The new Henry Single Shot, brass frame .45 70 rifle. Henry makes a beautiful rifle.
I’m using the time before I pick up my new Henry rifle to prepare the reloaded ammunition I want to test for accuracy. You will recall that in an earlier blog we discussed the three .45 70 load levels shown in modern reloading manuals. As I mentioned in that earlier blog, I use the loads intended for the 1873 Trapdoor Springfield. Those loads were powerful enough to take down all kinds of critters back in the 1800s, and in developing loads for other .45 70 rifles, I’ve found these to be fun to shoot and accurate.
Missouri 405-grain cast .45 70 bullets. These have proven to be very accurate in other .45 70 rifles. I’m trying these and two other bullets in the Henry. The .22 Long Rifle cartridge you see here didn’t come with the Missouri bullets; I added it to give you an idea of just what a monster the .45 70 cartridge is.
My loads are based primarily on the components I have on hand and loads I’ve known to work well in the past. Powders include SR 4759, IMR 4198, IMR 3031, 5744, Varget, and Trail Boss. Bullets include the Remington 405-grain jacketed soft point, the Hornady 300-grain jacketed hollow point, and the Missouri 405-grain cast roundnose.
A photo showing some of the components to be used in this test. When loading, I would never have all of this stuff on the reloading bench, and in particular, I would never have more than one powder on the bench at the same time. The risk of mixing powders is too great. If you have more than one powder container on the bench, it’s very easy to pour the remaining powder in the dispenser into the wrong container (don’t ask me how I know this). When that happens, the only prudent thing to do is throw the mixed powder on the front lawn (it makes good fertilizer).
I like all of the bullets I listed above, but I particularly like the Missouri bullets. The Missouri cast bullets seem to always be available, they are relatively inexpensive, and they are accurate. I’m expecting to see great accuracy from these in the Henry, as they shoot well in the Ruger and the Marlin. The 405-grain Missouri bullets are accurate in the Chiappa 1886, too, but that rifle’s stock design and buttplate make the recoil painful when shooting the heavier Missouri bullets.
Here are the .45 70 loads I will test in the Henry:
When testing for accuracy, it helps to keep things organized. I’ll bring this table to the range with me and record my results as soon I retrieve the targets. All loads will be fired using open sights at 50 yards.
For a more in-depth reloading process overview, I invite you to review our earlier series on loading .45 ACP ammunition. The .45 70 reloading process is very similar to loading handgun ammo. That’s because the .45 70 is nearly a straight-walled cartridge, so the steps are the same. This is what is involved in reloading .45 70 ammo:
The reloading process. It looks complicated, but it’s very intuitive. Most folks who reload find it as enjoyable as shooting.
I use mostly RCBS or Lee reloading dies for all of the cartridges I load. Both are good companies, and both offer superior customer service (if you ever need it, which has only occurred a couple of times for me). I’ve been reloading .45 70 ammo for close to 50 years now, and I’ve been using the same set of RCBS dies the entire time.
A three-die RCBS set. The first die (on the left) deprimes and resizes the fired case to its original diameter. The case has to be lubricated for this step, or else it will stick in the die. The second die is called the expander die. It expands the upper portion of the cartridge case and, if adjusted to do so, adds a flare to the case mouth. The third die (on the right) is the bullet seating and crimping die. It can be adjusted to change the depth to which the bullet is seated, and to add a crimp if you wish to do so.
The expander die (the one in the center of the above three dies) is the one that flares the case mouth. It contains a threaded insert with a step in it to apply the bell mouth to the case.
In this photo, the case expander has been removed from the die to show the diametral step. It is this step that adds a flare to the case mouth.
This is what the case mouth should look like after it has been flared. You don’t want to overdo this step. You just want to get enough of a flare to allow the bullet to get started in the case.
A .45 70 case with a flared mouth. We add the flare to allow the bullet to enter the case with no shaving of the bullet.
After the case has the flare applied, it’s time to clean the primer pockets and then prime each case. I use another RCBS tool to clean any combustion residue from the primer pocket (see our earlier tutorial on loading .45 ACP ammo), and then I use a Lee priming tool to seat the primers.
The Lee priming tool. This is another tool I’ve been using for five decades. It’s a much better way to prime cartridge cases.A CCI 200 large rifle primer in place, ready to be seated in a cartridge case. The .45 70 cartridge requires a Lee No. 8 shellholder, shown in place in this photo.A .45 70 case in the Lee priming tool. Compressing the handle (shown to the right of the priming tool barrel) forces the primer into the case. You do this one at a time for each case.A freshly primed .45 70 cartridge case.
After all the cases have been cleaned, flared, and primed, it’s time to add propellant. I use my RCBS scale along with a powder dispenser to add the right amount of powder to each case. To get the correct amount of powder, I always consult a load manual. I’m showing you different charge weights in this blog, but DO NOT rely on what I’m telling you (or what you read on the Internet from other people) for this information. Always consult a reloading manual. Several reloading manuals are available; I prefer the Lyman manual and it’s the one I use most often. Most of the other manuals are either from bullet manufacturers or propellant manufacturers, so they list only their components. The Lyman manuals are not restricted to a single brand of bullets or powders, as Lyman does not manufacture bullets or powders. Lyman does a good job, I think.
My RCBS powder scale, the reloading tray, and ten .45 70 cases waiting for their propellant charges.
When I load different test loads as I’m describing in this blog, I’ll charge and complete each group separately. Typically, that’s ten cartridges in a group.
Once the cases have been charged with propellant, it’s time to seat and crimp the bullet. I typically use a light crimp for the .45 70. Crimping involves bending the flared case mouth into a crimping groove (sometimes called a cannelure) on the bullet. You crimp a cartridge for three reasons: To prevent the bullet from being forced further into the cartridge case if it is fed into the chamber automatically (as occurs with, say, a 9mm or .45 ACP cartridge), to prevent the bullet from backing out of the case due to the recoil of other cartridges (as might occur in a revolver or a rifle magazine), and to hold the bullet in place when the primer first fires (this allows the flame front to build to a consistent pressure in cartridge prior to driving the bullet down the bore). It’s that last reason that I’m most interested in here. It should make for a more accurate cartridge. Theoretically, neither of the first two reasons is a consideration for a single shot rifle.
A Missouri bullet on top of a charged .45 70 case, ready to be run into the bullet seating die in the RCBS Rockchucker press.
Seating the bullet and crimping it is a bit of a dance. You have to get the bullet seated to the right depth, and then you have to apply the crimp. We use the third and final die in a three-die set to accomplish both. I screw the bullet seating portion of the die fairly far into die initially and then I screw the die into the press to get the bullet seating depth where I want it. In this case, I want the top of the brass case to be nearly even with the top of the bullet’s crimp groove. Then I back the bullet seat all the way up in the die, and screw the die body into the press such that it forms the crimp (there’s a tapered decreased diameter in the die insider diameter that forms crimp). Once I have the crimp where I want it (and the amount of crimp I want), I then screw the bullet seater all the way such that it contacts the bullet. I then make sure everything is jake on the next round (you know, the same crimp and the same cartridge overall length), I make any required small adjustments, and then I lock everything down with the die’s two locknuts and load the remaining cases.
Adjustments on the seating and crimping die. The small-diameter threaded shaft controls fine adjustment of the bullet seating depth. Turning the main die body into or out of the press controls coarse bullet seating depth and crimp. The two locknuts (denoted by the arrows on the left) lock the bullet seating shaft and the die body in place.The Missouri bullet nearly fully seated in the case, but not yet crimped. I’ll seat the bullet just a bit deeper, and in the last few thousandths of an inch on the press stroke, the upper edge of the cartridge case will be crimped by the die around the bullet.A seated and crimped Missouri bullet in a .45 70 brass case. When I bellmouth the cases, I only open them up just enough to allow the bullet to start into the case. When I crimp, I only crimp a little bit. This minimizes working of the brass around the case mouth. Loading at the Trapdoor Springfield levels as I do, and using this minimal amount of opening and then crimping the brass, results in long case life. These cases were purchased in the 1970s and I’m still using them.A completed round. This .45 70 cartridge is ready chamber and fire. It’s a big cartridge.
After I’ve done all of the above, I immediately label the packaged, reloaded ammo so that I know what I have. I can’t rely on my memory and do this later; I always perform the labeling operation as soon as the reloading operations are complete.
A box of 50 .45 70 cartridges labeled and ready to take to the range. I always label my loads as soon as I finish them.Because these are cartridges loaded differently for accuracy testing in the new Henry rifle, I included a map inside the cartridge container to identify how each group has been loaded.Ready to go to the range. Reloaded cartridges are less expensive than factory ammunition, and I will be able to find which combination of components performs with the greatest accuracy in my new Henry rifle. With factory ammo, you pay more and you get what you get in terms of accuracy.
There you have it. I have all the .45 70 ammunition I want to test loaded, boxed, labeled, and ready to go to the range. Now all I have to do is take possession of my new Henry, head out to the West End Gun Club, and see what works best. You’ll get to see it, too, right here on the ExNotes blog.
Check out our earlier Henry Single Shot stories here:
The new Henry Single Shot. Mine has exceptionally fancy walnut. I am a soft touch when fancy walnut is involved.
I’m about a week away from having sufficiently cooled (at least in the Peoples Republik of Kalifornia’s eyes), which is another way of saying I have 7 days left until my 10-day waiting period is over, and then I’ll be able to pick up my new Henry .45 70 Single Shot. (“Single Shot” is capitalized because it’s a proper noun; it’s Henry’s official name for this rifle.)
