Glock Innovation

7psqp1.jpg
 
Great thread John!

Glock took advantage of 2 very new manufacturing technologies ( at that time). Both were technologies specific to the plastic injection molding industry. They did not invent them, they just incorporated the technology into their offering.

• Glock had a proprietary polymer configured for the injection molding of their frames.

• Glock placed the slide guides into the molds as "inserts" and inject molded "around" them which incorporated the guides as a part of the finish molded frame. Multi-Axis CNC machining capabilities allowed the molds to be machined in a multi- cavity manner that allowed this capability.

( Intratec in Florida soon followed with the whole stainless steel slide rail molded into the frame of the Cat series of polymer pistols )
 
Last edited:
Hmmmm… this makes me wonder…
Glass wasn’t new
Electricity wasn’t new
Inert gasses weren’t new
Setting cloth on fire was older than all that stuff
Was the light bulb really an “innovation”?
 
Dirtydirtysouf said:
I was the same way till I held a MP Compact in 45acp....it felt closest to a 1911 then any other plastic pistol
Click to expand...
Honestly, I don't even shoot any more. At one time, I was burning 40-50 thousand rounds a year. I haven't even been down the PHA in over 3 years. I should probably let my membership lapse, but I hold onto the hope that I'll shift gears and get back to it.
 
John Travis said:
Honestly, I don't even shoot any more. At one time, I was burning 40-50 thousand rounds a year. I haven't even been down the PHA in over 3 years. I should probably let my membership lapse, but I hold onto the hope that I'll shift gears and get back to it.
Click to expand...
You need to get back into it....even 50rnds a week is better than nothing!!!!!
 
Dirtydirtysouf said:
I was the same way till I held a MP Compact in 45acp....it felt closest to a 1911 then any other plastic pistol
Click to expand...
Except the recoil impulse in a plastic gun, and I carry a plastic gun. I had to quit shooting 45. I used to read about old guys not shooting 45 anymore, and I thought, “Wimps”.

Well, I’m the wimp now. Right wrist is fine at the range, but complains the next day.

I even prefer shooting a heavier framed gun in 9mm for matches now.
 
Last edited:
fieldgrade said:
Except the recoil impulse in a plastic gun, and I carry a plastic gun. I had to quit shooting 45. I used to read about old guys not shooting 45 anymore, and I thought, “Wimps”.

Well, I’m the wimp now. Right wrist is fine at the range, but complains the next day.

I even prefer shooting a heavier framed gun in 9mm for matches now.
Click to expand...

Dammit. Now I’m going to have nightmares tonight. This aging this is not for wimps. 🥺
 
Last edited:
CZfool68 said:
Dammit. Now I’m going to have nightmares tonight. This aging this is not for wimps. 🥺
Click to expand...
Getcha a motor-sickle, and ride it 95mph every so often.

You won’t be thinking about how many birthdays you’ve had.
 
Innovation isn't always a good thing look at bullpups and most trucks produced in the past 5 years 😀.
Glock combined all the necessary features better than everyone else, and 1911 fan boys still can't get over it.
 
Me, I laugh at people's safety misconceptions on the Glock, just like I laugh at people's misconceptions about "How JMB meant for the 1911 to be carried".

If there's anything truly innovative to Herr Glock's designs, it's how he managed to pack so much ugly into them.

By any measure, they're a quality firearm. But man, are they ugly!
 
BatteryOaksBilly said:
Any single event cause this or did you just slip-slide into it?
Click to expand...
Both, but the single event that started it is long past and the eye problem was resolved with cataract surgery. Now, it's mostly a matter of time and effort and the fact that I just plain don't feel like making the effort to get down there.
 
Cole_McD said:
Glock combined all the necessary features better than everyone else
Click to expand...
What...besides cost and ease of production...makes all those features necessary? All guns have what is necessary to perform the task assigned to them and all pistols that are short recoil operated with controlled feed and the tilting barrel locking system function in exactly the same way. All of them.

When the Chinese adopted the AK47, they started fabricating the receivers from sheet metal stampings. Did that make them better? No. It just enabled them to produce the weapon faster and cheaper.
 
Last edited:
It is difficult to attribute the success of Glock to any one thing.

Timing was a big part of it. They were the first of the "wonder 9s" and though there were other options out there, Glock was smart enough to court the law enforcement contracts at the right time to win them.

