Guns

Range Report – Reload Results

/ hsoi / 7 Comments

Went to the local indoor range this morning, because I had collected enough “stuff to do” and work was a bit quiet this morning — perfect to slip away for a little bit and get some stuff done.

First, I had a scope problem, but I’ll write about that later.

I had 2 main reloads to try: .38 Special and 9mm.

.38 Special Reloads

This was shooting my first go at .38 special reloads. You can read the recipe here, but basically 3.5 grains of TiteGroup, Berry’s .38 Special 158 grain plated RN DS bullet, Remington 1.5 primer, CBC brass, 1.510″ COL. Note that I had no crimp on these, because I wasn’t sure about crimping on .38, especially with these Berry’s bullets.

I was curious about the crimps and spoke with someone at Berry’s about it. The basic rule with their bullets is nothing over 1200 fps and no heavy roll crimps. He said that on .38 Special, a taper crimp would actually be best with their bullets, but a roll crimp would be fine so long as it wasn’t a heavy crimp. For now I opted to go with no crimp and not futz with what I had already loaded to see how it goes.

I was shooting out of my customized S&W 442. My goal isn’t going for some uber-load, I’m not looking for 1/2 MOA accuracy, right now I’m just learning to reload so I want to just see how things go, see if I can make a load that goes bang and how it performs. It’s just a desire to learn, not necessarily find that ideal load.

First thing I noticed was the cartridges were difficult to insert into the chambers of the cylinder. Factory loads just slide in and out with no problem (they’re just a hair loose). But these reloads would get almost all the way in then I would have to push firmly to fully seat them. I’m not sure what caused that, and as I write this I realize I should have not fired all 20 rounds that I loaded so I could get the calipers on them and measure and compare to a factory load. But such is hindsight. Could it be from lack of crimp? Could it be due to case expansion? I’m not sure, but I will go back and reexamine my reloading process when next I reload .38 Special.

As for the performance of the load, it was mild. Sure it still had a wee bit of snap to it, but it really wasn’t bad. I’d see a small spark and a tiny bit of muzzle flash. Overall felt recoil was mild. As a factory reference round, I had some Remington UMC .38 Special 130 grain MC (L38S11). By comparison, the UMC had more felt recoil, a little more snap, a little more muzzle flip, and a lot more muzzle flash. So if that’s a fair reference point as factory ammo, my load was milder no question. Accuracy was fine… no heavy measuring of accuracy, but rounds went exactly where I put them. I do know I need to continue to get used to the sights on the snub… they’re just not Dawson’s.

Overall, I’m pleased with the load. Next thing I’d do is reload the same recipe but verify my reloading process and ensure a roll crimp. After I see how that goes, I’ll start to play with things like how much powder I put in and see how that goes. Once I settle on something, then I’ll start looking at accuracy and velocity. One thing I do like about a lighter load like this is you could probably shoot it all day, even out of a snub with small grips and an exposed backstrap, and probably do OK.

As a quick aside, I also shot 15 rounds of Buffalo Bore 20/20c. I did this because last time I tried them (just after getting my snub back from the gunsmith), I had one misfire. I wanted to see if it may have been that round or if it may have been the customized snub not liking the Buffalo Bore loads. All 15 went bang (and bang they did… oh thank you for better grips and a covered backstrap). So I think they’ll be OK in this gun, but of course more testing is always good.

9mm Reloads

My first 9mm reloads had a recipe like this: Berry’s 115 grain plated RN bullet, 6.3 grains Power Pistol, Winchester SSP, Speer brass, 1.135″ COL. When I tried them out I used a Springfield XD-9 subcompact (3″ barrel) and the results were snappy with a LOT of muzzle flash. Details here. So my next step was to try out that same load in my XD-9 Tactical (5″ barrel). I also wanted to do a load with TiteGroup to see how that would compare. I’d want everything between the two loads to be the same, save for the powder.

The TiteGroup recipe is as follows:

Bullet: 115 grain Berry’s RN DS plated bullet

Powder: 4.2 grains Hodgdon TiteGroup

Primer: Winchester WSP standard small pistol

Cases: used Speer brass

C.O.L.: 1.135″

So as you can see, the only difference between the two loads is the powder, 4.2 grains of TiteGroup vs. 6.3 of Power Pistol.

I used Speer Lawman 115 grain as a factory reference point. I brought both my 3″ and 5″ XD to the range. I also brought some of the true first reloads I did at Karl’s place, which I think have Vihtavuori N330 don’t remember how much.