Another view showing the entire Henry Single Shot rifle. I’ll get better photos when I get to the range; I shot these photos at the dealer.
I am loading a series of cartridges to test for accuracy in the new Henry and I’m going to tell you about the loads, but before I get into that I want to tell you about the three levels of reloads you find in the .45 70 reloading manuals. I’ll post about the different loads (and reloading those rounds) in the next blog.
A Sense of Scale: A .22 Long Rifle cartridge, a 405-grain Missouri cast .45 70 bullet (just the bullet is bigger in both length and diameter than an entire .22 cartridge), and a reloaded .45 70 cartridge.
.45 70 History
I’ve been a student of the .45 70 for close to 50 years, and the cartridge is nearly 150 years old. One of the best sources of information on the early .45 70 rifles is Jack Behn’s touchstone reference shown below.
One of the best references on early .45 70 rifles is Jack Behn’s excellent 1956 book. It was published by the Gun Room Press, an imprint owned by the now defunct Rutgers Gun Store. When I picked up my 1973 Colin D. MacManus 1911 .45 auto, it was from the Rutgers Gun Store in Highland Park, New Jersey.
At the end of the Civil War, the Army knew it needed a breechloading rifle (one that loaded from the rear with metallic cartridges). This resulted in development of the 1873 Springfield rifle and the .45 70 500 cartridge, so designated because it fired a 500-grain, .458-inch diameter lead cartridge propelled by 70 grains of black powder. That was later changed to a 405-grain lead cartridge because soldiers complained that recoil with the 500-grain projectile was excessive.
An 1873 Trapdoor Springfield rifle.
That .45 70 Trapdoor Springfield remained in service from 1873 through the Spanish American War and our wars against the Plains Indians. It was also the rifle most frequently used by buffalo hunters to nearly exterminate the American bison, which was really little more than an extension of the war against the Indians (it’s not widely known, but the dominant reason the U.S. Government encouraged eradication of the American bison was because it was the principal source of food, shelter, and clothing for the Indians).
The Trapdoor action. New in its day, it is antiquated today. It is a weaker action than are those used in modern single shot and lever action rifles, and it therefore is loaded to lower chamber pressures.
Trapdoor Springfield .45 70 Loads
The “Trapdoor” designation for the 1873 Springfield refers to the action design. The Springfield’s action had a hinged element that rotated forward to allow loading a cartridge, which was then closed and locked in place prior to firing a round. It was state of the art in 1873, but it was inherently weak and limited the pressures to which ammunition could be loaded. But it was enough. The Springfield action could withstand pressures up to around 17,000 psi, sufficient to launch a 405-grain projectile at velocities a little north of 1400 feet per second. It was more than enough to kill a man, and in fact, it was enough to kill a buffalo.
Winchester and Marlin .45 70 Loads
The .45 70 cartridge had a lot going for it, and in 1886, Winchester introduced a .45 70 lever action repeater (their Model 1886). Marlin had previously introduced a .45 70 lever action repeater in 1881. The Winchester and Marlin rifles had two advantages: They could fire repeatedly by operating the lever action and squeezing the trigger, and the lever gun actions were stronger (so they could be loaded to higher pressures with resulting higher velocities). I don’t know that any of the ammo companies loaded the cartridge to the higher pressures the Winchester and Marlin rifles could handle back in those days (probably out of a fear that the ammo might be used in the weaker Springfield action), but folks who reload today and who have either a Marlin or a Winchester can load their ammunition to the higher levels allowed by the lever gun receivers.
The reloading manuals show that the Model 1895 Marlin and Model 1886 Winchester lever actions can handle chamber pressures in the 27,000 psi range. That’s enough to drive a 405-grain bullet out at about 1700 feet per second. That’s a smoking hot load.
This is a Chiappa reproduction of the 1886 Winchester rifle, chambered in .45 70. This is a lever action rifle.The 1886 Chiappa reproduction. The curved metal buttplate is a faithful reproduction of the original Winchester design, and it is punishing when the hammer drops. Nice wood, huh?A modern Marlin 1895. When I saw this one on the rack, I knew I had to have it. I’ve owned the rifle about 25 years now. It’s very accurate, and it regularly shoots into an inch with open sights at 50 yards.
Ruger No. 1 and No. 3 .45 70 Loads
The next step in the .45 70 evolutionary chain? That would be the single shot rifles offered by Ruger starting in the 1970s. Ruger had two: Their No. 1 rifle and the No. 3. Both use the same action, and it’s strong. In the Ruger rifles, you can load .45 70 ammunition to nearly the same velocities and the same pressures as a .458 Winchester Magnum, which is to say, crazy levels (at least in terms of recoil). Ruger rifles chambered in .45 70 can handle pressures approaching 40,000 psi, with 405-grain bullet velocities north of 2,000 feet per second. I’ve done this. It’s no fun.
A Ruger No. 1 falling block rifle. This is the rare 26-inch barreled version with figured Circassian walnut. Ruger only made a limited number of these variants and most of them have very plain wood. It’s pretty, but the Marlin shown above is more accurate.
.45 70 Loads: The Bottom Line
The upshot of all this? There are three levels to which you can reload .45 70 ammunition: The Trapdoor Springfield level, the 1886 Winchester/Marlin level, and the Ruger level. When you see this in a reloading manual, you’ll see three sets of reloading data, designated separately as explained in this blog.
What does all this mean in the real world? Your mileage may vary, but for me, I never venture into the Marlin/Winchester and Ruger .45 70 reloading levels. There’s just too much recoil, and you don’t need to go there for accuracy. I would argue further that you don’t need to go there for lethality (the .45 70 in 1873 Trapdoor Springfields killed a lot of buffalo). I stick to the Springfield levels for all of my rifles (even though I could go higher), and that’s how I’m going to load for the new Henry rifle, too.
More Tales of the Gun here, including detailed info on each of the rifles shown above!
I sure was surprised a couple of days ago. While sheltered in place, or locked down, or in self-isolation, or whatever the nom du jour is, I received an email from my local FFL telling me that my Henry Rifle had arrived. Wow, I didn’t even know it had been shipped yet! You know the deal…I’m here in California and I have to wait 10 days so that I can cool sufficiently before taking possession of the new rifle, but I wanted to get the process started. I made an appointment so as not to be around too many other people and off I went. Truth be told, it felt great just getting out of the house, and I felt even better when I saw the Henry .45 70. It’s beautiful.
You can refer to our earlier blog for the first part of the Henry story. In it, I told about asking their marketing director (good buddy Dan) to try to get me one with a nice piece of walnut, and wow, did they ever! When I arrived at the FFL, the lighting at the store was not conducive to great photography, but I did my best:
What’s really nice about this rifle is that the stock is highly figured on both sides, and it is what I would call exhibition grade walnut. I’m guessing it’s American walnut, as Henry prides itself on being made in America. I’ve been collecting rifles for a good half century now, and I have some with really nice wood. The new Henry jumped to the head of the pack. It’s stunning.
I had hoped to have a more in depth chat with Dan this week, but like all companies, Henry has its hands full right now. That’s okay; we’ll get to chat later. What Dan told me earlier is that all these rifles are nice, and they are a cut above what one would normally see in a rifle in this price range. I think he’s being too modest. I’ve seen and I own rifles that cost two to four times as much as this Henry, and the fit and finish on those is not as nice as this. It truly is a beautiful rifle. My compliments to Henry USA!
I’ve already started loading .45 70 for the Henry ammo development effort, and I think the next blog will be on that topic. This is going to be fun, folks. I can’t wait to talk possession of the rifle and I can’t wait to start shooting it. I’m eager to see how the rifle performs, and I’m equally eager to get the Henry on the bench and out in the sunlight so I can get better photos for you…this rifle deserves it!
We’re going through a rough patch right now, and when I say we, I mean that literally. We, as in the whole world, are working through a terrible situation. But it will pass, and when it does, we’ll be better people. I’ve cut back substantially on the time I spend on social media for a lot of reasons, not the least of which is my deep disappointment in people who are using the current world health situation to post stupid stuff. But every once in a while you see something good, and this meme from Southern Pride and Dixie Proud was one of those rare occasions:
The story today, boys and girls, is about Ruger’s Gunsite Scout Rifle, or as Ruger calls it, the GSR.
My Ruger GSR. I have the blue steel version in .308 Winchester, which was the way Ruger originally offered the rifle. Ruger also makes a stainless version in .308, and both blue and stainless versions in .223 Remington. In the last few years, Ruger started offering these rifles in several other calibers, with other stock materials, too.
To keep a short story short, here’s the bottom line: This thing is one of the most accurate iron-sighted rifles I’ve ever owned. To make a short story a little less short, I have to tell you the rifle’s background and a bit about how my good buddy Jim Wile (rest in peace, Jim) and I came to buy our GSRs.
A long, long time ago, in a far away galaxy, there was this guy named Colonel Jeff Cooper who sort of became a god among mortals on all things gun related. Cooper had a lot of good ideas on handguns and was well published in his field. The Colonel started a shooting school (it still exists) that teaches marksmanship and tactics in Arizona called the Gunsite Academy (attending one of their classes is on my bucket list; good buddies Marty and Rex have done so). The good Colonel also had a few ideas on what would make a good scout rifle, with his concept being something light, accurate, short barreled, chambered in a respectable cartridge, and capable of mounting a low-powered scope with lots of eye relief. The idea floated around in the gun world for a few years, Steyr produced an overpriced rifle meeting the criteria, and then Ruger picked up the concept. About a decade ago, Ruger introduced their GSR, chambered in .308 Winchester (the 7.62 NATO round). At the time, they retailed for about a thousand bucks. That’s a lot of money, but as you know, I know people. Jim and I got our GSR rifles for $800 (a pretty good deal, I think).
