PSA Dagger

[Onepoint]

It just dawned on me while looking through all the guns on sale in email ads how similar the slide of the dagger is to the CZ P10c, (Which I always thought were kind of sexy), imitation is the sincerest form of flattery I guess.  The CZ is now well under $400, which seems like a great deal, although the optic ready version is about 100 bucks more, yet still close in price for an optic cut slide for the M&Ps I have.

[Onepoint]

I started comparing it to different pistols I tend to like, (while impatiently waiting for my slide to come) and they really did some research when designing it, I have to give credit.

I love the M&P full size feel, the front grip angle and trigger guard inside shape is nearly identical, but they gave the little finger groove at the top of the trigger guard and a lip on the front bottom of the guard for better control where the M&P is slick.  The grip is not configurable which has been popular on several pistols, but is obviously designed to work well with a good variety of hands except the extreme ends of size.  The grip has a wider heel portion, while the top is just slightly narrower, that allows smaller hands that ride higher to grip it properly, but larger hands still feel filled and supported with the lower heel taking up room.  Width is similar to Sigs P229 series with a fairly consistent thick grip, where the M&P uses swells and larger backstraps to take up room.`

The back of the grip is nearly identical to the Walther P99, with just a slight moderation of curves.

So looks like front of grip, trigger guard and trigger is M&P derived, the back strap is Walther, the slide is CZ P10 . sig320 influenced in shape and all on Glock compatible parts. 

Not that any of it is at all crucial, spend enough time shooting anything it becomes normal, but it is nice to have similar grips among various pistols if you have several different ones. It's easier to get a consistent presentation and sight picture if you don't have to consciously adjust your wrist angle.

I have handled the Polymer 80 pistols, and have not been that impressed, the slide was decent and trigger fairly nice, the one I played with had a P80 flat trigger, it was a little better than the OEM Glock triggers I have experienced, the grip and frame were kind of meh, seems to me the main draw was having a "homemade" Glock before the .gov ruined that.

 I'll be curious about the trigger, I am one of those weird people who didn't mind the M&P hinged trigger, mainly because mine have a decent break.  I do tend to like flat or at least flatter triggers, and did pick up a P80 flat trigger and bar in case I want to swap it, being ridiculously cheap to try at 20 bucks.  Try that with a S&W.

 

[Onepoint]

Doh! UPS is killing me, finally updated the tracking and its out for delivery. But UPS just dropped daily deliveries to 3 days a week for rural areas, so it won't come until monday.   

[JimmyJamesKY]

I feel your pain man.  That day my background check got delayed and I couldn't pick up the lower I bought I was fit to be tied.
 

It'll get there!

[Onepoint]

The good, it came! 

The bad, the sight does not fit. Neither will a Burris fast fire, the slot is 47.56mm with a curve milled in, Fast fires and the CT sight are just over 48mm.    (Edit to add), as to fit, the FF and vortex venom have the curved end base and that's apparently what PSA cut it for.  Talk about school of hard knocks.

Not in love with the idea of milling off that DLC coating to fit an optic that is supposed to fit already.

The good, Slide action is smooth and seems to handle very well.

The bad, the trigger is going to be swapped, its reasonably crisp, but probably about 8+ lbs.

The good, it fits M&P full size safari land ALS holsters w/o the dot, and probably several others.

 I'll post pics when I get a sight that fits.  This is why RMR pattern is winning the battle for standardization.

[Onepoint]

Just for reference in case someone is searching this, because it sure never popped up when I searched without some deep diving on specific optics, and PSA is way too vague of the Dr optic cut slide info.

Pistol slide footprint cuts are confusing, having several and at least 3 popular ones, RMR is the winning one so far as far as options for optics both high and low end, but certainly not the only one. Doctor optic footprint was more popular when Dr optic, the innovator of the micro reflex sights was around, but they went belly up.  Still that pattern is popular among optic makers because a couple industry heavy hitters, Vortex and Burris still use it.

Condensed version of this is the Dagger Doctor optic cut will fit very few Doctor optic pattern optics.  The Dr Optics bolt pattern is universal, although the screw size varies some, but the actual slot cut is not standardized for that pattern.  Burris and Vortex have their own base pattern that instead of a flat end, they slightly curved the ends of the optic base, PSA chose to use this for their DR optic pattern cut.

The measurements below are what both the Burris Fast fire and Votex Venom/Viper share for the base footprint. The overall length is 47.5mm, what it doesn't show is the slots narrowest point on the outside edges on the Dagger slide which is 46.6mm.  The longest dimension of the slot at the center of the slide (center of curve) is 48mm.  (the venom/FF optic base is 47.5mm at furthest end). Most flat cut Dr Optic based sights I have seen are 48.3mm

So if optic shopping for a Dr optic cut dagger, it's actually a venom cut.

I ended up ordering a Burris Fastfire from Midway, it was on sale for $150 shipped, which I figure was a better investment than spending $110 on a unknown brands like Vector or Cyelee, especially for resale if I want to upgrade in the future.

[Danjal]

The pistol slide cuts are the same as any new fad coming in. Everyone wants their name to be on it so we get tons of different standards till the people get fed up with it and it gets sorted out in the military or commercial market. Seeing as this is for pistols, it'll be the commercial market sorting it out.

[Hodgie]

Just for reference in case someone is searching this, because it sure never popped up when I searched without some deep diving on specific optics, and PSA is way too vague of the Dr optic cut slide info.

