Tag: recreational shooting

Report from Blackwater

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I could tell you what’s going on here, but then I’d have to kill you. . .

No, really. This morning at about 0900 we were picked up by the Blackhawk bus


and taken to their Norfolk facility for a show-n-tell.


These guys are the suppliers to the low-drag/high-speed set. The corporate philosophy is “do it right, then charge what it costs plus enough to make a living.” This is American capitalism at its best, from my point of view. They gave each of us a box of swag worth enough to surprise the hell out of me. For example, we each got a gun belt, two holsters, two mag pouches, and shooting gloves. And there was more. I very much like the SERPA holster for the 1911. Positive retention, belt slide or paddle. A lot of thought obviously went into the design. Very, very cool.

Blackhawk carries clothing, literally from helmets to socks and everything in between, knives, breaching tools, and every kind of accessory you can think of. For example, these:

are not knives. No, according to Tam, these are “Klingon marital aids.”

These guys carry EVERYTHING!

After the Blackhawk visit, we traveled to “Moyockistan” to Blackwater‘s facility, and were given the air-conditioned bus tour of the 8,000 acre facility. (Well, not all of it, but I’ve never seen so many shooting ranges and shoot houses in one place in my life!) It is Disneyworld for gun nuts. We got to see the interior of a shoot house, and got a glimpse of Blackwater’s armory.


Yes, that’s a gatling.

No, we didn’t get to shoot it.

Yet.

After lunch we had our introduction to the other sponsors of this bash, Para-USA, Crimson Trace, and International Cartridge Corp. We also got introduced to our guns. I’m shooting the Para PXT LDA Tac-S, a Commander-sized 1911 equipped with Para’s Light Double Action trigger, but much more than that. This pistol is also equipped with a fiber-optic front sight, adjustable rear sight, and Crimson Trace lasergrips! Overall, it’s finished in “Coyote Brown” duracoat, and looks very nice. But on top of that, the pistols we are shooting for this event were custom finished for us:


To be honest with you, I was not all that enamored with the idea of the Light Double Action trigger. I normally shoot a Kimber Classic Stainless full-sized Government model 1911, and it has, IMHO, the finest factory trigger I have ever pulled. The idea of a long trigger pull before a 1911 went “BANG!” just didn’t do it for me.

Now that I’ve shot it, I’ve got to say I like it. A lot. I might not use it as a competition pistol, but it has definite attraction as a carry piece. They tell us that these guns will be offered to us for purchase, but they haven’t told us for how much yet.

I’m wondering how I’m going to explain this purchase to my wife . . .

We finally got on the range about 4:00, and I personally was able to put about 120 rounds downrange before we knocked off about 6:00. Tomorrow is supposed to be pretty much all shooting. I think I’m going to find out how well shooting gloves work at preventing sores and blisters.

I’ll have more information to post on the ammo we’re using tomorrow. We’re shooting “green” frangible ammo – sintered copper and tin, 155 grain flatpoints at an advertised 1,150 fps. They hit where the sights are set, I’ll give them that. And they do disintegrate on impact with steel!

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I think I’ll go back upstairs and rejoin the conversation still going on.

THIS Was Interesting

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THIS Was Interesting

National Public Radio’s Weekend America show tomorrow will have a segment I wanted to listen to. Here’s the blurb for it that I received via email this morning:

In This Week’s Show, We…

… Shoot a Gun.
Weekend America Correspondent Sean Cole is terrified of guns. The only thing that scares him more than guns is the idea of falling asleep with one beside him. This weekend, Sean goes to the shooting range for the first time.

Actually, he went some time ago, but the segment airs this weekend. But there’s more to it than that. At their website, this is the blurb:

This weekend in Manchester, N.H., you can shoot a machine gun for $25. If you don’t have your own, you can rent one. And actually you can do that any day of the week in Manchester. Weekend America’s Sean Cole was recently invited up to one of those ranges by his friend Nick, who called the trip a “man-cation.” Unfortunately, Sean is what was referred to on the playground as a “girl.”