Jim Wile and I bought the GSRs at the same time while shopping under the influence. I had lost a couple of teeth (sometimes this happens in political discussions, sometimes it happens as we grow older, and sometimes it happens in motorcycle crashes; I need not go into the details of my toothlessness here). I was getting a new implant (yep, I have a couple of fake teeth), and that required oral surgery and anesthesia. Good buddy Jim drove me to the oral surgeon and I was still half looped from the anesthesia when we got back to my place. We’d been talking about these new Ruger GRS rifles for a while, and I guess I called a woman I know at Turner’s. I can’t say I wouldn’t have done it if not under the influence of the tooth doc’s elixers, so I won’t, but to keep this story from growing too long, I’ll just say I was a little surprised when Jim told me the next day what we had done. Ten days later we both owned new GSRs.
The GSR’s laminated stock. The rifle comes with spacers so you can adjust the length of pull (that’s the distance between the trigger and the buttplate). It’s a comfortable and stable platform.The GSR has a short barrel, fixed sights, and two provisions for scope mounting: A forward-mounted Picatinny rail, and Ruger’s standard scope rings and slots above the receiver.
They are cool rifles. The GSR rifle has a Parkerized finish (which made it an immediate winner in my book), a laminated stock, scope rings and a Picatinny rail, and a couple of recoil pad spacers so you can increase the length of pull to adjust it to what you like. I didn’t put my two spacers in; I liked the rifle as delivered with its short stock. The rifle had two 10-round metal mags that rattled a lot; I bought a plastic 5-round mag and that’s all I use (I like the sleeker look and the fact that it doesn’t rattle). I don’t need 10 rounds. Five will do just fine, thank you.
I don’t shoot the GSR that often, but I like it a lot. It is a comfortable and handy rifle. If I had a truck it would be a truck gun.
My good buddy, the late Jim Wile. Jim changed motorcycles about as often as I changed underwear. This photo was on a ride through Arizona. We were headed into Prescott (a glorious ride in the mountains) when I shot this photo.
Before Jim went to his reward, he and I spent a lot of time doing the things God put us here to do, which is to say we covered a lot of miles on our motorcycles and we spent a lot of time at the gun club sending lead downrange. On one of our trips to the range, Jim brought along a sheet of bulletproof glass. I was kind of floored when he pulled it out of his car and told me what it was. Bulletproof glass? Bitchin’! I’ll take that challenge!
That big old pane of superthick glass was the same stuff you see in banks. Before he retired, Jim owned one of those PayDay advance stores and I think the state required him to use bulletproof glass. Or maybe Jim just thought it would be a cool thing to have in his store. Whatever. It was a good inch (at least an inch) think and the pane was about 15 inches tall and 3 feet wide. Maybe it was designed to go on top of a counter. It had a real light greenish hue to it. If you’ve ever been in a bank, you’ve seen this stuff.
You can probably guess where this story is going. Yep, we set that pane up, leaning against a rock, about 50 feet out and went to work. Jim started shooting at it with a .357 Magnum Ruger SP 100 revolver. Pew! Pew! Pew! You know, just to see if it really was bulletproof. I mean, he had owned it for years, and I suppose ol’ Jim had been wondering for a long time. Just curious, man. Big kid stuff. And that’s what we were that day. Two kids in their 60s shooting at bulletproof glass. If we had been 50 or 60 years younger, we would have been blowing up model cars with cherry bombs. This day was devoted to shooting bulletproof glass, just to see if it really was. Bulletproof glass. Let’s check it out!
Jim’s .357 bullets didn’t even dent that glass. We looked at the pane’s surface up close, and we could maybe see a dust shadow where the .357 slugs had flattened. But they didn’t penetrate or mark the glass at all. This was cool stuff. It really was bulletproof. If I worked in a bank, I remember thinking, I would have felt pretty good about all this, hunkered down behind that green translucent armor. John Dillinger? No big deal. Bulletproof glass, see?
Okay, I thought, enough pussy-footing around (can you even say that any more?). It was time to call up the heavy artillery. I loaded the Ruger GSR with one of my .308 cartridges using a 173-grain full metal jacket bullet and drew a bead. You know, just to see what would happen. Sight alignment. Front sight focus. Breath control. Concentration. Slow, steady squeeze, and BOOOOM!!!
You know, a .357 Magnum is a powerful handgun, and you can sort of feel its power in the air when a round lights off. But when you hear a .308 rifle let loose, there’s no comparison. It’s God calling, and He wants to talk to YOU. You damn well better be paying attention. Firing a high-powered rifle, you see, is a religious experience.
The result? The .308 went through the “bulletproof” glass like it wasn’t even there, with severe spall on the exit side. It made a .30-caliber hole going into the pane and left a two-and-a-half-inch conical hole going out. And that 173-grain copper-jacketed-boat-tailed projectile probably didn’t even notice what it had just whizzed through. Good Gawd!
Spall from a shaped charge warhead, entering the armor plate on the left and exiting on the right. You can see how much bigger the exit hole is. And all that fragmentation spraying out to the right? That’s the armor itself, doing most of the damage inside the vehicle.
So, about that spall thing: Spallation is what happens when a high-speed projectile encounters a brittle barrier. It’s a cone of material that splinters into whatever you are shooting. You’ve probably seen this without realizing what you were looking at if you’ve ever seen a window shot with a BB gun. It’s the conical shaped hole on the opposite side of glass, the glass that shatters and flies in the direction of the BB (don’t ask me how I know this; let’s just say there were a lot of windows where I grew up that displayed classic spallation, and leave it at that). Spallation is the same physics effect that does most of the damage in an enemy tank when you hit one with an antitank warhead (the tank’s armor “spalls” into the interior of the vehicle and completely ruins the rest of the day for the crew). It’s what you see in that photo above.
Anyway, seeing that coned-out “bulletproof” pane really opened my eyes to the tremendous power a .308 rifle has over a .357 handgun. Yeah, it was bulletproof glass, but only up to a point. Bring enough gun, and bulletproof don’t mean diddly squat (“diddly squat” is a munitions term meaning of negligible value). And while I’m expanding the lexicon here, I guess I’ll mention that “bring enough gun” probably applies to a lot of situations. In this situation, bulletproof glass was no match for the Ruger GSR. If I had been thinking, I would have grabbed a photo or two of that pane, but I wasn’t and I didn’t. I was thinking if I was a pencil-necked geek of a bank teller and Dillinger walked in with a .308 rifle, I would probably pee my pants.
The bulletproof glass engineering evaluations aside, I had my Ruger GSR and you know I had to start testing its accuracy with different loads. What I noticed right away is that the rear aperture sight on my rifle didn’t have enough range of adjustment. With the rear sight cranked all the way over to the left, the rifle still shot to the right of my point of aim at 100 yards. I thought maybe I could compensate for it with the right reload, but I couldn’t, so the rifle went back to Ruger. They had it back to me in a couple of weeks after hogging out the stock to completely free float the barrel, and the problem was gone. I thought they did an amateurish bit of woodworking on the warranty repair, but it sure did the trick. The GSR shot to point of aim with the rear peep centered on the rifle. I went through my standard load development program with a variety of loads and propellants, and one stood out. Here’s the target I shot with it:
This is one of the best open sights targets I’ve ever shot. I put 15 rounds into the 10-ring at 100 yards with my Ruger GSR. It almost looks like I made a sight adjustment on this target, but I did not. I probably held the rifle slightly differently on the last 5 rounds.
The load for the target you see above used 180-grain Nosler jacketed softpoint boattail bullets (their Part Number 27567), a 2.800-inch cartridge overall length, no crimp on the bullet, 40.0 grains of Varget propellant, a CCI 200 primer, and Remington brass. The Nosler bullets are expensive, as I recall. I had them on the bench for probably 20 years or more and I just decided to use them up as part of the load development for the Ruger. I still have a few left, and when I use them up I’ll buy more.
The Ruger GSRs list at around $1200 now on the Ruger website (the typical retail price is about $1000), and you can still find good deals on them. I’ve seen the .223 GSR go on sale for as little as $599 at Turner’s, our local gunstore chain here in California. That’s a hell of a deal. They are offered in more calibers, too, including the new 350 Legend and the 450 Bushmaster (two cartridges with which I have zero experience, but they sure seem cool). The other calibers aside, the .308 is still the king in my opinion, and I sure can’t argue with its accuracy. These are cool guns. You need one. Colonel Cooper was right.
Henry Single Shot rifles. The steel-framed ones have a conventional pistol grip stock. The brass-framed rifles have a straight grip. They are available in chamberings ranging from .223 to .45 70.
About four years ago I went to the range with my good buddy TK. TK is a cool guy and he had a rifle I didn’t know much about. It was a new .44 Magnum Henry lever action rifle with a brass receiver and, in a word, it was stunning. The brass and the bluing were highly polished, the walnut stock was highly figured, and wow, was it ever accurate. I’d seen Henry rifles before but I had never handled or fired one, and when TK let me shoot his…well, let me put it this way: Wow! TK was impressed with my marksmanship and so was I. I put five .44 slugs through a hole you could cover with a quarter, and folks, with open sights, that’s good shooting. The rifle looked, felt, handled, and shot the way a rifle should.
