Guns – Page 21 – The ExhaustNotes Blog

Reduced Loads: Less Wailin’ with the .35 Whelen

It’s the .35 Whelen (not “wailin'”), but with a name like that, I had to have a little fun. I also considered “Win Some, Lose Some” for the title of this blog, but I’ll get to that in a minute. What this blog is all about is the beginning work in finding a reduced velocity load for my .35 Whelen Ruger No. 1.

Photos from the Gunbroker auction for my rifle (yeah, I saved them). The big featured photo above shows the wood with an orange tint, but that’s because I used flash for that photo. The rifle’s colors are closer to what you see here. It’s a beautiful rifle.

My .35 Whelen is the one you see in the photos above. I have a thing, you see, for Ruger No. 1 rifles. The first rifle I ever bought was a Ruger No. 1 in .30 06 when I was in the Army back in the ‘70s. I initially thought I’d wear out the barrel on my .30 06 and have it recut to .35 Whelen, but that ain’t gonna happen (I’ll never shoot that rifle enough). I have shot it a lot, though. An infantry division of jackrabbits in west Texas met their maker on account of me and my .30 06 No. 1.

Me, half a century ago with a 30 06 Ruger No. 1 and a very dead jackrabbit (one of many) in the west Texas desert. That was a 400-yard offhand shot. The older I get, the better I was.

Okay, back to the .35 Whelen: The concept of a big bore .30 06 stuck in my mind. I’d wanted a Whelen ever since I read about the cartridge. It was created by Townsend Whelen in 1922 (there’s some disagreement about whether it was Whelen or a guy he worked with, but there’s disagreement about everything on the Internet, and Townsend Whelen is the story I’m going with). Old Colonel Whelen ran a .30 06 cartridge case over a .358 expander, plunked in a .358-caliber bullet, and voila, he had created the .35 Whelen.

The .35 Whelen was strictly a wildcat from 1922 to 1988; in 1988 Remington chambered their 700 Classic rifle for it (my good buddy Jason has one and he recently took a nice buck with it). Then Ruger manufactured a limited run of No. 1 rifles in .35 Whelen maybe 5 or 6 years ago (I got mine from that run). Most of these rifles had very plain wood (both the Remingtons and the Rugers); when I saw the one featured in this blog on GunBroker, I jumped on it. The gun looks even better in person that it does in the photos (and it looks great in the photos). My mantra for many years has been that you just can’t go wrong with a Ruger No. 1 and fancy walnut. I believe these to be some of the classiest rifles ever made.

Why a reduced load? Hey, why not? I’ve got other thumpers, and if I ever hunt dinosaur, I can take my .458 Win Mag. I thought finding a way to make the Whelen work with less energetic loads would be fun. Factory-level loads are tough at both ends, and I want to have fun with this rifle. Folks say the .35 Whelen is as good a game-dropper as a .375 H&H. That may be, but it’s irrelevant to me, and besides, those kinds of energy levels come with big recoil. Finding a load that makes a thumper less of a thumper is my idea of fun. I just think the cartridge looks cool, too.

So I’ve had the Whelen a few years now, but until recently, I had never fired it. Then, for reasons I won’t go into, I no longer have a .357 Magnum handgun but I have a couple thousand 200-grain cast .357 Mag bullets. Hey, I thought…let’s see if they’ll work in the .35 Whelen. I looked online and found that other guys are doing it, my 200-grain bullets are sized at .358, and I thought it ought to work.

The Lyman cast bullet data for this bullet in the .35 Whelen.

I looked in the Lyman cast bullet book and I think the bullets I bought are the very same 200-grain Lyman bullet their cast bullet manual shows for the .35 Whelen (the profile is exactly the same). Whoa, this just might work, and it would give me something to use those big pills in.

A big heavy 357 Mag/38 Special bullet. It does well in the .357 Magnum revolver (I’ve shot 3-inch groups with this bullet in my Ruger Blackhawk at 100 yards).

I actually have .35 Whelen brass, but I wanted to make some the old-fashioned way like Townsend Whelen did. I ran 20 new .30 06 cases through the .35 Whelen sizing die to open the case mouths to .35 (from .308), I flared the mouths slightly with the Lee case mouth flaring tool (that’s so the cast bullets will start into the case mouth without shaving lead), and then the brass cases went into the tumbler. They came out looking good.

.35 Whelen brass crafted from .30 06 cases.

A .30 06 case on the right, which is what the .35 Whelen cases are formed from.

I selected Unique as the propellant for this first load because I have some on hand, and because it shows the lowest velocities in the Lyman manual. I went with 15.0 grains as a starting point. My 200-grain .357 magnum cast bullets leaded the bore a little bit in my .357 Magnum Blackhawk revolver, so I was mildly concerned that they would lead the bore in my Ruger No. 1. Hold that thought, because we’re going to return to it in a second.

Seating the bullets in my RCBS Rockchucker press.

My .35 Whelen cartridges looked good, and they chambered with no issues in the No. 1. I was eager to get to the range to see how they would group.

A finished .35 Whelen cartridge. It’s a handsome cartridge, I think.

I loaded 20 rounds for a trial run. This is good-looking ammunition.

So how did it work? Well, that brings us to the “lose some” portion of the tentative title I mentioned at the start of this blog. You know, as in “Win Some, Lose Some,” although I don’t think any No. 1 with wood like the one you see here could be filed in the “lose some” column.

Bottom line? The cast bullet load didn’t perform well at all. The bullets didn’t tumble in flight (as would have been evidenced by their keyholing through the target), but they didn’t group worth a damn, either. I’m talking 12-inch groups at 50 yards. Hell, on a mediocre day I can shooter smaller groups at a hundred yards with a handgun. A quick look at the bore revealed the culprit: Leading. Lots and lots of leading.

A severely-leaded Ruger No. 1 barrel. The bullets I used are intended for handgun velocities. I was hoping for a miracle. It didn’t happen. Not surprisingly, accuracy was nonexistent. Good buddy Greg commented that there was probably enough lead in that barrel to cast another bullet or two.