The Power Pistol loads of course performed the same as before out of the 3″. I expected a slight change in performance in the 5″ but didn’t get it: still kinda snappy and flippy and a fair lot of flash. I’d say the 5″ was a little less than the 3″ but certainly not by much. Compared to the factory load, it was fairly similar in feel (the factory was a bit different, felt “stronger” but not as snappy) but the factory load had almost no visible muzzle flash by comparison.  Still performance seemed OK and I wouldn’t be to opposed to using the Power Pistol up because well.. I’ve got the powder, might as well use it.

The TiteGroup was another matter. I tried it first out of the 5″ gun and I swore I could watch the slide move. It was a really wimpy load. 🙂  The brass was ejecting consistently but only maybe one foot away from me. I swore I could feel the slide creeping along instead of flying in and out of battery. It was kinda fun, but the load barely worked in that gun. Switching to the 3″ gun, things felt a lot better, it functioned more like you’d expect. Overall the feel of the load was light, in terms of recoil. This also seemed to shoot a little bit cleaner than the Power Pistol.

At this point I’m really intrigued by the TiteGroup load. The above recipe could be fine for a light load, but I wouldn’t expect it to reliably cycle except in really light/weak-springed guns. Looking at the data on Hodgdon’s website, a 115 gr. LRN would use 3.9 to 4.3 grains of TiteGroup and a 1.100″ COL. Using a 115 gr. Speer GDHP it’d have a COL of 1.125″ and 4.5 to 4.8 grains of TiteGroup. So I have a little working to do to figure out my next step, but certainly it needs to go up from here.

Conclusion

All in all, I’m pleased. Pleased because I’m reloading my own ammo and it’s working. Plus I’m starting to see how things fit together, how things go, different characteristics of things. Just lots of things and soaking in all the information I can.

I have things to work on and change: for the .38 load ensure the loading process is not off and see about roll crimping, on the 9mm loads work with TiteGroup more.

And I hope Santa could bring me a Hornady Lock-n-Load progressive press. 🙂

It’s not the thing…

/ hsoi

… it’s the person using the thing.

I know Bob S. is talking about something else, but the word substitution does go to show something.

There is nothing magic. There is nothing that an object can do for you, in and of itself. In the end, it’s all about the person using the object. If a good person is using the object, good things can come from it. If a bad person is using the object, a bad thing can come from it. Using Bob’s words, if you have good and attentive doctors in the emergency room, they can save lives. If you have bad doctors in the emergency room, lives can be lost. It’s nothing to do with an emergency room itself, it’s all about the people in that emergency room. But even with the best doctors, lives can be lost… we are human, we can make mistakes, we can be distracted. But in the end, we’re still glad to have good people with useful tools at their disposal because in the end it keeps our society running better than if the bad people had the advantage.

A shotgun is a lot like a guitar….

/ hsoi / 4 Comments

A shotgun is a lot like a guitar. A lot of wood, a little metal, an element of twang, and damn if I can’t get my dinner with both of ’em.

— Ted Nugent

For full effect, you need to watch and listen to Uncle Ted deliver the above line.

AR for hunting

/ hsoi / 3 Comments

I purchased a Bushmaster SuperLight Carbine (the A3 model with the detachable carry handle and collapsible stock) some many months ago. It was not my first choice in AR’s: I’d rather have a mid-length gas system, I know there are better triggers out there, and I’d rather have something other than a Bushmaster (numerous reasons there). Still, it’s not bad for what it is and it was all that was available at the time (the Obama-induced gun rush). What I do like about the rifle is it’s light weight, and that light weight plus the collapsible stock make it rather a usable gun by smaller statured people. Consequently, it’s been something very usable by the kids.

Oldest and Daughter have been wanting to go hunting, but I keep telling them both they need to get better with a rifle bigger than a .22 if they want to do that. I’m so surprised at the mild recoil of my Savage 11, even in .308 (it’d due in large part to the excellent recoil pad), that I wondered if they could shoot it. I suspect they could, but having Daughter hold up the rifle well… they could handle .308 I’m sure but they’re just too small a person to handle that particular full-sized rifle. I’ve been hum-hawing about buying a dedicated youth rifle: I know it’s a better solution for them, but I just don’t feel like buying a special rifle that will have limited use plus require me to add in another caliber of ammo to have to stock up on (since most youth rifles are chambered in .243 Winchester).

