I see a lot of people falling into the misconception that their super tight pistol represents "tight tolerances."
It's actually rather the opposite. A tolerance is the allowed variation. If you have very tight control of the variation, then you can precisely guarantee a given amount of clearance or flatness.
My job requires engineering parts with micron-level tolerancing. The fuel pumps I work with have a clearance of the piston in the bore of about 3 microns. That's about 3% of the *width* of a human hair.
Yet, you can always insert the piston in its bore. It has no play, no slop, yes-- but it also has no hangups, no catches or "tight spots" that need to break in.
When a gun maker ships you something with catches and tight spots that have to "wear in" it means that they couldn't hold the tolerances tight enough to produce the desired small clearance. So they produced something that has no clearance (i.e., it hangs up) and insist that wear produce the clearance their manufacturing process couldn't.
I'm not trying to throw anyone under any particular bus, but wanted to make very clear that tight *tolerances* and tight *gun* are not only NOT the same thing, but they are diametric opposites.
It's actually rather the opposite. A tolerance is the allowed variation. If you have very tight control of the variation, then you can precisely guarantee a given amount of clearance or flatness.
My job requires engineering parts with micron-level tolerancing. The fuel pumps I work with have a clearance of the piston in the bore of about 3 microns. That's about 3% of the *width* of a human hair.
Yet, you can always insert the piston in its bore. It has no play, no slop, yes-- but it also has no hangups, no catches or "tight spots" that need to break in.
When a gun maker ships you something with catches and tight spots that have to "wear in" it means that they couldn't hold the tolerances tight enough to produce the desired small clearance. So they produced something that has no clearance (i.e., it hangs up) and insist that wear produce the clearance their manufacturing process couldn't.
I'm not trying to throw anyone under any particular bus, but wanted to make very clear that tight *tolerances* and tight *gun* are not only NOT the same thing, but they are diametric opposites.