Okay, it’s knowledge gained, and that’s not a bad thing. These handgun bullets won’t work in my No. 1. But there are cast bullets out there made specifically for rifles, and I knew where to go to get some. I like the cast bullets made by Montana Bullet Works. I called them when I got home, I had a nice conversation with Bruce (the owner), and a hundred of his bullets are on their way to me now. Bruce’s bullets are from an RCBS mold, they have a gas check, they’re hardened to 22 BHN, and they’re heat treated (to prevent breakup when hunting). Everything I’ve read about these bullets on the Internet indicates they are great, and I’ve had good experiences with Montana Bullet Works when using their bullets in a different big bore rifle. I’ll update you with a range report when I try them.

Montana Bullet Works 200-grain flatnose gas check bullets. It will be interesting to see how these perform in the .35 Whelen.

In the meantime (while I’m waiting for the Montana Bullet Works bullets), I explored the Internet and my loading manuals for more information on a reduced .35 Whelen load. I didn’t do well with the 200-grain cast .357 Mag bullets but in researching this more, I found that others have had decent results using jacketed .357 Mag bullets, and there are loads published for this in the Lyman manual. The .35 Whelen rifle bullet diameter is listed at .358 and the jacketed pistol bullets are listed at .357 (we’re talking inches here, folks), but guys on the Internet are saying they get good results with the pistol bullets. So I loaded 20 and made a quick run to the range.

Hornady 158-grain .357 Magnum jacketed flatnose pistol bullets. These grouped well in the Whelen.

The Lyman manual’s data for using 158-grain .357 Magnum pistol bullets in the .35 Whelen.

20 rounds of custom-made, good-looking .35 Whelen ammo.

I loaded at 24.0 grains of 5744 because I have that powder on hand and I didn’t want to dip into my stash of discontinued 4759. While I was loading these, I was a little leery about shooting .357-inch diameter bullets in a .358-inch bore. About 45 years ago in another life I tried loading .45 ACP bullets in a .458 Win Mag (I know, I was young and dumb). The difference there was too much (the pistol bullets were .451 inch and the bore diameter for a .458 Win Mag is .458). Those rounds fired okay, but accuracy was horrible. The bullet was a whopping 0.007 smaller than the bore. Here, with the .35 Whelen, I’m 0.001 smaller. Maybe it would work, I thought.

I arrived at the range in the late afternoon and set up a target at 50 yards. At the West End Gun Club, the rifle range points about 20-degrees north of due west, and what that means is that late afternoon shooting involves shooting into the sun (the sun is off to the left about 20 degrees). Everything I’ve read about the effects of lighting on bullet point of impact says that the point of impact moves in the opposite direction that light emanates from, but my experience has always been exactly the opposite. If the light is coming from the left, my point of impact is to the left, and that’s what I experienced with the Whelen.

My Ruger has a brass bead front sight (which I think is the worst kind of front sight), and it had a decided flare on the left side from the sinking sun. Sure enough, my first group was sharply offset to the left. Tight, but to the left. I shifted the sight over to the right, and my guesstimate put the point of impact dead even with the centerline of the target. I fired a 3-shot group, moved the front down a hair, and then fired a 5-shot group. All were gratifying small, given that I was shooting almost into the sun by then and using iron sights (well, brass and iron, but you know what I mean).

My 50-yard .35 Whelen target. The first group (a 0.795-inch group) was off to the left. I drifted the rear sight to the right and shot the 0.490-inch, 3-shot group. Then I moved the rear sight down a hair (or was it a hare?) and shot a 5-shot, 1.133-inch group. The top 3-shot, 2.037-inch group was with full power, 200-grain Hornady jacketed bullets.

This is looking good. I am very satisfied with the accuracy I’m getting with the reduced velocity jacketed pistol bullet groups. They’re maybe about 1500 feet per second, and that just feels right.

Then, just for giggles, I fired another 3-shot group with “real” .35 Whelen ammo, loaded with the 200-grain Hornady jacketed softpoint bullet and 52.0 grains of IMR 4320 ammo. That’s at the low end of the big bore loads in the Hornady manual, recoil was substantially higher, and as expected, the group was quite a bit higher (I had the rear sight all the way up for the reduced velocity loads). It wasn’t as tight as the pistol bullet reduced loads, but it’s the first load I tried in the big boy .35 Whelen load region. It was late in the afternoon and the sun was, by now, nearly directly even with my line of sight. I have a million excuses, folks.

The real deal…a big boy .35 Whelen load with a 200-grain Hornady bullet designed for big game rifle shooting. Recoil was more than with the reduced loads, but it was not overwhelming. I’d say it was about the same as a 30 06, but this was at the low end of the .35 Whelen propellant range. The reduced loads discussed above are more fun.

Overall, this is good stuff. At least it is to me. I’m sure there’s a clown or two on Facebook who shoots quarter-inch groups offhand in the rain at 500 yards with his .35 Whelen (it’s always a guy, never a gal, making those insane claims), but for a geezer like me shooting iron sights, this ain’t bad for the second time I’ve had this rifle on the range. You can bet there will be more.

You might be wondering: Why not just go with a full-bore, factory-equivalent load? I’m way ahead of you there. I’ve got a hundred rounds of factory-level .35 Whelen loads ready to go with 200-grain and 250-grain jacketed Hornady bullets (well, now it’s 97, as three of them went through that target you see above). Me? I’m on a quest to develop a decent reduced load for this rifle and I am making good progress. I can shoot the full bore stuff later; for now, the reduced load quest continues. I’ve got good results with the jacketed 158-grain Hornady pistol bullets; when the Montana 200-grain cast bullets arrive, I’ll let you know how they work.

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Star Primer Pickup Tubes: A Story Within A Story!

Like the title says, this is a story within a story. It’s about using primer pickup tubes with my resurrected Star reloader, and how Lady Luck smiled on me yet again.