Just a couple of weeks ago, good buddy Greg and I were on the range again and Greg had a new toy. He had recently purchased an older Harrington and Richardson break open rifle in .223, and it was nice. Harrington and Richardson stopped making their rifles some time ago, and I always thought having one in .45 70 would be the right thing to do. But I had never gotten around to scratching that itch. Maybe it was time to do something about that, I thought.
I like the concept of break open rifle, and I love the concept of a single shot. They are just cool. You have to make every shot count, and that’s appealing to me. A Ruger No. 1 or a Ruger No. 3 single shot rifle has always been my first choice. There’s something about a single shot rifle that floats my boat.
Seeing Greg’s H&R single shot .223 got me to thinking about Henry rifles again, probably because I’d seen something on the web about Henry having introduced a new single shot. I remembered the quality of TK’s Henry, and I love the break open configuration I was seeing on Greg’s H&R. It reminded me of my very first rifle…a .177 caliber pellet gun I’ve had since I was a kid wandering the woods in New Jersey. What I had in mind was a Henry single shot rifle with a brass frame chambered in .45 70 (one of the world’s all-time great cartridges). Throw in some fancy walnut, and it would be perfect. It would be just what the doctor ordered.
One of the artisan’s at the Henry plant handling a .45 70 single shot rifle. Check out the walnut!
Hmmmm. Brass. Walnut. .45 70. The wheels were turning, and that prompted a visit to Henry’s website. What’s this? A contact form? Hmmmm again. Would it be possible to get a Henry Single Shot in .45 70, brass framed, with hand-selected walnut? Well, it seems the Henry folks had checked out our ExNotes gun page, and the answer was swift: Yep, they could help me on this.
So, to make a long story a little less long, I’ve been corresponding with Henry USA and I bought one of their brass frame single shot rifles. The good folks at Henry assured me it will have nice walnut. I’m talking to the Henry marketing director to learn a little more about the company tomorrow and I’ll be posting a blog about that in the near future. I’ll soon have a new Henry rifle in the ExNotes armory, and you can bet I’m going to have lots to say about it.
Stay tuned, folks. You’ll read all about it right here.
The year was 1971 and I was 20 years old. Those were the good old days. Movies were wildly entertaining, it was real easy to tell the good guys from the bad guys, movie stars kept their political opinions to themselves, and being politically correct hadn’t been invented yet. And the movies were better for it. To me, there’s one movie in particular that stands out: Dirty Harry.
Dirty Harry was an exceptional movie for its time and it was an iconic role for Eastwood: Inspector Harry Callahan of the San Francisco Police Department. Eastwood went on to make several Dirty Harry movies. The Callahan role propelled Eastwood’s career enormously. But Callahan was only one of two stars in Dirty Harry. The other was Smith and Wesson’s Model 29 .44 Magnum revolver. Much as I like Clint Eastwood, I liked the Model 29 better, and yep, I bought a Model 29 after seeing Dirty Harry. I’ll get to that in a minute.
Susie and I were flipping through movies on Netflix a few nights ago and Dirty Harry was on the menu. “Put it on,” Sue said, with some resignation. “You know you want to watch it.” She was right. I did. Before I get into the Model 29 and all that, watch the video clip below. It’s a classic bit of tough guyism, and it’s a scene a lot of guys like me burned into our mental firmware.
So…back to the Model 29. Before Dirty Harry, Smith and Wesson didn’t quite know what to do with their Model 29. The police didn’t want it (the .44 Magnum is wildly overpowered as a police cartridge), nearly everyone who tried the cartridge back then took a pass, and the gun just kind of languished at the dealers. Oh, I know you read Elmer Keith and you’re a keyboard commando and all that, but let me tell you…in the ’50s (when the .44 Magnum was introduced) and on into the ’60s, nobody was buying them. The guns retailed in the mid-$150 range in those early years, but they just weren’t moving. Then Dirty Harry hit the big screen, and everything changed. Whaddaya know, everyone wanted a Model 29. I know. I was one of them. I was there.
You couldn’t find a Model 29 anywhere after Dirty Harry. It was product placement before anyone knew what product placement was, and all those N-frame Smiths gathering dust in dealer showcases vanished. In 1971 the MSRP for a new Model 29 was $183, but all that changed after Dirty Harry. They were going for $500 when you could find one on the used gun market, and that wasn’t very often. Everyone wanted to be Dirty Harry Callahan, including me. But I had an “in.” I had people. My father was an Olympic-class competitive trap shooter and he had contacts in the gun world. Dad put the word out and one of his buddies (a firearms wholesaler in south Jersey) had a brand new Model 29 (if I wanted it, he said) at the discounted price of $150. If I wanted it. Like I could say no. It’s good to know people, and I was in. Inspector Callahan, move over.
My Model 29. It’s a beautiful handgun and it’s a good shooter. I bought the custom grips at a gun show in Dallas back in the 1970s.
I shot the hell out of that Model 29 in New Jersey and then in Texas when I went in the Army, until it loosened up so much I didn’t want to shoot it any more. I put a notice up on a bulletin board at Fort Bliss and the next day an artillery captain bought it from me for, you guessed it, $500. I no longer owned a Model 29, but that was only a temporary situation. I reached out to my peeps back in New Jersey (it was my home of record and I was still a legal resident) and a week later I had another new Model 29. It’s the one I have today and the one you see in these photos.
The early Model 29s were of impeccable quality. Note the rollmarking and how it is free of any distortion or metal upset around the letters. Check out the deep blue. These are amazing handguns.
So when Sue and I watched Dirty Harry the other night, I realized it had been more than a few years since I shot my Model 29. I checked the ammo locker and I had some .44 Magnum ammo I had reloaded back in 2012. I dug the Model 29 out of the safe that evening, and the next day I was on the range. You know what? I still do a pretty good Dirty Harry. Inspector Callahan has nothing on me.
Five-shot groups at 50 feet on an Alco target. I shot the upper left target first and scored a decent group that was high right. The rear sight was way to the right, so I centered it and shot a second group at the same target. I moved over to the target on the right, then down to the left target on the bottom row. Ah, one went high on that one, but I was getting familiar with the Model 29 again. My last group was the lower right target, and that’s how you do it. The load was the 240-grain Speer swaged semi-wadcutter over 5.6 grains of Bullseye (light for a .44 Magnum, but still enough to get your attention). Even Dirty Harry didn’t shoot full-bore .44 Magnum loads!
So back to that opening Dirty Harry scene…you know, the “Do you feel lucky, punk?” bit. It is classic Hollywood tough guy babble, but I had no idea of its reach until we had a bunch of Chinese guys come over from Zongshen to ride across the United States (you can and should read about that in 5000 Miles at 8000 RPM). We had a couple of days to kill before starting our epic journey, and when we asked the Chinese what they wanted to do, their answer was immediate: We want to shoot a gun. You know. ‘Murica, and all that. Hey, I was only too happy to oblige and we were off to the gun club. After sending a lot of lead downrange with a Ruger Mini 14, our Chinese guests then wanted to visit a gun store (the full American experience, you know), so we rolled over to Bass Pro.
I was a little nervous because the Chinese like to take pictures (and guys like me don’t like anyone, especially foreigners, taking our pictures in gun stores). Our Chinese guests were cool when I told them to put their cameras away, but I need not have worried. The Bass Pro folks were intrigued by all of this when we walked in. They invited our Chinese guests to take all the photos they wanted, and then they allowed them to handle the guns. That was really cool. One of the Bass Pro sales dudes gave Hugo, the young Zongshen rep, a monstrous .500 Smith and Wesson revolver. The Chinese guys had their cameras on Hugo in a heartbeat as he handled that massive hand cannon. Hugo knew what to do. With a slight Chinese accent (but otherwise perfect English) he was transformed. Hugo became Dirty Harry:
I know what you guys are thinking. Did I fire six shots, or only five? Tell the truth, in all this excitement, I kind of lost track myself. What you need to ask yourself is: Do I feel lucky?
Well, do ya, punk?
Hugo was amazing and we all (me, the Chinese guys, and the Bass Pro staff) had a good laugh. Hugo was born on the other side of the world a good 30 years afterDirty Harry hit the big screen, but he knew that line perfectly. And he knew it was part of the whole Smith and Wesson schtick. I guess it’s no small wonder. It was both the opening and closing scenes of Dirty Harry. Take a look:
Me? I still have my Model 29, and I can still hit the target with it. I still feel lucky, too.
The Davidson’s Circassian walnut Ruger Mini 14. It was a limited production item offered for sale about 10 years ago.
My Mini 14 quest for accuracy is over. I have the answer and an honest-to-God 1.5 MOA Mini 14. With open sights. At 100 yards. Yippeeee!
It’s been an interesting journey.
Davidson’s Circassian Mini 14
I like rifles with fine walnut, and about a decade ago when Davidson’s (a large Ruger distributor) offered a limited quantity of Mini 14 rifles with Circasssian walnut stocks, I had to have one. Most of the Circassian Mini 14 rifles had very plain wood, but when I saw the one you see here, I pulled the Buy Now trigger. That’s a light trigger, I’ve learned. If it’s for a rifle with highly-figured walnut, in my case you might even say it’s a hair trigger.
