RIA Compact 1911 Update

I’ve done a few blogs on the 1911 handgun and, in particular, on a Rock Island Armory Compact I bought a couple of years ago.   I love the Compact, it’s accurate enough, and it carries well.  But I’ve had several issues with this handgun and because I’ve written about it before, I feel like I owe you an update.

Quick offhand shots with the Rock Island Compact 1911 at 50 feet. The load was a 185-grain wadcutter with a stiff charge of Bullseye propellant.  It’s accurate enough for its intended purpose, and every shot was on the target.  My 230-grain hardball loads are more accurate.

I’m going to share my experiences with you, but I want to make this point early on:  I love my Rock Island Compact, and I would buy one again in a heartbeat.  Yeah, it’s had problems, but let me make my point again:  I’d buy another one in a heartbeat.  I thought long and hard about doing a blog focused on the Compact’s failures, mostly because I’ve used the gun longer and harder than most.  I’ve put several thousand rounds through the Compact, and nearly all have been full-power, hardball equivalent loads.  Having said that, let’s get into it.

Firing Pin Stop Release

The first time I had the Compact on the range, it locked up a couple of times.  The culprit?  It was a weird one, something I had never encountered on a 1911 before.  The firing pin stop was sliding off the firing pin.

The red arrow points to the firing pin stop. It is held in place by the firing pin (shown in the center of the firing pin stop) during recoil, but the firing pin has to be pushed back by its spring to do so.

This fix for this one was easy.  After removing the slide from the frame, I depressed the firing pin, pulled the firing pin stop, and then I pulled the firing pin and its spring from the slide.  I stretched the firing pin spring just a bit, figuring it needed a little more oomph to push the firing pin back to hold the firing pin stop in place.  After that, this failure never recurred.

Staked Front Sight Failure

The Rock Island Compact front sight. It loosened within the first thousand rounds through the gun.

The front sight on my Compact came loose very quickly. That’s common enough on 1911s for staked sights (I’ve had it happen on a Colt 1911 and I’ve seen it happen on a couple of Springfield Armory 1911s, so it’s not a problem unique to the Rock Island handgun).   If I was running Engineering at Rock Island, I’d specify a dovetailed front sight. The Compact replicates the look of the original Army 1911 (and I love that about the gun), but I think most purists like me would be willing to give up a tiny bit of the original GI look for a dovetailed front sight. Staked front sights on a 1911 (especially a Compact, which really gets knocked around by hardball-level recoil) are not a formula for long term reliability.

Rock Island made good on the front sight failure with their lifetime warranty.  I sent the gun back and they fixed it, and the front sight is staying put.

Extraction and Ejection Failures

I had a ton of extraction and ejection issues. I sent the Compact back to Rock Island on the warranty and they fooled around with the extractor, but it still had extraction problems (at a lower frequency, but they still occurred).  After the gun came back and I fired maybe another thousand rounds through it, the extractor broke so I replaced it with an aftermarket extractor (at my expense, because I didn’t want to send it back to Rock Island again).  The nature of the failure indicated the extractor steel was too brittle.

The fracture surface of the Rock Island extractor. The surface fractography indicates the material was too brittle (perhaps a consequence of an inadequately-controlled heat treat process).

Ejection was flaky, too, and the gun frequently failed to eject the last round fired.  It would stovepipe the brass as the slide went forward, and that brings me to another problem:  The slide frequently would not lock to the rear after firing the last round.  I mentioned that when I sent the gun back to Rock Island for the extraction issues, but they didn’t completely solve this problem, either.  It got better, but it still occurred.

I then took the gun to a real gunsmith (good buddy TJ, about whom I’ve written before).   TJ looked at the ejector and immediately recognized it was cut at the wrong angle. He recut it and the gun now ejects flawlessly.  To state the obvious, you shouldn’t have to do this on a new gun.

Magazine Issues

Regarding the slide not locking back after firing the last shot in the magazine, that problem required a couple of fixes.  One issue was the relationship between the magazine follower and the slide release.  I bought two extra mags from Rock Island thinking (and hoping) that maybe I just had a bad magazine, but all three mags had the same problem.  The magazine follower is supposed to push the slide release up after the last round is fired with enough force to lock the slide to the rear, but on my gun it wasn’t doing this reliably.  I believe it was because one of the magazine follower bends is in the wrong place.

The magazine follower. The arrow on the right points to the follower bend I believe positions the flat portion of the follower (denoted by the other arrow) too low to effectively engage the slide release. I think that bend needs to be about 0.030 or 0.040 inches higher.

