Alright, I broke down and decided the GDers will get tired of me regularly posting pictures of this gun in other people’s threads (not like that’ll stop me ), so welcome to the official project thread for the pistol I’ve decided to dub Rocinante:



Most of you will be somewhat familiar with how my project threads work, given the Sig subforum was the home for my first dedicated project thread on this site detailing and cataloging my misadventures of modifying, shooting, and repairing a series of P320 pistols:

https://www.ar15.com/forums/Handguns/Introducing-Project-Nemesis-The-P320-Roland-Special/14-182311/

It’s been a while since I had a Sig in my hands to vivisect. Some of you may be aware I desecrated a couple revolvers for a while (HERE and HERE), meanwhile putting the spotlight of my general-purpose, do-anything, high-performance pistol attentions briefly towards a Tanfoglio Defiant Limited Master one-centimeter-yeeter (HERE). The Tanfo was very nice, but the “do it for the memes” wore off pretty quick and I got tired of paying nearly a dollar a round for FMJ range ammo, so it was put up for sale and I went searching for my next victim.

Per usual, this will be a long-term ongoing thread detailing any modifications, maintenance, repairs, problems, thoughts, brainstorming, or other adventures that take place with [Amos Burton Voice] the Roci [/Amos Burton Voice]. Updates will be fairly random and there may be long periods where the thread goes dormant, but I expect the shooting updates at least to be fairly regular.

As you can see, the pistol has already been set up with an optic (Holosun 508T-GR X2 with a Springer Precision filler plate), WML (Surefire X300U), and extended base pads/11-coil magazine springs (Springer Precision). As far as part modifications for this gun goes, the current plan is that will be about it for roughly the next year. We’ll see if that plan holds up in the long run…

Tomorrow will be the first range day with the gun, and as is my usual course of action any time I acquire a new pistol intended for serious defensive use I have about 700 rounds of mixed 115/124/147 grain FMJ and JHP loads to run through the gun:



I’ll honestly be shocked if any of this causes the gun to choke, as I expect Sig has pretty well figured out how to keep the P226 reliable on a variety of ammo at this point. Once reliability is verified, I’ll down-select to a few different FMJ and JHP loads with similar recoil profile for designated range/practice and defensive ammo. Given the physics involved (long barrel, uncompensated, heavy frame pistol), I expect I’ll prefer the recoil profile of the comparatively heavy and slow 147gr loads the most, but I’m prepared to be surprised.

So, what’s the current plan for this American-made Wunder Neun? 10,000 rounds by this time time next year, at which point the pistol - assuming it’s earned the honor - will be sent off to Bruce Gray at Gray Guns Inc (GGI) for a full rebuild and tuning into a master gunsmith masterpiece, after which it’ll take a quick detour to Mk3 Firearms for one of their patented Single-Stage SAO trigger jobs that leave literally nothing to be desired from a pistol trigger. Then another 10,000 round year after that.

Alright Sig, Custom Shop, and the venerable P226; Let’s see what you can really do

Ammo can’s loaded down and the Roci’s dripping with lube like a drunken sorostitute at a Halloweekend frat party.



Time to go christen this bitch

Such a nice looking handgun.

Looking forward to yet another thread
Attached File

So.



That is all 300-some odd rounds I fired today, between 5 and 10 yards, the vast majority of which about as quickly as I could pull the trigger. Unsurprisingly not a single malfunction, even with my initial reliability confirmation practice of throwing randomly mixed grain weight FMJ/JHP loads into the magazines*. It ate everything without complaint.



It turns out when you buy a gun that weighs 45 ounces stock, then add an optic and WML, then shoot 9mm ammo through it, it barely fuckin moves. As long as I had just about any half-way decent grip pressure on the thing the muzzle barely lifted, the slide just chugs straight back and forward like a sewing machine. Not even my P320 with three-port comp and frame-mounted optic was this flat or soft shooting, and that includes with 124gr NATO loads that I had on hand today.

