts really clean so you can peel out big long curls with the chisels whereas black or claro walnut would be busting out in angry chips. Bitching aside, being able to do this is worth it: So good so far!
Today was my lucky day- the gun shop near my office had a Ruger rep in house and were offering free range time with about a dozen different Ruger guns. After shooting an LCP and LC9 back in December, I wanted to try an SR and LCR. Started with an SR40 and the trigger felt worlds better than the LC9- I shot a nice tight group and it felt easy to shoot. However I couldn't handle the LCR .357 worth shit at first but could warm up to it with practice. Recoil was a lot more manageable than I expected, but I struggled with the trigger pull and small grip after the SR40. Regardless, some nice guns. In my shop, I'm nearly done with inletting this Remington 40X barreled action into the Australian walnut blank. Got less than 1/16" depth left to go before I can do fun stuff like saw out the profile of the stock and start fitting the hardware. Until then, I'm still in the painstakingly slow process of endless test fittings and literally making progress one sliver at a time. Nearly done with the KIDD custom stock too. I was given a couple of old camera lenses to use as loupes for close-up inspection of stuff like checkering, and they work really really well. If it looks good through that thing, it'll look good to the naked eye. I tend to put off metalworking tasks like filing and polishing hardware 'til the last minute, because it can be a pain in the ass. Either way, this is a before and after of filing a screw head flush with the convex surface of a grip cap and polishing it all smooth. Ready for sandblasting and coating now. Spoiler: Spoiler Gonna tear into a TiB member's 10/22 soon, to slick things up and make it a Super Stock style rig. Plus my great aunt wants me to make a pair of custom left hand stocks for my second cousins' Winchester 70s for next Christmas. The guy who I'm doing the 40x stock for wants me to put stocks on a trio of Remington Rolling Block rifles. I'm telling myself this is a good problem, but I have projects coming out of my ass.
I'm all for law-abiding citizens having the right to carry concealed guns if they want to, but for Christ's sake people- please don't be an idiot like this. Spoiler: *sigh* Also, I'm nearly done with inletting this 40X barreled action into the stock blank. Very glad to see this after hours and hours of painfully slow scraping. Should be sawing out the profile of the stock soon now.
Yup. If you're not smart enough to carry your pistol in a proper holster you're not smart enough to be carrying in the first place.
I visited a buddy who has a bandsaw in his shop to saw away much of the bulk off this blank last weekend. It lost quite a bit of weight here. All the scraps are still valuable and saved for knife handles, pistol grips, etc. in addition to potential repairs and fixes as I work on the project. I have a tub overflowing with figured wood leftovers now. After that, I fitted a block of tight grained ebony I'd been saving to the tip of the fore-end. It is secured with a pair of 1/4" dowels connecting the two pieces- that Stanley no. 59 jig I posted in the woodworking thread came in handy. A little trick I use is mixing black dye into the Titebond wood glue to help hide the glue line if there is any. Another friend recently picked up a hefty 3/8" Nicholson rat tail file for less than $10 at Mills Fleet Farm, so I had to get one too. These things kick ass- surprisingly good quality for the price. It came in handy for extending the barrel channel through the ebony fore-end tip. Here's the first full length look at this thing all together.
I glass and pillar bedded the custom stock I've been working on for a KIDD Classic .22 rifle over the weekend. It's been a couple of years since I last bedded a 10/22-type rifle, which I hate bedding due to the blocky shape and configuration (cylindrical receivers are way easier), so I was super relieved to see these results. No cleanup yet in this pic: More pics: Spoiler: Photos
Good idea: Because: Uh-oh. Not such a good idea: Sources: http://www.wmcactionnews5.com/story...-naacp-wants-black-families-to-arm-themselves http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Memphis,_Arkansas#Crime
Well damn... they pulled it off. http://factor-tech.com/vid/darpas-self-steering-bullet-hits-the-target-everytime/
That looks frightening. Unless you're using that for isolated targets, I can see a lot of problems with that tech unless there is some kind of IFF system. I wonder how much a single round of that ammo costs. No way that is close to affordable.