First, a bit of background. There are a few approaches in the reloading world for transferring primers from the primer box into the reloader. In our general series on reloading, I showed how to use the Lee primer tool, which is what I generally use when I’m loading on a single stage press like my RCBS Rockchucker. Another approach is to use a primer pickup tube and a primer tray. See, the deal is that you don’t want to touch the primers with your bare fingers. You might get skin oils on the primer, and that could make the primer inert. As explained earlier, in this game, you want all the primers to be “ert.”

The first step is to transfer primers from the box they come in into a primer tray, like you see below.

That green circular deal on the left in the photo above is the primer tray. It consists of a base and a lid. You take the lid off and drop the primers into the base, like you see below.

When you do that, though, invariably some of the primers will face up and some will face down. We want them all facing down in the tray’s base, and we get that by jiggling the base. There are little circumferential ridges molded into the base, and when you jiggle the tray, it makes all the primers face down (see below).

Get ready for more cleverness here, folks. What we do next is put the lid back on the primer tray, invert it, and then remove the base from the lid. That leaves us with the lid, and all the primers in it are facing up (see below).

At this point, we pick up the primers from the tray using a primer pickup tube like you see in the photo below.

The tube you see in the photo above is an RCBS primer pickup tube. It’s a hollow tube with a spring catch on one end and a spring clip on the other. What you do is take that tube and push it down (spring end down) on top of each primer. That stacks the primers, one on top of the other, in the tube. Then you invert it over the primer magazine on the Star reloader, remove the spring clip, and all the primers in the pickup tube drop into the Star’s primer magazine.

Star reloaders originally had a brass primer pickup tube, but that didn’t come with the one I have. I’m not complaining; my Star reloader was free. And I figured I’d just use an RCBS primer pickup tube, because I knew had three or four of those stashed away somewhere. But I couldn’t find the things. Then I remembered I had put a bunch of reloading odds and ends in a 50 cal ammo can somewhere, and I went through maybe 10 ammo cans before I found it. I used the RCBS primer pickup tube and I had to hold it carefully in alignment with the Star’s primer magazine when transferring the primers from the inverted tube, pulling the pin, and letting the primers fall into the Star brass primer magazine. It worked just fine. It wasn’t the original Star gear, but hey, you go to war with the Army you have.

After I did that, I went on to other things. I thought I was doing pretty good, you know, finding those RCBS primer pickup tubes, but the box they were in kept playing over and over again in my mind. Something was tickling the neurons, but I didn’t know what it was. Then it hit me. I remembered earlier in the day when I took the RCBS primer pickup tube out of the box. I could see it clearly in my mind:

There were two other brass primer pickup tubes in that box. In my eagerness to get the RCBS primer pickup tubes (the ones I was looking for), I reached right over the brass tubes. Could it be? I put that stuff away a decade ago, way before I ever had the Star.

I went back to that box immediately, and son of a gun, there were not one, but two Star original brass primer pickup tubes. Two! I think they came from Sue’s Dad before he passed away more than 10 years ago (he was a reloader, too), and I got a lot of his old bits and pieces. He never had a Star reloader that I ever saw, but he must have latched onto these two primer pickup tubes somewhere along his journey through life. How about that?

So, back to the story du jour…and more of the Star folks’ cleverness. Star used a slightly different approach than did RCBS. For starters, they made a cross cut in the pickup end of their primer pickup tubes to give the spring tension needed to hold the primers in the tube.

I started picking up a batch of primers from the primer tray lid with my newly-discovered Star primer pickup tube.

When you get that last one, you push it the rest of the way in with a probe (not your finger). With apologies in advance for the inadequate photo depth-of-field, here’s what the last primer looks like in the Star tube.

Then you invert the tube, so all the primers are at the other end. The spring clip keeps them from falling out. There’s a flange on the end of the Star primer pickup tube. It interfaces with the Star reloader’s primer magazine to keep the primer pickup tube aligned with the primer magazine tube.

Here’s the top end of the Star reloader’s primer magazine, with the primer follower in place. I removed it and placed the primer pickup tube on top.

At this point, I then removed the spring clip, and all the primers that were in the primer pickup tube transferred (gravity feed!) into the primer magazine.

So there you have it. The Star is up and running, and I’ll post about cleaning up a few more details on this magnificent old machine in the next Star blog. Stay tuned!

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A TJ Roscoe

Roscoe: It’s slang for a snubnose revolver. No one is really sure where the term originated. There are others…heater, rod, piece, burner, gat (that last one is easy, with me knowing a little bit about The Gatling Gun and all), but the origins of most of these terms are lost in the haze of handgun history. And on that Roscoe terminology, I recently tumbled onto a very cool website I’ll be talking about a bit more here on the ExNotes blog. But that’s for later. This blog is about my Roscoe.

It’s a Model 60 (no dash) stainless steel Smith and Wesson snubbie, to be specific. I mentioned it and the work my good buddy TJ was doing to it not too long ago, and it’s back. And it’s awesome. I had TJ do an action job, a little cosmetics work, and fix a problem or two.

First, the action work. TJ lightened both the double and single action trigger pull, and he did it the old-fashioned way…lots of hand work, polishing, and fitting. Here’s what the guts of my Model 60 look like after a TJ Level 1 action job:

I initially thought I’d have TJ put a high polish on the entire revolver (it would have been something north of $300 just for that work), but TJ was looking out for my best interests. “I can do the whole revolver,” TJ said, “but it will look a lot better if you just have me do the ejector rod, the cylinder, the trigger, the cylinder release, and the hammer.” He was right. It looks awesome.

Here are a few more shots of the high polish TJ put on these components.

The work on the trigger is lot more than just cosmetic. TJ recontoured the face of the trigger in addition to polishing it, and it really makes a difference in double action shooting. It’s much easier to find and control that precise instant when the hammer drops during double action shooting with the new trigger contour.

As part of the Level I action job, TJ also applied orange Day Glo to the front sight. It’s a small touch that works wonders. Finding and putting the front sight on target is much faster with this Day Glo treatment. It’s not just a cosmetic thing.

I mentioned in a previous blog that the revolver was hard to open, and TJ found and fixed the root causes of that problem. The ejector rod threads had stripped, the ejector rod’s axis wasn’t concentric to the bore, and the barrel underlug catch was not properly configured. My Model 60 opens and closes the way it should now. It’s slick.