TJ addressed the magazine follower issue by welding a bead on the bottom of the slide release where it engages the magazine follower.  That made sure the magazine exerted positive upward pressure on the slide release after the last shot, and that made a significant improvement.  I think what Rock Island needs to do is modify the design of the follower bend, or better control the manufacturing process to make sure the follower bend is in the right place (it might be that the engineering drawing for the follower places the bend at the wrong location, or it might just be the magazine follower doesn’t meet the Rock Island drawing).

A fully assembled loaded magazine, and a disassembled magazine. One of the magazine issues is a weak magazine spring. The fix was simple enough: I elongated it and that fixed the slide not staying back after the last round.

The other issue is that the magazine springs were wimpy.  I pulled the springs and stretched them, reinstalled them in the magazines, and the problem disappeared.  The slide now stays back after firing the last round every time.

Slide Deformation

I believe the slide material is too soft. This resulted in a big burr on the slide at the rear of the machined cutout for the slide release, which I ground off because it was scarring the inside of my leather holster and it just looked ugly.  You can see the deformation in the photos below.

Metal deformation on the Compact 1911’s slide. A small amount of this is to be expected, but this is excessive.
Deformation in the slide’s release slot.

To some extent, a modest amount of slide material deformation is to be expected, and the problem is somewhat self-correcting.  As metal deforms, it work hardens, and this natural work hardening tends to prevent further deformation.  I’ve seen this occur on other 1911s I’ve owned (including one manufactured by Colt).  I just saw way more of it than I expected on the Rock Island 1911.

Guide Rod Plug Failure

My most recent failure involved the guide rod reverse plug (I call it a bushing).  I think this part failed because it was too hard (the fracture surface indicates a brittle failure); I’m guessing the heat treat made it too brittle. This part needs to be more ductile. I also think it is too thin in the area in which the failure occurred.

Rock Island calls this part a plug; I call it a guide rod bushing. The plug fractured and Rock Island shipped a replacement part to me at no cost.
The new plug installed on the guide rod. The paper clip is holding the plug in position while the 1911 is being reassembled.
The guide rod, recoil spring, and replacement plug installed in the slide.
The guide rod plug, viewed from the business end.  My barrel and the guide rod have been polished; the stock parts have a Parkerized finish.

Poor Heat Treating Suspected

With the exception of the guide rod plug (which I think is a weak design) and the magazine follower, the issues described above are not faults in the basic design.  I think they are being caused by inadequate heat treating process control.  Heat treating was always a challenge in the defense plants I managed.  To heat treat properly, you have to pull a partial vacuum to prevent hydrogen embrittlement, and it’s difficult (but not impossible) to get accurate temp readings in a partial vacuum. You think it’s one temperature, but actually it’s different temperatures at different locations in the heat treat oven. The result?  You get parts harder or softer than specified on their respective drawings, which makes them more brittle or more ductile than they’re supposed to be.  This issue of parts being too hard or too soft could be a contributor to the slide deformation issue, the front sight failure, the guide rod reverse plug failure, the extractor fracture, and the magazine and firing pin springs being too weak.

RIA Compact 1911:  The Bottom Line

Yeah, I am putting more rounds through my Compact than most folks, who might get to the range once a month or more likely a couple of times a year. But the gun ought to be able to handle it.   And yeah, the Compact has a lifetime warranty and the folks at Rock Island have been good about honoring it. I just wish I didn’t have to use it as often.

Having said the above, though, I’ll also tell you that new gun issues are not unique to Rock Island Armory.   I’ve had to send three Rugers back for warranty service, my very expensive Smith and Wesson Performance Center revolver went back to Smith for repeated failures to fire (they took what I considered to be an inordinate amount of time to fix it), and my Springfield Armory M1A went back to Springfield for ejection issues (those guys took a long time, too).  Two of my friends have Springfield Armory 1911s, and they both had to go back to Springfield for front sight failures (one of them had to go back twice because Springfield screwed up the repair).  All of this has been in just the last few years.  It’s unfortunate, but quality issues abound in the gun industry, and it seems like things are getting worse.  When folks say they don’t make them like they used to, I can tell you from a lifetime of playing with things that go bang that’s true.


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I should also tell you that one of my good buddies tried my Compact, liked it, and he bought one.  He hasn’t had any issues with his.   None.  Zip.  Nada.  So I can’t say my experience is representative of what you might expect.  I’m only telling you what I experienced.

