What Did You Shoot Today?

I don't. It's fast. It also has a bulge at the front of the frame and a hairline crack through the bottom of the frame, someone either shot too many too hot loads through it or fired into a barrel obstruction. I had sourced a 1 turn in 16" heavy blank stub, but that was before I got it apart and found all the hidden problems.
 
Cpl pix of mine. 6" bbl is not orig - it came with a 4" But, whomever replaced the bbl did use a Highway Patrolman bbl!

ps: apologize - can't read the "Aristocrat" sight name in the pic...
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Cylinder throats on the Taurus 608 measure .358 - .3585". I shot size test in it today

MP 115gr TC BLL, no leading
.359 DECENT
.358 GOOD
.357 BEST

Lee 105gr SWC BLL, no leading
.359 ok
.358 good
.357 best of the day

.44 RCBS 250K (265gr) PC BLL SB-620 9.4gr 10" SBH 2.25" 35yds
.44 RCBS 250K (265gr) PC BLL SB-620 9.4gr 7.5" SBH 2.75"
Going a little faster than I wanted but it shoots decent in both pistols.
 
Silhouette match today. Freezing cold temps made for some very interesting mirage right outside the window of our inside shooting line. Wind was mild to non-existent. But the heat escaping thru the window often made my 20X Unertl look like the target was underwater. And the effect of that mirage showed itself when I broke a perfectly centered shot and it went 6 inches high at 200 yds. I should have waited as the effects of the mirage would vary. I think part of it might have been people opening and closing doors at the back of the firing line.

The general rule is, if you see a heavy window mirage the shot will go high. That point was driven home at 500 yds. We had 3 shooters on my bench today and all of us struggled with the elevation changes. I watched strings that were sub MOA windage-wise with 5 MOA of elevation variation depending on the mirage. Almost impossible to call since it was normally very subtle. Only occasionally would you get the "underwater" view thru the scope.
 
This morning I machined some sights and dovetails for my cherrywood SMR and installed the flash hole liner so I could go test fire it today. In short, after five hours and 3/4 pound of powder, it is still shooting shotgun patterns. All I had for round balls was some estate sale .353" that had been put through a rolling plate system and some had huge casting wrinkles still, but most looked okay. The eight-groove Green Mountain barrel was happier with .018" patches than .015" and would probably appreciate .355" balls more, but that doesn't explain 8-10" 50-yard groups from the bench. 25 grains of 3F seemed best, 30 started putting pinholes in the patches and 35 blew them out completely. I even cleaned and tried spit patches, no better. Really at a loss here. Last target with the last of the powder in my horn grouped a little over 4", if it wasn't for getting a bullseye every three to five shots, I would think I forgot how to shoot. Last weekend I was regularly hitting the 12" gong at 100 yards with my Isaac Haines .45....offhand....using the same powder and patch lube.

Scratching my head on this one, I'll go weigh some of these balls for consistency and see if I was able to buy a .350" mould in all the moulds I got in the past few months when I was on a RB mould buying spree.

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Still have a lot of shaping to do and to finish the trigger guard and rammer pipes.
 
I prefer a heavy patch with a smaller diameter ball also.. got a .424 diameter for my 45 & a .308 for the 32.. I use heavy denim.

My Grandfather used to lap all his barrels don't know what he used but I do have one of his lapping slugs left over in his old machine chest.

Keep shooting it , it'll smooth out..
 
I phoned a friend, got some ideas. I dropped the ball on my patch material, didn't wash this stuff (.45 SMR with similar GM barrel loves the same material straight off the bolt) and these smaller patches looked like cheesecloth when held to the light. Our conclusion is this .36 shouldn't be blowing patches at 35 grains of powder so I need to wash the sizing out and shrink them. Might need a bigger ball. I still haven't checked the weight of the mystery balls but I think there may be a problem there.

The FH liner was sticking a little proud in the bore and was stopping the jag when cleaning so I pulled it to clean the breech face tonight, filed it down and put it back in, cleaned some more and noticed the rod wasn't going all the way down. Almost stuck my jag an inch from the breech face, turns out the chamber was STILL so caked with powder fouling forward of the FH liner that I couldn't even get a bare jag down there. Ended up pulling the breech plug and scrubbing out the fouling with a bronze brush and water, took a while. So I didn't have a carbon ring but had so much buildup that I probably wasn't getting the ball on the powder firmly. While I had the breech plug out I gave the bore a good scope and decided to run 200 strokes with 2-0 steel wool wrapped tightly around a brush. The machine marks on top of the lands were already looking polished from 200+ rounds today but it looks even better after the steel wool polish. Land edges still look really sharp but it's bound to be easier on patches now.