I’ll finish up shooting the rest of the initial ammo I bought for it next weekend. So far, so good

*For the record, this is NOT a practice I recommend in perpetuity. It’s only for the purposes of establishing the reliability of the pistol on any commonly available factory manufactured ammo. For general range and defensive use, I still recommend selecting just a couple easily acquirable go-to loads of FMJ and JHP of the same grain weight and zeroing your gun to your chosen defensive ammo. PSA over

In on 1.

Welcome friend

OST, really enjoyed your previous threads.

Why thank you! Hopefully this one is a bit more consistently active and at least as long-lasting as the P320 shenanigans. Given how the gun felt during shooting today, about the only thing that’ll make me get rid of it any time soon is if something goes horribly wrong with it. Which I highly doubt will happen. After four decades of development, it’s pretty difficult to fuck up a P226

I feel like you’re obligated to say “motherfucker!” at least 3 times per range session.
Does the comp push muzzle flash into your optic window or away from it?
ETA. No comp. Looked at it wrong.

This thread is remarkably easy to fap to.

Per range session? More like every third shot.



It’s always my number one goal when starting a new thread

I'm in on this. I love my p226 in .40SW. It barely recoils with nothing on it. I may eventually get a 9mm p226

I’ll try to get some slow-mo video on my next range trip. It’s the softest recoiling pistol I’ve ever shot. At least aside from the ones chambered in 22

You get the points for noticing It’s a reference to a couple things. Rocinante means workhorse, which seemed appropriate for a high round count general-purpose project based on a classic pistol design with a long history of duty, military, and commercial uses. It’s also another reference to The Expanse, my favorite novel and television series. It’s a sci-fi story and Rocinante is the name of the main hero spaceship. A sci-fi reference seemed appropriate for a modern, gadget-ified build

The P226 is nearly perfection in its plain Jane form. That’s a beauty. Subscribed.

Honestly mostly it’s the reference to The Expanse, but it seemed like the actual definition of the translated word was a bit fitting as well:



I don’t think anyone with the basic historical knowledge of the P226 pistol would honestly be able to argue that it doesn’t match that description pretty well.



I do like the design language of Sig’s classic P-series guns, but there’s just something that they’ve done to the lines of their X-Series pistols that make them stand out from the pack and become incredibly aesthetically pleasing. Doesn’t hurt that it shoots as damn well as it looks

I've always enjoyed the P226.
Have one on my hip right now.
They just fit my hands right.
Dad has an original X5 and she's a dream to shoot.

I'm very much look forward to watching your updates in this thread.

Hot shit.  

*amos burton voice*. You are that guy.(excuse the paraphrase)


Loved your precious (that was a typo for previous but it fits so it stays) builds.  My record in a year, fwiw, was a little under 26,000 rounds through a Glock 17 (gen 3).  It had a ghost connector and new sights, but was otherwise as it came circa 2007. But that was back when WWB was $3 at Walmart, and I was the head RSO at a range where I could go shoot anytime I wanted.  Lots of 2am range sessions.  My general routine was 200 rounds, 3-4 times a week.  You should hit 10,000 well within a year at the rate yours starting.

I agree wholeheartedly.

Attached File

10,000 rounds isn’t even close to the round count that most of the serious competitive shooters will go through in a year, but for my purposes it’s more than enough to get regular weekly practice sessions in.

Assuming the pistol holds up - and I have no reason to believe it won’t hold up - I’m hoping 10,000/year is the normal for quite some time. I’ve always wanted one of those guns that I’ve had for over a decade and has tens of thousands of rounds through it. This seems as good a platform for that goal as any

I wish they made this in black.

Re-finishing in DLC is on the list when it goes to GGI

I may need to buy a SAO P226. I prefer SA to DA/SA.

DA is for revolvers. Pistols can do better, so we should let them

Ok, I have a vitally important question for this project from experienced P226 owners…

Who makes a good reliable high capacity magazine for the P226? By high capacity I mean like close to 30 rounds or more

As far as I know Promag is the only place making higher high cap mags and the reviews are exactly what you’d expect.

The P226 and 92 can use the same magazine if you make a cut for the Sig mag release. That’s what I’ve been debating as I have a stack of 30 round Beretta mags. Been trying to hunt down someone who does it with better repeatability than I’m likely capable of.