All the above notwithstanding, I’m happy with my Rock Island Armory Compact 1911 and like I said above, I love the gun.  I’ve fixed the thing so many times that the Rock and I have what you might call an intimate relationship.  We know each other.  Like Gresh said about his relationship with the Royal Enfield Bullet, my Rock Island 1911 needs me.

You might wonder:  Why not just buy a compact 1911 from a higher-end supplier, like Springfield, Kimber, Sig, or one of the custom builders like Les Baer or Wilson?  Well, in a word, price.  These other compacts start at roughly twice what the Rock costs (and go up sharply from there), and there’s no certainty they wouldn’t have problems, too.  You could argue that you get what you pay for, and my response to that would be:  Sometimes.

You can buy Rock Island 1911s for $499 all day long, and I’ve seen them on sale for as little as $429.   That’s a great deal on a new 1911.  I’ve had to work my way through the issues outlined above, but my Rock Compact is extremely reliable now and it’s a constant companion.  Someday I may wear it out completely and if that ever happens, I’d just buy another one.  If something goes wrong, odds are I’ll know how to fix it.


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A grand Garand load…

A cell phone photo by my daughter from an earlier Veteran’s Day at the range. She managed to catch an ejected brass case in mid-air. I’ll have to get her out again to see if she can repeat that miracle with the en bloc clip after the 8th round.

Veteran’s Day is upon us (it’s Monday), and I’ll do as I usually do on this fine holiday:  I’ll be out on the range observing it with my M1 Garand and my 1911 .45 Auto.  I’m a vet, I come from a long line of vets, and it somehow feels like bringing those two old warhorses out on Veteran’s Day is the right thing to do.

I’ve been shooting my M1 Garand a lot lately.  A couple of weeks ago I gave the bore a gentle but thorough scrubbing with Hoppes No. 9 and Butch’s bore solvent.  I finally got it down to where the barrel had no copper streaking in the bore.

The drill is you keep swabbing with a good solvent, wait 15 minutes, and then run another patch down the bore. When they come out blue like this, you’re not done yet.

The rifle needed a few rounds through it after that for its accuracy to return, but when it did, it do so mightily with a new load I tried.  I tested  several loads during that visit to the range, but one that the old Garand really liked turned in an absolutely stellar performance at 100 yards.

Eight rounds at 100 yards. Two shots went through the hole at the bottom. It’s the best I had done to date with the Garand.  My targets?  I get all of mine from Alco Target.

I shot the group above with the last of the 40 rounds I took with me that day, and I liked what I saw when I walked down to the target.   For a 100-yard, open-sight group, that’s cooking.  It’s about the best I’ve ever done.

It was a quick trip to the tumbler and my RCBS reloading equipment to reload my brass with the same recipe, and the next range visit allowed me to dial in the sights.  Here’s what it did at 100 yards:

A near-repeat performance the following week, with six rounds in the 10-ring and two that dropped low. Maybe a fly landed on my front sight for the two shots that went low.  Still, at 100 yards, that ain’t half bad with open sights.

The load is the 168 grain Sierra jacketed hollow point match boat tail bullet (their MatchKing bullet) with a CCI 200 primer, 47.0 grains of IMR 4064 powder, Remington brass, and an overall cartridge length of 3.240 inches.

I’m pumped.  I’m finally getting used to the Garand’s aperture sights and I’m getting used to the rifle.  The rear aperture is huge, and it takes every once of mental concentration I can muster to throw all my concentration on the front sight without worrying about where it appears in the aperture.  That’s tough to do, and maybe I dropped the ball and that’s why the last two shots went low.  Or maybe it was that fly landing on my front sight.

The only problem with the load I used is that the Sierra MatchKing bullets are expensive.  They’re $37 a box (that’s 100 bullets), and that’s at the upper end of the price spectrum for me.   But, a good group is a good group, and it’s hard to put a price on the kind of performance you see above.  I stopped at my favorite reloading components place (Phillips Wholesale in Covina) to pick up another one of those green Sierra boxes and it was a good news/bad news story.   The bad news is Phillips didn’t have the Sierra bullets in stock. But that’s the good news, too.  Phillips didn’t have the MatchKings, but they had a new one I had not seen before, and that’s the Speer 168 grain Target Match bullets.

Speer’s 168 grain target bullet, their new Target Match jacketed hollow point boat tail. We’ll see if they’re as good as the Sierra bullets.

