Guns

To Crimp Or Not To Crimp

/ hsoi / 4 Comments

That’s my current question.

So in trying to work with these Barnes TSX .224″ 53 grain bullets, do I need to crimp them or not?

From Barnes’ FAQ:

Do you recommend crimping your bullets?
We usually don’t recommend crimping our smaller-caliber bullets. However, if you choose to do so, a light crimp is best. Heavy caliber bullets (.375 and up) for large game require a heavy crimp, as do most revolver and lever-rifle loads.

From Barnes’ April 2007 Newsletter:

Question: When reloading magnum calibers with TSX Bullets, do I need to set up my die to add a factory-style crimp to prevent cartridges in the magazine from losing their grip on bullets under recoil? I have loaded short-action and long-action rounds without placing a crimp on the bullet, and have never had a problem. I have been told that reloading magnum cartridges is a whole new ball game. Any information you could give would be appreciated.Keep turning out those TSX Bullets and I will keep loading them. Thanks for the help.

—Randall Miles

Answer: In the past Barnes has recommended not crimping anything smaller than .375 caliber if proper neck tension is applied. However, there are exceptions to this rule. Cartridges used in autoloaders should be crimped to prevent bullet movement as the action cycles. Some of the light-for-caliber TSXs require crimping due to their short bearing surface. Sometimes a light or Lee factory crimp will improve accuracy in a standard or magnum cartridge. Finally, with some of the extreme magnum cartridges (e.g. .30-378, .338-378, etc.) it is a good practice to always crimp.

Ultimately, it is up to the shooter to determine what will yield the best results in his or her rifle.

Thanks for a great question.

—Ty

So it sounds like yes I should crimp.

And it sounds like I’ll need to buy a Lee Factory Crimp Die. Or do I? I found this article that shows yes in fact crimping makes some sort of difference. There’s this guy that doesn’t speak highly of crimping (for maximum accuracy). The more I Google around, there’s just a zillion opinions, of course. But one interesting thing that comes up is a lot of people don’t think much of Lee dies to begin with but do like their factory crimp dies. Go figure.

Given these will be shot out of an AR-15, I figure I should crimp. And it sounds like the roll crimp my RCBS dies will do isn’t going to be the best thing. *grumble grumble* More shopping to do.

Tales from Cabela’s

/ hsoi

Snunk out to Cabela’s this morning to look into components for .223 hunting loads.

They had Barnes TSX in 53 grain, but not the 62 grain. I can work with that.

Only new brass was Remington. I’ll try it. Most of my existing .223 brass is either military or of unknown condition; it’s Georgia Arms Canned Heat and that’s already a reload. If it was just plinking rounds I may not care, but for these hunting loads it’ll be nice to start with something new.

No powders that fit my needs.

No primers that fit my needs, but it was nice to see they had something other than shotgun primers on the shelf. 🙂

Had the Barnes reloading book, picked it up.

Picked up what I could. Meantime I’ll be searching online for the rest of the components.

One interesting thing.

I saw they had 60 grain Nosler Partitions there. They also had Nosler’s reloading data book and I flipped through it. For a moment I thought about ditching all that was in my basket and going with the Nosler’s as they had just about everything in stock to work up a load. However I noticed an interesting thing in the book. They book said that if the ammo was going to be used in a semi-auto that you’d want to crimp. However, they suggested doing a taper crimp because their bullets didn’t come with a cannelure. I looked at the bullet and sure enough, smooth as silk. I looked to see if they had any .223 dies that did taper crimps, but no luck so I opted to go back to the Barnes approach. I’m glad I did… stick to my guns (no pun intended).

What was interesting? I decided to see if there was any factory hunting ammo on the shelves. Sure enough, there was some Federal P223Q on the shelf. That’s the load using the 60 grain Nosler Partition. I wanted to see how they crimped. Well get this… the bullets had cannelures! So Nosler’s book says they don’t make the bullets with cannelures, but yet here we have the bullets with them. I don’t know the reason why things are this way… maybe Nosler doesn’t sell cannelured ones as components, maybe Nosler makes cannelured versions special for Federal. I don’t know, but I found that interesting.

Anyway, I’m going to work with the Barnes TSX for now and see where it gets me.

Lasers… feh.

/ hsoi / 6 Comments

So JayG discovers what some already knew: lasers aren’t all that.

They don’t solve your shooting problems. They have to be remembered to be turned on and off. They get in the way. They make the gun more bulky. You spend your time focusing on finding that little dot, and that eats precious time.

I’m not convinced laser sights are worthwhile things.