I had various thoughts about what to do with the Bushmaster. Should I sell it and build the AR I want? Should I use this Bushmaster as a platform and change it up the way I want? But if I do those things it makes for a bigger and heavier rifle, and I do like that lightweight aspect. I’ve become really interested in 6.8 mm Remington SPC as a platform, but is this the rifle I want to do that on (e.g. buy an upper) or for that do I want to construct something from the ground up? Gah. I’ve tossed around so many thoughts on what to do here. But I have finally decided what’s going to happen, at least for the near future. 🙂

I am going to keep the Bushmaster fairly stock. I am going to purchase a decent but inexpensive scope and mount for the AR. Then this AR will become a hunting rifle for the kids. Some will say that .223 isn’t a good enough caliber for hunting. Here in Texas, that is a legal hunting caliber, and with good bullets and proper shot placement (which you should be doing anyways) it should be fine. For those who think it looks odd to hunt with an AR, know that the AR is just fine as a modern sporting rifle. In fact, for a youth I think it works quite well for the above outlined reasons (adjustable, weight, recoil, etc.).

We’ll see how it goes. It’s a rifle that a youth can handle. That scope and setup ought to be just fine for any sort of game they would take here in Texas. Getting it sooner rather than later lets the kids get good practice in. If they can hit a 4″ circle at 100 yards, they should do fine. They will need to learn about holdover given the nature of the AR and how high a scope can be over the barrel. Heck, I may find myself wanting to use this setup because it should be rather light and handy.

Aside: I ordered the scope, mount, and covers through MidwayUSA. After I submitted the order I realized I should have also ordered a couple 20 round PMAGs (easier to use off the bench and in the field). I telephoned MidwayUSA to see if I could add them onto the order. They couldn’t add on to the order and to cancel and submit a new order would have been annoying (extra transaction fees, etc.). So instead, they just started a new order for the PMAGs and waived the shipping charges. It was a small thing, but a nice thing. Little bits of customer service like that go a long way. I’ve ordered lots of stuff from MidwayUSA and little things like this keep me going back.

Quote for the day

/ hsoi

Comes from Robb Allen:

You know how to tell that you’re on the right side of a debate? When you’re not concerned with having all the data available, good and bad, because you know that even the statistical noise won’t harm your argument.

How To Improve Your Split Times

/ hsoi / 2 Comments

Some emails were being exchanged between KR Training instructors and students. One person mentioned how he was wanting to work on improving his split times (time between shots). Karl Rehn gave an informative reply and was kind enough to grant me permission to reprint his reply here.

1. Gunsmith the gun to have a lighter trigger pull with a shorter reset. This will buy you the most improvement fastest.

2. Don’t wait to see the sights again to start resetting and pressing the trigger again. If you work on this, put the target up against the back of the backstop and start at 3 yards from the backstop so if you let one go early (high) it does not go over the berm.

3. Work on Bill Drills (6 shots) not “double taps.” Practicing “double taps” will teach you to get one sight picture and slap the trigger twice (Alpha-Mike syndrome). Bill Drills will teach you how to be consistent in your shot cycle. Set up a full IPSC target at 3 yards, set yourself a par time of 4 sec to draw and fire 6 shots. If you hit all A’s in 4 sec, drop the par time by 10% (0.4 sec) and try it again. Keep dropping by 10% until you are shooting ½ A’s and ½ C’s. Don’t worry about what you are seeing or “not seeing.” Just look at the hits on the paper after each drill. A Master class score for a 3 yard Bill Drill is 2 sec (1 sec draw, 0.16 splits approx).

Repeat the drill at 7 yards, 10 yards, 15 yards. Longer distances — draw time should be the same but splits will slow down as distance increases.

The best way to learn to go fast is to set par times and force yourself to go fast and make the times regardless of the hits. You have to teach your brain to process the information at that speed. Once you have basic technique down, trying to get fast by being careful and consistent won’t get you there. You have to start in your comfort zone, then push to find the edge of what you can do and then dial it back to 90% of your max.

What you have to learn is the “rhythm” of your gun — when it is ready to fire again. At some point you may have to go back to equipment mods — heavier guide rods, lighter loads, trying different weight recoil sprints, to “tune” the gun’s recoil cycle. If you get your splits down in the 0.15 – 0.20 level at 7 yards then there’s limited “return in investment” by spending ammo trying to go beyond that. There are a lot of other skills that are more important than split times (target acquisition, movement) that shouldn’t be neglected obsessing about hitting 0.11 splits.

