Guns

Combative Pistol 2 – The Grip

/ hsoi / 4 Comments

I spent October 23-24, 2010 with Tom Givens of Rangemaster taking his Combative Pistol 2 course, hosted at KR Training. While my general AAR is here, there were some things that came up in class that I wanted to speak about in greater detail. What follows is inspired by something Tom said or we did in class, but is ultimately my take on things and how thoughts gelled in my head. I would encourage you to train with Tom Givens, if you ever have the chance. Reading my blather is no substitute.

Grip

Tom Givens said something in class that made the light bulb in my head turn on.

You see, I’ve struggled with grip. It’s due in part to the shape of the gun grip, the size of my hands, and then everyone and their mother having a theory on grip. Todd Jarrett and his “grip 20% harder” kung-fu grip. Bill Rogers and gripping hard and being solid like a 2×4. Then Brian Enos and his neutral gripping just enough for consistent recoil. And the list can go on. I’ve been trying them all with varying levels of success.

Now I will say, while everyone has a different flavor on it, they all are striving for the same thing: consistency. You want the gun to behave in a consistent manner, where it goes bang, the gun moves due to recoil, then comes right back to where you started, then bang and recoil follows the same path as before, then comes right back to where you started, and so on. There’s no need to hunt for the front sight because your eyes never left that focus point and the gun comes right back. So, the “right grip” is one that’s consistent.

But there was something about the way Tom described it that just gelled for me.

Look at the shape of a gun grip, especially if you have a plastic-framed double-stack gun (Glock, XD, M&P, Sig, etc.). The shape is like a rectangle with the corners rounded off. It’s not a circle. Now, how do you grip a baseball bat? The bat is circular and when you grip it your grip pressure is evenly spread all around the bat… it’s a circular grip. Now, how do you grip pliers? Your hand works more like a clamp, exerting just a “front to back” pressure. It’s a little hard to describe, but try it. The pressure your hand exerts holding a baseball bat vs. holding pliers are two different things.

Grip the gun like pliers. Your strong hand (right hand, for me) should clamp the gun’s grip like pliers, exerting that front-to-back pressure. Not a “round” pressure like a bat.

Now your weak/support hand (left hand, for me). The tendons in your hand are joined, thus when you move your trigger finger, your other fingers move as well. Due to that, moving the trigger causes your other fingers to move thus cause your gun to move in unwanted ways. This is where a good trigger job that minimizes pull weight and travel distance makes a big difference. Setting that aside, what your support hand can do to help reduce this? When your support-hand fingers wrap around your strong hand, depress those support fingers atop your strong-hand fingers and tendons (on the back of the hand) like those support-fingers were pressing guitar strings. Just clamp down on them. That helps minimize the sympathetic movement.

Strong hand gives front to back pressure, support hand gives left-right pressure. Each hand is exerting pressure along a unique axis with no overlap. You still have to have a very strong white-knuckle grip, but it’s the way/direction that grip pressure is applied.

For some reason, that explanation turned on a light bulb in my head. I tried that grip all weekend, and it made a huge difference. YMMV. That felt “right” to me. It felt awkward because I wasn’t used to it, and my forearms are pretty sore now from gripping the hell out of the gun all weekend. But there we go! I’ll be working with this grip for a while to see where it takes me. So far tho, so good.

But here’s one key thing: always perform this grip. The moment your hands come together at position 3 of the draw, you should have this grip going, including all that white-knuckle pressure. You don’t relax it until you’re putting the gun back in the holster. For me, I need to get better about this in dry fire practice. Some time ago I realized that my brain wasn’t caring about grip pressure in dry practice because my brain knew it was dry and thus no recoil and thus no reason to exert. I’ve been working to overcome this, but still would find my grip fading because I’d be thinking about whatever it was I was working on, which wasn’t grip. But now I have an explicit grip technique to focus on, so I will do my best to work on that in dry fire, in live fire, always.

Combative Pistol 2 AAR

/ hsoi / 19 Comments

I spent October 23-24, 2010 with Tom Givens of Rangemaster taking his Combative Pistol 2 course, hosted at KR Training.

