Snub Nose

Customized my 442

/ hsoi / 1 Comment

At the advice of Tom Hogel, I sent my S&W 442 to Mr. Verne Trester for some custom smith work.

I got a red insert on the front sight ramp. Made a HUGE difference in the visibility of that sight.

I also got the action worked on.

Price for the work was very reasonable.

Took a little over a month for complete turnaround, which was fine.

As soon as it arrived I took it out and just spent time dry firing it. Felt nice. Still a long trigger pull, but it felt smoother and a tad lighter, tho still a “heavy” trigger pull.

Took it to the range. Ran all sorts of ammo through it, different makes and brands, some .38 Special, some .38 Special +P. All sorts of stuff. Everything ran without a hitch. I tried 5 of my Buffalo Bore 20C’s. The first one didn’t fire, but the rest did, and the first one fired when it came around a second time. I’m not sure what the deal was there and will be asking Verne. Could have been a hard primer or just a fluke, or could be something with how he tuned the action (he did ask me prior to starting the work what ammo I’d be shooting out of it). Nice thing about the revolver tho… just keep pulling the trigger. 🙂

This is also the first time I got to shoot it since putting on the new grips. I must say they did a great job. I had more control over the gun due to the longer grip and thus having a pinky on there. The covering of the backstrap was very welcome, especially when shooting those Buffalo Bore. They are certainly bigger than the previous grips and there’s no question that affects concealability. But I don’t think the concealability is all that unmanageable (it doesn’t bulge in my pocket any more than the cylinder width causes things to bulge). As well, when I slip my hand in my pocket and get a grip on the gun, it’s a far more proper grip; with the original grips I noticed that what felt comfortable for a grip in my pocket was NOT a good firing grip. Still, I wouldn’t be opposed to switching back to the little grips if I really needed to maximize concealability. But for general carry and shooting, I will stick with the Pachmayr Compac grips.

Between Verne Trester’s work and the grips, I think I have a good snub. I still think I’d like to get an all-steel snub, like a S&W 640 with no internal lock… but those are getting harder to find so I just have to keep my eyes out. Meantime, my custom 442 will serve me just fine. Now I look forward to Claude Werner‘s snub classes @ KR Training in February 2010. I picked up some RCBS carbide .38 dies at Cabela’s today. I need to get reloading on that.

I want to thank Verne Trester for his work. He was always very polite on the phone and in emails, prompt in returning calls and speaking with me and answering questions until I was satisfied. Good customer service, good work. I’m satisfied and would certainly use him again.

New grips for my 442

/ hsoi / 9 Comments

My Smith & Wesson 442 snub nose revolver is a gun designed for concealed carry. It’s small, it’s lightweight, and everything about it is designed to help minimize its profile. To further this end, the 442 comes with very small grips. I didn’t like the grips so I went looking for a replacement set. This is what I found…. with pictures!!

Continue reading →

More thoughts on snub ammo

/ hsoi / 3 Comments

I was headed to Cabela’s last night to get some hunting stuff and realized that I should probably look for some ammo for the snub. I must admit, I’m still not settled on what ammo to use for self-defense. I’ve got this pull towards wanting to use the Gold Dot 135 grain +P’s, because I like Gold Dot and know they make solid stuff, plus there’s something about carrying and handling unjacketed lead that bugs me (probably the health-aspect of it all) so I’d like to carry some sort of jacketed ammo. Yet, as I look at ballistics data on a lot of your JHP rounds for .38’s (as shot out of snubs, regardless if the load is specifically designed for short barrels or not), they tend to get the expansion but not always the penetration. I think that’s perhaps one thing that bugs me about Hornady Critical Defense is that part of its design is to not penetrate more than 12″. If 12″ is considered the FBI minimum, to not go more than 12″ by design feels faulty to me. I can only guess why Hornady made such a decision (risks of overpenetration, since primary consumers are civilians?). But, all this data is partially subjective.

The thing is, expansion is certainly desirable, but if you don’t get it deep enough to hit vitals then expansion doesn’t matter. You want both depth and width, but given a choice between the two I’d say depth comes out as slightly more important because vitals are buried down deep and you need to ensure you get to them. Given that, while I don’t want to carry LSWCHP’s I think that’s really the only way to go for a .38 snub. The main reason? They get the penetration, and some expansion. Granted they may not expand as much as a JHP round, but they get the penetration and seem fairly reliable at doing so… then some expansion as a bonus.