Some very impressive and spooky technology. Now how long until it could be practically applied to more small arms? We'll see. Sounds like the governor of my state will veto the bill allowing suppressors. Opponents have the same stupid boogeyman arguments. Bummer. I avoided my shop for a couple of weeks after a stupid neighbor unplugged my fridge and let the venison in the freezer go rancid, which made it reek to hell and awful to be in (possibly the dumbest reason for downtime yet), but now the fridge and smell is gone so I'm back to work on the Remington 40X. Spoiler: Progress photos and stuff Finally got to inletting for the trigger and starting work on the trigger guard. I started the trigger inlet with my drill press and a 1/4" bit, overlapping holes to make a rough mortise, and finished it off with chisels and scrapers. A night's worth of work. On to the grip cap. Gotta flatten and smooth the surface it will sit on and locate the center. Starting the fitting process with inletting black and scrapers now. It'll take more work but this is how I can get a skin-tight fit between the metal and wood. I mark the screw hole with a deep punch so I can locate the cap in the same spot over and over again before drilling the hole when I'm done. Starting on the buttplate. This is a royal pain in the ass but worth it in the end. I mark the center line and then where the buttplate will actually go. Note there's 3/16" of cast-off at the heel and about double that amount at the toe of the butt- these dimensions help the stock shoulder much more naturally and reduce recoil (for bigger guns), and differentiate great stocks from good ones. I work on the curve with rasps and nick in the spur at the top with my sharpest little chisels, one sliver at a time. You can see the metal isn't making a great deal of contact with the wood yet there, but it is already starting to look like it belongs. The buttplate and grip cap serve nicely as templates for shaping the butt and grip of the stock, so now with them in place I can start (literally) hacking away at the rest of the stock with a 1" chisel. Hammer time!
Is that an old welding table you've got your vice mounted to? It looks like you have it weighted down with some weight... how does that work out for you? How do you sharpen your chisels? Do it by hand? Use a machine/system?
It's a lightweight tool stand I got for free, and I have a few 35 lb. iron plates stacked underneath to add a bit of heft. It is a temporary work bench and marginal at best- I can make the whole thing jump and shake across the floor with force from a planer or chisel but it stays in place most of the time. However it works pretty well for holding my checkering cradle, and I think I may keep using it for that. I would have built a legit heavy workbench however I moved in last June and broke a hand the next week, and am moving out of the place in a month and didn't want to put the time and effort into a shitty temporary workspace. Feeling motivated to do the tough grunt work has been a challenge in the past year because of it- it's just a pain in the ass. Building a bench and shelves is one of my first tasks for my new basement shop once I move in. I sharpen my flat blades by hand with a set of DMT diamond stones and hones, and use various dowels and a curved block for my gouges. I do have a jig for chisels and planer blades too. I also use a leather strop very often and it has become one of the most important pieces of my sharpening kit. I got the discipline now to keep a the strop (an old belt with polishing compound embedded into it) next to my work so I can effortlessly touch up blades as I work before they get dull to begin with. That's something that has really become concrete to me in the past couple of years- it's so important to keep your blades in good shape and it is a LOT easier to keep a blade sharp once it is really razor sharp with quick regular maintenance like stropping rather than being lazy and letting it get dull and having to go through stoning again (or having a bad day and fucking up your work or stabbing yourself- sharp is safe and dull is dangerous). Sharpening a handmade chisel with a DMT hone: The strop on my bench as I fitted a buttplate last year- cutting across that endgrain is a tough lesson on why we need to keep the blades sharp!
A local gun shop had a Winchester 52 .22 sitting in the used racks last week and I nearly shit myself when I turned over the tag and saw a price of $350. I thought "Here it is, the cheap M52 project rifle I've been looking for!" But... then upon closer inspection I saw it was a pre-A model with the unfortunate cracked left recoil lug and a huge cutout on top of the receiver for a rear sight. Damn- so close! I will probably need to settle for a more expensive Model B or C project rifle but some day I will build myself my own version of this: http://hallowellco.com/darwin_hensley win52.htm My fingertips are raw after the work I put in my shop over the weekend, but this 40X stock actually looks like a stock now- and the client is very happy so I am happy. Spoiler: More pics