Another shot of the Circassian walnut on the Davidson’s Mini 14. That’s a Springfield Armory M1A in the background. I like fancy walnut.
The problem I had is that Davidson’s Circassian Mini 14 wasn’t legal in California because of its two 30-round magazines and flash suppressor. Here in the Peoples Republik of Kalifornia (Gavinland, if you will), we can’t have mags that hold more than 10 rounds, and semi-auto rifles with flash suppressors are verboten. So I had the rifle shipped with no magazines to an outfit with a Class III license, and they replaced the flash suppressor with a muzzle brake. Then I had to wait my state-mandated 10-day cooling off period. After I had chilled sufficiently, the rifle was mine.
The muzzle brake on my Mini 14. It may seem silly to have a muzzle brake on a .223 rifle, but if you fire this rifle and then a Mini 14 without a muzzle brake, there is a perceptible difference in recoil.
I think the muzzle brake looks better than the flash suppressor, and I don’t need a 30-round magazine. I hated the idea of leaving those 30-round mags with the guy I bought the rifle from (they were worth about $80), but hey, our mush-minded legislators think they made the Golden State safer and that’s what matters.
My rifle has a 16-inch barrel (most Mini 14 rifles have 18-inch barrels), which looks cool but it is not conducive to great accuracy. There’s nothing inherent to the shorter barrel in and of itself that hurts accuracy, but what that shorter barrel does is reduce the sight radius. A longer sight radius offers an accuracy advantage, a shorter one can work against accuracy.
The bottom line? The rifle is beautiful. I shoot it a lot, and whenever I’m on the range with it, folks are taken with it. It draws a crowd. You just don’t see Mini 14 rifles with wood like mine. But it wasn’t terribly accurate. I was going to change that. And I did.
The First Accuracy Mod: Tech-Sights
I did not like the standard rear sight on my Mini 14. To adjust elevation, you had to loosen the windage adjustment and then rotate the entire rear aperture, and to adjust windage you had to loosen both Allen screws at the base of the sight and move it. There was not indexing for windage, so where you ended up was only repeatable with a repeated fire, check the point of impact, loosen the sight, adjust, tighten the sight, fire again, and repeat until you were happy. I also didn’t like the range of elevation adjustment on the stock sight; it seemed liked the aperture had to be way too high to bring my shots to the point of aim.
The Tech-Sights rear sight on a Mini 14. It’s a first class product, and it is much better than the stock Mini 14 rear sight.
The hot setup is a replacement rear sight from Tech-Sights. It was about $70, but it was well worth it. The Tech-Sights rear sight is click adjustable for both windage and elevation, and it is repeatable when I make adjustments. It’s a much better mousetrap.
Mini 14 Accuracy Loads
I tried different reloading recipes until the cows come home, and over the last decade, I’ve converged on two that gave the best results in my Mini 14. Both use inexpensive Hornady full metal jacket boat tail bullets. The first is the 55-grain Hornady FMJBT with 26.2 grains of IMR 4320 propellant, a Winchester small rifle primer, and a cartridge overall length of 2.255 inches. That’s a near max load, and the only reason I don’t run it up to the max load is the 26.2 grains damn near fill the .223 case. The second favored load is the Hornady 62-grain FMJBT bullet with 23.2 grains of ARComp propellant. I use the same primer and overall cartridge length as the first load.
Hornady 55-grain full metal jacket boat tail bullets. The boat tail reduces aerodynamic drag and allows a flatter trajectory, or so the theory goes. These are accurate bullets with the right load.
Either bullet (Hornady’s 55-grain or 62-grain FMJBT) can usually be purchased for something between $7.50 and $8.00 per hundred when they are on sale. I probably get 10 emails a day from the different reloading houses advertising their sales, and when they throw free shipping into the mix, I’m in. You usually have to order above $100 in stuff to get the free shipping, and that’s why I have 1400 of the 62-grain Hornady bullets inbound. I’ll burn through those in 6 months or so. Yeah, I shoot my Mini 14 a lot.
I don’t crimp the bullets in either of the above loads, and I’ve found that what kind of brass I use doesn’t make a difference in group size. Using brass from different manufacturers does move the group around, though, so when I load, I do so using only one kind of brass for each lot of ammo. For me, that is usually either Remington or military brass. I have a good supply of both.
Factory versus Reloaded Ammo in the Mini 14
There may be good factory ammo out there that groups well in the Mini 14, but I haven’t found it. I buy bulk factory only to get the brass (believe it or not, when loaded bulk ammo goes on sale, I can actually buy it for less than what unprimed brass costs). When I shoot the bulk factory ammo, the accuracy is truly abysmal. At 100 yards from a bench rest, a 20-shot Remington bulk ammo group spans about 12 inches. For all you keyboard commandos out there…I know, you can do better. One guy keeps commenting that he can shoot the lock off a Cadillac with his Mini 14. Whatever. I’m reporting my results, and with factory ammo, they’re terrible.
With either of the two reloading recipes described above, I can get the group size down to about the size of the 9-ring on a 100-yard target. That’s a big improvement from factory ammo and the other loads I’ve tried. The problem, though, was the rifle wasn’t consistent. I could get a good group, but then the next one would open up. Then I’d get another good group, but it would shift on the target from the last group.
Bedding the Mini 14 Action
Past accuracy quests with bolt action rifle always included bedding the action. What that means is creating a glass-fiber-impregnated epoxy bed for the barreled action in the stock. It’s a lot trickier on a Garand-style rifle (which the Mini 14 is) than a bolt action, because the Garand-type action doesn’t have a conventional recoil lug or action screws. On the Mini 14, two tabs on the receiver fit into sheet metal inserts in the stock, and the trigger group’s trigger guard pivots to lock the whole mess (barreled action, stock, and trigger group) together. On my rifle, I could detect a minor amount of play between the stock and the barreled action, both fore-and-aft and left-to-right.
The jeweled bolt on my Mini 14. This photo doesn’t really add to the story and the bolt jeweling does nothing to improve accuracy, but I love the look. The jeweling was done by my good buddy TJ at TJ’s Custom Gunworks. I locked the bolt to the rear for the next photo so you could see the glass bedding.That brown stuff is the glass bedding below the action, between the receiver and the stock. Bedding a Mini 14 is a bit tricky, but it worked out well for me.You can just barely see that there is Acraglas bedding beneath the receiver, between it and the stock. The reason you can barely see it is because I did it well.
I used Brownell’s Acraglas as the bedding compound, and after reading and watching everything I could on the Internet about glass bedding a Mini 14, I did so with mine. It turned out well, I think. There is zero play between the barreled action and the stock now.
ASI’s Mini 14 Gas Port Kit
I wrote about this before in a previous blog. The Mini 14 throws brass into the next county, and that’s a real pain in the ass. I’ve actually dented cars behind the firing line with brass ejected from my Mini 14. The reason the Mini’s ejection is so violent is that Ruger overdesigned the ejection approach to make the rifle reliable. Ruger uses a gas port with an approximate 0.085-inch-diameter opening to port propellant gas to the op rod, and that pretty much guarantees that no matter what type of ammo you’re shooting, the rifle will function. It’s way more gas pressure than the op rod needs, though, and the ejection is so energetic that the barreled action doesn’t stay in the same place after each round. That hurts accuracy.
Mini 14 gas ports. The three on the left are ASI’s 0.035, 0.040, and 0.045-inch diameter ports. The fourth port in the kit (a 0.050-inch diameter port) is currently in my rifle. The port on the right is the stock Mini 14 gas port. You can see its ID is huge.There are four Allen bolts securing the upper and lower Mini 14 gas blocks. You have to remove the barreled action from the stock and unscrew these four bolts to replace the gas port.As delivered by Ruger, the gas block Allen bolts are staked in place. Getting them out (and back in again) takes some muscle.
As an aside, the Mini 14 is kind of like the AK 47 with regard to its ejection energy. Both rifles have excess margin in the extraction and ejection gas porting design to make sure they always work.
The ASI gas port kit includes four bushings with different diameter ports, and the idea is you try each one to find the bushing that gives you reliable function. You want to use the smallest one possible consistent with reliable operation. I’ve tried all four and I’m now at the 0.050-inch port (the largest one in the ASI kit), and it is usually reliable, but not always. I still get an occasional failure to extract. I may take the smallest one (with its 0.035-inch bore) and have it opened up to 0.060 inch, but that will come later. I’m not going into combat with my Mini 14, so I can tolerate the occasional failure to extract. I like to think of my Mini 14 as a SHTF rifle, but truth be told, I’m more concerned about shooting tiny groups than I am about doomsday scenarios. Your mileage may vary.
I think the reason the largest of the ASI ports still sometimes fails to extract is because my rifle has that short 16-inch barrel, which imparts a little less of a gun gas pressure pulse to the op rod than would a rifle with an 18-inch barrel. It may be another disadvantage of the shorter barrel.
ASI Gas Ports and Glass Bedding
My last Mini 14 blog was on the effects of both the glass bedding and the ASI gas port. Both of these upgrades made a difference, but the rifle still wasn’t where I wanted it to be from an accuracy perspective. Interestingly, the dispersion got smaller top to bottom, but it was still about the same left to right as it had been with my preferred 62-grain bullet load.
Better, but still no cigar on a 100-yard target. Glass bedding and the 0.050-inch ASI gas port reduced vertical dispersion to about 3 inches and brought the lateral dispersion down to about the size of the bullseye, but I still wasn’t where I wanted to be.
