This past weekend I was fortunate enough to participate in the Apex Tactical M&P Armorer Course taught by by Master Gunsmith Randy Lee of Apex Tactical. This class was really cool, I knew the basics of breaking down the 2.0 to clean but understanding the why was awesome. We went over the design and interaction of parts, inspection of parts for excessive wear, proper maintenance, modification and customization to fit items like the Apex Trigger and Barrel.
For this class I purchased a semi drop in barrel to custom fit on my m&p as well as another barrel and apex trigger kit for a coworker.
I had a good understanding of how to do the trigger install myself but this was cool to see little tips to get it done smoother and faster, plus they gave us free bench blocks to use where as before I used whatever I had laying around, like rolls of duct tape, to prop my gun up enough to hit pins out. Randy was awesome, explained everything super clear and had good tips on getting stubborn pieces to work.
We started by completely stripping the frames and Randy gave a cool insight on the development of the trigger and what they wanted out of it.
Trigger install is pretty straight forward. I was one of the only people setting it up as light of a pull as possible.
After a quick lunch break we got into the custom fitting of the barrel. This was really cool. Getting better accuracy out of these pistols by a little fabrication peaks my interest. I love building things and using my hands so once we got into this part of class I was loving it. Theres a couple locations that need to be filed down, or milled down if you have the tooling, to achieve that perfect fit. A file and a jig with a little bit of patience gets you that perfect fit that gets you that improved accuracy.
At the end of the day, I had installed a new trigger kit on a 2.0 and two custom fit barrels for two 2.0s, great success!
Overall a really cool class, if you get the chance to take a class from them I highly recommended it. Very informative but not overwhelming to get discouraged.
-Cano