It was an intensive weekend of work, and fun. I’m going to do the AAR differently than I’ve done others. In the past, I’ve done AAR’s as a big long journal entry detailing everything I could think of. I did this so as to give a good report, but also to serve as my own reminder of the event. But this time well… there are a lot of things worth discussing. This entry is going to cover a basic idea of what the course is like, but I’ll follow it in the coming days with entries that discuss one-off topics.

Note as well… this is only my recollection of the experience. I may have forgotten things, I may have experienced and perceived things differently than others. I know a good number of the other students are readers of my blog (hi guys!), so if you guys remember something differently, remember something I forgot, or just wish to add your own input to all of this, I encourage you to leave a comment! BTW, it was good to see a lot of you guys again. Always a pleasure training with you.

Basic Concept

You can read the course description, but it’s really more fundamental than that. It’s about working foundations, because really it’s all about “looking at the bumpy thing (sights) and pressing the trigger straight back”. Then it’s about giving you drills and ways to practice to work on those skills. Usually when we’re in class or practicing, we’re thinking about that thing we’ve been given. Then something new gets added, and what happens to the prior thing? It goes to crap and you typically revert back to the way you did it before (which was the wrong way). For instance, you’re working on trigger press and you get it working well, but then you add a timer which adds pressure and now your trigger press goes to crap, reverting back to the yanking you were doing before.

But you say, this is an advanced class! Why work all this fundamental stuff? Because it’s important. A handgun is hard to shoot well, especially under pressure. You need to have your mechanical skills (sights, trigger, grip, draw and present, reloading, malfunction clearing, movement, etc.) so ingrained as to be unconscious and not requiring any real effort or thought to perform. Then you need to be able to hit a very small area, especially in practice because when the fur flies your groups are going to open up. If you struggle to keep all your shots within the 8-ring of a B-27 target (i.e. the target used for Texas CHL), imagine that grouping double or tripling in size… that’s how it’ll be under pressure. So maybe you should be able to drill out that little X ring on the B-27 in a high-pressure practice/training environment, if you hope to keep ’em all within the 8-ring when the flag flies.

That’s what this class is about. Mechanical skills. Fighting skills. Mindset.

Content

Day one was filled with a lot of building block work. First thing done? Line up at 5 yards, a 1″ dot on the target, a 5-shot slow fire group. This helped Tom figure out where people were and where to go from there. There’d be work for trigger control, work for grip, work for sight picture. Many different styles of targets were used, many different drills were run, all towards helping you get foundations tightened up. Ball & Dummy drill. Draw & Present. Use of dry fire, use of live fire. Everything Tom did was progressive, starting from the most basic of starting points, building up in skills, in application, culminating in the skills necessary for a fight (e.g. movement). Oh yeah… lots of strong-hand-only and weak-hand-only shooting too.

The other large part of day one was a lot of mental. Much discussion on mindset. Tom has the distinction of having nearly 60 students involved in self-defense shootings. It not only demonstrates what he teaches works in the realm of civilian self-defense, but it also provides a lot of data for us to learn from. Ten cases were discussed, which outlined good things and bad things… because yes, it’s wise for us to learn from the mistakes of others (not every student did the right/best things).

Oh, one important thing? There was a lot of testing. Day 1 had us run through 3 qualification courses, for time and score. We also ended day 1 with a shootoff. What’s the reason? Pressure. When you’re in a fight for your life, you’re going to be under pressure. Using testing will put pressure on you. Having to get out and perform in front of the class? Pressure. Having to shoot a course against someone else, last man is out? Pressure. Think inoculation. When we want to inoculate you against a disease, we give you a small dose to help your body get used to it and know how to cope with the infection. Pressure in the training hall helps to inoculate you against the pressure you’ll feel in a real fight.

