Last night my husband and I attended a Glock Armorer class put on by MALC Training Institute (http://www.malctrainingevents.com/). This was not an actual class put on by Glock so we didn’t receive any certification but we received what we really wanted more, education.
The evening started out by driving 45 minutes north to Muncie, Indiana. We met at a local Holiday Inn (we did not spend the night there so we are unfortunately unable to perform brain surgery now….) to learn how to fully disassemble, trouble shoot and reassemble Glock handguns. Charles took his Baby G (Glock 42) while I had a 30s we’ve had on hock from a coworker of Charles’.
The class started with a little Glock history (most of which I had already read in my Glock book) and general information on Glocks (like, for example, the numbering system has no meaning other then that’s the order they introduced the guns in. 17 came out first, then 18, then 19 and so on).
I didn’t get to take as extensive of notes as I would have liked so some of this is based off of my memory of what we did. So here we go!
Of the 34 parts that make up a Glock, 19 are interchangeable (excluding the Glock 42 and 43) between the different models. If you think about this it’s kinda brilliant. An armorer for a police department or military unit can repair multiple different models of Glock with a fairly small assortment of parts. Once you’re familiar with disassembling one Glock you can disassemble pretty much any Glock (the 42 and 43 are slightly different in certain areas as far as the parts go).
The first thing we did was field strip the guns down into a slide, barrel, frame and the recoil spring. This is the level that most gun owners are comfortable with and as far as most guns need to be taken down regularly for cleaning. But the point of an armorer’s class is to go further lol.
After field striping, we took apart the slide. Parts that we discovered included the firing pin (complete with spring and cups), extractor and extractor spring. We learned about taking the cups (the 2 little black pieces in the picture to the right) off of the firing pin and how the factory cups can be replaced with maritime cups. Why would anyone want to use maritime cups? Technically your gun would fire under water. Cool? Yes. Useful? Not really. Where it IS useful is if you were to drop your gun in mud…Without the maritime cups there is the chance of water getting into the firing pin assembly and hydraulically bogging down, rendering the gun unable to fire.
When we started on taking apart the frame, one thing that was useful to keep in mind was top pin out and in first. There are 3 pins on the frame of most Glocks (some are 2 pin like the 42). 1 is in the grip just in front of the backstrap while 2 are above the trigger guard area. These 2 are the ones responsible for holding the locking block, slide lock spring and slide lock. The take down lever also comes out of this area. The pin closest to the slide is the one previously referred to (the top pin). These pins are NOT always easy to get out, especially if you’ve never removed them from the gun before. Charles had a heck of a time getting them out of his gun
Once we got the 2 pins out and the assorted parts that go along with them, the next step was to remove the pin in the grip to remove the trigger assembly (left).
This consists of the trigger, trigger bar, trigger mechanism housing (right) and connector (in the picture on the right below). The connector (trigger timing bar as it was called last night) has the important job of directly affecting how the trigger feels when pulled and how the reset feels. One thing that can help (and we got to do last night) is to polish the connector with a metal polishing compound (we used one available at Walmart) until it had a mirror finish to it.
Be forewarned, polishing is dirty work…we went through I don’t know how many Q-Tips between the 2 of us!
Once we got the gun fully disassembled we ended up with the bare 
frame, bare slide and a plastic bowl of parts. Reassembling the gun is pretty straightforward, just like disassembling but in the opposite order.
Like I said previously, I wish I would have taken more extensive notes so I could retain more of the process. As it is, I will likely look into taking the class at least a couple more times along with practicing at home. I found a 3 part series that looked pretty good with from an initial viewing of a couple minutes. I may share the links after I have a chance to watch them.
I would HIGHLY suggest NOT taking your Glock apart just from what’s shown in this video. There are nuances to disassembly and assembly that the video may not address that a live instructor can.
In closing, I’m glad we attended the class. I don’t have much depth (at this point) in anything related to gunsmithing so anything is better than nothing! So go forth and learn!