The New Hampshire shoot is a machine gun shoot to benefit the New Hampshire GOP. Very anti-PC. Twenty-five dollars lets you shoot an Uzi. I wonder if Mark Steyn will be attending?

The Sean Cole story is currently available as streaming RealMedia here.

Cole didn’t react like Emily Yoffe did, though I am not surprised. This is the second piece on guns and shooting (that I’m aware of) that Weekend America has done. The last one was surprisingly positive. This one was surprisingly not negative.

And Heller wasn’t mentioned once.

Range Report: Baby Blue

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I took my M1 Carbine and M1 Garand out to the Casa Grande public range today for a tryout. I brought 100 rounds of Federal American Eagle commercial .30 Carbine, and a couple of bandoleers of the Greek HXP M2 Ball I bought from the CMP for the Garand. As seems to be standard practice when I go to Casa Grande, I forgot to take my spotting scope.

While I was interested in the accuracy potential of the little Carbine, mostly I was interested in how (or whether) it was going to function with the magazines I bought last year. The good news: It functions pretty damned well. I loaded ten rounds into each magazine. Out of the 100 rounds, I had one failure to feed that was very simply cleared. I had one magazine, one of the two Union Hardwares, that didn’t want to fit in the well. It did, but it’s pretty tight. Other than that, the rifle cycled like a sewing machine.

Without sandbags or any other decent rest, and my eyeball Mk. I sighting system, the Carbine was capable of holding minute-of-paper-plate at 50 yards. I’m certain that this is mostly me, and with some work I can definitely improve on that. I was startled to discover that the adjustable sight is dead-nuts on. Set at 200 yards, it hit (pretty much) where I aimed at the 200 yard berm, and set for 250 yards I was able to hit the (rather large) steel plate set into the 250 yard berm with regularity. Set for 300 yards I believe I was lobbing the rounds over the top of the 250 yard berm.

Overall, I’m very pleased! Now I just need to get some more ammo and practice!

I let some other shooters try the Garand and the Carbine. That put some smiles on faces! There was already a Garand shooter at the range when I arrived, and when I left the guys at the table next to me were shooting a Lee Enfield No. 4 Mk. I.

Damn, I love old rifles!

Back from the Match

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Back from the Match

Today’s Pima Pistol Steelworker’s match was a little different from the ones I’ve shot there before. Normally we have five different shooting bays to use, so there are five different scenarios to shoot. Unfortunately we’ve had some pretty severe rain over the last week so three of the bays weren’t available. Plus, apparently they’re going to be running a Steel Challenge shoot at Pima soon, so today’s shoot was a practice setup for that. Only four stages, but they were taken from the Steel Challenge website, modified slightly for our equipment. We don’t use a stop plate, but rather a standard shot timer, and we shot the plates in any order. Here’s a quick video of me shooting Stage 2. There are four falling plates and two silhouettes. The stage is: knock down the plates, two rounds on each silhouette, step over the shooting line (that piece of 2×2 on the ground at my feet) and engage the silhouettes with two more rounds each. Note that I’m using an 8-round capacity standard 1911. And I missed the first plate.

http://img.photobucket.com/player.swf?file=http://vidmg.photobucket.com/albums/v99/smallestminority/DSCF0623.flv

Here’s another shooter on Stage 1 showing you how to do it right. In this stage there are three large targets that get two hits each, and two small targets that get one hit each. Shoot them all, step over the firing line and do it again:

http://img.photobucket.com/player.swf?file=http://vidmg.photobucket.com/albums/v99/smallestminority/DSCF0608.flv

I’m not embarrassed by my time, but I definitely need improvement. Still, I had a lot of fun! And I wore my Heller Kitty shirt, and got a couple of compliments on it.

In Premature Celebration…

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…I’m going to spend the rest of my short evening loading 100 rounds of .308 Winchester with 155 grain Lapua Scenar bullets and Varget powder. I need to make a trip to the range this weekend, and I want to see how the 5R likes the lighter projectile.

Keep your fingers crossed.

