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I initially just took this picture to show off my new kit but noticed something I found weird and wanted some feed back. See when the action is open the barrel is slants upwards slightly?

Is this normal/ok ?

yes.

Yeah after taking it apart and looking at I see why it does that. My S&W 9mm was always straight as an arrow though so that's what got me wondering. Thanks!

Any pistol that uses the locking breech method the barrel will unlock then hinge down when the slide has retracted back enough

This is why the straight blowback designs have fairly uncommon accuracy, the barrel doesn't move

Wanna see it in action:
http://www.sniperworld.com/glock/
http://www.genitron.com/Glock23/IntGlock.html

For the colt fans
http://www.m1911.org/full_1911desc.htm
http://www.m1911.org/loader.swf

That's why we have a lot of fun with that little Bersa .380, doesn't hinge...

Its why my 8 year old son who hasn't fired a pistol but a few times can hit an empty 1 gallon delo bottle at 7 yards w/ my Hi-Point .380...its is very accurate

Yeppers. The XD (and Glock, S&W M&P and Sigmas, most SIGs, etc.) are a tilt-barrel, external-locking system. The tilt-barrel is the most common system in autoloaders. The external-locking models rely on external surfaces at the top of the barrel and slide to lock the two together at the moment of combustion and until the bullet can clear the muzzle. The barrel tilts, unlocking the barrel-slide unit, and the slide is free to reciprocate all the way back and shove a new round into the chamber as it goes forward. With the slide locked back, that tilt will be more pronounced in some models than other, and generally more apparent in models with shorter barrels.

The internal-locking tilt-barrel types include the 1911, Hi-Power, and some of S&W's metal frame guns like the 910. It's and older design than the external-lockers. The locking lugs and recesses are all internal. That's a big reason 1911s can be slimmer and have a more rounded shape than the external-lockers. All things being equal, the external-lockers have an arguable reliability benefit over internal-lockers.

And before age-ranger calls me on it , Beretta makes a distinctly different mechanism where the barrel rotates to lock and unlock, rather than tilting, dropping, or staying in one place (gas blowback).

Actually the military 92FS or (M9) uses a unorthodox unlocking mechanism that still operates on the verticle plane (its a locking block wedge or a CAM lock)..the new PX4 Storm uses a rotating locker

Molon_labe wrote:Actually the military 92FS or (M9) uses a unorthodox unlocking mechanism that still operates on the verticle plane (its a locking block wedge or a CAM lock)..the new PX4 Storm uses a rotating locker

Yep. The drop-lock system's functional reliability is one of the biggest reasons the 92 was chosen by the Pentagon in the '80s as a duty gun. With no interlocking recesses on the bottom of the slide, you can have a huge ejection port.

But the system makes for a thick and heavy pistol. The 9mm was about as far as it could go and still be practical; I don't think (correct me if I'm wrong) that Beretta ever made a successful drop-lock in .45. The concealed carry demands that began in the '90s sorta ruled out the drop-lock system as commercially viable because the pistols were so heavy, and when the Pentagon initiated a study (why that study-slash-RFP got scrubbed, I don't fully understand) to look for a standardized replacement, the writing was on the wall. Too, though reliable, the 92 had a history of not being terribly durable.

Sometime in 2008, a PX4 will be on my to-buy list. I'm intrigued by the rotary-barrel system. I just don't like the decocker (though one of my S&Ws has it). My prediction is that Beretta will drop the decocker and go to a version of a "safe-action" trigger (automatic decocking method) like the Glock and XD, keep and refine the rotary barrel, and introduce a new line of pistols in 2008 or 2009. Then we'll all want one, and age_ranger can say, "I told you so!"