Sure, I can see a niche for them in practice because they don’t lie about what your muzzle is doing. But that’s rather an expensive training aid. As well, it comes across to me as still ingraining bad habit since you’ll still be looking at the target at the little red dot instead of focusing on your front sight. Learn to read your front sight as that will take you further.

Nicely Said, Joe

/ hsoi

From Joe Huffman:

The gun lobby isn’t “pushing guns into every corner of our society” any more than the ACLU is pushing free speech, the NAACP is pushing blacks, or the ADL is pushing Jews into every corner of our society. The right to keep and bear arms is a specific enumerated right guaranteed by the U.S. and most state constitutions. It is an inalienable right recognized by the people that wrote the constitutions and has been a part of our society since long before they wrote those documents.

Night Hogs

/ hsoi / 3 Comments

Steve at The Firearm Blog has a posting about hunting feral hogs with night vision.

As of this writing Steve’s posting actually has a mix-up regarding the hog hunting businesses, but a bit fortuitous as he writes-up the Night Hogs outfit that I went hunting with back in July 2009. I notified Steve via a comment, and hopefully he’ll remedy things soon.

I’ve actually had some thoughts about calling Randy and Gerald back up and doing another hunt. Just not right now… too cold. 🙂

Teaching “the rules”

/ hsoi / 6 Comments

Caleb made a posting about “the rules” and it spurred me to finally write about something that’s been rolling around in my head for a while.

I written before about “the rules” — both Col. Cooper’s rules and the NRA’s rules. The first rules I learned were Cooper’s, then after spending a lot of time in KR Training Basic Pistol 1 courses I came to better appreciate the NRA’s rules.

When it comes to “which ruleset to teach new shooters,” what really sold me on the NRA rules? Teaching Youngest.

I started trying to teach him Col. Cooper’s rules, mostly because that’s how I started teaching Oldest and Daughter and the consistency for when I talk to all 3 kids is welcome. However it became cumbersome to discuss this with him. Why? Because children like things to be simple, and Cooper’s rules are not simple. Yes some parts of his rules are straightforward, which is good. But let’s consider Rule 1 and all the various exceptions that can be had to that rule. Consider as well that others may or may not have the same exception set as you (does dry fire violate rule 1? does cleaning a gun violate rule 1?). There was no way I could explain these rules to Youngest without risking overload… too many new things on a young brain is a sure way for things to get forgotten, and these safety rules are not something you want people to forget!

So I opted to teach him the NRA rules. That approach worked out great. The more I think about the NRA rules, the more I find them to be a better rule set that doesn’t have to have exceptions and qualifiers. To be fair, it’s not perfect. For instance, you have to discuss what a “safe direction” is (that between the muzzle and where the bullet would come to rest, it won’t damage anything you don’t want to damage… or perhaps that it does damage what you want to damage). While you can certainly discuss this with the child, they may not have enough depth of life knowledge to know what materials can and cannot stop a bullet; you can talk about how the walls of the house won’t stop it and give some references relevant to the child’s life experience, but will a brick wall stop a bullet? Depends upon the bullet… these things a child just can’t know.

I’m not going to go with Caleb and say Cooper’s Rules are merely guidelines, but I will say they risk that, especially the much vaunted Rule 1. Once you start having a parade of exceptions, how useful of a rule is it? Once it starts being too complex to follow, is it going to serve the intended end? When there’s no established set of exceptions, how dangerous can things become? And should there be exceptions in the first place?

Any time I drive to the range with the kids we always talk about what we’re going to do, including a review of the rules. This last range trip with Daughter started off with her telling me the Cooper rules, but then I opted to reinforce with her the NRA rules. Then we had a discussion about the two rulesets, strengths and weaknesses of them, how they overlap, how they are unique, how they work to reinforce each other and ultimately in the end knowledge of and adherence to the concepts an directives of both rulesets will serve you best. I think in the end it’s best for people to know both sets of rules. There are subtle aspects the Cooper set touches on the NRA set does not, and the NRA rules touch on things the Cooper set does not. What needs to happen is teaching people the rules as statements and immediately following into discussion of the rules to ensure they are more deeply understood. And while I may prefer the NRA rule set, I will always teach Cooper’s ruleset as well because there’s good mindset in there and if nothing else… gunnies tend to prefer Cooper’s rules so it’s just good to know them.

Updated: Ah, I see. Caleb’s posting came about due to some other discussion, like from Sebastian and SayUncle and JayG who seemed to start all of this.