Range Report

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To celebrate Memorial Day, I took the 700 5R back to the range with a small range of loads to test. First, yesterday afternoon I thoroughly cleaned the barrel until it was as sqeeky-clean as I could get it. I did not, per the recommendation, use Bore Paste on a patch wrapped around a brush, since this barrel had, at that point, only 50 rounds fired through it. I scrubbed it three times with foaming bore cleaner, followed by Butch’s Bore Shine until the patches came out clean. Then I treated it with Ultra Bore Coat per the instructions, and let it sit overnight.

At the range, after setting up everything (except my spotting scope, which I neglected to bring), I fired 20 rounds at a load-and-fire rate to warm the barrel up and condition it, also per the UBC instructions. If you recall from my previous range trip, I had to move the scope back on the Picatinny rail, so it was no longer sighted in. It took me another 15 rounds before I was back on paper, because it was shooting a little low and a lot right. After I got it sighted in, I cleaned. The instructions warn to not use a bore brush, and if you must, us a nylon one. I used just a slotted jag and a patch soaked with Butch’s Bore Shine, and then a button jag and patch after patch. The first couple of patches had flakes of what I assume must be the Bore Coat material – black, shiny specks, but fairly rapidly the patches started coming out clean. No copper fouling was evident.

Then I settled in to do some shooting.

I brought 100 rounds of 175 grain Sierra Match Kings in Lapua brass, loaded with Varget and primed with WLR primers. Twenty each of 42.0, 42.2, 42.4, 42.6, and 42.8* grains. I’d burned two of each load warming up the barrel, and fifteen more of the 42.0 getting on target. That left me three of the 42.0 load, and eighteen each of the others. I fired the three 42.0’s to foul the barrel, and then started shooting for groups.

Overall, I’m pretty happy. The heavier I went with the charge weight, the better it shot. After I’d put about forty rounds through it, I cleaned it again, and I was getting almost spotless patches quite rapidly. (As I noted previously, I don’t like cleaning, and I’m not a fanatic about it.) The best group of the day was the last one I shot – rounds 91-95, with a center-to-center spread of 1.24″ at 200 meters, or a hair over 0.6MOA.

That was with the 42.8 grain load. One other thing: this rifle craters primers. Even at 42.0 grains, there’s a little cratering evident, so I’m no longer going to assume that the cratering I saw previously is actually a sign of high pressure. There was no evidence of piercing at all.

Other comments: The HS Precision stock looks very nice, but it is not very ergonomic – at least not for me, shooting off the bench. My right hand is sore from assuming an odd position in order to get my finger on the trigger properly. Major kudos to Ninth Stage for providing the spirit level. It’s amazing how easy it is to cant the rifle off of vertical without noticing, and that little device stops that cold. Ninety-five rounds of 175 grain SMKs at something on the order of 2600fps beats the CRAP out of you. Individually, they’re not bad, but the beating is cumulative. I let somebody else shoot the last five. I think my next test will be with the 155 grain Lapua Scenars, which are actually as long as the 180SMK. The Williams bottom metal was worth the money, as was the Evolution Gun Works 20MOA scope base. The bottom metal doesn’t make it shoot better (I don’t think), but it appears to be a lot more rugged. The Burris Xtreme mounts do not let the scope move a nanometer, and the scope? Given its wince-inducing price, it does the job I bought it for. It’s clear and crisp, the adjustments are positive and repeatable, the side focus works as advertised. I’m very pleased with the whole package.

*Use this load data at your own risk. Not responsible for typos or tyros who blow up their guns using load data from someone you don’t even know. This is safe in MY rifle. YMMV.

CHA-CHING!!

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Shooting can be a very expensive hobby.

The stainless-steel Remington 700 I just bought was a thousand dollars ($1,000!!), new-in-box (and that doesn’t include tax). No sights. And the triggerguard/floorplate assembly looks and feels like plastic. Actually, it is plastic.

Cheap plastic.

That has to go. But you want to buy a replacement in steel? How about Badger Ordnance’s Tatical triggerguard/floorplate? Three hundred and thirty-five bucks! Jeebus! That’s a third of the price of the damned rifle!