Day 2 had even more testing. I believe only 3 qualification courses, but then a bunch of other competitions against each other. Oh sure, more advanced skills were worked on too, like shooting from behind cover, malfunction clearing techniques. But the stress of testing was big on day 2. Even while each qual course might be similar in basic structure, every time the course was shot with more and more stuff added to it. This time you just shot. Next time you added movement. Next time you added a dummy round to simulate a malfunction. Next time you add movement behind cover. And so on, continually building on what you did before. And of course, there was classroom time, with much discussion.

Since some people care about this, I reckon we went through 1200-1500 rounds. Not really sure as I was just scooping out of my cans of reloads. But Tom Hogel (another KR Training assistant instructor) was also shooting the class and happened to use one of my XD-9’s for the class, so I also gave him a can of 2000 of my reloads. He shot a couple hundred outside of class, and I figure 200-300 were left so… 1500 in the class? My can was already down a few hundred but I don’t know how many for sure. But the aside cool for me was shooting maybe 3000 rounds under pressure of class and my reloads ran smoothly. That was welcome. 🙂

Me

So how did I do?

I am overall pleased with my performance. I can see improvement in my skills and abilities, so to me, that’s what matters. I also was pretty consistent, so that was welcome too.

How did I score on the tests? I was torn about revealing this. I felt if I didn’t reveal it people would think I have something to hide, or that I didn’t do that well. But I also felt if I did reveal it, people would take it like I’m bragging or would think this established some sort of standard of how well I shoot. Well, I reckon it perhaps does, but to me the score doesn’t really mean much. In my book it’s not a way to compare me to you, it’s only a way for me to compare me to myself. I’m not in competition with anyone other than myself, just working to improve my skills and abilities. Across all the scored tests, 98.5%. I won some of the shootoffs, I lost some. The important thing? I see what I’m good at, I see where I need work.

One thing I was pleased at was my eyeballs being glued to the front sight. With a situation like this (high-pressure, high-ego class), you really want to know how you did. You want to know, “did I hit it?” because it matters for your score, for your ego, for how other classmates view you. Do those things matter? Maybe, depends how you value it, but if nothing else, it is putting pressure on you to perform and pressure is good for training. But the reality is, if you hit it you hit it… checking for the hole now or 5 minutes from now doesn’t matter because the hole isn’t going to change. So, follow-through properly and do everything possible to get good hits… because if you work to get good hits, then you’ll get good hits, and checking for the hole doesn’t matter… it will be a hit, the hole will be where you wanted it to be, and so you can check it a year from now.. it’ll still be good. Stay on that front sight.

A pre-class goal was to NOT shoot faster than I can get good hits. Any time I didn’t get a good hit? I shot too fast. Most of the class I shot at the right speed… perhaps even a little slower than I could have shot, but my mind wanted verification: “Yes, this will be a good hit… the sights are properly lined up on target, the trigger press will be good” THEN I let it go. I know that took a little more time, but I got good hits… and a good hit slightly slower is better than a fast miss.

As for things to work on?

  • One-hand shooting, especially weak-hand. Learned a little grip-trick that made a HUGE difference.
  • 8-25 yard shooting, especially 15-25 yards. I got better at the 8-15 yard shooting as the weekend progressed, but I really need to shoot more at longer distances.
  • Getting on the trigger sooner. My draw and present felt good, but then I wasn’t getting on the trigger fast enough. The ideal is from position 3 of the draw you push the gun out, finger goes on trigger, starts to press and by the time the gun is extended the shot breaks. Well, I was getting the gun out there, verifying my sights, then breaking the shot. That’s not right. It’s a good safe way to shoot, it’s the way to teach beginners, but at my level I need to be making it all one smooth motion. But I know why I did it: what I said above, not wanting to shoot faster than I could get good hits. I wanted to verify my sights were correct and the gun was properly on target before shooting. Once I get the smoothed out, my times should pick up considerably (another half second at least).
  • Never pull the trigger unless the sight picture is on target. You’ve done it… you press the gun out and we’re so conditioned to have to break a shot before the time runs out that we know the sights were bad, we called it the moment we saw it, but yet we still pressed off a shot. Why? Bad habit. It’s one I’ve been trying to break in dry practice, but I still do it. I had a few times when I did this, and the bad thing? 1. it doesn’t stop the bad guy, 2. and now where does that round go? you’re liable for it. Every shot counts.
  • Of course, work every skill from the class. Can’t forget them, must improve them. I ran the final drill in 10.7 seconds, so now I need to do it in 10 seconds, then in 9… and well, Givens ran it in 8.5 seconds so I need to be able to do it in 8.4. 😉

Conclusion

I will write more in the coming days discussing specific things from the class. This was just to provide an overview of the class content and small summary of my own performance.