Actually yes, I do believe there are people out there that demand the rules be taken literally (Cooper himself, for one) — they are rules, after all. But when pressed, it’s hard to find people that don’t violate the rules in some way (e.g. dry fire, cleaning the gun, etc.). However, these people will always find ways to justify their position.

So to me, that just weakens “The Rules” as rules. To have exceptions, to have “allowable violations”, and so on… what good then are The Rules? If for no other reason it removes simplicity. You make a rule too hard to follow well… just look at the tax code from the IRS; extreme example, but thus is the slope. Even things like the “i before e except after c” rule has so many blasted exceptions, no wonder it’s difficult to learn the English language.

Interesting in all of this discussion it only beats on Cooper’s rules. I’d like to see more discussion then about a better rule set. Could the NRA’s set be better? If so, let’s make that The Holy Grail and move foward. If that isn’t good enough, then why are we as a gunnie community satisified with what we’ve got — this less than ideal rule set? Why aren’t we trying to make something better?

.223 Remington for hunting?

/ hsoi / 23 Comments

If you bring up the topic of using the .223 Remington cartridge for hunting, invariably strong opinions arise:

“It’s great! Works just fine.”

“Only for varmints; I wouldn’t shoot deer-sized or larger game with it because that’d be inhumane.”

“Anything less than .30 caliber isn’t a real hunting round.”

“If you use it, you better make sure your shot placement is perfect.”

and it goes on.

Of course, some people have no opinion whatsoever because it’s illegal to use that caliber for game hunting in their state. As well, some people use the fact it’s illegal in some states as justification for why you shouldn’t hunt with it (ignoring all the other ways it’s illegal to hunt that could actually be beneficial, like using suppressors). Here in Texas, it’s legal to hunt with .223 and many people have reported successful deer and hog hunts using .223. Of course as well, there are many stories of failures with a .223 and those one or two stories someone has are reason enough for them to say it’s inadequate. The simple reality is any round can fail, no round is a magic bullet (pun intended). Yes you cannot pick your ammunition blindly, but in the end if you pick the right equipment and you do your job — which you should be doing no matter what you’re using, a .22 or a .300 magnum — it can be effective.

This isn’t any sort of definitive piece about hunting with .223 and shouldn’t be taken as such; it’s merely me thinking out loud and presenting things I’ve found on the topic.

Continue reading →

Morning with Daughter

/ hsoi / 6 Comments

Had a fun morning with Daughter.

The main purpose was to go to the gun range to have her try out the AR with the scope. But we made a morning out of it, stopping for breakfast at Denny’s. We were going to go to Waffle House but there was a Denny’s on the way and Daughter wanted to try it because she’s never been to one. No problem, we changed plans and stopped at the Denny’s for breakfast. I figured as long as we were doing firsts, I had a t-bone steak and eggs for breakfast; never done that before but always wanted to. It was terrible, but I loved every minute of it. 🙂

We were surprised how many people were out at the range this morning, given the temperatures were just above freezing. Apart from that tho the morning was very nice, so it made sense some people were out. We settled over on the “E” range because no one was there so it would give us the most flexibility. The one downside was I wanted to start her at 25 yards (thus originally I hoped to use position 41 on the “A” range), but 40 meters would have to do and frankly I didn’t think it’d be a problem.

Got settled in, got her set up on the rest. Still, she was too short. Luckily we found an old office chair and we could raise the seat up some, which got her there. Set up the targets on the 40 meter rails, and let fly. Daughter did quite well. A few days ago I had a talk with the kids about trajectory, “height over bore”, zeroing, point of impact vs. point of aim, and things like that. That this rifle was sighted to be zeroed at 100 yards, thus when they shot at the closer targets they wouldn’t hit where they were aiming. I told them, for, now, to keep aiming dead center on the target and just watch where the bullets impact and strive for good groupings. I’m glad we had the talk before we went as it made it much easier to handle things on the range.

Daughter shot for a bit, then I shot for a bit. I was pretty happy with my shooting, with some pretty tight groups. I did have some fliers and I know it’s because I am not used to that heavy single-stage trigger. I know the trigger also was giving Daughter some troubles, and I think that convinced her to dry fire the rifle at home to work on it. Between the cold air, the steady cold breeze, and the heavy trigger, I know it was giving Daughter troubles in breaking the shot. She had no trouble getting on paper and putting the bullet basically where she wanted, but doing it in a timely manner was rough. It’s just going to take practice with the rifle, but I think she’ll be fine. Next time we go out I’ll try “walking” the target rails on the “E” range (it’s a silhouette range), starting at 40 meters, then 50, then 75, then 100 and see how they do. I am pretty sure that as long as they can keep things steady, they’ll do fine out to 100 yards/meters.