I just look at data such as brassfetcher’s, and while it may be a single point of reference it’s still useful info. Look at this (but note the barrel lengths). Even consider this:

2-inch .38 snubs
There seems to be no JHP bullet cartridge that is capable of providing a reasonable balance of adequate penetration and reliable expansion. A bullet that expands will not penetrate deeply enough, whereas a bullet that does not expand will probably overpenetrate.

As a result, we feel the best cartridge for .38 snubbies is the 148 grain wadcutter target load. (MacPherson, Duncan: Bullet Penetration, Ballistic Publications, El Segundo, California, 1994. p. 247, Figure 10-2 Cylinder Bullet Penetration Depth.) The sharp-edged shoulder of the full wadcutter design provides the best penetration and wounding efficiency for this gun/cartridge combination.

Take that as you wish, as that was printed 11 years ago, but did include the Gold Dot in the testing.

I still don’t think I’m settled on what ammo to use, and I reserved the right to change my mind. But for now, I think I will stick with LSWCHP’s, and presently the Buffalo Bore 20c/20 stuff since that’s what I have. Didn’t see any for sale at Cabela’s (the only place in town I’ve seen Buffalo Bore for sale).

The quest continues….

Paired Round Loading

/ hsoi / 4 Comments

I’m working my way through the postings at SnubTraining.com. I just came upon a set of postings regarding reloading your snub. This particular drill about “paired round loading” caught my eye. The background is that while at the range we might always reload our guns to full capacity, in a pressure situation we may not be able to. We may be able to unload the gun then only partially reload, either by choice or by time constraint, and then have to get back into the fight. So this drill is discussing that you may only be able to do a partial reload. Assuming your snub holds 5 rounds, maybe you can only get 2 rounds reloaded (thus “paired round”).

What Michael points out is how/where you do the reload. Chances are, we’re going to reload those rounds side-by-side. He presents some statistics worth considering:

If you were loading to protect your family wouldn’t you have better served them if you had loaded those roundsanywhere other than side by side?  When loading side by side you run a statistical risk of closing the cylinder and having to cycle through three or four empty charge holes (depending on if you loaded a five or six round cylinder) before you hit upon your first live round.  If you had split the loading then your chances for a live round earlier would have gone up to 25% with a five shot revolver and 20% with a six shot revolver.

Quite a good point. Yes with only a partial reload you have to keep pulling the trigger over empty chambers before you get to a loaded chamber, but now with the rounds spread out you’ve got a statistically better chance of getting at least one shot off sooner rather than later.

Furthermore, by practicing this way you give yourself an inexpensive “ball and dummy” drill. It can help you work to eliminate flinching. Load a couple rounds, spin the cylinder so you don’t know where they are, close the cylinder, then go. Work to eliminate any flinch or anticipation.

I’m not saying this is the best way to do things, or the worst. I do think it’s worthwhile food for thought.

442 vs. 642

/ hsoi / 6 Comments

After obtaining my snub nose revolver, I got curious about the differences between the S&W 442 and 642. I touched on them briefly here, but I figured why not ask Smith & Wesson themselves and get the straight skinny.

I emailed and received a response.

Hello, the only differance is the cylinder, the main reason is some people do not like a silver firearm. Do not use any cleaner which contains chlorine or ammonia, the finish is a spray coat which is prone to show wear but the trade off is the light weight.

So if I’m reading his response correctly:

The only differences between the 642 and 442 are the finish and the cylinder. That is, despite what Tam says, the barrel is the same. The cylinder materials are different: the 642 with stainless steel and the 442 with carbon steel.

The finish of the 442 is a spray coat (that surprised me). Of course, I wasn’t told exactly what the coating was. I’m assuming Hoppes #9 is OK for cleaning.

Anyway, there you go.

Range time

/ hsoi / 2 Comments

I needed to go to the gun range this morning to take care of some chores. This wasn’t a practice session, this was taking care of some business. So, I headed to the local indoor range and took care of my two tasks.

