Another early evening trip to Champion Arms shooting range in Kent, WA. A bit of test shooting, some practice and drills. A good time overall, but not without issues…

Issue number one, I used the bullseye targets they print on-site, and I don’t know if they’ve changed the paper they’re using, but this time they were tearable. No, that’s not a typo; the targets had a marked tendency to tear when the bullets hit them. A pretty minor quibble; if the problem persists I’ll mention it to them.

Southern Comfort, my Frankengun .38 Sort Colt cartridge conversion, had an issue with punching holes in the primers. I replaced the firing pin and that fixed that. So of course now there’s an issue with the hand spring; the gun has decided to only rotate the cylinder if I point the muzzle up. Bugger. The good news it it has turned out to be surprisingly accurate!

Next up was the Colt Detective Special .32. I did some drills at seven yards and noticed a couple of keyholed hits. Not a good thing… and it got worse. I ran the target out a bit further and accuracy was out the window, and practically every bullet that didn’t keyhole exhibited yawing. These bullets don’t normally do this, but the most recent box has shown this tendency. I’ve contacted the manufacturer.

The Old Dog- a Model 1902 .38 Special- was in fine form, and liking the mid-range 125gr. loads.

I tried something different this evening too- the Panic Shot drill. It’s simple- target at three yards, gun in a single-hand grip pointed downward. Point the gun (without raising it to eye level) and get a shot off as fast as you can, alternating strong and weak hand. If you have a partner have them signal you when to fire. It can be very revealing.

Aside from the minor issue with Southern Comfort’s hand-spring and the keyholing bullets it was an enjoyable and productive session. I’ll get the hand-spring fixed, dead easy really, and get some different .32 bullets.

Michael Tinker Pearce, 3 January 2020

Oh, and Happy New Year!

.251 TCR is about to be listed on Ammoguide.com, and this prompted me to take a closer look at loaded case dimensions. The case diameter is actually .272, not .275; the chamber is reamed to .275 however. The case does not taper, as you can see in the cutaway.

A word about AmmoGuide- they’ve been around for a long time in internet terms, and it shows; their website is archaic. It can take some effort to navigate, and you need to make sure JAVA is active in your browser. That being said, it is a treasure-trove of cartridge and loading data, the like of which I have never seen on the internet. This is a must for anyone into reloading, and for folks shooting wildcats, antique or obscure cartridges it is a gold mine! Well worth the modest yearly subscription.

Of course you can add cartridges (like the .251 TCR.) if you don’t see them, and you can add load data of your own for the cartridges listed. I highly recommend giving it a look.

Michael Tinker Pearce, 31 December 2019

.38 S&W normally takes a bullet in the .359-.362 diameter range. My S&W slugged at .361″, and lately I’ve been using swaged 125gr./.361 wadcutters with great success… but not everyone can swage their own bullets, so yesterday I tried an experiment.

I loaded 50rds. of Aardvark’s 125gr. TCL ‘cowboy’ bullets. In my experience ‘cowboy’ bullets tend to be rather soft so they’ll splatter nicely on steel instead of ricocheting. I wanted to see if they would ‘bump up’ to bore diameter and stabilize properly over a modest load.

I used 2.7gr of Unique, a CCI 500 small pistol primer and a fairly serious crimp. At the range the results were just right; the load shot to point of aim and the targets showed no sign of yawing or key-holing, even all the way out at 25 yards. Recoil was mildly snappy but not unpleasant.

Guns vary; what works in one may not in another. But given the lack of bullets in .361, and that when you find them they are almost always 145-148gr LRNs, it might be worth trying a 125gr./.357 ‘cowboy’ or soft-cast bullet in your gun. Could make life just a little easier, and the lower recoil of the light bullet might help prolong the life of your antique revolver.

Michael Tinker Pearce, 27 December 2019