I found both a .350 and a .360 Lyman mould in my round ball collection so I'll cast some 350s and boil my .018" ticking and try again. Looks like I'll need to keep a rod marked and swab out every five shots or so to make certain I'm not getting such a bad chamber buildup. I've run 100 balls through my .45 in a day more than once and never needed to wipe out when using wet lube, even after that much shooting I never got chamber fouling this badly before. Usually one wet patch and I can push through the crusties and all the way to the breech face, but not on this little .36 after a ton of shooting.
 
Sorry to hear about your difficulties. But enjoy learning thru your reporting of the problem. I was told over 50 years ago to wash my patch material to remove the sizing by a hard core muzzle loader. I had no recollection of every washing my patch material. I guess I should try that. Not that I'm a big ML shooter. I've got the one LH Hawken that was given to me that I shoot when we have an ML match on a holiday or 5th Sunday. So, that amounts to maybe 2, max 3 matches a year.

It will be fun to see how you work thru this, Ian. I am happy to see my Isaac Haines is shooting well for you.
 
I took two Ruger single actions to the range this morning. The Single Six I have had for 30 plus years. The Blackhawk, inspired by @johnnyjr's recent post, only a few weeks. I really like the Bisley grip, hammer and trigger. This was a distributors special configuration, Bisley with the companion 9x19 cylinder. A quick once over showed very consistent throats, shakes with .357 pin, refuses a .358 pin and .006 gap, both cylinders. The barrel slugged at .3565. Trigger at just under 3 lbs. I shot the .357 with 20-1 150 gr RCBS SWC sized .358 over 5 gr N340. Very pleasant to shoot. Two cylinders of 9x19 factory did very well also.

The conditions were optimal. The light was very good and I had better sight clarity with no corrective lens. I tried the 1.25 diopter top lens and it worked as it was supposed to, the front sight was in focus. After trying both I went without it. Different light conditions might be otherwise.

Both of the target were at 15 yards using a sandbag rest. The results were ok and showed that I need more practice. I'm going to try sizing to .357 next.

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This morning range session was the First Annual Michael Vasquez Memorial Shoot.

Mike was married to my niece, was retired from the California Highway Patrol after 29 years, was a man you were proud to call a friend, and died all too young last February.

I apologized to Mike that the 10/22's groups were not as small as they sometime are, but I like to think he was smiling nonetheless.

I bought the rifle and extra magazines in '96 and think it's time to replace the magazine springs. One magazine still had feeding hiccups after its retensioning, though retensioning the other two seems to have helped.
 
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Got out this AM to do some plinking.

First up was some full-power cast loads for the Krag. These were loaded in '96 as a test: I wanted to see how LBT's commercial lube holds up over time. With Veral gone it seemed appropriate to blast some off. If I do my part, from a seated position five rounds will still group right around an inch at 100 yards. Let's not discuss the results off-hand: I clearly need to practice more.

Then the .44 special. I found about 1,000 grains of 2400 in a can I thought was empty, so I loaded up some Keith-level loads (17 gr) with the 429421. As always, it was a good long-range plinking load. I think until I can reliably source more 2400 I will probably work something up with AA9 or H110.

Put 50 rounds of milsurp 2Z through the XDS. It isn't just me, the gun doesn't like that load: groups were twice the size I get with WWB. I really need to get around to getting a decent mould for that gun.
 
JustJim said:
Got out this AM to do some plinking.

First up was some full-power cast loads for the Krag. These were loaded in '96 as a test: I wanted to see how LBT's commercial lube holds up over time. With Veral gone it seemed appropriate to blast some off. If I do my part, from a seated position five rounds will still group right around an inch at 100 yards. Let's not discuss the results off-hand: I clearly need to practice more.

Then the .44 special. I found about 1,000 grains of 2400 in a can I thought was empty, so I loaded up some Keith-level loads (17 gr) with the 429421. As always, it was a good long-range plinking load. I think until I can reliably source more 2400 I will probably work something up with AA9 or H110.