Well damn. I imagine I’ll have a pretty difficult enough time finding additional Mec-Gar mags for the thing as it is until something’s done about CO’s dumbass capacity law. The state police union vowed they wouldn’t enforce the law when it passed in 2013 and have been true to their word, so all of the local gun stores summarily ignore the law anyway (except for the big box chain stores), but all the online retailers won’t ship mags over 15 rounds to a CO address so if one of my local stores doesn’t stock them and won’t order them I’m pretty much stuck going for a road trip some day…

Took a brief respite from the chaos of moving today and went to the range long enough to finish off the remainder of the mixed weight FMJ/JHP ammo I bought for initial testing. As expected not even a slight hiccup with any of the rounds. This gun makes it way too easy to shoot as fast as you can pull the trigger, good thing my local indoor range doesn’t have a one-shot-per-second rule or I’d have gotten yelled at.



Field stripped the pistol when I got home, wiped everything down with rags and oil, and ran a bore snake through the barrel a few times. Lubed up all the contact points and put it back together, nice and clean and shiny again. I still can’t get over just how smooth the slide is on this thing, even as tight as the fit is on the frame.



Next is to bulk order some more FMJ and JHP ammo. I’m thinking either Federal American Eagle or Sig Elite for FMJ, and Federal HST, Speer Gold Dot, or Sig V-Crown - whatever can be found in stock - for JHP, all in 147gr loadings. The optic was roughly bore-sighted when it was installed but I’ll take it to my gunsmith once I have a specific defensive load and have them zero it more precisely at 25 yards.

700 rounds down, 9,300 to go

Beautiful pistol. Wish I could afford one!

Alright, ordered up 2,000 rounds of Federal 147gr FMJ and 500 rounds of 147gr HST LE JHP. Probably won’t get to me in time to go shooting this weekend but I’ll make up for it next weekend, we’re already well ahead of the average weekly round count I’ll need to keep up to hit 10,000 rounds this year. I’ll get the optic more precisely zeroed at 25yds with the HST when it gets here as well.

Building momentum!

Attached File


I run the hell out of mine.

Been through 2 green ops, 2 jedi, 1 hades, 1 Riley bowman classes and a few USPSA matches so far with ZERO failures of any kind.

Love it, and following this thread as I will be rebuilding mine before long and will likely follow your lead.

Fuck yeah that’s good to see Any idea on your current round count?

Time for an informational update: on my way home from work today I stopped by my LGS to poke around a bit. I was walking through their aisle of magazines and took a look to see if they stocked any P226 mags. Turns out they carry two kinds - flush-fit 15-rounders (Blegh), and the extended basepad 20-round mags. The kind that have a witness hole marked 20:



I purchased three of them, expecting I’d have to change the basepads to get them to work with the X-Five magwell. Got home, tried to throw one into the gun as it came out of the box and as expected it wouldn’t seat:



No big deal, I figured this would be the case. Pulled the Springer basepad off one of the mags that came with the gun, installed it on the new 20-round tube, and put it in the gun…And it still wouldn’t catch. Pulled the mag out of the pistol, set it on the counter next to one of the Springer extended 18-rounders, and figured out why:



18-round tube that came with the gun on the left, 20-round tube on the right. Both mags using Springer Precision extensions.

Turns out the mag catch cutout on the 20-round mag tube is slightly lower on the actual body of the magazine, so it won’t click into place in the X-Five regardless of what basepad is used. I’m not sure if this is a problem with the new style mag release being located slightly differently on the gun, something special to do with the X-Five, or what. Either way, frustrating.

The good news is when I went back to the LGS and explained the issue they happily took back the 20-round mags and special ordered three Mec-Gar marked 18-round magazines straight from Sig. I’m ordering up more extended basepads and 11-coil springs from Springer, so they’ll be ready to go whenever the tubes get here. I had been a bit worried I might not be able to source more magazines for the gun anywhere in-state, but the store informed me they’ll happily special order more magazines any time I want to buy them with no additional mark-up. This is excellent news.

TL;DR: Sig 20-round P226 magazines don’t work in the X-Five, but my LGS can order more Mec-Gar 18-rounders whenever I want. Because MOAR

Best guesstimate 8k ish?