Glocks simply run right out of the box. I didn't have any interest in them at all when I was growing up, though they were out there by my high school years. Mostly there were two kinds of handguns: 1911s and revolvers. That's what I learned to shoot and that's what I bought for my first two handguns. I got a Colt Commander, brand new in the box from Leonard Beatty somewhere around Wilkesboro (I think) back in the 90's. It would NOT run out of the box. It spent YEARS with Ogburn over at Personal Defense doing one thing and another to it. He got it to run, and I loved it. It finally started to have issues again. I was upset. Bought a Kimber. It had issues. Two trips back to Yonkers. Many years later I tried 1911s again. Bought a Les Baer. It didn't run right either even past break in. The slide stop kept working itself out. Sent it back. Les fixed it. Ended up selling it. Somewhere along the way, I ended up with a Glock because it was cheap and I needed something that would run besides my S&W Model 15. That Glock 17 still pulls bedside duty to this day and I have no idea how many rounds I have through it at various range trips and matches. I very grudgingly bought it. It isn't exciting, but it goes bang every time.

As a range employee that rented guns to the good people of Raleigh, I got to see how all sorts of guns performed. This was over 20 years ago. The ones that got shot the most were the Glocks. They had the least number of issues out of the 98 different handguns we had.

I think Glocks were popular because they simply worked, were at a reasonable price point, got traction with LEOs as a duty weapon, and for whatever reason seemed to be a favorite prop in Hollywood movies. Every rapper from the 90's has a song that mentions a Glock.

I shoot 1911s better than Glocks. It's just the way it is. If we lived in more orderly times with fewer riots, flash mobs of criminals that randomly beat people, I'd probably be just fine with 7+1 even if the thing is a lot heavier than my current CCW. The 1911, as far as the act of shooting is concerned, is a joy to shoot and has no centerfire peer in my humble opinion. There's a reason the best of the best on planet earth use 2011s in competition.

The older I get and the more I shoot (which totals about 30k rounds a year at this point) a gun is more or less just a gun. It's a tool. I like some more than others. Most things out there have a place. but polymer guns aren't particularly special. Bought a Dagger the other day for the princely sum of $248. It runs like a champ. I can afford nicer stuff and do have nicer stuff. Was just fun to see how cheap I could assemble a reliable 9mm compact. I'm not sure if I could buy a 1911 for $250 and if such a thing were available I'm not certain it would run. For not much more one could get a RIA or a Tisas so maybe price isn't such a consideration after all. Still...gonna be tough to beat a Dagger for a poverty pistol.

Run whatever fits you best within your budget, I say. All are welcome to their opinions. There's very little new under the sun. But tonight, I'll have a Glock in the nightstand for my personal defense. I feel pretty confident I can take care of business with it.

But to be fair, it is a backup for the Langdon Tactical Beretta 1301 sporting an Arisaka light and 8 shells of Federal Flight Control 00 Buckshot. Sooo...I care less about platform and manufacturer loyalty or whatever than I do effectiveness based on the application.

If there's gonna be a gunfight I just want to win and I'll cheat if I have to.
 
Studentofthegun said:
Glocks simply run right out of the box.
Click to expand...
So do 1911s as long as they're built to spec. You had a bad experience with a few. That can happen, but nobody ever mentions the hundreds of thousands that have run "right out of the box" and instead focus on the squeaky wheels. The US military didn't stick with the pistol for over 70 years because it was unreliable.

The problem with the 1911 isn't the design. It's with the execution of the design. With so many different entities vying for a piece of the pie, and most of them seem to think that blueprints are suggestions...including Colt...there's bound to be a problem child or two every so often. Most of them are fine.

The 1911 pistol was designed to function. If it's correctly built to spec and fed decent ammunition from a proper magazine, it will function. It's a machine. It doesn't have a choice.

One of the things that I find interesting is that every time a Glock discussion starts, the 1911 bashing soon works its way in...and when the 1911 is the topic, it won't be long before the Glockers show up to steer it in a different direction.

That's why I started the thread off with this disclaimer:

"This is for educational purposes only and is in no way a Glock bashing thread, nor is it intended to bolster any arguments for any other design."

This thread is about the Glock.
 
Last edited:
John Travis said:
So do 1911s as long as they're built to spec. You had a bad experience with a few. That can happen, but nobody ever mentions the hundreds of thousands that have run "right out of the box" and instead focus on the squeaky wheels. The US military didn't stick with the pistol for over 70 years because it was unreliable.

The problem with the 1911 isn't the design. It's with the execution of the design. With so many different entities vying for a piece of the pie, and most of them seem to think that blueprints are suggestions...including Colt...there's bound to be a problem child or two every so often. Most of them are fine.