Here’s another small detail I like…polishing the cylinder release and its slotted nut (it’s not a screw, even though it looks like one). This little bit adds a nice touch to the revolver.

The grips are smooth rosewood, and they work well with their S&W emblems against the stainless steel revolver. I like the look.

So, on to the main question: How did the TJ-customized Model 60 shoot? Superbly well, thank you. I tried two loads with the new-to-me Model 60. The first was the 148-grain wadcutter with 2.7 grains of Bullseye; the second was a 158-grain cast truncated flat point bullet with the same 2.7 grains of Bullseye. I loaded both on my new-to-me freebie Star progressive reloader. Yep, the Star is up and running now, and how it works will be a story for a future blog (in the meantime, you can read about the Star resurrection here).

I fired four targets at 50 feet and the results are interesting. The first two targets were with the 148-grain wadcutter load (I use an Alco silhouette that has four small silhouettes on a single target sheet).

I shot the target on the left with a 148-grain Missouri double-ended wadcutter bullet; the one on the right is with a Hornady swaged 148-grain hollow base wadcutter bullet. I’ll tell you more about those in a bit.

Before TJ did any work on my Model 60, the gun printed wadcutter groups a good 12 inches to the right (good if you want to hit your bad guy in the elbow, I suppose). After TJ fixed the ejector rod issue I described above, the wadcutter bullets still shot a little bit to the right, but much less than they had before. That rightward bias is a function of the load, not the gun (as you’ll see in the next set of targets).

The really good news is how the Model 60 performed with the 158-grain truncated flat point bullets. Those puppies shot exactly to point of aim, and after warming up with the first group on the left target below, I got serious about focusing on that beautiful Day Glo front sight and shot the group you see on the right target. Point of aim was at 6:00, and for a 2-inch barrel Roscoe, that ain’t bad shooting.

If you’re not familiar with all this wadcutter and truncated flat point bullet business, here’s your lesson for the day. Let’s call it Bulletology 101.

The brass cartridge on the left is loaded with a Missouri 148-grain DEWC (double ended wadcutter) cast bullet; the nickel-plated 38 Special cartridge to its right is loaded with a Hornady 148-grain swaged hollow base wadcutter (HBWC). The Missouri DEWC bullets are symmetrical (they’re the same top and bottom); the Hornady HBWC bullets have (as the name implies) a hollow base (you can see those bullets in the center of the photo above, one inverted and the other right side up). The idea behind a wadcutter bullet is that it punches a clean hole in the target (that makes it easier to score). The two bullets on the right side of the photo above are 158-grain cast truncated flat points. I have a local caster make these for me.

I am enjoying my Model 60 and the custom work TJ did on it, but I’ll tell you what…this puppy bites. The recoil is significant (even with the lighter 148-grain wadcutter loads), and I’m a guy used to shooting big bore handguns. That little .38 Special cartridge is nothing to sneeze at (Elmer Keith, Dirty Harry, and all the rest of the bigger-is-better gunsels notwithstanding).

For a defense gun, I can live with Roscoe’s recoil (it’s not a handgun I would put 100 rounds through during a range session, though). For all you keyboard commandos out there, I know, I know. You can do that all day long. I can, too, with a 1911. But this little Chiefs Special is a handful, and after firing 5 or 6 groups, I’ve had enough. Your mileage may vary. I know, too, that if I put the Pachmayr-style oversize rubber grips on it, it would be more manageable (and I own a pair of those). But then it wouldn’t look like it does now, and I love that look.

Hey, there’s more to this story…TJ also did a little work on my Compact 1911. The latest improvements on the Compact 1911 are coming up in a future blog, so stay tuned!

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Want to turn your handgun into a one-of-a-kind combat companion? You don’t need to live out here; TJ’s work is carried daily by law enforcement officers (and others whose lives depend on their sidearms) all over the world. Here’s where you need to go to get started:

9mm Jacketed Bullet Comparo

Back in January I tested a bunch of 9mm cast bullet loads in the three handguns you see above: A SIG P226 Scorpion, a Smith and Wesson Model 659, and the Springfield Armory 1911 Target. For that test series (you can read it here), all the loads used the Missouri 125-grain cast roundnose bullet with different powders and different charge weights. My cast bullet testing showed the SIG to be the most accurate, followed by the Springfield and then the Smith and Wesson Model 659.

I promised an update with jacketed bullets to assess accuracy and functionality of all three handguns (and to find favored accuracy loads for each). It took a while, but I finally got around to making good on that promise this past week. The six different loads I tested for the jacketed 9mm test series are summarized below:

Actually, the term “jacketed” doesn’t really apply to the Xtreme bullets (they are copper plated, not copper jacketed). The Armscor bullets are brass jacketed. Both the Winchester and Speer bullets are copper jacketed bullets. As you can see from the table above and the photos below, the Xtreme, Armscor, and Winchester bullets were of the roundnose configuration. The Speer 147-grain bullets were jacketed flatnosed bullets. I didn’t try any hollow points in this test series; I prefer roundnose bullets in my 9mm handguns. They are reliable.

All groups were 5 shot groups. I shot a total of 360 rounds in the two test series (both the jacketed and cast bullet accuracy tests).

While I was shooting last week, I was a little disappointed. I thought I had done a lot better with the cast bullets back in January. I thought my jacketed groups were larger when I eyeballed the targets, but you never really know until you measure the groups.

9mm jacketed bullets on an Alco target. I like using the Alco target that has four mini-silhouettes on a single target. All testing was at 50 feet.