Just basing that off the round four totals for those classes and then adding another k for the matches and some practice.

She’s a big girl, but accurate and reliable, just how I like ‘em.

You haven’t had a single malfunction to your memory in that many rounds? How often do you clean and lube it?

I wonder if this thing can make it to 10k rounds without any hiccups 🤔

We got ourselves some hollow points boys

How's she like the HST's?

Looks like I'll be buying Dad a new X5 in exchange for his West German X5.

Thanks for the info about the magazines, Dad just stated the WG X5's took regular 226 mags and that the new X5's (like your Rocinante) do not.

Best place I've found online for 226 mags is Greg Cote

Haven’t run the HST’s specifically yet but it handled all the other 147gr JHP/FMJ ammo I shot through it initially just fine and the recoil was exceptionally soft.

The X-Five must use a slightly different frame than the other P226 pistols, cause the 20-round magazines worked perfectly fine in the P226 Legion SAO that my LGS had when I first bought the three mags.

If I could order from just anywhere online I wouldn’t have had any concerns with acquiring mags for the gun, but the vast majority of online retailers won’t ship mags above 15-round capacity to CO even though the dumbass capacity limit law is summarily ignored by everyone here including the state sheriff and police unions. Pretty much any smaller gun stores that aren’t the big-box national chain stores sell standard capacity magazines, provided you can find the type you’re looking for in stock. This is why I was so pleased to find out my preferred LGS will special order the 18-rounders from Sig on request

…and a good gaggle of FMJ to go with it. Too late to head to the range this weekend, but I’ll take the gun to my ‘smith after work one day this week and have him zero it with the HSTs at 25yds. Next weekend, more blastin’

What holosun is that and is it directly mounted to the Roci, or are you using a adaptor plate?
If using an adaptor plate, which one are you using?

It’s a HE508T-GR X2. I’m using the Springer Precision RMR-footprint filler plate:

https://shop.springerprecision.com/filler-plate-for-sig-sauer-p320-p226-r2-slides/

The X-Five optics cut comes pre-drilled for the RMR-footprint bolt pattern already (it’s Sig’s most recent R1P/R2/DPP cut), but if you just mount a RMR-footprint optic directly it leaves gaps in front and behind the optic and doesn’t have recoil bosses. That leaves all of the g-forces from the slide cycling directly on the mounting screws, which will cause them to shear off - it’s a question of when, not if.

Technically it’s a filler plate, not an adapter plate. The screws go down from the top of the optic, through the plate, and into the slide, so it’s not like a Glock MOS where you’re mounting the optic to just the plate and then the plate to the slide. The filler plate is just filling in the gaps at the front and rear of the optic and providing recoil bosses, which helps alleviate a lot of the stress from the mount screws when the slide cycles

Thanks for that information. I'm going to be doing some shopping apparently.

CHPWS makes similar filler plates for Sig’s R1P/R2/DPP footprint cuts with and without RMR holes for a lot more different optics:

https://chpws.com/product-category/red-dot-apater-plates/?CHPWS=1&pa_manufacturer=sig-sauer&really_curr_tax=382-product_cat

I can confidently recommend any of their products as well. Just make sure you’re buying the correct filler plate for the specific optics cut footprint your pistol has, Sig’s done several at this point and a couple different kinds still actively being produced

Thanks for the info.
I currently only have two optics capable pistols.

One is a 226 that has a slide machined for (and came with the Romeo 1Pro), the other is a plane jane 1st gen P365XL, (using the optic means you lose the rear sight).

I've got some research to do to figure out where I'll be going with this.

Thanks for the thread and all the links. I appreciate it.

ETA - looking through your links, it appears I'll probably want to go with a C&H adaptor plate for the 509T for my 226RX.

Honestly the way the quality of optics are these days losing my rear iron sight to mount a dot doesn’t really bother me. I know that’s very subjective, and I totally get it if people feel more comfortable being able to keep some kind of BUIS. I’m comfortable with it though

You’re making me want to explore pawnshops for used 226’s.

Do it, as long as it’s SAO