Zero the 10/22

I will be needing a .22 rifle this coming weekend, so I wanted to make sure my Ruger 10/22 was in working order. The scope had come loose last time it was being used, so I had tightened things down and wanted to ensure it was zeroed. It wasn’t too far off, just needed a little tweaking, but it’s back to being zeroed at 25 yards and I’m happy. Should run just fine this coming weekend.

I haven’t shot the 10/22 in a while, and I forgot how nice it is to shoot. Not so much the gun itself, but just shooting a little .22 rimfire for accuracy. I could certainly see making myself a really customized up target rig with a Ruger 10/22 as the base, and just sitting out in the country somewhere on a nice day, drinking iced tea, and punching holes in paper. I’ve experienced this before when shooting this gun… there’s something somewhat Zen about the experience.

Also since I hadn’t shot it in a while, now shooting it I realized the truths about that trigger. It’s not a bad trigger, it’s just a lot heavier than I remember. I guess I’ve been spoiled by lighter triggers lately (the snub notwithstanding).

Anyway, this was a simple enough task, then I got down to what I really wanted to do….

Break in the Snub

Ever since I got my S&W 442 a little over a week ago I’ve been itching to break it in. Finally got that chance, but my time was cut short. Read on.

I started out just wanting to throw some lead. Just get some rounds through it to break it in under fire (I’ve already been doing a lot of dry fire to start the break-in process), get the feel for it in my hands. Went through a box of Magtech .38 Special 158 grain lead round nose to start.

I don’t like the small grip. I don’t like how my pinky hangs off the bottom. Feels weird, plus it takes away recoil control. I knew this going in. However, I don’t want to give up the smaller grip and thus concealability. Just grip harder with both hands. Having that “crush grip” worked fine and I was able to control the little gun just fine. I’m still going to look for grips that might be just a hair longer, but I’m not going to really sweat it too much.

Under actual fire, I realized that I was using the distal joint of my index finger…makes sense with the heavier trigger pull. Interestingly, everything worked just fine. My eyes were trained on the front sight, and even with all the grip and trigger differences, I was still being combat accurate enough. But again, I think the crush grip is what makes the difference here.

I’d like to put some red paint or something on the front sight to make it a bit more visible.

I then started to go through some defensive ammo. As I wrote about here, I don’t have the ability to do deeper testing of the rounds, like gel or wetpack, chronographs, and the like. But, most of that information is out there if you look for it. What I’m looking at is how well it works in my gun and how it performed for me. Today I was able to try out: the Federal Nyclad, the Buffalo Bore, and the Cor®Bon DPX.

The Federal Nyclad felt about the same as the Magtech, which stands to reason as they’re both standard pressure rounds. Accuracy was fine, and again since it was a standard pressure round was certainly the most controllable round to shoot. I was surprised at how much muzzle flash there was. It may just be the nature of the snub-nose beast, but I was still taken-aback by the amount of flash I saw. And note, this was at an indoor range… it’s not dark, but it’s not bright and sunny either.

The Buffalo Bore by contrast didn’t have as much noticeable muzzle flash, but did produce a lot of smoke. I will say that their claim of being “non+P” is a lie. 😉  I mean, this is Buffalo Bore, I expected it to be hot, but I figured if they were saying “non+P” that it might be in line with that. I can say that, at least in terms of the felt recoil, it kicked hard and was the hardest recoil of the bunch. At one point I looked at my right hand and noticed I was bleeding in the web of my hand between the thumb and index finger… where your hand wraps around the back of the gun. It wasn’t more than just the skin being broken, but it bled a lot and eventually is what caused me to cut my range time short.

The Cor®Bon recoiled more than the Nyclad, but less than the Buffalo Bore, and I’d say closer to the Buffalo Bore than the Nyclad, since 1. the DPX is a +P round, and 2. this is CorBon and they’re always hot loads. It too had some noticeable muzzle flash.

Anyway, that’s all I was able to manage, due to the aforementioned wound. I was there to break in the gun and instead it broke me. 😉  I did manage to put a few rounds of Remington UMC 130 grain FMJ downrange just for some additional comparison. I’ve always thought UMC had the most muzzle flash of any ammo I’ve seen (looks kinda cool at night), and I’d say that the other muzzle flashes I saw today were on par with that tho the UMC was likely the brightest of all.

