Archive for August, 2020

Thoughts on Installing an Apex Trigger in the S&W M&P 2.0 Compact

Saturday, August 8th, 2020

I recently installed an Apex Flat-Faced Forward Set Trigger Kit in my M&P M2.0 Compact and I am pleased to report that the resulting trigger pull exceeded my expectations. With the Apex trigger my M&P is almost as shoot-able as my favorite custom 45.

Now, I’m not saying my M&P Apex trigger feels exactly like a great .45 trigger feels because my Apex M&P trigger has just the slightest, barely noticeable, subtle hint of a springy feel. What I am saying is that the Apex trigger gave my M&P 2.0 Compact a great trigger pull that made the gun much more shoot-able.

With the Apex trigger my offhand groups at 15 yards shrank from 3″ average to a 2″ average, which is about as good as my 65 year old eyes and hands can do.

Another benefit to installing the flat-faced trigger is that the bottom of the curved factory trigger would bump my trigger finger slightly with every shot. After shooting a couple of magazines, my trigger finder would start to get sore. The flat-faced trigger completely eliminated that problem.

Installing the trigger was not as straight-forward as I hoped it would be, but that was largely due to Apex’s failure to provide any guidance on how to install the trigger in the package that the trigger arrived in. The package contained no reference to the videos on Apex’s web site, no reference to Apex’s YouTube channel, and no reference to the important Apex PDF chart that tells which spring combinations to use to get different pull weights.

Nor was installation information easy to find on Apex’s web site. Apex really needs to have someone thoroughly audit their website, fix broken links, and improve the product pages so they link directly to the videos, charts, blog entries, and other references that customers need in order to install the trigger.

Installation Resources

This installation resources link at the bottom of some of Apex’s pages gives a 404 error: https://www.apextactical.com/installation-resources

This very useful installation video was needlessly difficult to find on their site.

This essential chart of which springs produce specific pull weights is also needlessly difficult to find on their web site. The trigger product page really should have a link to this chart.

Eventually I found a reference to the Apex Installation Video YouTube channel, but for some odd reason, the channel doesn’t have any M&P 2.0 videos!

This YouTube video on installing the Apex trigger by Hammer Striker is pretty good and was quite helpful.

Installing the Trigger Bar

I had never disassembled an M&P 2.0 before I installed the Apex trigger. Installing the trigger was pretty straightforward except the step to pin the trigger bar to the Apex trigger. For my trigger, the step to pin the trigger bar to the trigger required an astonishing amount of force to move the pin even the smallest distance.

Randy Lee with Apex demonstrates how to use a vice to move the pin in this video. At about 60 seconds into the video Randy mentions applying “a little bit of pressure.” If you watch the video you will notice that Randy actually had to apply what I consider to be a very large amount of pressure to the vice handle. Moving the pin on my trigger took much more force than you see in Randy’s video. I had to really bear down on the vice handle and then I’d hear the pin pop and the pin would move slightly. I had to do that about four times before the pin was close to being flush with the surface of the trigger. I don’t know how you’ll move that pin if you don’t have a decent size vise.

Maybe some triggers and pins are not as tight as mine was. For triggers and pins as tight as mine, I don’t think you would be able to move the pin with just a pin punch. Just something to be aware of if you decide to install an Apex trigger for yourself.

Conclusion

If you like the S&W M&P M2.0 but you don’t like the factory trigger then I highly recommend that you get an Apex Flat-Faced Forward Set Trigger Kit. The trigger kit ain’t cheap (around $170 in August 2020) but the Apex trigger has made my M&P M2.0 compact much more shoot-able and putting bullets on target under time pressure is what it’s all about.

The Apex Flat-Faced Forward Set Trigger Kit that I installed is here on Apex’s web site.

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What Makes This Book Worth Reading: The Long Price Quartet

Sunday, August 2nd, 2020

The Long Price Quartet by Daniel Abraham
ISBN 978-1-250-18658-4

This post is about a four-book fantasy series by Daniel Abraham that was published in one volume as “The Long Price Quartet”. The four books in the series are:

  1. A Shadow in Summer (2006)
  2. A Betrayal in Winter (2007)
  3. An Autumn War (2008)
  4. The Price of Spring (2009)

Daniel Abraham is one half of the team that writes as S.A. Corey (the team that wrote The Expanse).

What first attracted me to the series were the outstanding reviews from other authors and book review sites. On the strength of those reviews, I purchased the first book, “A Shadow in Summer,” at Half Price Books on clearance for $2.00. I enjoyed the book so much that when I finished it I wanted to be able to read the rest of the series immediately. The cheapest way to get the other three books was to buy the four book omnibus edition from Amazon. (I put the first book up for swapping on paperbackswap.com and it was claimed within two days.)

Authors who praised the series include George R. R. Martin, Connie Willis, Kate Elliot, Brandon Sanderson, Jo Walton, and Patrick Rothfuss.

Connie Willis (Grand Master of Science Fiction and Fantasy) said it is “utterly original and incredibly seductive.”

Brandon Sanderson said it was “Exactly the kind of book I love.”

Locus described it as “Heart-stoppingly surprising and exciting”

Kirkus Reviews said it was “Impressive”

SFX wrote it was “A compelling, emotionally brutal and edgy fantasy that’s genuinely worth of comparison with genre heavyweights like George R. R. Martin…exceptionally well written.”

Bookpage said it was “Full of hope that nen and women can be equal and that systems which degrate us can be changed.”

Asimov’s Science Fiction’s review praised Abraham saying that “Abraham has an interesting set of distinctive characters, a good sense of plot, and a fresh take on several of the usual fantasy tropes. He’s also willing to examine real-world issues a lot of popular fantasy doesn’t look at.”

The four book series spans a period of about 70 years set in a low-tech world dominated by city-states that are all that remains of a fallen empire that once dominated the world. Each city-state has a sorcerer that has cast a spell that forced a different aspect of nature to become embodied in a human-like form, under the complete control of the sorcerer. The sorcerers are known as poets and the embodied powers are known as andat. The andat constantly struggle against the sorcerers who control them desiring nothing more that to be released from their enforced embodiment and servitude.

A few generations before the story begins the empire fell when the poets waged war with their andat against other poets unleashing forces so powerful that world-wide cataclysms resulted. Other countries that have no poets of their own have no great love for the remains of the fallen empire but they cannot risk open conflict with the city-states without suffering retaliation from a poet and his andat.

But the country of Galt has advanced more technologically than the rest and is constantly scheming to undermine the fallen empire and its poets.

Author Abraham has created a fantasy world with intricate customs and interesting cultures. The fallen empire’s culture is Eastern (oriental-like) whereas the count of Galt is more Western-like.

The system of magic is quite unlike anything I’ve encountered in fantasy literature before. At the beginning of the series only men can bind nature forces into andat and only selfless men who are unlikely to abuse their power are trained to become poets. By the fourth book in the series, attempts are made to train women to be poets. The results are world-changing.

The series is refreshingly free of explicit sex. In fact, there’s not much sex in the series at all. Abraham puts his energy into dealing with other, non-sexual, adult themes and he does so very well.

One other positive aspect of this series is that Abraham has finished it, so you won’t have to wait an inexcusable amount of time for the author to wrap things up (unlike Patrick Rothfuss and his Kingkiller Chronicle that has been waiting for the final book for more than 9 years).

I’m very glad that I didn’t wait to get used copies of the last three books in Long Price Quartet and I recommend it highly.

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