5.56 NATO versus .223 Ammunition
Ah, here’s where things start to get both technical, and to ballistics geeks like me and you, extremely interesting. You might be wondering why this blog is suddenly going tangential into a discussion of 5.56 NATO ammunition and the .223 Remington commercial cartridge. Bear with me and it will all come together.
As we proceed, keep this in mind: Even though the Ruger Mini 14 is marked as a caliber .223 rifle, it has a 5.56mm NATO chamber.
For starters, there is a difference between the two cartridges (they are loaded to different pressure levels, with the 5.56mm NATO cartridge loaded to higher pressure than the .223 Remington cartridge), but the 5.56mm NATO and commercial .223 Remington share identical exterior dimensions. Military (i.e., NATO) ammo has thicker case walls, which means the interior volume decreases slightly, but on the outside, the dimensions are the same.
Okay, the above addresses the two cartridges. Now, let’s consider the two chambers (the part of the rifle that surrounds the cartridge). There are lots of differences between the chambers in a 5.56 NATO rifle versus a rifle chambered for the .223 Remington cartridge. The first is the leade (the distance between the case mouth and where the rifling begins in the barrel). Rifles chambered for the 5.56 NATO round have approximately twice the leade as do rifles chambered for the .223 Remington cartridge. That’s what allows the 5.56 NATO round to be loaded hotter than .223 Remington cartridge (it’s exactly the same thing you see in a Weatherby rifle; they are cut with longer leades to allow loading the cartridges hotter for more velocity). Because longer leades allow loading a cartridge hotter (the bullet is free to move a little more before the rifling resists it), the longer leade allows higher muzzle velocities. But longer leades may allow the bullet to tilt a bit before it hits the rifling, so rifles with longer leades tend to be less accurate. In a bolt action or single shot rifle, you could account for this by seating the bullet out further in the cartridge case to get it closer to the rifling, but you can’t do that in the Mini 14. If you seat the bullet out further, the cartridges won’t fit in the magazine.
All that business above about the 5.56mm NATO chamber’s longer leade is interesting, but it’s not the primary concern here. The bigger concern as it pertains to the Mini 14 (and its 5.56mm NATO chamber) is that the 5.56 NATO chamber is slightly larger than is a chamber for the .223 Remington cartridge. That’s to meet the military’s combat reliability requirements (a rifle with more clearance between the chamber and the cartridge is less likely to jam). The difference in the two cartridges’ chamber dimensi0ns is shown in the chart below.
In particular, note Dimensions C, D, F, and L, which govern the length, neck location, and diameter of the chamber. As you can see above, they are all larger for the 5.56mm NATO chambered rifle, and like I said above, the Mini 14 has a 5.56mm NATO chamber. The cartridge has a lot more clearance between the case and chamber walls in the Mini 14 than it would in a rifle with a .223 Remington chamber. The cartridge can move around in the Mini 14’s chamber, and that hurts accuracy. Big time, as it turns out.
With one exception in the Mini 14 family (that was the Mini 14 Target, which was kind of a commercial flop), the Mini 14 has a 5.56mm NATO chamber, because Ruger designed the rifle to work with either 5.56mm NATO ammunition or .223 Remington commercial ammunition. What that means to us is that the rifle is not optimized for accuracy. There’s a greater bullet jump from the cartridge case to the rifling, and there’s more clearance around the cartridge due to the slightly larger chamber. Both work against optimal accuracy.
Neck Sizing Mini 14 Brass
Well, that chamber issue sure had my attention as a potential significant contributor to the Mini 14’s accuracy woes. It made me wonder: Would neck sizing the brass (rather than full length resizing) make a difference? Maybe the Ruger’s chamber is just too loose to be accurate, I thought.
So what is neck sizing? There are two approaches to resizing brass during the reloading process. The first is that you full length resize the brass, which brings it back to factory specification. The entire case is resized, including its diameter along the full length of the cartridge case, the case neck diameter, and the location and angle of the case shoulder (you know, where it necks down to the part of the case that holds the bullet). The other approach is to neck size only, and the idea here is you leave most of the case (in its post-fired condition) alone and only resize the part of the case that holds the bullet. The concept is that the case has formed (we call it fireforming) to the exact dimensions of the chamber in which it was fired, and resizing only the neck assures a near perfect fit of the reloaded cartridge in the rifle that previously fired it. It should be a near perfect fit around the case diameter and from the case shoulder to the bolt face. It should theoretically improve accuracy because the cartridge and its bullet are in exactly the same position for each shot.
I know you usually would not ordinarily neck size brass for ammo to be fired in a semi-auto rifle, as it could degrade reliability. But my thinking was maybe the Ruger’s chamber is so big it would work. As a first step, I tried an empty case that had been fired in the Mini to see if it chambered and extracted easily. It did.
.223 cartridge cases that have been neck sized only. Only the area between the arrows has been resized. The rest of the case is left in its fireformed condition. It will more closely match the dimensions of the Mini 14 chamber in which it was fired.
There are two approaches to neck sizing brass. One is that you can use the full length resizing die, but you don’t screw it into the press all the way. The intent is that it resizes the case neck but not the case body. The problem with this approach is that it is hard to get most of the case neck without the full length resizing die contacting the cartridge case body. I tried this as a first approach, though, and the results on the target were dramatic. Using the last of my 62-grain Hornady FMJBT bullets and 23.2 grains of ARComp propellant, I was now reliably getting groups I could mostly keep in the black at 100 yards. Yowzers!
Progress at 100 yards! Neck sizing the .223 cases using a full length resizing die got the group sizes down to the size of the bullseye. Things were moving in the right direction.
I ordered the RCBS neck size only .223 die on Amazon and when it arrived the next day, I loaded ammo with what had been my best load with the 55-grain Hornady FMJBT bullet (and that was 26.2 grains of IMR 4320 propellant). How did it work? Read on, my friends.
My new RCBS .223 neck size die. It cost just over $30.
The Sweet Feel of an Accurate Mini 14
Ah, the sweet feel of success. I was out of my 62-grain Hornady bullets (more are on the way as I write this blog), so like I said above I used my other favorite load with Hornady’s 55-grain bullets. That load worked even better, and surprisingly, it required no sight adjustment from the 62-grain bullet load.
Good times with an iron-sighted Mini 14 at 100 yards. That group on the right looks like it could have been fired with a scoped rifle, but it wasn’t.
I had two targets set up at the 100-yard line (the two you see above), and I first shot the target on the left. I could see the holes with my 20X spotting scope, and it felt mighty good to see them all plunk right into the bullseye. Then I fired on the target on the right, and when I checked it in the spotting scope, I thought I had done well, but I wasn’t sure. The way the light was hitting the target I couldn’t count five holes through the spotting scope. At the next line break, my buddy Greg and I walked down to the targets and at first, I was disappointed. I could see only four holes in the target on the right, and I thought I had missed altogether with my fifth shot. I mentioned that to Greg, and then he pointed to the fifth hole. It was hiding right alongside the X.
100 yards, iron sights, and a Ruger Mini 14. I have this rifle dialed in now.
As I said at the beginning of this admittedly long blog, this has been an interesting journey. I think everything I did to this rifle helped to improve its accuracy, but the major contributors have been finding the right load, glass bedding, and neck sizing. Your mileage may vary (every rifle is different). I’ve found what works for me.
See Our Other Mini 14 Blogs
I mentioned several earlier Mini 14 blogs. Here are links to our Mini 14 posts:
If you follow the ExNotes blog, you know I’m still chasing accuracy improvements for my Mini 14. The latest upgrades include glass bedding the receiver and installing a smaller gas port. They helped, as will be described here. What’s next? Read on.
The Accuracy Systems International Gas Port Kit
I bought a new set of Mini 14 gas ports from Accuracy Systems International, an outfit that specializes in Mini 14 accuracy upgrades. The gas port is essentially an orifice that restricts the flow of combustion gas to the rifle’s op rod. The stock Ruger gas port orifice is huge (it’s probably something like 0.090 inches in diameter). That is because Ruger wants the rifle to function with any kind of ammo, but the huge stock gas port throws spent brass into the next county and it slams the barreled action around in the stock (that hurts accuracy, as the receiver may not be sitting in the same spot after each round). The ASI gas port kit costs $30, but it’s more like $40 after including the shipping and handling charge. That’s a rip because the thing fits in a business envelope, but hey, it is what it is.
Glass Bedding the Mini 14
I bought an Acraglas bedding kit from Brownells and glass bedded the receiver in the stock. I’ve glass bedded bolt action rifles before, but I had never done a Garand-type action. There’s no recoil lug like a bolt action rifle has, so the glass bedding involved delicately laying in the epoxy on the interior sides of the stock and the area above the stock that mates with the receiver. This was something new for me, and I don’t mind telling you that I was plenty nervous about getting the barreled action out of the stock after the epoxy cured. I need not have worried; the release agent worked like it was supposed to and the bedding job turned out well. There is zero movement between the receiver and the Mini 14’s Circassian walnut stock now, and that’s what I wanted.
Tuning The Mini 14 Gas Port
After the bedding job, it was time to start playing with the different gas port orifices. The Accuracy Systems International kit includes four gas ports (0.035, 0.040, 0.045, and 0.050 inches), and the drill is to find the smallest one that works. The stock Ruger gas plug orifice is huge (as mentioned above), and ejection from a stock Mini 14 can only be described as violent. I tried the 0.040 and then the 0.045, but both would occasionally fail to fully cycle. With the 0.050 orifice, the rifle didn’t have any failures. I noticed that sometimes the last round out of a magazine just lays the brass on top of the follower after being extracted. That’s no big deal. My Mini 14 now throws the brass about 20 feet to the right (maybe less, because the brass was landing on concrete and rolling around a bit). It’s a substantial improvement.