The Speer bullets are new to me, they look just like the Sierras, and they’re designed to go head-to-head with Sierra’s MatchKing pills.   More good news is that they’re only $25 per 100.   So I bought a box.  You’re probably wondering if the Speer bullets are as good as Sierras, and that would be something we have in common (I’m wondering the same thing).   So I loaded another 40 rounds of .30 06 ammo for the Garand and this weekend I’m going to the range to answer that very question.  Stay tuned, and I’ll let you know how they shoot.


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A Ruger No. 1 in .300 Weatherby Magnum

A No. 1 in .300 Weatherby:  The Best of Both Worlds

I’m a big fan of the .300 Weatherby cartridge, and an even bigger fan of the Ruger No. 1 rifle.    You’ve seen several blogs about these fine single-shot firearms here on ExhaustNotes, and I thought I’d add another combining the best of both worlds:  A Ruger No. 1 chambered in .300 Weatherby Magnum.

Ruger didn’t make too many No. 1 rifles in .300 Weatherby.

Finding a Rifle with Fancy Walnut

When Ruger announced the .300 Weatherby No. 1 nearly 30 years ago, I wanted one, but I couldn’t find one with fancy wood.   Then my interest waned and I was on to other things.  I remember seeing one at a gun store in Oregon (it was the first one I’d seen in person), but the wood was plain and I didn’t want to go through the hassle of buying one and having it shipped FFL-to-FFL back to California.  Then I saw one with better-than-average wood on Gunbroker and I had it shipped to a dealer here in California, but that rifle was a disappointment.  It had an aftermarket recoil pad that didn’t appear in the photos on Gunbroker, so back it went.  Then a few years later I saw one that had even better wood (exhibition grade, actually) and I pulled the trigger.  When it arrived, I was blown away by the wood.

The wood looks good from the right, but it looks even better from the left.
See what I mean? Those are my .300 Weatherby Magnum reloads, and they shot very well in this rifle.

Ruger No. 1 Accuracy

My .300 Weatherby No. 1 is essentially a new gun, and it may have been unfired when I bought it.  Sometimes guys buy these big bore magnums, keep them for several years, and then sell them without ever taking them to the range.  Even when folks do shoot their .300 magnum rifles, it’s more often than not the case that very few rounds are fired.  Sometimes the folks who buy these things don’t realize just how severe the recoil is, and after one or two shots, they conclude the rifle is not for them.


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I held off firing this rifle for a long time.  It wasn’t because I was afraid of the recoil (although it is significant).  I guess on some level what I feared was that the rifle would be inaccurate.  I didn’t want to not like it, so I didn’t shoot it.  I owned this rifle a good 10 years before I got around to mounting a scope on it and to see how it performed.  That happened just a couple of weeks ago.

In a word, the rifle performed magnificently.  I put a Redfield variable scope on it and did my normal sighting-in routine at the range.  That consisted of loosely mounting the scope, taking it to the range to move it back and forth to get the eye relief where I want it to be, and then setting up the rifle on a rest.  The drill there is to look through the bore at a target at 50 yards (centering the target in the bore) and then, without disturbing the rifle, dialing in the windage and elevation turrets so that the scope’s crosshairs are centered on the target.  I did that, and my first shot went exactly where it was supposed to go.

The next step was to move the target out to 100 yards and adjust the scope at that range.   It took only three groups to get the rifle zeroed.

The target on the left is the first one fired at 100 yards (the bullets were hitting high and to the left). I dropped the elevation about 12 clicks (each click is a quarter inch at 100 yards) for the second group, and then 8 clicks on the windage to move the point of impact to the right for the third target. I’m there.

The load I used was one that performs well in my bolt action .300 Weatherby bolt action rifles, and that’s an upper-range dose of IMR 7828 SSC propellant with the 180-grain Remington jacketed soft point bullet and CCI magnum rifle primers.  What’s satisfying is that this is a minute-of-angle load (it shoots into an inch at 100 yards), and I haven’t really done any load development with this rifle yet.  It’s almost kind of disappointing when they shoot this well immediately (half the fun is experimenting to find the right load), but hey, it is what it is.

I’ve found that the .300 Weatherby Magnum is an inherently accurate cartridge when loaded with heavier bullets and maximum or near-maximum propellant charges.  I have a few boxes left of the 180-grain Remington bullets, and that’s what I’ll be using for a bit.  I can’t hunt with those bullets in California (we have to use copper solids here in the Peoples’ Republik), but the Remington pills are legal on the rifle range in our gloriously-progressive state, and they’re good for hunting in other states with more normal hunting rules.

