Many years have passed since a guy walked up to me at a USPSA match and sold me a crude brass heelweight for the Glock with a sort of extension on the end. (He had them in a baggie.) He sold one to me, and to other shooters that were trying to shoot USPSA/IPSC with the hard-recoiling, light-for-caliber Glock 22.

 

The part helped with recoil, but the way he had it set up, it actually made the gun speedload worse than the stock gun (sort of the way the copycat “Slug Plug” does now). I laid some epoxy onto mine, re-shaping it so it would work, and waited for the commercial version to come out.  I waited a year or two. The guy with the baggie disappeared, and eventually I decided to make one myself.

 

That was the start of “Taylor Freelance.” I was living in Ballard, Wash., shooting just outside of metro Seattle. The resulting parts looked alarmingly like a banana slug (a yellow snail without a shell), so we started calling them a “Seattle Slug.”

 

The Slug was the only really viable magazine guide available for the Glock at the time, and was instantly popular with the small slice of competitors using the Glock in USPSA/IPSC nationwide.

 

I designed the part as a compromise between a “competition” part, and a “tactical” part. Originally I’d intended to do a concealment part (like the Jentra butt caps available now), but the Seattle Slug worked so well, I couldn’t see making ANOTHER part to do the same thing.

 

WHY DO I WANT ONE?

 

The Glock’s lightweight polymer frame offers the shooter a compromise. The light weight makes it easy to carry, but absorbs very little recoil, and offers no significant weight to balance out the relatively heavy slide. As you run out of ammo, the Glock’s recoil signature changes, becoming very “whippy” in the hand. The lack of weight in the frame also makes the gun (rather famously) prone to “weak wrist” malfunctions. The recoil-operated action needs to recoil against something in order to work, and if you don’t hold on and let it recoil against you, the entire gun will move rearward instead of just the slide.

 

The slug provides extra weight to absorb recoil, counterbalance the weight of the slide, and give the gun a little something extra to work against before the gun recoils into your hand. It’s also an effective magazine guide, letting you load off the back of the magwell instead of aiming for the front (to avoid hooking the rim of the topmost cartridge into that gaping hole at the back).

 

The slug is no wider than the frame of the gun, and protrudes only slightly beyond the length of the installed magazine. Since it works off the back of the gun only, you can use stock magazines and seat them properly without the extensions required by competition parts. Just as important, you can reach up and strip out a stuck magazine without having to reach up inside a steel ring to grab an extension with your fingertips (as you would with a competition part).

 

It conceals well, reloads well, and calms the recoil down considerably.

 

HOW WELL DOES IT WORK?

 

The Slug works so well in that compromise role that it’s now the only part banned BY NAME by both USPSA and IDPA for use in their “Production” and “Stock Service Pistol” divisions.

 

It’s issued by Lake Forest Park P.D. (near Seattle), and is a popular accessory with members of King County Sheriff (Seattle again) where it’s endorsed by their chief firearms instructor, Darrion Holiwell.

 

The instructor at Lake Forest P.D. called us a while back to report that thanks to the slug and some of our solid brass floorplates, one of his female officers was able to up-gun and qualify with their issue .40 caliber Glocks, rather than the less-powerful 9mm.

 

As a guy that likes designing parts for guns, I couldn’t ask for a happier story than that!

 

While I understand using a competition-only magwell for competition purposes, the Seattle Slug holds its own at the matches, particularly if you’re running a large-frame gun. My friend Patrick Kelley continues to campaign with a Seattle Slug in his Glock 21 (winning the USPSA “Heavy Metal” title in 2007), as do a number of others.

 

I use one in my G21 for bowling pin shooting in particular, where I team it with our brass floorplates (a la that gal at Lake Forest P.D.) to get the most control over those hot .45 ACP handloads.

 

BLACK VERSIONS

The main complaint we’ve heard over the years pertains to the slug’s color: shiny brass. We offered these parts in black-anodized aluminum for a while, but without the weight, it wasn’t particularly popular (you can get a serviceable plastic part for less). We basically lost a deal with North Carolina P.D. over the color of brass (long story, our fault), so we’ve been working to find a coating that will hold up.

 

This year we’re working with two coatings that show a lot of promise. Mr. Holiwell and a crew of testers at King County Sheriff have been experimenting with sample parts done in “Graphite Black” and “Black Mag II” by Metal Coaters, Inc. So far they’re happy with both, but we’re still in the testing phase. When they pick a coating, we’ll do up 100 or so parts and offer them to individual officers at King County first, then to the public at a slight premium.

 

Stay tuned!

--- Robin Taylor