Category: Gun/Ammo Tests

Following on from Saturday’s post about my revolver range session, I went off to the local Merchants Of Death Collective (Mesquite Gun Show) to see if I could rectify two problems identified at that session:  getting some decent (fuller) wooden grips for the Model 10, and replenishing my depleted .38 Special ammo supply.  I thought that the first might be difficult, the second easy.  Au contraire, mes amis.

The grips took me about 15 minutes to find (among about 700 tables):

Old:

New:

Much better, innit?  Can’t wait to get back to the range now, except that I don’t have any cheap ammo to shoot.  So I looked around for ammo vendors.

And here’s where the problems began.

Five big ammo dealers were at the show, so one would think…. but no.  If you were looking for 5.56 Poodleshooter or 7.62 Commie, you’d have had no problem.  Good grief:  it looked like the Army was having a clearance sale.  Ditto 9mm Europellet and all manner of similar teeny handgun ammo (e.g. .380, .327 etc.) were proudly displayed in bulk.

.38 Special?  Hardly any.  (And what was there wasn’t what I was looking for anyway.)  As I mentioned, I have plenty of defensive loads in .38 Spec and .38 +P — the goblin antidote — but I’m out of range ammo.  What I’m looking for, in fact, is something like this:

The cowboy stuff is what’s known as a “bunny-fart” load, and it’s both inexpensive (~ 45c/round) and pleasant to shoot because of the lighter bullets.  (Yeah, it’s lead flat nose and not copper-clad, but I clean my guns quite frequently so not a problem.)  The Winchester is ubiquitous, and a little cheaper.

And both are readily available online, except that shipping (for only 200 rounds) adds about $50 to the total, making it… [errr carry the three]  82c/round (?????!!!!).  The hell with that.

SGA Ammo sells the Winchester for a decent price, but you have to buy the jillion-round box to get free shipping.  Philosophically, I don’t have a problem with a bulk purchase (because duh), but financially… ugh.

Let’s see what they sell for locally.

One final note:  it seems as though revolvers are heading for a shrinking market (that would be Olde Pharttes like me)

…because all the new shooters seem to be enthralled by the gangsta/operator Glocks and SIGs and what have you, and not by wheelguns.  And so once-ubiquitous calibers like .45 Colt and .38 Spec are, it seems, being pushed to the sidelines and rapidly becoming unavailable.  Which means that we members of the Ancient Revolver Shooting Club need to buy MOAR .38 Spec.

Duly noted.

Yesterday, I decided that my range time was going to be of the “no fiddling, no hassles” sort — i.e. no adjusting sights, fiddling with scopes, etc., and definitely no malfunctions of the misfeed / bad ejection genre.

You know what that means, right?

Yup… that would be S&W Time, and only .357 Mag and .38 Special ammo needed for the trip, thank you.

And yes, I had an awful lot of fun and yes, it turned out to be a very long session.  In fact, I had so much fun that I actually blew through every last round of my .38 Special practice ammo — I mean, there’s none left in Ye Olde Ammoe Locquere at all.  (Ten guesses where I’ll be over the weekend…)

(I know, it’s not as cheap as buying online but then again, there aren’t any horrible $$$$hipping charges either.  And I need a couple of odds and sods of a gunny nature anyway, so…)

Things learned while having fun:

1) I need to put some beefier grips on the little Model 10.  When I tried some one-handed single-action drills, I damn nearly dropped the gun it turned so much in my hand.  I’m looking for something in wood, like these:

2) I’m done shooting .357 Mag out of a 4″ barrel.  Maybe it’s age, or maybe I’m just sick of being beaten up by a damn boolet, or both.  So all the .357 Mag ammo has been banished to the back of the Locquere until I get a lever rifle thus chambered, or else a revolver with a 6″ or even 8″ barrel.  Even the bedside gun (the shiny one) has been loaded with .38+P.

3) I really need to practice more with my revolvers.  I’ve been spending so much time with rifles recently that I felt like a frigging amateur when at last I put a revolver in my hand:  don’t even ask me how badly I shot the double-action drills.  In fact, I ended up shooting more accurately and more consistently towards the end of the session, when I did the single-hand (left- and right) drills — because by then I’d re-familiarized myself with the trigger pulls of each gun.  I was embarrassed b my performance;  in fact, as I told Mr. Free Market, my target looked like somebody had been having blunderbuss practice.

So:  gun show over the weekend, followed by MOAR RANGE TIME next week.

It could be worse;  I could be living in Southern California or New York.

Last week’s test of the above rifle made me want to test how the thing shoots with serious glass (instead of the “meh, that’s close enough”  accuracy of the red-dot genre).

So suiting the action to the word, I mounted a Burris Fullfield 2.5-10x42m that just happened to be lying around in Ye Olde Odds & Sods box:

Looks better, dunnit?  Also, this time I’d brought a sandbag along, instead of having to rely on my shaky old grip off the bench.  Ammo used was CCI Mini-Mag 40gr solids, and CCI Maxi-Mag 40gr solids.

Anyway, for the life of me I could not remember when last the scope had been mounted, or even what gun it had been mounted on, so I started off slowly, at 30 feet with the .22 LR:

Okay, good enough for jazz / government work.  When I moved the target out to 60 feet and then 75 feet, the shots went quite high, as to be expected.  So I moved the target back to 60 feet, dialed the scope down, and fired off the unlabeled string in the orange target on the left.  (Yeah, I forgot to label it, sue me.)

So much for the .22 LR;  now came time for the barrel swap and the .22 WMR.

The top string, at 75 feet, was fired with the scope untouched from the .22 LR sighting-in.  High (expected) and much to the left (unexpected).  The next string, at 60 feet:  still high (okay) but a lot less to the left (not okay).  When I brought the target back to 30 feet, the group was a little high (to be expected, with the mag load) and still to the left.

So I said a few Bad Words, and decided to zero the scope for 60 feet as the default (which is the very bottom grouping).  Very much good enough for jazz / government work.

But when I left the scope untouched and changed the barrel back to .22 LR, at the same distance (60 feet) I got the un-labeled grouping on the left (with a called flyer because the guy in the bay next to mine chose that precise second to touch off a .44 Mag revolver, and I caught a fright).

Still, there seems to be way too much left/right variance between the two calibers — which means that I can’t swap barrels in the same session without messing with the scope each time.  And that’s somewhat annoying.

So here’s what I’ve decided to do.  If I’m going to be shooting .22 LR, I’ll use this setup:

…and if I’m going to be shooting the .22 Mag, then the scope:

Swapping the scopes — they both have quick-detach (QD) mounts — actually takes less time than changing the barrels.

So I’ll be using the red-dot for plinking .22 LR fun, and the scope for any serious .22 Mag shooting I may want to do.

Final thoughts:  while shooting the .22 Mag ammo, I had several ejection failures (FTE) and a couple of feeding failures (FTF).  As I was too busy doing the sighting-in thing, I didn’t pay much attention to it until afterwards.  Here’s what I learned:  even though the straight-pull bolt looks quite flimsy (plastic, what can I say?), it really isn’t, and the thing needs to be pulled back and slammed home with as much force as a turnbolt action.  I was actually being quite gentle with the loading process, and I shouldn’t be.  That will be addressed in future range sessions.

Next step:  acquire a suppressor.  More on that, later.

As Regular Readers know, I recently decided to do something about my .22 LR / .22 Mag situation, and sold my two Marlin rifles to a Reader so that I could free up space in both wallet and Ye Olde Gunne Sayffe for their replacement.

The old guys:

Their replacement:

…or, as kitted out by Yours Truly:

So last week I took it out to the range and got used to it, working the trigger, adjusting the red-dot scope, changing barrels and so on.

Everything about this rifle works as advertised.  The trigger is fine — a little stiff, but I’m guessing that a few bricks or so of .22 ammo should take care of that — and the straight-pull bolt is excellent, both positive and reliable.  (There was not a single issue with ejecting empties and chambering fresh ones, as expected from a rifle of this heritage.)  The B1 uses Ruger 10/22 mags, but:  please note that because the mag well is longer than a standard 10/22 rifle, you have to use a mag extender (supplied with the rifle) clipped onto the rear of the mags.  (Of course, the .22 WMR magazine doesn’t need the extender piece.)  This is a bit of a PITA only in that one needs to buy more of the extender clip thingies from Walther if there’s lots of shooting to be done without wasting time reloading mags, which is my preference.  It’s a minor hassle, but definitely not a deal-breaker if one should consider purchasing this gun.  (And one should, see below.)
I also like the ability to lengthen / shorten the stock according to preference:  one little button in the rear of the stock, and that’s all there is.

“How does the thing shoot, Kim?”

Well, I’d forgotten to bring my sandbag along, so I just shot off the bench, not expecting too much in the way of accuracy.  Ammo used was CCI Mini-Mag 40gr solid (my regular test ammo)

…and some Remington .22 WMR that was on sale at Bass Pro the other day:

Once I’d got the scope dialed in, I got the following, first at thirty feet:

…and then further out, at fifty:

I don’t actually know what happened with the .22 LR string — my eyes were getting tired, maybe, and that red-dot thingy was getting quite fuzzy.  Maybe I was getting tired of holding the rifle steady — it’s quite a hefty beast — causing the shakes?  Or maybe I just need MOAR PRACTICE.

Which leads me to my next point of consideration:

Am I going to use this lovely rifle for plinking, or just for serious target shooting?  (I know, it’s not an either/or situation, but bear with me.)

Perhaps, given that I may be shooting the Walther more seriously, as I did my two Marlin squirrel guns, perhaps a scope would be a better option?

Let’s see.  But whatever I decide about the sights, let me just say that this is a serious bit of kit, and it goes well recommended.  In my humble opinion, it would keep up with just about any rimfire rifle in a serious competition, for far less money.

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Here are the specs for the gun:

I’ve kinda had the hots for this little gun since it first came on the market, so when I had a chance to exchange one of my “spare” guns for the LC a week ago, I jumped at it, and went to pop a few rounds off at the range yesterday, you know, just to make my acquaintance  I even bought a couple boxes of 230gr FMJ for the occasion, and two spare mags.

There are a lot of things to like about the LC:  the chambering (.45 ACP, ’nuff said), the compact size, the Glock 21 12-round* mags it uses, and of course the Ruger quality and reliability.  And yeah, it has all that.  I also found the trigger acceptable — about a 5-lb break but very crisp, and the gun was acceptably consistent in terms of grouping (given my shitty eyesight):  the bullets struck dead center off a sandbag at 25 yards.  (It also shot 4″ low out of the box, but with the front-sight adjustment tool I got that right.)

And it fed reliably — not a single jam or malfunction with either the FMJ or the various hollowpoint cartridges I tested it with.  Clockwork, brass ejected firmly etc. etc.

Mechanically, therefore, it was fine;  and on that basis I’d take it to war, so to speak, without a qualm.

But the “ergonomics” (as Mae calls the feel of a gun)?  Not so fine.

The recoil is excessive, even considering that it’s shooting the John Moses Browning .45 ACP cartridge and not a proper rifle cartridge.  That straight-though stock (more on that in a moment) slams the stock straight into the shoulder with considerable force.  Even when I popped an extra recoil pad on the butt, it wasn’t pleasant.

And here’s something I’ve noticed when shooting these kinds of guns (e.g. the AR-15 and others of the “chassis” gun type) while wearing hearing protection “lids”:  you can’t get a decent stock weld with your cheek to get the sights to fall naturally into your sight line.  That’s because unlike a regular rifle, there is no drop of the stock below the barrel line, so your ear protection (we used to call them “pots”) get in the way of your hold.

Now on my AR, you can see that my cheek does not need to come down onto the stock because I’m using a high-elevation red-dot sight.  But the low position of the pop-up iron sights on the LC makes life difficult, in that you have to re-position your head after every shot.

So basically, I’m going to have to put a high-rise red-dot sight on the LC, which I did not want to do because the aperture (Garand- or Marble type) is plenty accurate for me and to be frank, that’s one of the reasons for owning a short-range pistol-caliber carbine (PCC) in the first place.  Like a fork, you pick it up and it works.

I’m starting to regret selling my M1 Carbine, now.

Does this mean that the LC is going to be used only in the open air, when I don’t have to wear pots and just rely on earplugs — i.e. when I go over to TDSA twice a year?

Frankly, I’m disappointed because I was looking for a good answer to the question, “Do I really need an AR-15 ‘pistol’ for those social occasions?”

And the Ruger LC Carbine doesn’t seem to be it.  In my hands, it’s about a 50% solution, and I don’t like those.

Right now, of the two carbines I prefer to shoot the AR — and I don’t especially like shooting the AR.

Also, that “flared mag well” caused me to pop a blood blister on the heel of my right hand (for the first time in about forty-odd years) when I slammed a mag home.  Ouch.

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*Glock calls them 13-round mags;  I call them 12 because it’s impossible to load that 13th round without that loading tool thingy.

From the comments at GarandThumb (shooting the 5.56mm poodleshooter at 25 yards and 125 yards into ballistic gel):

“Slow motion videos of gel blocks being shot NEVER stops being entertaining.“

Amen.

Also:  that’s some impressive cavitation, right there.