Actual Shooting Content

Business has been slow the past week so I decided to make a trip to the range.  That always makes business show up to keep me from going.

A few things needed to be checked to make sure they'd function so I put them in the trunk and left for the range after lunch.

The Hurricane is out in the Atlantic but we are still getting winds from the edges.   What?    Oh.  Right.

The Hurricane is out in the Atlantic but we are still getting winds from the edges.  A 20-25 mph crosswind with gusts that make you lean into them to stay standing up straight kept the Mosquitoes at bay but eliminated any thought of shooting for accuracy.

Ya.  I know.

Anyway, the wind kept the mosquitoes at bay so I wasn't constantly slapping democrats or any other blood sucking pestilence and I did leave the range with some good information.

First up was the new-to-me Savage 99 that I got a few months ago.  The load that I concocted for it almost shot to the sights as they were set when I got it.

The top shot was a fouling shot.  I didn't try to hold a decent sight picture so it doesn't really mean anything.  The other three were shot offhand at about 30 yards.  30 yards?   I know.  Not particularly good shooting but considering I was rocking side to side in winds like we had today it was good enough to tell me the rifle still has whatever it had when it left the factory seventy-two years ago.  I will have to return on a calmer day to see how well it really can shoot but I'd hunt in any swamp with it as is. 

Next was an M1 Carbine that I had never fired.  I wanted to make sure the rifle was reliable and I also wanted to find out if a load I put together for it was actually going to work.  Military ball from a box of cartuchos imported from somewhere worked great.  It did seem to want to throw the empties forward for some reason though.  Several of them bounced off the handguard.  Might have been the wind.  It threw some to the right like normal.  I wasn't really paying attention to whether there was a correlation to wind gusts and where the brass landed but my 45 did the same thing a little later.  Some to the right and some right in front.

Naturally, with the wind playing havoc with the sight picture,

there  was no point in trying to see how accurate the little beast is but I still had one more test for it.  I bought a box of eighty-something grain .308" Hornady bullets intended for the .30 Mauser and had loaded some of them in .30 Carbine brass to see if they'd make a "high velocity" load.  The  load was good.  It was impressive in a Ruger Blackhawk (no, no Helicopter picture)  and it seemed to be pretty good in the little rifle except that it wouldn't feed. 

Details.

The bullet profile has a fatter ogive than real .30 Carbine bullets and a lot more exposed lead.  The lead hit the breech and stopped the music on every other round.

This is what a typical stoppage looked like.


Below is the same round after clearing the jam.  You can see the spot where it  hung up and you can see how fat the exposed lead is.

So I learned that the bullets won't work in my rifle.  Its good to learn that now instead of when something goes bump in the night.

Besides, they are still great in the Blackhawk.

After that came a Garand.  I had installed an adjustable gas cylinder plug a while back and needed to calibrate it.  I ran into trouble because the little lock screw was tighter than the plug and I couldn't get it out of the plug so I could adjust the screw underneath.  The whole plug came out. I had no pliers or anything else to hold it while I loosened the lock screw so I never did get it calibrated.

Ugh.

Just for fun I did fire a few rounds of the ammo that I loaded for it a while back.  Again, not for a group.  Just to feel the rifle shoot again.  I'll have to loosen the lock nut, tighten the plug and go back to the range. 

A friend has an M1A and it gave me a case of flash hider envy so I also put one of these on the Garand when I did the adjustable plug.   I think mine's bigger.   Heh.

The final test was for the new magazines I got for an "Officer's sized" 1911.  I got them from a place called Joe's 1911 Mag Mania .  They were  $14 each in stainless and I wanted to make sure they worked before I started using them in my carry gun. 

The two on the left are the new ones.  On the right is either the one that came with the pistol or a Chip McCormick mag that I bought when I bought the gun.    The new ones were flawless.  I'm happy with them & that's one step closer to making the little 45 my carry gun.

I learned good and valuable things about every gun I took and the wind and the lock screw made it so I have to go back and do it all over again on a calmer day.  I say that's a pretty good afternoon at the range.