Finding a Ruger’s Age

Ruger has a spot on their website where you can punch in the serial number to find out when the rifle shipped.  I did, and mine left the factory in 1993.  Yep, it’s 26 years old, and it’s in as-new condition.

The Bottom Line

The bottom line:  I like this rifle.  It’s chambered for a great cartridge, it has outstanding wood, it’s accurate, and it’s a single shot.  There’s just something cool about single-shot rifles, especially when they have wood like this one.


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I Never Got a Free Gun When Obama Was President

Foreigners have a hard time understanding America’s gun fetish. I admit, I have a little trouble with the craziness myself but that didn’t stop my wife from entering a local charity’s gun raffle. It’s like 50 bucks and they draw a winner once a month for a year. CT’s number came up and we are now the proud owner of a 17-round (with one in the chamber), plastic, meth-dealer’s friend, a Smith & Wesson 9mm.

The thing is a bit cheesy-looking with the plastic and all. Berk assures me it’s a good weapon and that it won’t explode in my hand. I’m a little leery of automatics as they give no easy indication of their status. Is it cocked? Loaded?  Who knows?  Give me a revolver any day.

When we picked the thing up at the Ace Hardware (they still sell guns at the hardware store in New Mexico) CT was entered into the store’s computer and in seconds the gun guy knew her entire life story. It was a bit creepy but I guess that’s the price we pay to keep tyrants at bay.

Coming from a revolver perspective the quantity of ammunition this thing holds is incredible. 16 rounds fit in the magazine, henceforth known as a clip just to piss off the gun nuts. Not only that but you can plop one in the chamber giving a total of 17 rounds! That’s nearly three reloads on my Smith revolver. It’s a lot of lead and with my aiming ability I need all the chances I can get.

We bought 50 rounds of ammo when we got the Smith and the clerk gave me a look that screamed Piker. “Is that all? Sure you don’t want more?” The S&W 9mm came with a nice plastic case that included the manuals and a second clip, meaning I can pack 33 rounds ready to go in a large jacket pocket. You won’t run out of ammo and have to throw the gun at any survivors with a Smith 9. This kind of legal firepower is what makes America the greatest country in the world. I better go pick up another couple hundred rounds of 9mm.

The Smith 9mm came with three different size grips to custom-fit the gun to your hand. The whole package is well thought out and it will be interesting to see if we can hit anything with all that ammunition. A trip to the gun range for a familiarization session is in order. CT will be taking a gun-specific class to learn about the new gun from shooting it to disassembling, cleaning and reassembly. I’d show her how to do all that stuff myself if I knew anything about it and didn’t yell all the time.


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Men of a Certain Age

Men of a certain age, like me, grew up in the ’50s and ’60s. Our values were formed in a era when honor, courage, integrity, and self-reliance were important, and I think a big part of those values were formed by what we watched on TV. Today, television shows are mostly mindless drivel centered on pop culture (an oxymoron if ever there was one) and the so-called reality genre. We were way luckier:

Good times and good TV shows. The ’50s and’60s were a good time to be a kid.

The stars of those ’50s and ’60s shows were folks who knew the difference between right and wrong, and we received a steady stream of 30-minute morality injections several times every week as a consequence of watching them. It seemed to work. It was a good time to be a kid.

The other stars in those early Westerns were the horses and guns. I never had any interest in owning a horse, but the steady emphasis on six-shooters and leverguns instilled a lasting fascination with firearms in many of us. A Colt .45 Single Action Army figured in nearly every episode (in fact, you can see this iconic firearm in several of the photos above). It’s no small wonder that sixguns still sell well in the US.


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Today, the prices of Colt Single Action Army revolvers are through the roof, but there are a number of companies that offer exact replicas built in Italy at far more reasonable prices.  A few years ago, when I saw this Taylor and Company “tuned” Single Action Army at my local gun shop, I was a goner.  To borrow a phrase, I pulled the trigger.

My Taylor .45 Single Action Army. This is a sweet-shooting sixgun.

The Taylor is an exact copy of the Colt Single Action Army, it’s chambered in .45 Colt, and Taylor’s “tuned” descriptor means the revolver has a trigger and action job to slick up the internals. The trigger is under two pounds, it’s crisp, and the gun feels perfect in every way.  There’s just something about a single action sixgun that feels right.  This one is beautiful and it has everything that floats my boat:  A brass grip frame, a color case hardened receiver, and high polish bluing everywhere else.  The .45 Colt chambering is perfect, too.   It’s a fun cartridge to reload and shoot, and it’s accurate.