Thanks to the Intartubes, I was able to find and then research Williams Firearms and their Remington 700 Short-Action bottom metal. On order now, one each in-the-white: $154 plus $8 freight. Sorry Brownell’s, but if you offered this product I’d have probably bought it through you.

As I noted previously, this rifle is going to be given a matte black Gunkote finish by Mac’s Shootin’ Irons. I’m going to go with Mac’s Tuff-Gun II process (though no initial parkerizing over anything but the new bottom metal, since the rifle is stainless steel). That’s another $230, unless we negotiate the price down since I’ll be delivering it and picking it up.

Because this is intended to be a long-range precision rifle, and I hate to clean copper fouling out of barrels, I am also going to treat the bore with Ultra Bore Coat – another $51 with shipping.

This gun is going to be mostly shot off a bench or prone, so it needs a bipod. A Harris S-BRM (on sale!) at MidwayUSA: $79.99. ($121.90 at Brownell’s – ouch!)

Bullets and brass and something to put assembled ammo into? Lapua .308 brass, two boxes of 100 at $52.99 each. Sierra 175 grain MatchKing HPBT bullets, box of 500: $117.99. Two 100 round smoke gray plastic ammo boxes: $4.27 each. I already have RCBS full-length size and seat dies, but this is a bolt-gun, and the only gun I have in .308 caliber (I sold my Ruger M77 LONG ago), I wanted a Lee Collet neck sizing die: $16.99. Lee case length gauge and shell holder for their trimmer setup: $3.49. Cutter and lockstud: $4.99. Given the reputation of Lapua brass, I shouldn’t need to trim the cases for a bit, but it’s best to be prepared. I’ve already got eight lbs. of Varget powder – well, a bit less than eight because it’s the powder I use for my 75 grain .223 loads – but I need large rifle primers. I have some Winchester, but I really like CCI’s benchrest primers for this: another $41.99 for a thousand, plus tax.

So far I’ve poured $1,718 into this project, not including the upcoming refinish.

And we haven’t addressed optics yet.

Since this is to be a 700 yard rifle, it will be very helpful if the scope base has some built-in elevation, that way it won’t be necessary to crank the scope to the end of its adjustment travel to be able to reach out, out, out there. I’ve already run across this problem with the Swede. My solution then was Burris Signature Rings that have inserts that allow for extra elevation. I don’t want to go that route this time. I do, however, want a one-piece Picatinny/Weaver style base. But again – cost? Badger Ordnance has a great reputation, but $150?? And they’re not alone. Nightforce wants $120 ($150 at Brownells). Some Internet searching and… Evolution Gun Works 20 MOA Remington 700 short-action Picatinny scope base: $39.99, with a good reputation to boot. I believe that will be my choice.

Now, the glass.

On a precision rifle the glass means as much as the rifle. No matter the potential accuracy of the rifle, if you can’t see the target, or if your scope adjustments are not reliably repeatable, you’re not going to hit what you’re aiming for. Still, like most shooters I think, I cringe at laying out more for the glass than I did for the gun. When the gun costs a grand, the thought of dropping another grand (or more, much more!) on a scope has a tendency to induce nosebleed.

Because my wife wants to punch me in the face.

I have not yet settled on a scope. One helpful commenter has recommended the Nikon 2.5-10X44 Tactical from SWFA’s Sample List. They have several in stock, and I have bought from there before. The Leupold scope on my AR-15 target upper came from there, as did the Simmons scopes on both the Swede and Conan the Borg. The Nikons run $700-800, and that’s an excellent deal, but I’m looking very hard at an IOR Valdada scope. Their 2.5-10X42 with a 30mm tube, new, is $725 and is supposed to be excellent. I like their MP8 reticle, too.

Anyway, until I settle on a scope, I can’t decide what rings to get. One-inch or 30mm? “Tactical” (which means “expen$ive”) or standard? Leupold, Burris, or somebody else?

And then there are the other little doo-dads that accumulate. A spirit-level cant indicator, a retractable ballistics chart, so on, and so forth.

I love this hobby, but I’m damned glad I picked a profession that pays well.