Put 50 rounds of milsurp 2Z through the XDS. It isn't just me, the gun doesn't like that load: groups were twice the size I get with WWB. I really need to get around to getting a decent mould for that gun.
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Is that 17 grains a typo? Seems like it, IMO. I load 2400 in 44 Special, with 240-grain bullets, in the 12.5-13-grain range.
 
Not a typo, just the upper end of published 44 special loads. In my Blackhawk, 17.0gr 2400 with a 429421 averages just over 1,200 fps.
 
JustJim said:
Not a typo, just the upper end of published 44 special loads. In my Blackhawk, 17.0gr 2400 with a 429421 averages just over 1,200 fps.
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Yeah, I went downstairs and checked my load data. Found that load in Pierce's 44 Special article under Category Three (25,000psi or less) data. I stick with Category One (15,500 psi or less) or Category Two (22,000 psi or less) loads for my CA 2.75" barreled Bulldog or the Lew Horton 3-inch barreled revolver. When I need more power, I'll grab the Redhawk.

Your load seemed high because I use 17 grains of 2400 with a 260 grain SWC in Cindy's 45 LC Blackhawk for practice. I bump that up to 19 grains for hunting. Those are Ruger Only loads that feel like top-end 44 Magnum loads.
 
Snakeoil said:
Sorry to hear about your difficulties. But enjoy learning thru your reporting of the problem. I was told over 50 years ago to wash my patch material to remove the sizing by a hard core muzzle loader. I had no recollection of every washing my patch material. I guess I should try that. Not that I'm a big ML shooter. I've got the one LH Hawken that was given to me that I shoot when we have an ML match on a holiday or 5th Sunday. So, that amounts to maybe 2, max 3 matches a year.

It will be fun to see how you work thru this, Ian. I am happy to see my Isaac Haines is shooting well for you.
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I may have it sorted. Only took a little less than half a pound of powder this time and one flint.

Turns out I was mistaken, my .018" SMR patching has been washed and ironed, but I wasn't using that before, I was using some spare scraps from a resale store that measured .018". Redoing the arithmetic, .3825" groove and .362" bore with a .350" round ball and .018" compressed patch gets me around 3-4 thousandths further compression on the patch in the grooves. Ought to seal. Does seal in anything else I've ever used it in. So I headed out with my smaller cow horn full of 3F, the new .018" patching I use regularly in other rifles, and re-did the usual tests from 25-35 grains using .350" and .360" balls. Dismal groups, some barely on 12x12 target paper. Best in the 5" range. Lots of stringing, but every which direction. Only found a few patches on the ground and there are close to 300 of them out there from this rifle at this point. I stopped for lunch and to rest as the sick fatigue set in and thought over every variable that I had NOT changed since the start. I came up with sprue up, firm seating, using the same short/long starter and rammer end, using water-soluble patch lubes, and precut, square patches. One thing that kept coming back to me as I tried to see where the patches were going was just ONE that I actually witnessed leave the muzzle and it hooked hard to the right at about 15 feet and veered into the ether, more on that in a sec. To recap, I've used three different ball sizes, two different alloys, three different lubes, two different powders (willow and toilet paper), three different patch thicknesses, and the only thing that really changes is the point of impact of the pattern.

Then I remembered my friend suggesting to rip a strip, spit patch, and cut at the muzzle. So off with my patch knife and a couple fresh strips of .018" twill ticking, wiped out the bore, hammered in a .360" ball, cut the patch, rammed like normal, and laid down a 2" group. I also saw my patches going downrange, straight, about 15-18 yards. I'll be dipped. There is an axiom a generally accepted by muzzleload-ors that patch size and shape makes no difference to accuracy. This is backed up by real scientific tests by at least one actual rocket scientist and several others more than qualified to perform valid experiments and make assertions based on the results. Anecdotally, with exactly two years of flintlock shooting under my belt, this has proven out 100% for me as well. Well, THIS rifle is the monkey wrench. It may have just earned a nickname.