Pistol slide footprint cuts are confusing, having several and at least 3 popular ones, RMR is the winning one so far as far as options for optics both high and low end, but certainly not the only one. Doctor optic footprint was more popular when Dr optic, the innovator of the micro reflex sights was around, but they went belly up.  Still that pattern is popular among optic makers because a couple industry heavy hitters, Vortex and Burris still use it.

Condensed version of this is the Dagger Doctor optic cut will fit very few Doctor optic pattern optics.  The Dr Optics bolt pattern is universal, although the screw size varies some, but the actual slot cut is not standardized for that pattern.  Burris and Vortex have their own base pattern that instead of a flat end, they slightly curved the ends of the optic base, PSA chose to use this for their DR optic pattern cut.

The measurements below are what both the Burris Fast fire and Votex Venom/Viper share for the base footprint. The overall length is 47.5mm, what it doesn't show is the slots narrowest point on the outside edges on the Dagger slide which is 46.6mm.  The longest dimension of the slot at the center of the slide (center of curve) is 48mm.  (the venom/FF optic base is 47.5mm at furthest end). Most flat cut Dr Optic based sights I have seen are 48.3mm

So if optic shopping for a Dr optic cut dagger, it's actually a venom cut.

I ended up ordering a Burris Fastfire from Midway, it was on sale for $150 shipped, which I figure was a better investment than spending $110 on a unknown brands like Vector or Cyelee, especially for resale if I want to upgrade in the future.

You should check out the 704 Tactical YouTube channel. He has dozens of videos on various models of the Dagger using all different budget, but high value optics. Before you do any slide modification I would go through his channel.

[Onepoint]

Yeah the main optics makers are not following any particular pattern together, and some companies are not going along with a defacto standard, I suspect because they don't want to litigate it down the road at some point when someone gets squirrely and tries to patent it or something.

It would be nice if it followed a universal standard  like picatinny rails did, but then even that was succeeded by a standardizing fight of keymod vs M-lok


As to the optic mount of the Dagger, I'm not going to mod the slide, if I really like it, I will probably wait and pick up a RMR cut slide on sale and probably a Holosun 507c X2 or whatever comes out similar.

[Danjal]

Picatinny is a special case as it was government owned. Keymod came later as they wanted to get rid of the bulky quad rails and mlok is the commercial improvement on it. At this point the military is using both standards for QD rails. Until they set a standard and refuse all others, it'll remain.

Regarding the mlok vs keymod and picatinny. It's apples and oranges. Once the 1913 standard was in place it hasn't been deviated from. In fact the scope of its usage has grown. The keymod v mlok fight is another issue arrived later. Granted both use the 1913, but it's not the crux of the issue. That issue being "What QD interface do we want to adopt?" The current pistol dot i ssue is what mounting size/pattern do we want to standardize? At this point it's still in its infancy. Until someone gets tired of all the options, we'll have it around. Suppressors faced the same issue. Everyone had their own threads and mounts. People got tired of it once they got popular and now we have standard thread sizes in cans. Now mount makers are forced to confirm or lose business.

The best option at this point would be to have some form or individual make one up that works for most or is easily adaptable to existing dots then release it royalty free.

[Onepoint]

Suppressor makers kind of universally accepted ASR thread pitch and diameter for mounts, but then you have everyone competing with their proprietary QD adapters for muzzle devises that defeats the purpose, it would be kind of nice to have a Q can that threaded onto a silencerco muzzle device or vice versa, but we are not anywhere near there yet, and that is much more developed and standardized than pistol dot footprints.   I suspect whatever is newer will be out before that gets sorted, like micro thermal optics. 

But then again we are living in the age of Jetsons and may see it all sooner than later.  We were in Menards yesterday and were met by self driving robotic floor cleaner.  Which was kind of hilarious, it stopped because my wife was in its way with a cart, she side stepped and after a few seconds of it just sitting there told it, "Its ok, you can get by" 

[Danjal]

I'm saddened the robot didn't break into a Ludicrous song and thank her after.

Regarding suppressors, the main boom was just getting them into a standard. Now we're free to use and combination of mounts and QD. I do agree that putting acme threads like you see on the 51t/90t and ASR mounts would help. The other issue is doing so would kill off mounts like the keymo.

[Onepoint]

It would be better consumer wise just if more after market makers would make more muzzle devices that were not stupidly expensive.

I suspect there will always be room for different systems like Keymo, but the taper shoulder threaded mounts all being different is annoying.

I swapped the trigger, had a heck of a time getting the trigger pin all aligned, but got it eventually with a lots of cussing.  I used a P80 flat trigger, It's now completely different, not sure it's better, still a heavy super long take up, then a wall that is much less perceptible, slightly crisper lighter break, shorter over travel and reset, but the break is nearly all the way in back of the trigger guard.  I haven't shot it yet because it decided to rain.   

I'm not familiar with any aftermarket pistol triggers so this new territory for me.

[Onepoint]

The FastFire came today.  Nice to have something actually fit like it's supposed to.

Nothing fancy, hopefully it will be more issue free using it.

Here it is, just like everyone elses. 

17rd ETS mag with a EBay sleeve, Burris FastFire 3 and P80 flat trigger.


 

[Greatguns]

I finally bit the bullet, so to speak. Just got the email from PSA with the plain Jane full sized Dagger on sale for $269.99 with free shipping, which I promptly ordered so, I'll be at $304 OTD after transfer.

https://palmettostatearmory.com/psa-dagger-full-size-s-9mm-pistol-with-extreme-carry-cut-non-threaded-barrel-black-dlc.html