The first day I went to the range with my new Single Action Army sixgun, I knew it was going to be a good morning.  On the dirt road leading to the range, I saw a bobcat. We were both surprised. He looked at me and I looked at him, and then the cat leisurely walked across the road and disappeared into the brush. It was a good sign. I’ve seen bobcats here in California three or four times in the last 30 years and seeing one on my way to the range that morning was a special treat.

Targets at 25 yards. The Taylor is an accurate handgun. Surprisingly, the sights shoot exactly to point of aim, which is unusual for a fixed-sight revolver.

My .45 Single Action Army groups well with every load I tested. It particularly likes Trail Boss propellant and cast bullets (the two groups with arrows were with this powder). The gun shoots exactly to point of aim (I used a 6:00 o’clock hold on the targets above), and the spread you see in the groups is almost certainly more the result of my old hands and eyes than the gun or the load.  If you’ve ever wondered how good the Italian replica Single Action Army handguns are, my results indicate they are fine firearms.


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Gear’d Up

You might remember I told you we had a couple of watches from Gear’d Hardware.  This is the one I showed on the blog last week:

The first of two Gear’d watches. This puppy is headed to the Tinfiny Ranch in New Mexico!

This morning I took the second Gear’d watch out of its shipper.  It’s a stunner.  Take a look:

Here’s a photo of the watch, which Gear’d calls its ZX2-1116 model:

The Gear’d watch I’m wearing. It’s a good-looking wristwatch. It makes me wish I’d kept the Corvette; the colors are an exact match to the Z06’s interior.

I’ve got a few things in mind for these watches.   The top one is getting mailed to Joe Gresh today, and he’ll be providing his impressions.  I’m going to read the instructions on mine, set it, and then my fun will begin.   I’m not just going to be a male model here (although folks in the waiting room at the optometrist’s office tell me I’ve got the looks for it).  Nope, what I have in mind are a few tests, like how well the watch keeps time, how it stands up to vibration (that means a motorcycle ride), and how well it stands up to shock.   That may be a bit more than the Gear’d folks banked on when they sent the watches to us, but hey, it is what it is.

The games begin today. This afternoon I’m headed out to the range with my new Gear’d watch, my bright stainless 1911 .45 Colt, and a couple of boxes of hardball ammo.  I’m going to send 100 rounds of 230-grain roundnose ammo (the heavy, hard-recoiling stuff) downrange and we’ll see how the Gear’d watch stands up to it.  Y0u’ll be able to read about it tomorrow, right here on the ExNotes blog.

Horological test equipment. “Horological” means it’s related to time-keeping gear (that may not be what you thought it meant).

Stay tuned, my friends.


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Ruger’s .357 Blackhawk

My stainless .357 Blackhawk, with a 25-yard target. It’s one of my favorite handguns.  The loads you see here use WW 296 propellant and Hornady’s 158-grain jacketed h0llow point bullet.

One of my good buddies wrote to me over the weekend asking about the Ruger Blackhawk in .357 Magnum.  He wanted to know if I felt they were good guns.  In a word:  Yes.  My friend was specifically considering the .357 Blackhawk with the extra cylinder for 9mm ammo; I’m not a big fan of the combo Blackhawks (I think they’re a solution to a problem that doesn’t exist).  But the basic .357 Blackhawk?   It’s a winner, and I think it’s one of the world’s great handguns.

I’ve owned several .357 Blackhawks over the last 50 years, starting with a plain vanilla blue steel New Model I bought at a K-Mart when I lived in El Paso (yep, they used to sell handguns).  I traded that one away, and then I bought an Old Model Blackhawk with the convertible 9mm cylinder.   It was a pristine used gun, still in the original box, with the shorter 4 5/8-inch barrel.  I never fired that gun and I only owned it for about a week.  I paid something like $75 for it, and then I sold it to my boss at Fort Bliss a few days later because he wanted it.   That Old Model with its convertible 9mm cylinder would be collectible today.  Eh, live and learn, I guess.

