Kel-Tec P17 with optic and silencer.
Lightening cuts on P17 slide.
Posted on 01/21/2023 4:23:30 AM PST by marktwain
Kel-Tec has announced an optical mounting system for their Kel-Tec P17 pistol. The plan appears to have the optic mounted at the factory on a Kel-Tec slide manufactured for the pistol. The entire system would quickly be interchanged with the existing slide. The optical system on the pistol at the Kel-Tec booth is a Crimson Trace, probably a CTS 1550 red dot sight. The suppressor does not come with the system. Above is shown a GemTech Alpine .22 LR suppressor, privately owned by a Kel-Tec employee.
It is not certain, at this time, that the Crimson Trace optic will be the one bundled with the Kel-Tec slide for sale as an accessory. A different optic might be bundled. The Kel-Tec slides will be lightened by laser cutting “KELTEC” in the slide with lightning cuts above and below the letters.
This correspondent waited for nearly three years before purchasing a Kel-Tec P17 at retail for only a little over the suggested manufacturers’ retail price. They have been incredibly successful pistols. The success has been helped by the boom in the firearms market over the last three years. With a suppressor, my P17 has been reliable with subsonic .22 ammunition. Subsonic ammunition out of a suppressor makes the good P17 a serious pleasure to shoot. CCI Quiet-semi-auto comes out of the system at 771 fps, with a 45-grain bullet, right at the ballistics of a .25 auto. For a small pistol, this is a decent performance. It is quiet and reasonably accurate to 50 yards.
(Excerpt) Read more at ammoland.com ...
Kel-Tec P17 with optic and silencer.
Lightening cuts on P17 slide.
Lots of new fun stuff coming out.
That looks fun! And it cycles reliably with subsonic ammo?
The lower the power of the ammo, the more often you should clean it.
.....I got a P17 some months back at a local gun show and love it....! I almost exclusisvely use CCI’s MiniMag ammo in all but one of my .22LR pistols, the exception being a Phoenix pistol for which high-velocity ammo is not recommended....22LR ammo is dirty by nature so cleaning your gun after firing it is probably very wise...
Kel TEC only does screw builds. I refuse to run anything held together by screws since repeated recoil after an unknown number of shots, maybe dozens, maybe hundreds, may a few thousand, and screws WILL eventually walk out and fall off and get lost.
Screws are used by companies too cheap to install captive pins.
The Kel-Tec P32 does not use the clamshell-screw build technique. It is highly thought of.
In their clamshell designs, Kel-Tec only uses commonly available industrial machine screws which are easy to replace, at least in the models I have examined.
Really? Ever seen a Kel-Tec P32, P3AT, PF9, P11, or P40?
Screws are used by companies too cheap to install captive pins.
Given that Kel-Tec's target market is at the 'economical' end of the spectrum, that's probably not too surprising. And I can't say that I was ever impressed by the number of disposable connectors (like roll pins or rivets), that are used in some expensive and quite popular firearms.
As my friend Captain Obvious once famously observed, "All gun owners have opinions - so what?"
;>)
Myself and 4 colleagues of mine teach defensive courses, in which enrollees would depend around 1,700 rounds in a 2 day class. No XD ever made it, budget ARs tended to die, I wasn’t the shotgun trainer but he told us a lot of his students ran KSGs and their screws would fall out of break in ways that would shut down the students’ training if we didn’t keep loaners on hand for this purpose.
MAYBE I could see a screw built .22 being reliable enough, but nothing serious.
What we see works best (I was the head pistol guy when I was doing it) was, Glock, M&P, Baretta M9s, CZs of all kinds (I particularly like the P-07 and was impressed enough with it to by my own) Walthers work pretty good, SIG jar great but I saw the spring die in a SIG P320, but sit mostly rocks
And you’re right about the roll pins. I’ve had to replace quite a few after 2000 ish rounds, but after that I don’t see them walking anymore. My P-07 is a hair over 37k rounds and on its second spring, but that roll pin still looks good to go
By the way, we had one young guy in a class in Florida running, I shit you not, a luger. He dominated with it too. I couldn’t get over the sight picture. Imagining cracking open a book just enough to let a tiny bit of sunlight through, and on the other side, you’re trying to focus on a sewing needle. I was barely on steel at 25 yards with it but he was ringing them like a xylophone. He had a few jams but it didn’t go down. He just racked his toggle and the next round would chamber.
A Luger. In a 2017 defensive class. That’s pretty dope.
....try taking one out...they are held in place by some kind of industrial-strength LockTite or whatever it is...I have every confidence that my P17 will shoot thousands of rounds and not one screw will back out..
(Captain Obvious again... ;^)
Can it be field stripped without removing the screws? I locktite screw-mounted optics and rails but I wouldn’t wanna have to do it on the actual guns
....field stripping is pretty easy...and only the slide is removed thereby...the barrel and captive recoil spring cannot be removed without destroying the gun, I would surmise...!!
the owners’ manual is pretty easy to follow and quite specific about how far you can go with field stripping...
;>)
One of two Kel-Tec pistols I own. The other is a P32 which has been flawless.
The 'crack' of a supersonic bullet echoes off everything that gets in its way, and the echo is easy to detect if your hearing hasn't already been been overpowered by muzzle blast (which the suppressor prevents happening). If you don't hear the echo, that can only mean your bullet was subsonic. Either that or you're in the middle of the Bonneville Salt Flats and there's nothing for miles for it to echo off.
You might be able to hear it without a suppressor but with one it's really obvious, especially without earpro. Which is more practicable with a suppressed rimfire (which with subsonic ammunition is about as loud as a slamming card door) but I wouldn't recommend it with even a suppressed centerfire.
And keeping your bullet subsonic might be a little more complicated than you think because, strictly speaking, it's not about the speed of sound, it's about the transonic region. An airplane or a bullet will generate a supersonic shockwave as low as the critical Mach number, which is the lower threshold of the transonic region. And all shockwaves have an accompanying "sonic boom."
Testing done by "dean of silencers" Alan C Paulson found that bullets in flight always have an accompanying "crack" down to at least 0.8 Mach and sometimes to 0.7 Mach. So depending on the local speed of sound, bullets as fast as 880 fps are almost certain to make a "crack," and bullets as as slow as 750 fps might.
Truth be told, the actual "speed of sound" is entirely meaningless to a bullet. It's actually the transonic region -- which starts at the lower critical Mach number, which is ~20% below speed of sound and continues to ~20% above it -- that is responsible not only for the crack of the bullet but also for the instability encountered by some bullets when slowing to the vicinity of SOS.
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