Earlier I covered the FK PSD in detail. It’s a pretty neat handgun that utilizes an impressive 7.5FK round. The odd shape of the dust cover is due to an oversized 5oz tungsten weight with is part of FK’s “proprietary” recoil dampening design. That’s a good sized chunk of metal up front. So I was curious if we could actually see results of dampened recoil on my high speed camera.
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Replacing the Weight
Of course I didn’t think I could just remove the weight since it’s part of the recoil system. However a friend of mine was willing to 3D print an exact replica. So instead of weighing 5 oz of tungsten, it only weighs 0.3oz.
For the shooting test I began with low powered 9mm rounds for safety reasons. We didn’t see a single bit of difference on high speed camera. In fact the slide didn’t even recoil completely, but this was expected. The PSD is designed for a very high pressured round, and even though we used the weaker 9mm recoil spring, the cartridge just didn’t have the power in it for a full slide cycle.
7.5FK Test
With the full power 7.5FK loads, we saw a consistent 3 degrees reduction of muzzle flip when using the factory provided tungsten weight rather than our 3D printed sub-half ounce weight. 3 degrees. That doesn’t sound like much at all to me.
Perhaps if I had let an inexperienced shooter with weaker hands and less of an experienced recoil control stance we could have seen more. That’s what happened when we tested this high end muzzle brake:
The 3 degree flip is roughly the same reduction as when we tested with a 9mm compensator before:
However with the Desert Eagle in 50AE, we found an impressive 10 degree reduction utilizing the compensated barreL;
Final Thoughts
When I compare the pistol comp findings from earlier with the new FK weighted design I imagine it’s roughly the same as shooting a compensated pistol. The trade off is only the oversized dustcover that gives a barrier to using lights/holsters. Either way, I suppose FK was thinking outside the box.