When I returned home, measured the group sizes, and tabulated the results, I was surprised. The results of the jacketed and plated bullets were not too different from what I had achieved with the cast bullets almost a year ago. Take a look:

The most surprising finding, for me, was that the average results with the jacketed bullets (versus the cast bullets) were almost identical. Here’s that data extracted from the above, shown in a table that makes it a little easier to make the comparison:

My testing showed essentially the same results for the three handguns I tested whether I used cast bullets or jacketed bullets: The SIG P226 Scorpion is the most accurate (it is a magnificent handgun), followed by the Springfield Armory 1911, followed by the Smith and Wesson 659. It doesn’t matter whether it’s with cast or jacketed bullets: The averages are eerily similar for each gun, with a very slight accuracy advantage going to the cast bullets for the SIG and the 1911, and a very slight accuracy advantage going to the jacketed bullets for the Smith 659. But the differences between jacketed and cast bullets are so small they can be ignored. Cast bullets are usually a lot less expensive than jacketed bullets, so this is good knowledge.

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Pffffft…Bond…James Bond

Like everyone else on the planet except the nefarious bastards of SMERSH and SPECTRE, we mourn the passing of Sean Connery, the great talent who defined and was the ultimate Bond. James Bond. Checking out at age 90, Sir Sean lived a long life. With that many years and many wonderful roles under his belt, he got his money’s worth, I think. So did we, speaking as one among hundreds of millions of people lucky enough to enjoy his work. Still, it was tough to hear of his passing.

That poster of Sean Connery above? A lot of gunsels may not know this, but the iconic early James Bond movie posters showed Sean Connery armed with…a pellet gun. A Walther LP53, to be specific. Take a good look, and then look at this photo of my Walther.

I’ve owned my Walther for a lot of years (I wrote an ExNotes blog on it a year or two ago that tells a more complete story of the Bond connection, with a bit of pellet pistol bragging rights thrown in for good measure).

Rest in peace, Mr. Connery, and thanks for the many good stories you brought to us.

A TJ tune for my Model 60

I had trouble selecting a title for this blog. The other contender was 50 Shades of Gray to go with the big photo you see above. I wish I could say I took that photo, but the credit goes to good buddy and master gunsmith TJ. TJ is the best pistolsmith there is, and one of the things that makes working with him so enjoyable is his photography. When TJ works a custom gun project, he photodocuments it to keep you appraised of what’s going on, and a couple of the photos you see here are the ones he sent to me on my Model 60 project. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let me back up a bit.

If you follow the blog (and you all do, right?), you’ve been watching the Star reloader resurrection project I’m working. That’s coming along nicely, and I’m already making .38 Special ammo on my resurrected reloader. This story started with my noticing an ad in my gun club newsletter for a Model 60 at a killer price. I’m normally not a snubnose kind of guy, but hey, a deal’s a deal and I like the idea of a snubnose .38. Maybe I watched too many cop shows in the ’50s and ’60s. You know. Cannon, Kojak, Hawaii 5-0, 77 Sunset Strip, Dragnet…you get the idea. All those guys carried snubbies.

Anyway, the Model 60 was a good deal, but swinging the cylinder out to the side was a bit dicey…sometimes it wanted to stick. The seller told me about that but I didn’t see it as a problem. I saw it as an opportunity to do another project with good buddy TJ, and that’s what I’m doing. TJ is doing his Level 1 action job for me (polishing all the internals and lightening both the double and single action trigger pulls), and I’m having him also put a mirror finish on the cylinder, the ejector rod, the cylinder release, the trigger, and the hammer. It will make for a nice, subtle contrast with the brushed stainless finish on the rest of the gun. That leaves only the grips, and I’m doing something about those, too. TJ put into words what I was thinking, and that was that the stock grips (the ones you see above) are butt ugly (pardon the gun pun).

Back in the day Smith used to offer uncheckered rosewood grips, and that’s what I really wanted. They don’t sell those any more, though, and I mentioned to TJ that I should have bought a set back in the ’70s. You know, just in case. “Try E-Bay,” TJ said, and I did. I hit paydirt almost immediately, and the grips you see below are on their way to me now. Rosewood. Smooth. Just what I wanted.

The finish on my inbound grips may be a little funky, but that’s another opportunity, too. It’s TruOil time, folks. TruOil and a little patience will have these grips looking literally better than they did when they left the S&W factory in Springfield.

The Star reloader is operational now (I’ll show you more on the Star resurrection in upcoming blogs, and I’ll include a video that shows it making finished ammo). I’ll have the Model 60 back in a few days, so I went ahead and loaded a box of ammo with the outstandingly accurate 158-grain cast bullets I get from my good buddy Roy. It took only a few minutes on the Star (it would take closer to an hour on a single-stage press). For a machine that’s probably older than I am, the Star sure does a good job.

When I take my custom snubbie .38 to the range, I’ll grab a few photos and share a range report with you here on the ExNotes blog. Stay tuned, my friends, and keep your powder dry.

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The Star’s Hulme Case Feed Mechanism

The Star story just keeps getting better. I not only picked up the reloader for free…I also got a free Hulme case feed mechanism. I didn’t realize what I had until I started learning more about these marvelous old machines.

You may remember that we posted a blog a month or so ago about the Los Angeles Sheriffs Department Pistol Team. It was a cool old video (it was from the 1930s), but I didn’t realize just how cool it was until I spoke with my buddy Paul about the Star reloader I’m resurrecting. Paul mentioned that the LASD video had a segment about reloading .38 Special ammo, and as soon as he said it, I remembered the scene. You’re certainly welcome to watch the entire video again, but my advice would be to jump to the 13:57 mark to see the Star reloader in action:

Man, those guys are busy, I thought as I watched them reloading .38 Special ammo in the video above. It’s almost as if you need three hands (or two people) to operate the Star. For every cycle, you need to:

- - Insert a case in the shell plate.
  - Insert a bullet in the case that’s just been charged with powder.
  - Pull the main lever down.
  - Pull the main lever up.
  - Index the shell plate one position counterclockwise.

Then I realized: The guys in that video above were placing the empty .38 Special cases directly into the shell plate. My Star doesn’t work that way. It has a case feed mechanism. Instead of inserting the empty case directly into the shell plate, you insert the case into the case feed mechanism. Why do that, I wondered, when you can insert the case directly into the shell plate?