In general I’m pleased with how I did. I see where I’ve improved, I see where I need work. To me, that’s the important thing. I got a lot out of the weekend. The course was different from I expected… I expected a lot of “fightin’ and shewtin'” type stuff, but it wasn’t. What it was was fundamentals but worked at a higher level, with more pressure, with greater expectation of performance. Is that a bad thing? No, it’s a great thing! Because in the end, it’s still all sight alignment and trigger control… doesn’t matter if you’re a rank beginner or your Rob Leatham, it’s all still the same fundamentals, just different context.

I’ll admit. For the past couple weeks I’ve been stressing over this class. While I strive to dry fire all I can, I haven’t been able to get to the range near enough what I need. Oddly, I think all of that really showed itself in my draw and present and then the delay in getting the trigger press… it was all pretty much like I did it in dry fire, so I need to refine that practice. But I just didn’t feel I was ready for the class. Honestly, I feel some pressure to perform because hey… if I’m going to wear a KR Training shirt and get up in front of people to say “this is how you do it” I need to be able to do it and perform. There’s expectation and I need to live up to it. Plus hey… last time Givens was here he complemented my shooting, so that means the baseline was set and I had to do better because I want him to have a good impression of me. Yes, ego at play, but I’m human… sue me. 🙂  After seeing how I performed? I feel a lot more confident about things. Oh sure, I’ve still a long ways to go, but I see I’m on a good, positively progressing road so I’ll be content with this journey. I’m setting goals, I’m meeting goals, I’m exceeding goals, I’m needing to set new goals and revisit other goals. Refine my plans, and press on.

Of course, the real treat of the weekend was seeing Lynn, Tom’s charming wife. She’s a sweetheart, and a hell of a shot with that M&P. She took a lot of pictures from the weekend, and I’m hoping to get a few from her. I’ll post ’em when I get ’em.

Combative Pistol 2 with Tom Givens was certainly well worth the time, money, and effort… at least for me, YMMV.

Updated: I’ve spent the morning writing up a bunch of those one-off topics and queuing the articles for future publication. As I wrote I started to wonder… gosh, should I be talking about this stuff? I mean, it feels like I’m giving away class material. Is that right?

Well… yes, there’s some material that’s being given away. But there’s a lot more that isn’t. There’s a lot of things you cannot get unless you attend the class. So many intangibles. Plus, the only way you can receive instruction and feedback and thus improvement on your skills is by having Tom Givens watching over you. Not to mention, lots of informative and enlightening anecdotes, and lots of good-natured razzing. 🙂  Honestly, we had a lot of fun in the class, especially because many of us have trained together before. You can’t get that sort of atmosphere, that sort of pressure, that sort of work, unless you attend class.

So yes, you get my thoughts on a few things. But I’m not sharing it all. You just have to go out and try it yourself.

Updated 2: Pictures added (courtesy of Lynn Givens). No, we didn’t have a lot of people with black dots for faces. For people that I don’t know if they want their faces out or not, I blacked out the faces. Any face not blacked out are people that I have permission from or are public enough already.

I’m the tall guy with the long hair and blue hat.

Jenny’s got a gun

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Jennifer Willis is a freelance writer. And she has a stalker.

She decided, it was time to get a gun. She put her anti-gun sentiments aside. She had an epiphany:

That’s when the old Theodore Roosevelt adage popped into my head — “Speak softly and carry a big stick” — and I finally got it. I can still be the compassionate, diplomatic, interfaith groovy gal I’ve always been; I’ll just be packing heat in case negotiations tank.