They all shot well enough. All ran in the gun. All were accurate enough. I do think the Nyclads were the most controllable and the Buffalo Bore the least, but the spread wasn’t that wide. The key was shooting enough to get familiar with the load and the gun so you know what you’re up against and how your tool will behave. Crush grip is key.

So what will I pick for now? Well, for now I’ll probably go with the Buffalo Bore. I actually don’t like how hot it is and how much it bites, but these will be used in a defensive situation, not a normal range ammo. Furthermore, because they’re so hot I don’t know how the S&W 442 would appreciate a steady diet of them. But for now until I get the ammo I really want, when I take the 442 out I’ll load it with the Buffalo Bore, but only because of two things:

1. Lowest perceived muzzle flash

2. it’s the only semi-wadcutter that I have

#2 is the bigger reason. As I’ve mentioned before, I’m finding more and more support that the “lead semi-wadcutter hollow point” (LSWCHP) is really the load that I want to use for self-defense. It provides penetration above all, but has expanding capabilities which helps to maximize desired impact and minimize risks of undesired (collateral) damage. It’s got a proven track record, and I don’t really have to worry about potential issues such as if the bullet will expand or not, if say I was in a contact shot situation, going through clothing, or other such matters. Again, I am not providing any sort of true scientific review or study here… this is just me in my informal reading, researching, Googling, talking with folks whose knowledge and opinion I trust. I’d really like to get those Remington R38S12 and carry those. I looked on the shelves at the range, but alas they didn’t have any. I Google to find someone online selling them, nothing. 😦  So, I shall just keep looking.

Other Range Observations

The range was rather busy for an early Sunday morning. The guy in the bay next to me was shooting a muzzleloader. I was surprised how quiet it was in comparison to some of the other cannons going off around me. It was fun when he’d shoot tho… all this smoke would drift across my bay. Kinda neat.

Lots of kids there. That’s not something I usually see when I go there, but lots of parents had brought their kids out. A father-daughter took the bay next to me after Mr. Muzzleloader left. She was shooting a bunch of lever-action rifles. I saw some kids shooting a Buckmark with Mom. Various other things. It was nice to see families doing things together.

I do not like shooting indoors, but when there’s a chore to do and it needs to be done quickly, it’s about the only option I have as the outdoor ranges are a bit of a drive.

But hey, I got to go and take care of some business. Can’t complain. 🙂

Snub ammo trials

/ hsoi / 4 Comments

I’ve been blogging a lot on the right ammo for snub nosed revolvers. I thought I’d try to pull things together here.

First, this isn’t about finding practice ammo, because any sort of .38 Special ammo will fill that bill (read: what’s cheapest and, especially these days, available). This is about finding the right ammo for carry. And not any .38 Special ammo will do because out of the short-barrel snub nose revolver, you can’t get much velocity and that can affect the ammo performance (e.g. ability for hollow-points to expand).

First, some back postings:

And now, we come to this.

Based on all that I’ve read, here’s the list of the snub nose carry ammo that I wish to try:

Are there more out there? Sure. But from what I’ve been reading, these tend to be the most popular.

Hey, just came across this very nice write-up from thehighroad.

A summary of what I’ve been coming up with. Note: the following is just based upon a lot of Google searching and reading:

  • Old school Nyclads were pretty good, but apparently the new Nyclads aren’t all that great. They’re not bad, just nothing to write home about. Their big advantage is they give reasonable performance from a standard pressure load, so if you need standard pressure, they’re not a bad choice.
  • The specific aforementioned Buffalo Bore are another standard pressure load and supposedly a lot more potent. They are also a semi-wadcutter bullet. Their big downside is they can be hard to find, and expensive.
  • Corbon is going to be hot hot hot. Potent, but hot.
  • The Speer Gold Dot short-barrel model seems to be extremely popular and apparently have good performance.
  • I already wrote up all I could about Hornady Critical Defense. I’m intrigued but skeptical. There’s enough anecdotal evidence that the load has problems. Hopefully Hornady can work things out as it’s a nifty approach. But am I willing to trust my life to nifty and unproven? Nope. Consequently, I’m not going to bother spending any money on this ammo to even bother testing it.
  • The semi-wadcutter seems to be a proven stand-by. It’s old technology, but it’s proven technology and many people stand by it. The Remington R38S12 seems to be the standard by which all others are judged.