Daughter didn’t get as much trigger time as she wanted — she was just too cold. So we packed it up and she sat in the car while I worked with my XD-9 a bit. No targets, just shooting into the berm. I’ve been re-reading the Brian Enos book and I wanted to do some stuff with grip, relaxation, and “floating the gun.” I picked up some good feedback and some points to ponder. I’d like to try running a lot of Bill Drills at this point and see how I do, as that’d give me a lot more tangible feedback. The cool thing was how much I stopped thinking about everything else and just let my eyes “drive the gun,” as Enos puts it. It really does make a big difference. As well, while I see lots of merit to the Todd Jarrett “grip 20% tighter kung fu action grip”, there’s also Enos’ take of being more relaxed and just letting the gun do its thing. You can’t be limp wristed, but yes I find the gun works a lot better when I have a “medium” grip and just let the gun do what it does. There’s a balance to find. More things for me to play with later.

A good morning. Not just because I got to go shooting, but because I got to spend time with Daughter. That’s the best part.

Updated: I forgot. Daughter got to learn some things about ammo. We were shooting Georgia Arms Canned Heat. Daughter pressed trigger, it went “pop” not “bang”. She looked up, puzzled. Her first misfire. I took care of it. I pulled back the charging handle and when the case ejected I noticed a lot of powder still in the case. Ugh. Good thing I had a cleaning rod with me. Bullet was only lodged an inch or two into the barrel, but I explained how this could be a bad thing. When I examined the case I immediately saw the problem… and I showed it to Daughter and asked her if she saw it (I didn’t say what it was), and she saw it. The primer wasn’t fully seated.

I’ve generally had good luck with Georgia Arms stuff so I’m not really holding this against them. But these things can happen. Glad Daughter got to experience and learn about them.

Rangemaster Student Involved Incident #51

/ hsoi / 1 Comment

This just came in via the Rangemaster mailing list.

Student Involved Incident #51

Monday evening, at 10:40pm, we had the 51st  self defense incident involving a Rangemaster student that we know of. This one occurred in an upscale area in the Southeast part of the county, just outside the Memphis city limits.

The male resident had just arrived home, exited his car, and was walking up the sidewalk to his home when he was accosted by two armed robbery suspects. A struggle ensued, during which the homeowner was shot in the thigh by one of the suspects. The homeowner’s wife was at the front door to greet her husband, and saw the attack. She ran upstairs, got her handgun, opened the bedroom window and engaged the suspects with several shots from the window. She hit one suspect, and both fled.

The homeowner was taken to a local hospital and treated. About 1:00am, police received a call from Delta Medical Hospital on Getwell about a male with a gunshot wound. He was positively identified by the victim as one of the robbers, and was arrested and transferred to the jail unit at the Med. The second suspect was still at large at the time of the police report.

Comments:

1. Both the homeowner and his wife have been through training here. The wife’s ability to engage the suspects likely saved her husband’s life. Had she not intervened he probably would have been shot more.

2. The victim owns several businesses, including a couple of convenience stores in Hickory Hill. It appears he was followed home, and possibly deliberately targeted on the theory that he would be carrying the store’s cash. Be alert, and as you draw near your home or other destination, check your rear view mirrors! If you have made some turns and the same vehicle is right behind you, don’t go home.

3. Practice! Not all defensive shootings involve a suspect a few feet away. In this instance, the wife had to shoot past her husband from the second floor window, without hitting him.

Point #3 is something I touched upon in my recent article about XS Sights. You just don’t know and cannot predict what a self-defense situation is going to be like. Odds may say it’s likely to go in some particular way, but wouldn’t it just be your luck that you get to be the statistical anomaly?  It’s one big reason I stopped using the XS Sights and got better sights (Dawson Precision). It’s also a reason that we need to practice things we may not always think or want to practice, like shooting groups at 25 yards.

iPhone Shot Timers

/ hsoi

So now I see Taurus has a free shot timer app for the iPhone.

I already have the SureFire shot timer app. It’s not bad, but I didn’t have much success with it the time I tried it. It just didn’t pick everything up. I’m not sure if Tom was shooting faster than it could pick up, or if because of the tin roof over the shooting bay the echo muddled things up and it couldn’t pick it out. Of course Tom’s dedicated proper shot timer had no problems in the same environment. Still, you get what you pay for.

I’ll see about doing a review of the 2 apps one of these days.