Happy for her. I do hope she’ll seek out more training and practice more.

There was one thing in the article that made me cringe: all the “advice for the ladies”:

I read that the .357 Magnum and .38 Special were ideal for women interested in a gun for self-defense because they’re relatively lightweight, aren’t prone to jamming and don’t carry too many bullets. Because who really needs a 20-round magazine when you’re defending against a stalker? “Six or seven bullets will do you just fine,” read one Web comment.

The FAIL is strong with that one.

What is ideal for a woman is what she can shoot well. Packing .357 Magnum self-defense rounds into a snub revolver? How about no. She needs a gun that can fit her hands: if she’s got small hands, if she’s got large hands. It’s a matter of size and shape, not gender. She needs a gun that fits her whole hand… full-sized guns, not subcompacts, since you can get all of both hands onto the grip and thus control the gun better. Lightweight? That might be useful for carry, but it hurts for shooting. The heavier the gun, the larger the gun (esp. since larger guns with longer slides generally have less stout springs), the easier it will be to shoot, generally speaking. If the gun is pleasant to shoot, she’ll be more willing to shoot it more often, which means more practice, which is only a good thing. If the gun bites back when you shoot it, negative reinforcement like that doesn’t serve her desired goals. Who needs a 20-round magazine against a stalker? Maybe you. Are you able to predict what situation you will face? What if the stalker brings a friend? Now instead of 6 or 7, you may need 12 or 14. What if the stalker brings 2 friends? 20 rounds and even an extra full magazine doesn’t seem so out of the question now does it?

I’m not sure where Jenny got her advice, but at least she seems to be serious about her efforts in the gun world. Thunder Ranch is only about 6 hours from Portland and a week there might be a good thing. Could make for a great follow-up article as well. 🙂

Lessons from a home-invasion

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Friendswood, TX home invasion story:

 

Police said a woman was working on a homework project with her 8-year-old and 11-year-old children at their home in the 2900 block of Autumn Creek when a man came through an open window at the back of the house. Three other male suspects wearing black hoodies and masks followed the first suspect in, with at least one displaying a handgun.

Authorities said the suspects tied the family up and began to ransack their home when the husband arrived home. He tried to flee but was grabbed by one of the suspects and was also bound. The family was put in the bathroom and eventually got out after the suspects left the house.

 

 

What I take from this read:

  • Looks like it happened in the middle of the day.
  • Crime of opportunity: they came through an open window, and one in the back of the house (i.e. less likely to be seen from the street).
  • Not sure if any resistance was put up, but the mother was probably more concerned with keeping her children from harm… still, fighting back aids in that effort.
  • Father arrived home and tried to flee (WTF?).
  • They didn’t care about the people, only something to steel.

So… this is why I carry my gun around the house. Some people think I only need my carry gun when I’m out and about. But no, I need it because it’s a handy tool to have, but a handy tool is only handy if it’s on hand when needed. If it’s on my hip, it’s right where I want it to be, when I need it to be. I don’t need to go get it and risk wasting precious time.

It’s also an argument against legal disarmament. That is, there are laws on the books that prevent law-abiding citizens from carrying their guns. For instance, employer doesn’t permit the guns, even in the parking lot. Let’s say the father in this story was a CHL holder and did carry every legal way he could. If he couldn’t have his gun on his person or even in his car due to workplace limitations, that would explain coming home disarmed and walking in on your family being tied up and robbed. Is that what we wish to allow? Is that what the spirit of the law is desiring? That’s not right.

 

Superformance powder – the limited skinny

/ hsoi / 3 Comments

So we know about Hornady’s new Superformance ammo. The gist is not just really accurate for factory ammo, but also achieving 100-200 fps more than other ammo yet staying within SAAMI pressure specs. That’s… just awesome.

I’m totally interested in this ammo. I blogged about it before because I can’t help but be interested in what this powder could do behind a Barnes bullet. Barnes bullets love velocity, especially the TTSX, so could this powder and that bullet be a winning combination?

