I was watching Top Shot on the Tivo the other night and they were shooting to pretty awesome guns. The FN FS2000 Bullpup which I would love to try out and the FN Five seveN that shoots 5.7x28mm. Here is a link to the FN page on the Five seveN - http://www.fnhusa.com/le/products/firearms/model.asp?gid=&fid=FNF003&mid=FNM0004 I'm curious if anyone thinks Glock would go the route of an all polymer slide? I am looking for my first handgun and I know it will be a block as I like the way they feel and shoot along with the simplicity of the design and maintenance. I've never seen the Five seveN and have no idea how it compares but from the photos, description on TV and on the web, it sounds like it's extremely light and with only the barrel and some internal parts being metal, there's little to no weight to it. Have any of the members here fired or purchased one and do you think Glock would introduce a new model with this type of polymer design?
Welcome to the Glock Forum rodeman !! The FN Five Seven weighs in at about 1.3 lbs unloaded... and the FN FS2000 Bullpup weighs in at about 7.5 to 8 lbs unloaded, depending on the configuration...hardly " little to no weight to it " And the Glock with a polymer slide...I doubt it...it won't work...period.
The slide isn't completely polymer, it's a steel slide with a polymer outer shell. I'm not particularly fond of that idea and I don't think Glock would do it. The less the slide weighs, the stronger the recoil spring has to be and the faster the recoil spring needs to be replaced.
I beg to differ...the slide is steel and is only covered in a black parkerized coating. Even if the black coating wears off, the slide is still protected by the Tenifer... a proprietary surface finish that actually becomes one with the steel. TENIFER Unique GLOCK hi-tech surface refinement for barrel and slide. Apart from optimum corrosion protection and anti-reflective finish, a degree of hardness of 64 HRC - close to that of a diamond - is achieved. TENIFER is termed for a chemical bath nitriding process whereby nitrogen is chemically released and introduced into the surface at a suitable high temperature to allow the chemical process to take place. Using the liquid bath techniques, the temperature requires to activate the reaction is about 550 to 580 Celsius. The bath is performed in a molten, nitrogen-bearing liquid containing either cyanides or cyanates. However, cyanide-free liquid has also been used to release Nitrogen and then allow it to react chemically with steel (iron)at the surface (modern techniques). Interestingly, when using the cyanide-free liquid, Tenifer is actually the salt bath nitro-carburing technique because it starts (first reaction) with Carbon-Nitride (CN) and allows it to react with Oxygen (0)to produce Nitro-carbon-dioxide byproduct plus Nitrogen. The simultaneous second reaction takes place when nitrogen (N) is in contact with Iron (Fe) to form FeN (iron-nidride). The tenifer coating "composition" of Glock's steel slide is essentially that of FeN. It is interesting to note that FeN coating is used mainly to increase the surface wear resistance to against galling and wear. The corrosion resistance is also better for iron and conventional steel that are NOT stainless steel. Most stainless steels need not to be nitrided. The reason is stainless steel has chromium to fight against corrosion and rust (this is why we call these material stainless). However, nitriding a stainless steel will almost always lower the corrosion resistance of the stainless steel. This is because the nitrogen will also react with some of the chrominum (Cr) at the surface of stainless steel to form Chrominum-nitride (CrN). Obviously, gas-nitriding is a simpler process (but not necessary cheaper) to form a tough wear resistance coating. In this case, pure Nitrogen gas is chemically reacted with the metal such as iron (Fe) by holding the metal in the Nitrogen gas environment at high temperature allowing the chemical reaction to take place. The true FeN (tenifer) coating has a dull-gray color surface. Definitely, never black. In some applications, FeN coatings can also be polished to give a bright metal finish appearance.
I've shot my buddys FN P90 PDW and absolutely loved it... It's chambered for the 5.7x28mm round with a straight blowback closed bolt action fed by a fifty round mag weighing in at 6.5 lbs fully loaded...awesome firepower !!
Yeah I meant the FN 5.7 pistol's slide. When I first heard about it having a polymer slide I was like , then I looked into it a little more and it turns out the slide is still steel, it just has a polymer shell.
My bad... Well...that really wasn't made too clear in the post above...my bad. ...but now everyone knows about the finish on the Glock slide !!
Thanks for all the comments everyone. I didn't realize it was a steel slide under the polymer. I am still interested in shooting one, one day, as they talked about how low the recoil was. But the Bullpup FS2000 is just awesome and I'd love to try that too.
The FN 5.7 is really fun to shoot. Really light and the recoil is like a .22... Handgun that shoots a rifle round, but I doubt Glock will go FN's route.