Then it hit me: My Star had the optional Hulme case feeder. It was missing a couple of parts (the empty case magazine and the support for that magazine), but those parts would be easy to replace or make myself. That way, I wouldn’t have to insert an empty case into the Star every time I pulled the lever. I could just load up 25 or 30 cases at a time, and the Hulme case feed mechanism would take care of the rest. That would simplify the number of actions I’d have to do each cycle. Woo hoo!

Here’s another YouTube I found that explains how the Hulme case feed mechanism works.

It’s all very clever. I started this part of the Star resurrection by cleaning up the Hulme case feed mechanism on my press.

Here’s what it looked like before I disassembled it for a more thorough cleaning. Notice the rusty cam angle at the top of the photo below.

Here’s another photo of the rusty cam. It’s the piece that drives the Hulme case feeder to the rear when the tool head is lowered (which occurs when the main lever is pulled down).

The Hulme case feed mechanism attaches to the Star base with a single Allen bolt. Stars originally did not have that hole in the base, but the Hulme case feed mechanism was such a popular option that Star included a drilled and tapped hole (for the Hulme device) on all their presses sometime around 1959. I learned this from good buddy Bruce at Star Machine Works in New Jersey.

I removed it and then cleaned the case feed mechanism with Kroil, WD 40, and Scotchbrite.

Then I went to work on the cam and its mounting bracket with Kroil and Scotchbrite. After that, I remounted the Hulme case feed mechanism. Here’s what the case feed mechanism looks like in operation:

So, I had the case feed mechanism cleaned and it was operational. But I still needed to feed in a single case every cycle. I didn’t want that; I wanted the cases to feed automatically. It was time to channel my inner Bubba. All I needed was a tube in which to stack empty .38 Special cases above the case feeder, and a means to secure that tube. Hulme originally offered the componentry to do that, and my good buddy Bruce at Star Machine Works (the company that restores these magnificent old reloaders) offers the parts, but I hadn’t spent anything on my Star, and I wanted to keep it that way just for the sake of living up to my cheap SOB reputation. I wondered: WWJGD (what would Joe Gresh do)? I noodled a few ideas around, and then went to the closet for a coat hanger. I already had a clear plastic tube from one of my Lee reloading presses.

Like we say in French: Voilà!

The Star and its Hulme case feed mechanism works, and it works well. Take a look!

We’re getting pretty close to being done with the Star resurrection project, but there are still a few more things I want to show you. Stay tuned; you’ll see them right here on the ExNotes blog!

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Read the entire Star resurrection story here, along with our resurrections of other cool old machines!

The Star Primer Feed Mechanism

The next steps in bringing the Star progressive reloader back to life focused on the primer feed mechanism. That subsystem consists of the primer follower rod (the upper red arrow in the photo below), the primer magazine (the middle arrow in the photo below), the primer pickup and feed mechanism (the lower red arrow in the photo below), and the primer seating device (which is under the base of the reloader, as you’ll see further along in this blog).

In looking at the primer feed mechanism, the primer magazine , and the primer follower rod, I could see they were mighty funky and thoroughly oxidized. I wondered if they were all made of brass. The tip of the primer follower rod obviously was (see the photo below), and probably the feed mechanism base was, but the magazine tube and other parts were so corroded I couldn’t tell.

Then I realized I had another question. See the spring in the photo below? That one through me for a loop. I couldn’t see that it served any function, and all the online references I found for Star reloaders did not show it. So I sent an email to my good buddy Bruce over at Star Machine Works (the outfit that restores and sells parts for Star equipment).

Bruce responded quickly. Here’s what he told me:

Hi Joe,

The spring is a hitch hiker on your machine. Nothing to do with a Star.

Bruce

A hitch hiker. That got a laugh.

The primer pickup and feed mechanism (shown below) is what takes primers from the primer magazine and pushes them below the empty case. That L-shaped lever on the right? It’s the primer slide angle lever (shown by the lower arrow). It’s actuated when the primer feed cam (shown by the middle arrow) descends as the tool head is lowered on each stroke. The lever in turn actuates the primer slide in the feed mechanism (shown by the lower arrow), and that’s what picks up a primer from the magazine and positions it underneath the empty case.

With the primer now in position beneath a .38 Special case, it needs a way to be inserted into the case. The Star has a clever way of doing this that takes advantage of the fact that there’s a shaft in the tool head that descends with the tool head when the main lever is pulled. When the main lever is actuated and the tool head descends, the shaft fits through a hole in the shell plate and extends into the base of the reloader. The tip of the shaft pushes one end of a pivoted lever down, and that then pushes the other end of the lever up. That end actuates a plunger that seats the primer into the empty case. Here’s what the lever looks like underneath the reloader.

Like I said, it’s all quite clever. The guy that designed the Star was a mechanical genius.

Here’s a photo of the primer follower rod. It sits on top of a stack of primers in the primer magazine. Its weight pushes the primers down each time one is transferred from the primer magazine by the primer slide.

The knurled knob below allows you to grasp the primer magazine to remove the tube from the primer feed mechanism. It doesn’t unscrew; it’s just a tight slip fit into the feed mechanism.

When I removed the primer magazine, I could see that the tube was made of brass. There were still a couple of primers in it. I doubt they would fire; they were probably soaked in oil.

When I removed the primer slide angle lever screw, the primer slide was pushed out by its spring. As I was disassembling the primer feed mechanism, I found that the primer slide still held a primer. These parts were pretty funky. In a working reloader, you don’t want any oil in this area. It will contaminate the primers and make them inert (we only want “ert” primers when reloading ammo).

Check out the funk on the primer slide angle lever. This machine had been rode hard and put away wet, I think. My spraying it down with WD 40 to clean didn’t help in that regard. But it sure helped to clean up the Star.

I then unscrewed the two screws holding the primer magazine socket to the primer feed mechanism housing. Here are the parts in all their glorious funkiness.

The primer feed mechanism base is attached to the steel floor base with two large Allen bolts.

I removed the Allen bolts and then took the primer feed mechanism base off the machine. It had two pins to locate it on the Star reloader’s base.

Here’s another exploded view photo of the primer feed mechanism and its components.