And so it has been announced that Hodgdon will be releasing a Superformance powder for handloaders. But as I look for data, I can’t find much. I sent an email to Hodgdon asking. Here’s the reply I received (edited only for layout):

 

Here’s the deal.  Hornady uses many, many blends to load all of the cartridges in their Superformance line.  We are introducing one of those blends.  It has very limited application.  It will not work in a 6.8 Remington.  The only cartridges with Superformance powder data are:

22-250
243 Winchester
6mm Remington
243 WSSM
25 WSSM
300 WSM
300 Ruger Compact Magnum

There will not be any further cartridges used with this powder.  At some point, if this powder is successful, we may bring out other blends but that is unknown at this time.

Mike Daly
Customer Satisfaction Manager
The Hodgdon Family of Fine Propellants

 

 

So there you go.

It clarifies that Superformance powders are very specific blends, and each blend/flavor has very specific application. If you want to load for your favorite cartridge, you will need the Superformance powder specific to that cartridge — if it exists; if it doesn’t exist, you’re out of luck.

So… no .223 Rem, no .308 Win, no 6.8 SPC… which are my present centerfire rifle loads. So, no Superformance for me.

One thing that perks in mind tho. I know .243 Win is considered a good “youth deer gun” caliber. Could you pack a Barnes bullet here, perhaps a “weaker” load, yet still get the same performance? That is, if all things are equal you’d get 200 fps more well, if you drop the powder back to get no change in fps but now I’d assume some reduction in recoil, could that further help the “youth load” situation? Just thinking out loud.

I guess we just have to wait to see how the powder does in the market. Meantime, I guess we can always contact Hodgdon and let them know what we’d like to see. I know I’d like to see it for 6.8.

 

Long hair and shooting

/ hsoi

Over at Girls ❤ Guns, an article about hairstyles for the shooting range. (h/t to Caleb)

Now, speaking as a man with long hair, I’d step back and generalize this not as an article for ladies, but an article for people with long hair. I mean, if you’re a women with short hair, the article really doesn’t apply to you. That said, social constraints are such that women get different options for styling long hair than men do, so of course the article has a few options that could be considered “for the ladies” (sorry, but I look stupid with my hair in a bun).

The main point: if you have long hair, it should be tied and pulled back, out of the way. However you do it, the point is to keep your hair from interfering. One implication in this is the hair-style should be secure, because hair falling out while you’ve got a gun in your hands isn’t good. If you’re in an intensive training class, you don’t need a hair-style failure thus distraction to have to fix it. As well, if you’re a newbie, your gut reaction may be to brush the hair out of the way… and how does that gun in your hand move while you’re brushing hair away! Could be dangerous. If your hair-style fails while you have a gun in your hand, ignore the hair, finish the drill, safely put the gun away (unload and bench it, holster it, whatever is appropriate), THEN fix your hair. This is a side-reason why a ball-cap is good to wear, because in a pinch it can keep hair up and out of the way (e.g. loose fliers restrained under the cap, long hair pulled through the hole in the back as a makeshift ponytail).

Me? I prefer to have my hair in a braid. Pony tails are OK, but a braid is more secure. Furthermore, when the wind blows, a pony tail can blow the tail hairs up into your face, whereas the braid stays down and out of the way. Here’s a picture on how I wear my hair. I’m the guy, second from the right, in the blue/gray shirt and blue cap… and braided hair:

This article has more pictures.

That said, it’s good to train with your hair down once in a while. Why? Well, if you always wear your hair up or only ever shoot in situations where you can control your hair (e.g. you’re only a recreational shooter at the range and will never use a gun to defend your life at home or on the street), then it doesn’t really matter. But if you could be in a situation where your hair is down and you’d have to shoot (e.g. you like to wear your hair down, you carry a gun for self-defense), you should practice with your hair down. It doesn’t have to be live fire (yes, that could be dangerous), but certainly you can and should dry fire. For instance, I found that if my hair is down and I haven’t been to the barber for a trim in a while, my hair can get in the way of drawing and/or presenting my gun from the holster. It’s good to know these things.