If you don’t know what some of these terms mean, I intentionally did not link to stuff because either it should mean you’re not ready for this level of stuff or you’ll be better served by Googling on it yourself and exploring and learning.

But I did want to post one cool thing about the Bill Drill, from Brian Enos:

With a target, what do you need to see? One thing you might notice is that you’ve gotten in a blind rush to make the time. So what did (or didn’t) you see? Sometimes recollecting what you didn’t see tells as much as knowing what you did see.

As the old Kuk Sool saying goes “We need more practice, sir!”

My first .38 Special reloads

/ hsoi / 3 Comments

I don’t have scads of .38 Special ammo, but I do have a fair lot of .38 Special brass. In my push to get myself into reloading, I’m trying to avoid buying factory ammo and instead putting that money towards reloading components (bullets, primers, powder, etc.) and reloading equipment. Now that I have my S&W 442 back from the gunsmith and with the snub-nose revolver class coming up, I figure it’s time to start working up a .38 Special load to use for target/practice shooting.

There are lots of .38 Special data out there, but I’ve noticed it tends to have a bias towards lead bullets like semi-wadcutters, or towards hollow-points like the Hornady XTP. This is generally all good, but I had picked up 500 rounds of Berry’s .38 Special 158 grain plated round nose bullets because they were the most inexpensive bullets I could find locally. This posed two issues for me: 1. plated bullets reload a bit differently, 2. finding a cartridge overall length for a 158 grain round nose bullet was next to impossible. Making it a bit more difficult, I was limiting my powder to Titegroup. Again, when I bought all of exodus’ reloading equipment the two pistol powders I obtained were Titegroup and Power Pistol. Being as I don’t know one powder from another, my current approach is to use the powders I have and get a good feel for them; after that, I can explore other powders. I was told Titegroup and Trail Boss were good for large volume cases, like in .38 Special. Furthermore, Titegroup is fairly fast burning, which would be preferred for a snub. So having Titegroup I figured that’d be the place to start. So if it wasn’t hard enough to find something based upon the particular style of bullet I was using, throw in wanting to use Titegroup, and throw in a desire to get data that provides a COL and well…. I failed in finding any sort of existing recipes.

Consequently, I had to come up with my own load. I looked at all the data I could find and tried to come up with something that was workable yet conservative. Here’s what I have:

Bullet: Berry’s .38 Special 158 grain plated round nose double struck

Powder: 3.5 grains, Titegroup

Primer: Remington 1.5 small pistol primers

Cases: used, headstamp “CBC – 38 SPL”

C.O.L.: 1.510″

Also note the dies I used were RCBS carbide 3-die set #18212. This doesn’t have a taper-crimp die. As well, the bullets don’t have any sort of cannelure, so there’s really no crimp here.

As of this writing I have not tried this out. I just loaded 20 rounds and will try them out next time I get to the gun range. There won’t be any chronographing, just seeing if it goes bang, puts the bullet where I wanted it to go, and any other data that I can obtain (e.g. muzzle flash, how sooty things get, felt recoil, etc.).

Hopefully I can get to the range soon. I’ve still got my other set of 9mm experiments to try too.

My waistline

/ hsoi / 4 Comments

Mom is visiting.

She arrives at the house. Talking ensues. Hugs. Warm welcomes.

Eventually she goes to put an arm around my waist. Of course I’ve got my Batman utility belt on. Mom’s hand immediately impacts steel objects. I brace myself for the debate that will ensue (remember: this is the first time since obtaining my concealed handgun license that I’ve been around my mother, who’s not a big fan of firearms having been born into and growing up in war-torn and Japanese-occupied Korea). Mom’s hand starts to feel around my waist. Bracing for it….  But where does she end up? Squarely in the front of my waist, on my little pouch of belly fat. All the odd objects on my waist matter not. All I got a lecture about was the little paunch. 😆

Man. All my years growing up and she lectured me to gain weight (tall skinny kid growing up). Now that I’ve gained the weight, now she wants me to take it off. Can my mother ever be satisfied?  😉

(Yes, a discussion on the guns did happen at a later time. She’s still not happy with it… blames my moving to Texas over 15 years ago. Kept discussion calm and rational. She seems to understand but still doesn’t like it.)

Reading this post from Tam reminded me to post this.