The photo below shows the reloader’s steel base and where the primer feed mechanism attaches. The upper two arrows point to the Allen bolt attach points. The lower two arrows point to the locating holes (this is where the two pins mentioned above fit). The arrow in the middle points to the hole for the primer slide spring. The rectangular slot is where the primer slide enters the reloader base to position a new primer beneath a .38 Special case.

The steel base is a blued steel part. It’s just like the bluing on a gun. This is a pretty cool feature. There’s a fair amount of corrosion and discoloration on my Star, but it’s part of the machine’s charm. I hit it with some OOOO steel wool and Kroil, but I’m not going to reblue it. I like its patina.

I next turned my attention to the primer magazine (the long tube I pointed out earlier). When I withdrew the primer magazine from its slot, I could see the lower end of the tube was brass, but I still wasn’t sure about the entire tube. I went to work on the tube with Scotchbrite and that did the trick. Hello, Beautiful!

I worked on all of the primer feed mechanism’s brass pieces with Scotchbrite. The brass finish came up nicely. This project is coming together fabulously well.

After cleaning and polishing everything, I reassembled it all. I could have polished everything to a mirror finish, but you know the drill: This is a resurrection, not a restoration. Like I said above, I like the patina look. This machine might be older than me, and I sure don’t look like new. We match, the Star and I do. Old. Funky. The ultimate in personalized patina. That’s us.

In the photo below, you can see the primer cam to the right of the brass magazine tube. It’s the part that actuates the primer angle lever. You’ll get to see it all in a short video in just a minute. People like videos, Gresh tells me. We aim to please.

It’s beautiful, isn’t it?

So how does it all work? Gloriously well, thank you. Take a look:

Next up? It’s going to be the case feed mechanism, and that will be the topic for our next Star blog.

I’ll share with you that the blogging part of this Star resurrection business is lagging behind the actual resurrection. Yep, I actually have the Star running already, and it’s running well. You’ll see how I got there in future blogs, and those blogs will be right here in the not too distant future. But I don’t mind jumping ahead a tiny bit to tell you that I picked up my Model 60 Smith and Wesson yesterday morning and I fired the first few rounds I made on the Star through it. They worked just like they were supposed to, as did the Model 60. That’s a story for a future blog.

Stay tuned, my friends!

Hey, here are the Star resurrection blogs so far, along with our other Resurrection projects!

Art’s 1911 Art

You probably remember good buddy Arthur Benjamins’ guest post on the Smith and Wesson Model 29. Arthur is an artist who recently created a beautiful painting highlighting the iconic 1911 .45 auto (a frequent topic here on ExNotes). He volunteered to do a guest column for the blog and we were quick to say yes. Enjoy, my friends.

Looks That Could Kill

The lady’s expression was thoughtful and disapproving. She stood arms crossed with a stance that parents would adopt with their young child who hadn’t properly screwed back the top on the peanut butter jar. If my junior school teacher had given me that same glare, I would have been guilty of shouting out the correct answer before raising my hand.

The subject of the lady’s gaze was my latest painting on show at the Arizona Fine Art Expo – my image graphically depicted of one of the USA’s legendary man made objects. 2.5 lbs of steel which could fit inside a coat pocket – The famous Colt .45 Automatic Pistol.

When Colt started production in 1911, no one would have guessed the impact it would have on the USA and the industrial world. It would be further immortalized in films, songs, books – and like the AR15, it would find its way into history and folklore. This was no ephemeral object. From an engineering point of view, the venerable Colt .45 pistol is a true work of art, and of the 2.7 million produced from 1911 onwards, all wartime specimens now command premium prices.

A Legend Comes to Life Again

One of the other artists offered to bring in his own for reference details, and the following morning he thrust a mint condition 1911 in a small cardboard box into my thirsty hands.

Thanking the good Lord for the USA’s freedom and Second Amendment, the mere possession of this object would have automatically produced a 5-year custodial sentence in the UK – a once-proud country in which I had lived for four decades and where I had sadly experienced firsthand the contrived and rapid deterioration of the firearms law and the victimization of the British shooting sports members.

However, I wanted to depict this highly developed, three-dimensional jigsaw puzzle and convey its iconic status. The voice of action imagery contributes highly towards a visual impact, but that was not what I was looking for. I chose a harmonious and nestling triumvirate in red, white and blue along with similarly hued starred and swirling banners on a field of noble silver.

The great Andy Warhol would have smiled enigmatically at my painting, and have said something cryptic to me. He would have used three individual images himself and have colored them similarly but my own selective abstraction had steered me away from his own repetitious trademark productions.

However, I gladly accepted his spiritual input which he would have welcomed as it was not widely known that as his own portfolio grew, he was forever running out of ideas, turning to others for renewed inspiration.

Beautiful Memories

At the Expo, it was amazing just how many viewers lamented having gotten rid of their beloved Colt .45 many years ago or wished they had owned one in a time when were considered as surplus and you could barely give them away. I encountered several moist eyes and stories of proud ownership. I was one of those myself years ago, but the UK handgun legislation in 1997 ended all that.

One of the Vietnam vets at the Expo’s American Healing Arts Foundation openly carried a customized 1911 on his hip. It remains one of the ‘carry’ favorites for a great many Americans who refuse to accept anything else.

Feeling I really needed to give the lady more input, I gently approached and said that the last ten years had seen a great upswing of women who had taken up the shooting sport to become proud and responsible gun owners.

“Mm-mm,” she mused, giving me a difficult look. Her brow had furrowed when she returned to the painting. She looked back at me, “We have friends,” she spat, “And THEY have a gun!” With that, she turned on her heels and disappeared from view.

“Only ONE?” I smiled, and with that I straightened Nineteen Eleven on my easel, adjusted the label and awaited further memories from discerning visitors.

You just can’t win ‘m all.

Title: “NINETEEN ELEVEN”
Size: 29” x 32” x 2”
Medium: Acrylic paint on wood.
Value: $5950

For all inquiries, please contact Arthur directly.