In terms of my own testing, unfortunately I cannot do things like ballistics gel testing, or even just shooting through water jugs or wetpack newspaper. About all I can do is shoot them, report on accuracy, report on how they feel out of my S&W 442. And I can’t even do a lot of testing because I’m not made of money. But I can report what I do and can find.

Will I admit some initial bias? Yes. Nyclads I’m interested in because having a load that’s effective but not difficult to shoot has great appeal given the gun is already one that will be hard to shoot and control just due to its nature. Buffalo Bore and the Corbon I’m not looking forward to shooting because I expect they’re going to kick like hell. I regard Gold Dots favorably, they’re my choice of carry ammo in my 9mm Springfield XD. The semi-wadcutters are proven and old school, and I’ve a warm spot for that especially since it does have the long proven track record.

Furthermore, I’ll admit some initial favorable bias towards the LSWCHP because it does have the long track record, it’s apparently not too horrible to shoot, and supposedly is your best bet for contact shots. Whereas hollow points are designed to impact and expand, the intent of the contact shot is not to expand but to cut a hole… the wadcutter cuts the hole, but it’s the rapid expansion of gases into that hole that perform the tissue damage. Ugly, I know. But if the snub is to be used for contact shot purposes, the right ammo matters. Unfortunately I cannot find much data on this.

As well, 158 grain is considered the “standard” bullet weight for .38 Special. In theory, the fixed/integral sights on the snub would be set based on assumptions of shooting that sort of bullet. That puts a little bias against things like the Corbon DPX, but then the DPX is also loaded differently. YMMV.

We shall see.

Updated: Got to the range and was able to do some testing.

Updated 2: Since I got to shoot the above-mentioned Buffalo Bore, I was looking for some more data on the Buffalo Bore semi-wadcutter load. I found this at brassfetcher.com, that shows that very load fired from a S&W 642 and how it behaved in ballistics gel. Fairly consistent behavior. It’s got penetration and some expansion. It even had fragmentation, which can mean all sorts of things for defensive loads.

Same site also has some results of various .38 rounds into gel. Here’s one on the Gold Dot 135 grain. Here’s the Remington LSWCHP. The Cor®Bon DPX.

Check this: he did a contact shot test. I’d love to see more of this, comparing say hollow point loads like the Gold Dot 135 grain, DPX, even the Buffalo Bore SWCHP vs. the FBI load.

Looking at all of the brassfetcher .38 tests — and ballistics gel only tells us so much (it’s main advantage is controlability and consistency), it does seem many of the above-listed rounds are good. In fact, it makes me feel a little bit better about my current choice to use the Buffalo Bore (load 20C/20).

6 is enough

/ hsoi / 4 Comments

Shoothouse Barbie goes off about the saying “If I can’t get the job done in 6 rounds then I’m in over my head”.

Commenter RevolverRob quotes Clint Smith from Thunder Ranch:

“Nobody has ever complained of having too much ammunition during a gunfight.”

Amen.

I make no bones about the fact that I like capacity. It’s one reason I like 9mm handguns over other calibers like .40 S&W and .45 ACP. Since all pistol rounds suck about the same, I think it’s useful to consider other aspects such as capacity. If .45 ACP and 9mm will both get the job done, and I can carry twice as many 9mm rounds well… hopefully I won’t need them, but gosh it’s nice to have them if you do. We’re back to one of those old adages for why you carry: better to have it and not need it than need it and not have it. So, nice to have more ammo if you can, eh?

Put it this way. I opted to carry only a 5-shot snub-nose revolver a little while ago, and just when I opted to do that I had an incident that had potential to be ugly. Thankfully nothing came of it and that we did have rifles, but boy those 5 rounds just didn’t feel like enough. Maybe if it was just one guy it’d be OK, but again we like to say that “2 is 1, 1 is none”, to be aware of that which you can’t see, and all that stuff. So if it did wind up being 2 or more attackers, would those 5-6 rounds be enough?