The 1911 pistol was designed to function. If it's correctly built to spec and fed decent ammunition from a proper magazine, it will function. It's a machine. It doesn't have a choice.

One of the things that I find interesting is that every time a Glock discussion starts, the 1911 bashing soon works its way in...and when the 1911 is the topic, it won't be long before the Glockers show up to steer it in a different direction.

That's why I started the thread off with this disclaimer:

"This is for educational purposes only and is in no way a Glock bashing thread, nor is it intended to bolster any arguments for any other design."

This thread is about the Glock.
Click to expand...

You make fair points that I'm very aware of. I'm not the 1911 expert that you are, but Iet's just say I've got a fair amount of experience with them. I've had bad experiences with more than a few because the execution, as you say, was suboptimal. Unfortunately, if one is purchasing a firearm they actually expect to run, that's an issue. It was an issue even with Colt, as you are no doubt aware, and it was not limited to the Series 70. Those issues followed Colt throughout their product line in the 80's and 90's and is perhaps the only reason that companies like Kimber were ever able to get a foothold in the first place. None of this is shocking considering the financial issues they were having at the time.

Springfield had issues as well. I sold twelve Champions between 2002 and 2003 and all but two of them had to be sent back. You're exactly right about the design being fantastic and I've alluded to that.

As far as the thread topic being about Glock, it is difficult to explain Glock's rise to prominence without some historical context. As such I'm not bashing the 1911 so much as explaining why subpar execution of the manufacturing may have let some people to take a hard look at the large number of "wonder 9's" of the 90's. That's when the market share of the Glocks began to really take off.

My contention is that while Glock's design is not particularly ground breaking, it was and is a reliable handgun.

If the purpose of a firearm is to go bang, then that it must do. Most gun owners don't really care about the provenance of a particular design, only that it is obtainable within budget and does the job for which it is acquired. Keep in mind that for most people the statement "most of them are fine" will not suffice for something used to defend one's life. That's a different calculus than that used to determine what does best in a match or which is the most enjoyable to plink with on a Saturday afternoon.

Glocks may not innovate very much over time, but there are lots of aftermarket parts that any novice can install by watching a YouTube video. The same may or may not be true of other semi auto pistols. Glock plastic sights are terrible, but it takes me a max of 15 min to install a new set.

When we have companies like Sig that apparently like to use the end user as their quality assurance department, I don't see Glocks going anywhere anytime soon.
 
To be fair, I've had a factory built Grock that wouldn't run. G30S. Real disappointment. And I shoot my 19s enough to know that every gun malfunctions eventually.

Mission creep is real... all these P80 glockalike copies and their myriad problems are beginning to erode the reputation of the real thing... just like with the 1911.
 
John Travis said:
So do 1911s as long as they're built to spec. You had a bad experience with a few. That can happen, but nobody ever mentions the hundreds of thousands that have run "right out of the box" and instead focus on the squeaky wheels. The US military didn't stick with the pistol for over 70 years because it was unreliable.

The problem with the 1911 isn't the design. It's with the execution of the design. With so many different entities vying for a piece of the pie, and most of them seem to think that blueprints are suggestions...including Colt...there's bound to be a problem child or two every so often. Most of them are fine.

The 1911 pistol was designed to function. If it's correctly built to spec and fed decent ammunition from a proper magazine, it will function. It's a machine. It doesn't have a choice.
Click to expand...

Studentofthegun said:
My contention is that while Glock's design is not particularly ground breaking, it was and is a reliable handgun........When we have companies like Sig that apparently like to use the end user as their quality assurance department, I don't see Glocks going anywhere anytime soon.
Click to expand...

@John Travis , you told me the bolded/italicized about 15 years ago. It's etched, seared, into my memory.

When I was at recon we still used the MEU(SOC) 1911, a conglomeration, a mish-mash of frames and parts, even my 1941-vintage Singer ran like a sewing machine (see what I did there)? I never, ever had a single problem with those WW2-era frames. That said, we did have armorers, so.... but the fact that we still used them, used them hard, in the 90s gives credence to your assessment that "The US military didn't stick with the pistol for over 70 years because it was unreliable."

@Studentofthegun , I totally agree. I think the phrase I often hear is "boringly reliable." Not just that; if you want it rebuilt, just send it back to Glock, they send you back an essentially new gun. RE: SIG and that Glocks are not going anywhere anytime soon, hard agree. There's a reason SOCOM is sticking with the Glock over the SIG, and it ain't just about the almighty dollar.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom