Wednesday, June 10, 2009

Range day

Though it promised to be hot, I went. Glad I did, too; after all this 30%, it's gonna be bloody awful humidity tomorrow if it does hit the upper 80's.

I discovered a while back that the Hornady Leverevolution .30-30 ammo won't work very well in my Model 94; with the rear sight as low as it goes the stuff still hits almost 8" high at 50 yards. I did have a chance to try it in a Savage 340 with a scope; the stuff seems quite accurate. I'm wondering what the trajectory is like at 150 and 200 yards(I need to find a place with longer range).

Every time I shoot that S&W Target Masterpiece I'm more glad I bought it; even I can shoot fairly well with it.

If I haven't said it before, I heartily endorse a .22 conversion kit for your 1911. Or Glock. Or Hi-Power, or whatever else you can find one for. Mine's a Ceiner, and so far the only problem I've had is when it gets dirty, and can't really fault it for that. Seems to work with all ammo I've tried in it; definitely more authority and the brass flies further with something like Golden Bullet, but even with Centurion or Federal Champion it ticks right along.

I found some Lake City .223 brass someone left, and saved it; of all the brands I've tried, this stuff seems the easiest to form for the Nagant revolver. Otherwise, I think I found three or four .30-06 cases and two .308 on the rifle side; just about everything else reloadable had been cleaned up already. Lots of 9mm, .40S&W and .45acp on the pistol side, though not as much as before. I did find about twenty-five or so .380 cases, especially nice right now.

Remember that sucky Pentax red-dot sight I wrote about a year or so ago? Ran across it and decided to try it one more time, on a .22. New battery, everything clean, and it worked. For about 50 rounds. Then it started wandering all over the damn place; try to adjust elevation and it would change the windage, too, on top of that. I repeat:
Pentax Red-Dot Sights Suck!

I don't know why, but a lot of cast-bullet loads are very consistent in hitting a few inches to the right of where jacketed bullets hit. In something with windage adjustments, no big deal; just crank it over a click or two. In everything else, unless you plan to use cast loads only, you just get used to the POI being a little off.

Guy was trying out a .17HMR Savage rifle he'd just acquired. Seemed very accurate. He hung up a coconut at 50 yards and shot it; little bitty hole up front, BIG hole in back. I do believe that'll leave a mark on varmints.

Just a general day at the range, which ended as a storm was blowing in.

Except for not going to a workplace, doesn't seem like much less work to do so far in retirement; just different stuff. All kinds of little stuff I never had time to get to. Like trimming the holly trees out front, which I realized didn't just need trimming but almost needed to be beaten into submission, they'd grown out so much. So spent a couple of hours cutting them back, and gathering the trimmings into the trash can. I need to look up holly and see if there's a male and female plant; the leaves on one are pointy, but the leaves on the other will flat stab you. I do like the things; green and pretty, red berries in winter and in spring lots of little blossoms that attract honeybees. But trimming them will bleed you if you're not careful. And there's more to do, but it was too hot to continue the other day, so in a day or two out with the ladder and get the stuff overhanging the carport and house.

12 comments:

Anonymous said...

I seriously cannot understand being "one" with the honeybees. You know how much I hate those damn things.

It stormed here today and then it got TOO DAMN HOT. Even now, almost 11pm, it is flat out nasty outside. Got some storms moving in again....at least that's what the people who don't know anything said.

Hell yeah on the range day!

the pistolero said...

Though it promised to be hot, I went.

Hey, it helps to be able to hit your target in adverse conditions. :-) I thought shooting non-jacketed lead ammo at over ~1250 fps would cause barrel leading, no?

"Hunt you down without mercyyyy! Hunt you down all nightmare long..." turn it uuuup!

Firehand said...

It's not a matter of 'being one' with them, darlin', I just happen to like them.

Pistolero, depends on the alloy and- big one- if you're using gas checks; they make a BIG difference by protecting the base from propellant gas. Hard alloy, like linotype(if you can find any) can be pushed pretty hard before you run into trouble. I'm using mongrel alloy(mostly wheelweights, remelted bullets) with gas checks. In .30-06, .303 and 7.62x54r a 150 to 180-grain bullet pushed by 16.0 of 2400 runs around 1500fps, and I've never had any trouble with leading.

And what song is that from?

Anonymous said...

Well, when you put "darlin" on the end of that, I tend to like the bees myself. ;)

the pistolero said...

Wow, casting one's own bullets is really an entirely different endeavor than I thought it might be. I wasn't even thinking about different alloys, gas checks or driving them at lower velocities. At any rate, I'm sure that's quite the cost-saving measure with the cost of ammo these days...

Song & video here. It was playing on Sirius.

Firehand said...

The SERIOUS cast-bullet shooters mix to get an exact hardness(X pounds wheelweights and X pounds pure and so forth), and will try different sizing and different lubes to get the magic mix. And they can get amazing results.

Lee makes a simple tester to find hardness. I don't use one; I'm using gas checks just so I don't have to worry much about exact alloy for practice ammo.

Current issue of Handloader magazine(which I forgot to buy) had an article on how to make cast bullets expand better; all kinds of stuff out there.

Anonymous said...

Oh, Firehand, you are making this too easy.

I have a test to find hardness. Oh, and it's raining here. I seem to recall we had a discussion about that.

the pistolero said...

What kind of effective range can you get with those cast bullets at the lower velocities? If I remember right, the max. effective range of the 7.62/.308 is about 500 yards, but that's with jacketed ammo at normal rifle velocity, i.e. 2600-2800 fps.

"Well I get up, at seven, yea, and I go to work at nine...I got no time for livin', yeah, I'm workin' all the time..." yeah, story-a my life there...

Firehand said...

Real good article on the subject here:
http://castboolits.gunloads.com/showthread.php?t=13425
With the load I'm using for general use, indications are good accuracy to 200 yards; with the right bullet/load/rifle, considerably further.

Firehand said...

And dammit, Fire, lead! We're talking about lead!

the pistolero said...

Very interesting, indeed. I guess I was thinking in terms of just using jacketed-projectile load data with naked lead bullets, which of course makes no sense at all. I don't know if I'll be going down that rabbit-hole any time soon, but it's certainly something to think about...

"...smashing through the boundaries, lunacy has found me, cannot kill the bat-ter-y..." Ahem. 'Scuse me, it's just a thrash metal kind of day...

Anonymous said...

So was I, Firehand. What did you think I was talking about? A long, thick, HARD rifle is what I was thinking of. SHEEESH! Get your mind back here.....I'll wait.