There were two convertible Blackhawks back in the 1970s, and I guess there are still two available new today.  One is the 9mm/.357 combo I described above; the other is the .45 ACP/.45 Colt deal.  I had a New Model Blackhawk .45 ACP/.45 Colt around the same time as I bought that Old Model 9mm/.357.  I only shot .45 ACP in it because I had a ready supply of .45 ACP ammo.  Mine wasn’t very accurate.  It might have been because the .45 ACP bullet had to make a big jump to the rifling (it’s a shorter cartridge), or it might have been that I just had the wrong .45 ACP load for that revolver.  I think the same accuracy detractors exist with the 9mm/.357 arrangement. The accuracy challenge is perhaps even more significant for the 9mm Blackhawk because of the slight difference in bore diameters between the 9mm and the .357 (the barrel diameter is .357 inches; the 9mm bullets are .355 or .356 inches in diameter).  If you have the .357 Blackhawk with the extra 9mm cylinder, you can actually shoot three cartridges in it (9mm from the one cylinder, and 38 Special and 357 Magnum from the other).  But I don’t have an interest in any of that.  I only shoot .357 Magnum in mine.

My .357 Blackhawk is the stainless model you see in the photo above.  It’s accurate (I can usually hold all my shots in the 10-ring of a silhouette target at 25 yards). They are super strong and I think they are more rugged than a Smith and Wesson. I sold all my S&W 357s years ago. And on that subject, I owned a couple of Colt Pythons back in the 1970s and I sold them, too. I never understand all the excitement over the Pythons; their fit and finish was great, but they didn’t shoot any better than the Blackhawk (at least in my hands).

No targets? No problem. My Blackhawk is a shooter.

There are several variants of the Blackhawk; I have the full-sized Blackhawk with the 6½-inch barrel.  I like the feel of it, I like the grip, and as a kid who grew up watching Westerns, I like the idea of a single-action sixgun.  Today, Ruger makes several variants of their .357 Blackhawk.  There are fixed-sight versions they call the Vaquero, smaller frame versions they call the flat top, different barrel lengths, stainless models, blue steel models, and more.   I like the stainless version because the grip is made of steel; in the blue version it’s anodized aluminum. The stainless grip is a little heavier and the gun feels better to me. But there’s nothing wrong with the blued-steel Blackhawk. They are great guns.

My Blackhawk was manufactured in 1976, and like all Rugers built that year, it carries the “Made in the 200th Year of American Liberty” rollmark.

I like loading the .357 ammo, too, and I loaded a bunch this weekend. It’s a cool cartridge to reload. WW 296 is my preferred propellant. Unique does okay, too, but 296 is the cat’s meow for the .357 Magnum cartridge.  It’s a flat-shooting cartridge, and I can hit consistently with it all the way out to 200 yards.   I may set up a target or two at that distance the next time I’m on the range just to back up that statement.


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Catching up and what’s coming up!

Snacks at an engineering seminar in Singapore. Those are hard-boiled quail eggs and they were good!

I’m back after a 3-day hop over to Singapore, and it’s good to be home.  I thought I’d do sort of a catchall blog to mention a bunch of things.  For starters, Singapore was fun (it always is), but that 15-hour time change is a bear.  I was over there to teach a class, something I do two or three times a year.  They treat me well in Singapore and I love traveling to Asia.  I think I’m back on California time already, thanks to keeping an altered sleep schedule while I was in Asia and a good sleeping pill that let me sleep through the night last night.  If you’ve never been to Singapore, you might want to add it to your bucket list.  It’s one of the world’s great places.

I kept up (as many of you did) with Joe Gresh’s Endurofest fun in Flagstaff, and it looks like the only downside to that adventure was his good buddy Hunter crashed and cracked a bunch of ribs.  Hunter, we’re thinking of you.  Get well soon.

At the spot where Joe’s buddy Hunter crashed. He got through it with six broken ribs. Ouch!

And speaking of cracking things, you’ll remember the story on my .257 Weatherby Ruger No. 1 cracking its Circassian walnut stock and me shipping it back to the factory.  I called Ruger, but I still don’t have an update on the fix.  They were supposed to get back to me later today, but it’s already later today so I expect I won’t hear anything until tomorrow or Monday.  I’ve got a bunch of .257 Weatherby brass polished and primed, and I’ve got the Barnes monolithic copper bullets my good buddy Mississippi Dave recommended.  I’m eager to get that rifle back and continue the load development for it.

A 200th year Ruger 77 in 7×57. You’d think with all those 7s I’d get lucky, but I haven’t found a way to get tight groups yet. I’m working the problem.