100 Yards From The Bench
I first fired at a 100 yard target from a bench rest. Surprisingly, the bedding and the new orifice only shifted the group a little. The rifle now shoots a bit high, but the group size (absent a couple of flyers, one high and one low, most likely due to me) is about the size of the 9-ring on a 100-yard target (and that’s an improvement). Most of the dispersion is lateral, and that’s a change from what the rifle used to do. If I practiced a bit more, I’d do better. If I drop the rear sight a couple of clicks I should be right on the money. This was my 100-yard target from the bench:
The accuracy wasn’t the greatest I’ve ever achieved with an iron-sight rifle (my 80-year-old Mosin-Nagant will consistently keep its hits in the 10-ring), but it was an improvement over what the Mini 14 had done prior to the bedding job and the smaller gas port orifice. Things are moving in the right direction.
The B-21 Department of Corrections Target
Next up was the California Department of Corrections B-21 target my CDC buddy told me about. The California CDC uses the Mini 14 as an issue weapon, and the B-21 is their periodic qualification target. I bought some of these targets at Alco last week and I wanted to see how I would to. My CDC friend told me that CDC officers qualify with their Mini 14 rifles at 50 and 100 yards, from both the standing and kneeling position.
I put my target out at 100 yards and tried shooting from the kneeling position. It felt very awkward to me and I was terrible. Oh, I put rounds on the target, but this kneeling position is not my cup of tea. I used to be able to do it when I was in the Army, but I weighed 50 lbs less and I bent a lot easier in those days. I’m not even sure what knee is supposed to be on the ground. Maybe I need Colin Kaepernick to tutor me.
Then I went to the standing position, shooting offhand, and I found I could keep my shots in the bottle (as my CDC buddy described the target). I might be able to qualify as a CDC officer if I could get on top of this kneeling position business. The little .223 holes on the target below are a hard to see (my apologies for the cell phone photography), but trust me, they’re on there. All the ones that are outside the bottle were from the kneeling position.
You know, when I first saw that B-21 target, I was amused at how big it is (it’s literally life-sized). Try shooting it offhand from the standing position with iron sights, though, and the old B-21 suddenly gets a lot smaller. At 100 yards, I couldn’t see any of the lines on the target. It was just a big black mass, and I tried to hold in the center of it as I fired. It was swimming in the sights, but I was able to connect. Mind you, I had not shot offhand like this in years. The rifle seems to be grouping a little high shooting offhand (as it did from the bench). But it is, as the saying goes, close enough for government work.
What do you think? Would I be able to run with the big dogs in the CDC? My CDC buddy told me I’d qualify expert. Maybe he was just being nice.
Future Mini 14 Accuracy Improvement Thoughts
I am thinking about what else might make a difference in accuracy on the Mini 14. The action is bedded and I’ve experimented with different loads until the cows came home (for your information, my best load is with a max ARComp charge and the Hornady 162 grain full metal jacket bullet). I sort and trim the brass I reload (and that makes a difference). I’ve found the gas port that works best (it’s the 0.050-inch orifice). So what’s left?
I’m wondering about the fit of the .223 cartridge in the chamber. The Mini 14 has a loose chamber to make sure everything feeds reliably, so I’m wondering if it’s too loose for optimal accuracy. My thought is to try neck sizing only. That’s when you only size the cartridge neck down (to hold the bullet in place) but leave the rest of the brass case enlarged, as it came from the rifle after the last firing. I know you usually would not do that in a semi-auto rifle, but I’m guessing there’s plenty of room in that chamber. I’m thinking I’ll load 20 rounds with neck sizing only and see how that goes. I guess I could try chambering an empty case previously fired in the Mini 14 and see if it chambers and extracts easily. If it does, neck-sized-only loaded rounds probably will, too.
Sometimes you can seat the bullets out further in the case to improve accuracy. You can’t mess around with bullet eating depth on a Mini 14, though. If you seat the bullets out any further, the cartridges won’t fit in the magazine, so that’s out as a potential accuracy improvement.
Next up is the muzzle brake. This thing has a gigondo muzzle brake (see the photo above) that I had installed to replace the stock flash suppressor. I had to do that to bring the rifle into the People’s Republik of Kalifornia (a flash suppressor on a semi auto rifle is illegal in California, a stupid law if ever there was one). The muzzle brake does not make contact with the bullet on the way out of the barrel, but I’m wondering if it somehow disturbs the bullet’s flight as it exits the muzzle. I think I’ll Google “muzzle brake impact on accuracy” and see if there is anything out there on this. (Note: I did, and there’s evidence that this can happen.)
The other thing I’m wondering is if the guy who installed the brake damaged the muzzle when he installed it. I can’t see the muzzle in there. It’s not going to be easy to get it (the muzzle brake) off the barrel, but that may be the next step. The muzzle brake has to be affecting the barrel’s harmonics, too, because it is so massive. Maybe I’ll just take it off and see what that does.
The Mini 14’s bolt feels loose when the rifle is in battery, but my Garand is like that, too, as well as many of the bolt guns I have. I don’t know if that is playing an accuracy role. There’s nothing I can do about it, though, so that’s something that will remain a mystery.
I’m wondering about the front sight, too. It’s wide. At 100 yards, the width of the front sight blade is three or four times the diameter of the bullseye. My M1A has a much thinner blade for the front sight, and it seems to be a lot easier to shoot small groups with it. Looking at the 100-yard bullseye target shown above, most of the Mini 14’s dispersion is left and right; I’m thinking a thinner front sight might cut down on that lateral dispersion.
I’ve put a lot of lead downrange with my Mini 14, probably something well north of 10,000 rounds. Maybe the barrel is just worn out. Eyeballing it, though, it looks good, and accuracy keeps getting better with incorporation of some of the things I’ve done. But that’s a lot of shooting. It could be that a new barrel would make a difference.
Any other ideas? Hey, let’s hear your comments. I’ve shared what I know, and I could use your help.
See our other Tales of the Gun reports (including more on the mighty Mini 14) here.
Colt’s ad for the new Python. I have high hopes for this gun.
The Colt Python was the king of the handgun world back in the ’60s and ’70s. It was the Rolls Royce of revolvers. I owned two of them at different times in the mid-’70s. I bought one while I was deployed overseas in Korea (we could actually order guns through the base exchange) and it was delivered to me in Korea. I paid something like $150 for it back then, and it was sleek…deep bluing (Colt called it Royal Blue), a 6-inch barrel, and then I had to worry about bringing it back to the US. I was told I would need a certificate signed by the Director of the Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms Bureau and I could only imagine how long that would take, but it didn’t take long at all. I submitted the request and three weeks later I had a hard copy (this was the 1970s) signed in ink by the actual top guy at the ATF. That gun came back to America with me in a duffel bag. I remember that 10 grains of Unique behind a 110-grain jacketed hollowpoint Hornady tore one ragged hole at 25 yards. It was phenomenally accurate.
I traded that Python for a new Ruger No. 1 in .30 06 and a couple of boxes of .30 06 ammo, and I still have that rifle. But back at Fort Bliss I missed the Python. Good buddy Roy told me I could order one through the Fort Bliss Rifle and Pistol Club, so I did (this time in nickel, but still a 6-incher). It was stunning, with flawless nickel plating and a absolutely jewel-like, luxurious look. The I sold that one when I moved to Fort Worth. It was not my brightest move ever. I’ve done a lot of dumb things in my life. This was definitely one of them.
Colt quit making the Python several years ago, and prices went through the roof. An original Python goes for something around $3k, give or take a K or two (almost always to the north). Big bucks, and way more than I want to spend.
Pete’s Python. It’s one of the originals, and it is phenomenally accurate.
I sort of got the Python fever again a few months ago when good buddy Python Pete let me take a few shots with his vintage 8-inch barreled Python. It was the accuracy that got me excited. These were great revolvers. I wrote about that day here.
And then suddenly, just a few weeks ago, Colt announced that they were reintroducing the Python, and it would retail at $1500. That was a good thing, I thought. It’s still pricey, but a new Python would be great. Maybe when the supply exceeds the demand prices might drop, I thought.
I want the new Python to succeed. A frontline company like Colt (an iconic name if ever there was one) deserves nothing less.
Bottom line first: The SIG P226 Scorpion can get ‘er done! This is a phenomenal handgun, one of the best I’ve ever shot.
This is Part I of the promised 9mm comparo, and after thinking about it for a bit, I thought I would focus on the cast bullet loads in the first installment, and then move on to the jacketed bullet loads in the next one (that will come a little later). There are a lot of ways I could have organized the comparo; this one made the most sense to me. There’s a lot of information here and I didn’t want it to be overwhelming. It also involves a lot of shooting (about a half day’s worth with just the cast bullets), and I wanted to clean the pistols after shooting the cast bullet loads before moving on to the jacketed loads.
I used three 9mm handguns for this test: A former police-issue Model 659 Smith and Wesson, a Springfield Armory 1911 Target, and a SIG P226 Scorpion. Let’s start with a few words about each.