The Star Powder Dispenser

I’m going at the Star resurrection slowly, methodically, and piecemeal. I suppose I could completely disassemble the thing, clean, degrease, and polish all the bits and pieces, and then reassemble it all. But I’m a little bit scared I might not remember how it all goes back together, and I don’t want to spread everything out and make my workbench unusable during this resurrection. Nope, slow and easy is the path forward for me. I’m doing it one bite at a time and I am enjoying the meal.

The Star Powder Dispenser

The first bite is the powder dispenser. It’s the deal that automatically dispenses the right amount of propellant each time the Star’s lever is pulled. It consists of a powder hopper subassembly (the upper arrow) and the dispensing mechanism (the lower arrow), as you see in the photo below.

Here’s another photo of the dispensing mechanism. It mounts to the Star’s upper plate (Star calls this upper plate the tool head).

Powder Dispenser Disassembly

Here’s the bottom of the powder hopper. It’s brass and it mounts by threading into the powder dispensing subassembly. The silo that holds the powder is plastic, and I think when it was new the plastic was probably clear. It’s occluded with age. That’s okay. So have I.

This is the powder dispensing mechanism with the powder hopper removed.

Looking inside the powder dispensing mechanism, there were still a few grains of powder left inside from the last time this reloading equipment was used. I’m guessing that was quite a while ago. My Nikon camera and Sigma macro lens do a wonderful job for this kind of photography.

Incidentally, speaking of the last time this device was used…several of our readers suggested that the number etched onto the Star reloader’s base was a social security number. Before identity theft became the problem it is today, it was common for folks to etch their social security number on things to prevent theft. One of our blog readers located the man whose social security number was located on this Star reloader. That owner was born in 1926 and died in 2009. To my surprise, there’s a social security death index where you can find this information. Who knew?

Back to the job at hand: The powder dispensing mechanism is secured to the tool head with two slotted screws. I had applied a bit of Kroil to these screws a day earlier and they unscrewed easily. Kroil is good stuff.

With the two screws removed, the photo below shows what the powder dispenser mechanism looked like. There’s a lower housing, an upper cover, a spring, the two attach screws, and the powder slide. It was all pretty funky when I disassembled it, but I took care of that.

The powder slide is what actually meters (determines the amount) of powder dropped into each cartridge. When the tool head is up (before you actuate the lever), powder drops into a cavity in the slide. When the tool head is lowered (when you actuate the lever), the powder slide is pushed to the left, the cavity containing the powder moves over the powder spout, and the powder drops through the spout into the cartridge case.

Cleaning Things Up

The tube sticking up through the tool head in the photo below is the powder spout. It’s what the left arrow points to. The right arrow points to the bullet seating and crimping die. There was a lot of crud on the die.

The spout was funky, so I ran a patch through it with a cleaning rod.

The bullet seating and crimping die is the last of the three reloading dies. It was super funky. It’s the die that seat the bullet and crimps the cartridge case.

Here’s the “after” photo. I went to work on the die with WD 40 and a toothbrush.

This is the powder dispenser lower housing. It’s funky, too, but just wait.

The photo below shows the powder slide, and it says exactly what I hoped it would say. Note the “BE” on the upper tine, and the “2.7 GR” on the lower tine. That means this powder slide is designed to throw 2.7 grains of Bullseye powder, and that’s a good thing. That powder and that charge, along with a 148-grain lead wadcutter bullet, is the accuracy load in .38 Special. I got lucky; this is exactly what I wanted to see. Note the two rollers between the tines. I’ll explain what they do a little further along in this blog. And yeah, I know, this is another funky piece. But wait; you’ll see.

More funkiness…the powder dispensing mechanism cover.

Here’s another shot of the powder slide and its spring. This is the “before” picture. And that hole in the center? It’s the feature that determines how much powder goes into each cartridge. If you want a different charge on a Star reloader, you need to buy a different power slide. Like I said, I got lucky. This one was set up for 2.7 grains of Bullseye. It’s just what I wanted.

I wiped the powder slide off and, being that it was brass, I wanted to get rid of all the oxidation and then polish it. I was thinking it would be cool if I had some Brasso, but since I’m no longer in the Army I don’t have any. Then I remembered: I have Dillon Rapid Polish brass polish that I use with my Franklin Arsenal brass tumbler, and it does the same thing. I put a little on a rag and used it to polish the powder slide.

Here’s another shot (the “after” photo) of the powder slide.

Note the rollers on the left end of the powder slide. This thing is like a Ducati: It has desmodromic valve actuation. I’ll explain that a little bit further down.

Next up would be the powder dispenser mounting screws. I went to work on them with a Scotchbrite pad and they cleaned up nicely.

Here’s the powder dispenser base and the powder on the tool head.

And here’s the powder dispenser cover, the spring, and the mounting screws reassembled. I used a Scotchbrite pad to clean up the powder dispenser housing and powder dispenser cover, too. They look good.

And finally, here’s the powder hopper reinstalled on the powder dispenser.

Desmo Dispenser Actuation

You might be wondering how the powder dispenser works. It’s really quite clever. When the Star reloader lever is actuated, the tool head moves up and down on the main shaft, bringing the powder dispenser with it. As that occurs, the powder slide translates back and forth as it moves along the curved cam you see in the photo below.

Remember those two rollers in the powder slide?

They follow the vertical cam path shown two photos up. The inner roller rolls along the cam as the tool head moves down, and the outer roller rolls along the cam as the tool head is returned to the up position. This is desmodromic actuation, just like Ducati uses on the their motorcycle intake and exhaust valves. They’re driven open by a cam, and they’re driven closed by a cam. Star could have just used pins instead of rollers, but they went with rollers (a more expensive and more reliable approach, I think). When the tool head moves down, the powder slide takes 2.7 grains of Bullseye powder, shifts it over the powder spout, and gravity does the rest. Take a look.

This is all very cool stuff, and if you get the feeling I’m having a good time bringing the Star back to life, you’re a very perceptive person. If you’re just tuning in to this adventure and you want to see our earlier blogs on the Star reloader resurrection, you can find them here.

Next up? That’s going to be the primer feed mechanism. Stay tuned!