For shits and giggles I switched back to .350" balls and 25 grains of powder, got a 4" round pattern. Tried 30 grains, a little tighter. 35, three in a cluster and two flyers. 40, a vertical string (ah---HA!) and 45 a 1.5" cluster. Went to shoot another 45 grain group on a clean target and only had half a charge of powder left in the horn. Sighhhh... It was getting too dim to see well anyway. My cut patches looked good, even at 45 grains of powder. Somewhere in the workup I quit short-starting and just pressed the sprue flush with a 2x4 block, it doesn't take much to start these .350" balls but a bit more than my bare thumbs can handle more than once or twice. Seating flush in instead of short starting made the patch even smaller when cut at the muzzle. I'm not going to speculate about why this rifle won't shoot a 3/4" square, precut patch but will shoot patches cut at the muzzle, and I don't care, I'm just glad it shoots because I was just about ready to abandon the project.

If the weather and my health cooperates tomorrow I'll try to run some more groups and try the pre-cut patches at the higher powder charges just to see if it makes any difference.
 
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My marksmanship wasn't much today .

Test loads mostly, sort of .
45 ACP.
Full moons times 6 + 12 ea RP AR.
Winchester brass
CCI LPP
5.5 Unique
H&G #130@196 gr
NOE 454-250 K-SWC
452-200 RNFP
8/1918 , 1917 S&W as assembled at 5.5".
12-15 yd the 6&8" plates and 8.×11 gnomes were in trouble at 25 yd a half size block man profile at 14×24 could have been safe . I knew it doesn't like the NOE 250 gr . It's probably a little light charged for the #130 .
I have officially resigned myself to this being truly just a GI combat pistol regardless of its heritage.

45 Colts.
New Star Line brass
CCI LPP
9.5 Herco
NOE 454-250 K SWC at 251 gr.
1976 NM 7.5" BlackHawk.
2013 M92' Rosschester

I don't know what these are chronographing but I've been here before and I didn't like it jumping the base pin then . That would put it up north of 1150 fps . Not exactly the prediction from Unique to Herco . The recoil impulse is different also from the higher Unique charges . I could shoot a lot of these if I could keep the base pin in it .
6" plates prediction says even at 50 yd anything bigger than a 30# yote' is in trouble .
The M92', not so much . Dismal. The leftover 9.5 Unique 300 gr TC loads were great but they aren't going supersonic. So much for sharing loads in companion guns .

257 Roberts
RP 257 brass
CCI LRP
9.5 Herco
Herters 25-80 @80 gr
93/95 Mauser 22" A&B
It was just so so but , I'll take it .
3" for a first load .
It shoots Unique at 9.8 under the NOE 260-120 better . Weird because the 25-06' doesn't like it.

25-06'
257312 @90 gr
RP brass
CCI LRP
12.0 Herco
These shot great , half the group size of the 260-120 throughout the range .
I was surprised to see the 312 pop the paint off the back side of the gnomes at 50 yd and crater the AR500 slightly, more of a frosted blemish .

The 7×57 .
WW brass
CCI LRP
38.5 , 39 , 39.5 Du Pont IMR 4350
7mm-168 @178 gr
50 yd
3.5" ) shaped line @ 38.5 gr
2.5" eclipse @ 39.0 gr
The backers at Brushy Hollow shooting range are 24" chick wire with rebar posts about every 10' . The wind was straight into our face so I had placed my target on the back side of the wire .
I didn't expect to see a cast bullet grenade like a 4000 fps TNT hitting a wire . Anyway with the target replaced the last 4 delivered 2" .
Of course with new 2015 IMR 4350 it may all change completely, however I have a sizing thing going on also . The dies are a little too tight or the chamber is fat . The sizing at this point is screwing up whatever chance at concentricity is there .

I "found" 15 paper patched 301618 clones , 3 308291U paper patched and 3 more 312-155s . I think these were the growing group side left over work up loads either from the 1903A3 or the 110LH . They're hard cam-in in the 57' M70 but it's on the shoulder body length .
50.0 4350 under the 291 .
53.5 , 54 ,54.5 4350 under the 301618 .
The cases were marked as such.
A couple of younger kids were out with Dad , he ok'd and I let them shoot the 3 291s . The other 15 patches went inside the 8 ring of an NRA slow fire 50yd pistol target without any particular clusters. I am greatful the M70 is nearly a 10# tank . It occurs to me that the 175 pushing 2500 fps might recoil some .
 
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