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The 659 S&W is a gun that’s been featured on the ExNotes blog before. It’s a police department trade-in that was manufactured in the 1980s. My good buddy Tom gave me a great deal on it, I refinished the brushed stainless steel slide and frame, I fixed the decocker (it wasn’t dropping the hammer when the safety was actuated), and I’ve been shooting it a lot in the last few months. My gun has Pachmayr checkered rubber grips (which I like a lot). It is a heavy gun at 40 ounces, mostly because it has a steel frame (many 9mm handguns have a polymer or aluminum frame).
The 659 Smith and Wesson. It’s a solid service pistol, one that was used widely when police agencies in the US switched from revolvers to autos 40 years ago.
I like the 659. Like I said above, it’s heavy (but that means it’s steady) and it seems to shoot everything well. What do I not like about it? It needs to be kept clean behind the extractor, or it will sometimes fail to fully extract and eject a fired cartridge. That’s due to the nature of the extractor, which is a hinged arm. When grit or powder reside gets behind the aft portion of the extractor, it can’t pivot and it doesn’t pull the cartridge all the way out so that it can be ejected. I think the squared-off trigger guard is goofy. I never wrap my left hand around the front of the trigger guard and I prefer the look of a rounded trigger guard. Like most double-action/single-action semi-auto handguns, this 659 has the Joe Biden trigger (it’s kind of creepy). The front sight is unfinished stainless steel, so it is hard to see on the target (I paint the front sight on my 659 flat black so I can get a good sight picture). The Pachmayr grips add to the 659’s bulky grip design, but they also allow a secure hold.
That’s a lot of bitching, I suppose, especially when it’s directed at a handgun I enjoy shooting enormously. None of the above would keep me from buying a 659 (and none of the above kept me from buying this one). I like my 659. If you get an opportunity to buy one and the price is right for you, take it from a guy who knows: You won’t regret pulling the trigger (literally and figuratively) on a used Model 659. That’s if you can even find one. The police departments have all traded them in, Smith and Wesson stopped making these guns decades ago, and the supply is drying up.
The next one up is a Springfield Armory Target model 9mm 1911. As handguns go, it doesn’t get any better than the 1911 (or so I thought up until this test, but more on that later), and having a 1911 chambered in 9mm seems to me to be a good idea.
Springfield Armory changed the name on this gun. It used to be called the “Loaded” model (as in loaded with all the options, including target sights and hand fitting here in the US), but they later changed the name to the Target model. That’s good. “Loaded” makes it sound like the gun is a stoner (i.e., a doper, not the weapons designer).
I’ve had my 9mm 1911 for about 5 years (I bought it new from my good buddy Brian at Bullet Barn Guns). I knew it was accurate, but I had not really played with it that much to find out what loads it liked best.
The Springfield Armory 1911 Target Model, with adjustable sights, a 5-inch barrel, and all stainless steel construction.
There’s not too much to dislike about the Springfield Armory 1911. Springfield makes a quality gun. The fit and finish on mine are superb. One thing I’ve noticed is that it has a tight chamber, and ammo loaded on a progressive reloader is prone to sometimes jam if the cartridge isn’t perfect (unlike the 659, which feeds anything). That doesn’t bother me because I load everything on a single-stage RCBS Rockchucker these days. I don’t need the speed of a progressive reloader, and my ammo quality and accuracy are better when I load on a single-stage press. The trigger on my 1911 is superb, as is the case on nearly every 1911 I’ve ever shot. I think that as 1911s go, Springfield Armory is one of the best. I’ve owned and shot several of them. They are accurate and they hold up well. Fit and finish are top drawer, too, on every Springfield Armory 1911 I’ve ever seen. It’s just a beautiful 1911.
The third handgun for this test series is my recently-acquired SIG P226 Scorpion. This is the first SIG I’ve ever owned. I’d heard so many good things about SIG handguns (and in particular, their accuracy) that I thought I would take the plunge and buy one. I bought mine at Turner’s here in southern California.
So how do I like the SIG? In a word, it’s awesome. I like the look of the Cerakote finish and the SIG grips, and gun just feels right in my hand. The grips fit like a glove, and the grip texture works. It is one seriously good-looking and good-handling handgun.
SIG’s P226 Scorpion. It has a Cerakote finish and an aluminum frame. This is a good-looking handgun, I think.
The SIG is the only pistol used in this test that does not have adjustable sights. The SIG literature told me they offer sights of different heights, and the rear sight can be drifted left or right in its dovetail, but none of that was necessary on my gun. My SIG shoots exactly to its point of aim at 50 feet (take a look at that target at the top of this blog again).
Speaking of sights, the SIG has what is evidently a fairly expensive set of Tritium sights that glow in the dark (I think they are about a hundred bucks if you buy them separately). The glow is not like the lume of a watch dial; instead, they have something else going on that makes them light up at night. You can see that in this photo I took in the dark:
There’s the sights. Where’s the target? Normally, you’d get the front and rear sights aligned; that is not the case in this photo. The only point of this photo is that the SIG glows in the dark.
I think the Tritium sights are kind of a Gee-Whiz deal, and I don’t think I need them. I’m an old guy and I shoot targets when I can see what I’m shooting at. If I was a lot younger and I was running around in a white Ferrari with Miami Vice music playing while chasing bad guys at night, maybe Tritium sights would do it for me. But even under those conditions, it would still be dark and I wouldn’t be able to see my target. I think the Tritium sights are gimmicky, and the little lenses (or whatever they are) for the Tritium inserts are distracting. Plain black sights work best for me. Your mileage may vary.
So, on to the main attraction: The 9mm loads and how they performed in each of the three handguns. I loaded everything for this first 9mm test series with a bullet I’ve known and loved for 50 years, and that’s the 124-grain cast roundnose. My particular flavor these days are the pills from Missouri Bullets. At $33 for a box of 500, they are inexpensive and the quality is good. A roundnose configuration bullet feeds well in just about any gun. Yeah, I know there are other cast bullet configurations and other cast bullet weights. I’ve always had my best results with the 124-grain bullets, though, and that’s what I used for this test.
124-grain cast roundnose bullets from the Missouri Bullet Company. They are relatively inexpensive and they shoot well.
I tested with four different propellants: Bullseye, Unique, 231, and Power Pistol. For the 231 and Power Pistol loads, I loaded near the lower end of the recommended charge range for one test set, and I loaded another test set near the upper end of the recommended charge range. With Unique, they were all loaded with 5.0 grains, which is a max charge in most reloading manuals. I had a bunch of these already loaded, and I knew from a past life that this was an accurate load. I tried one load with Bullseye, too. I had a box of 50 loaded and I grabbed those as I headed to the range a few days ago. I used Remington small pistol primers for everything, and I used several different brands of brass, but I used the same kind of brass for each load. Cartridge overall length was 1.112 inches for all loads.
All loads were handheld at a distance of 50 feet. I shot two 5-shot groups with each load. I didn’t use a machine rest or a chronograph because I have neither. I shot from the bench, resting my arms (but not the gun) on the bench. Yes, a lot of the variability you see in the chart below is due to me. Hey, I’m what you get. My intent was to get an idea what worked best in each of these guns, and I think I succeeded.
That’s the background. Here are the results:
Clearly, the SIG is the most accurate of the three handguns. What I’d read and heard about SIG’s performance is true. Some of the SIG groups were amazing, putting 5-shots into under an inch at 50 feet. That’s about as good as I’ve ever done.
While the SIG was accurate with Winchester’s 231 propellant, the gun didn’t like it. On both of the 3.4 grain loads, the slide went forward after the last round (it didn’t lock open), and it did it again on one of the 3.9 grain magazines. While the 231 loads had enough poop to cycle the action, it wasn’t running the slide far enough back to lock open on the last round. This powder also did that on one of the Springfield Armory 1911 tests. Interestingly, the Smith and Wesson 659 worked okay with both the upper and lower 231 loads. These were light loads (I could see the slide moving back and forth with each shot, and it popped the brass out right next to the gun). My testing got me far enough along to decide Winchester 231 is not for me as a 9mm propellant.
The SIG really liked Power Pistol propellant, and from an accuracy perspective it performed similarly at both the low (5.0 grain) and high (5.5 grain) levels. There was perceptibly more recoil (but no pressure signs) with 5.5 grains of Power Pistol, so my load for the SIG with this bullet will be 5.0 grains. The SIG also did well with 5.0 grains of Unique. That’s a good thing, as I have a bunch of ammo loaded with this recipe. As I mentioned above, I found 5.0 grains of Unique did well in accuracy testing a long time ago, and it’s good to see this test supports those earlier findings. The 5.0 grains of Unique load also did very well in the Springfield 1911 (it was the Springfield’s most accurate load). With this load, the Springfield is as accurate as the SIG. But the SIG did well with all loads; the Springfield was pickier.
The 659 is a great gun, but from an accuracy perspective it can’t run with the big dogs. That’s okay; it’s still fun to shoot and I plan to continue shooting it a lot. And it only cost about a third what the others cost. Like I said earlier, if you get a chance to pick up a 659, don’t let it get away.
But that SIG. Wow!
So there you have it. Next up? I want to see how these same three pistols shoot jacketed bullets. Stay tuned.
One last comment…it’s time for the warnings and disclaimers. These are my loads in my guns. You should always consult a reloading manual published by one of the major sources (Hornady, Speer, Sierra, Lyman, Winchester, Alliant, you get the idea) and rely on the load data published there. Start low and work your way up, watching for any pressure signs along the way.
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