Bushmaster ACR recall

/ hsoi

Bushmaster is recalling ALL ACR rifles. If you own one of these, you MUST contact Bushmaster immediately. It’s a safety issue and a legal issue.

Here’s Bushmaster’s notice.

The Firearm Blog has a transcribed copy of the notice.

Monster Hunter Vendetta

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I finally finished reading Monster Hunter Vendetta by Larry Correia.

You see, I didn’t want to give a hoot about the Monster Hunter books. It’s just not my cup of tea. But TXGunGeek loaned me his copy of the first book, Monster Hunter International, and I did enjoy it.

So when I had to go to California a few weeks ago, I needed a book. I’ve found that when I fly, the best thing for me to do to pass the time is read. I can’t read technical or deep-thought books; I need light but engaging fare. It’s how I started reading the Harry Potter books. So while at the bookstore I was looking for the Dave Mustaine autobiography (which I enjoyed), but while waiting for someone at the counter it hit me that MH Vendetta was out. So why not… I picked it up figuring it would be good fare for the plane.

I wasn’t disappointed.

I don’t want to say too much and risk spoilers for folks that haven’t read it but plan to.

The book is certainly a good read. It’s enjoyable, action-packed. I reiterate that I think the Monster Hunter stuff could make for exciting viewing on the big screen (and again, Julie Strain for Julie Shackleford!).

I felt this book had more twists, more things to keep you on your toes. For instance, Agent Franks. I think there was more character development and more depth, but also a lot more to keep track of. I read half the book on the plane, then have been reading what I can when I can since then. If I stepped away for a couple days, I did find myself having to reorient and remind myself of the state of things, else I lost track of what was going on. It can be an involved read, but not heavy or demanding.

Certainly felt more suspense in this. A lot more “damn… how are they going to get out of this? thoughts… more “geez.. and I thought it couldn’t get any worse”. But it never felt forced or campy, at least, within the realm of sci-fi limits. 🙂   Oh sure, there’s still a lot of perfect far-fetchedness going on, Owen is still a super-human despite being merely human, but hey… suspend disbelief and just enjoy the fun.

No regrets about buying it. Very much enjoyed reading it.

And yes…. G-Nome. Couldn’t stop laughing. 🙂

I bent my wookie

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Reloaded another 200 rounds of .38 Special this morning.

It was anything but routine.

I broke the decapping pin on the sizing die. *sigh*  I’m not 100% sure how it happened, but here’s my guess. Earlier in the session I guess I didn’t get an empty case set in the shell plate correctly. I pulled the lever and it felt and sounded strange. I look at the shell plate and notice the old case was on its side and had been smashed flat against the bottom of the resizing die. Furthermore, the decapping pin had punched through the brass walls. Oops. I removed the damaged case and kept going. There were some hard to resize cases. I figure the pin had a crack or at least was stressed from the punch-through, and now with the difficult cases probably had more stress. Then on one pull of the handle I heard a strange noise and the pull felt weird. I looked, no more pin… it was in crumbled pieces inside the case I was attempting to resize and decap. *sigh*

Fortunately, I had an old set of Lee dies that I bought off Karl for cheap some time ago. I was able to put that sizing/decapping die in and finish the session.

So now I need to buy a new decapping pin. Thing is, I’m sure the cost of shipping it is going to be more than the pin itself (it’s about $3 for a pack of 5 pins). So, I need to find a way to make this worth my while. I am probably going to need to go to Cabela’s to get more bullets and probably some deer-hunting stuff, so if they have pins, great. If not well… I guess I’ll hope the Lee dies hold out until I’m done with .38 and then I’ll pick up pins whenever I next do an online order.

I’m just glad I had the spare dies and didn’t really have to break my stride. I’m itching to get .38 done with so I can get to working on 6.8 SPC loads with those Barnes .277″ 95 grain TTSX bullets. They won’t get used for hunting this season, but maybe hogs afterwards and into the future.

(Thanx to Ralph Wiggum for the title).