In the meantime, I’ve been playing with a beautiful 43-year-old Ruger Model 77.  It’s a 200th year Ruger in a very classy chambering, the 7×57, which is the old Spanish Mauser cartridge.  I bought it used in 1977 and it is in pristine condition, and I think I know why the previous owner sold it.   It doesn’t group worth a damn.  But that makes it more fun (half the fun with these things is searching for a good load).   Stay tuned, because if I ever find a decent load, you can be sure there will be a blog on this one.

The carb on my TT250 is gummed up and it won’t idle.  That’s not the bike’s fault.  It’s mine.  I sometimes go months between rides on that bike, and that’s what happened here.  I’ll take the carb apart to clean out the passageways, and when I do, I’ll photodocument the approach so you can see how I go about it.   I’ll have to re-read the tutorial I did for CSC Motorcycles on the TT250 carb first.  These bikes are super easy to maintain, and they have to be one of the best deals ever on a new motorcycle.

Hey, another cool motorcycle deal…my good buddy Ben recently published a book titled 21 Tips For Your First Ride South Of The Border (and it’s free).  You can download it here.

Let’s see…what else?  Oh yeah, we have a bunch of stuff in the blog pipeline for you.  There’s the Yoo-Hoo product review (we haven’t forgotten about that one).   There’s a very cool watch company (Gear’d Hardware) that follows the ExNotes blog, and they recently sent two watches to us for review.  The review will appear here in the near future.  That’s good; we’ve been meaning to start a watch review series and this will get the ball rolling.

A Gear’d Hardware watch, one of two Gresh and I will review for you here on the ExhaustNotes blog.

More good stuff:  I’ve been playing with another Ruger No. 1 chambered in yet another Weatherby cartridge (the mighty .300 Weatherby), and I’ll be posting a blog about that soon.   Another product review that’s coming up is one on turmeric, the dietary supplement that’s supposed to work wonders for arthritis.  I don’t have arthritis, but that crash I had on my Speed Triple 10 years ago has bothered me mightily for the last decade, and taking turmeric is getting it done for me.  I don’t normally believe in these supplement wonder pills, but folks, it’s working.  Watch for the blog on this stuff.  And we haven’t forgotten about a near-term ride up the Pacific Coast Highway (good buddy TK and I have been talking about that one).

California’s Pacific Coast Highway: It doesn’t get any better than this.

Stay tuned; there’s always good stuff coming your way here on the ExNotes blog!


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John Wayne’s Weatherby

We were in Oklahoma last week and it was awesome.  It was an opportunity to visit with a wonderful friend and see the sights.  And folks, Oklahoma has them.  One of our stops was the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City.  It’s an amazing place with a collection of Native American artifacts, rodeo trophies, art, sculpture, firearms, and more.  The guns on display were impressive, and one of the firearms that caught my attention was John Wayne’s Weatherby.

John Wayne’s Weatherby, chambered in the mighty .300 Weatherby Magnum cartridge, on display in Oklahoma City’s National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum.

I’ve always admired John Wayne, and I love Weatherby rifles.  This particular rifle was of interest for several reasons, not the least of which was John Wayne’s connection to Weatherby.  I remembered seeing John Wayne in Weatherby ads decades ago, and I knew he appeared in at least one of the magnificent Weatherby full color catalogs.   I found the photo I remembered in my vintage Weatherby catalogs, but it didn’t show Mr. Wayne with this rifle.  Then I did a search on “John Wayne’s Weatherby” hoping to find a photo showing him holding the rifle you see in the photo above, but I did not find it.  Wayne appeared in several photos and advertisements, though, like the one you see here:

An early ad showing John Wayne with a Weatherby rifle. It’s not the rifle I saw in Oklahoma City.

The Weatherby in the Oklahoma City National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum was interesting from several perspectives beyond the fact that it belonged to John Wayne.  Take a look:

This is very early Weatherby, built on a Mauser action. Weatherby used Mauser and other actions before he designed his proprietary Mark V action. Note the dark finish on this rifle.
Optional extrended checkering with a fleur de lis, skip line pattern. Note the scratches and dings; this rifle was not a safe queen. John Wayne rode this one hard!
Extra-cost fancier-than-stock checkering on the fore end. Some of the dark finish is worn away near the rosewood fore end tip. Did Wayne pay Weatherby to have a darker finish applied, did the rifle darken from too much oil over the years, or ???
A shot of the Mauser action and an early proprietary Weatherby four-power telescopic sight. Note that the windage and elevation turrets are in line on top of the scope, rather than today’s practice of placing elevation on the top and windage on the right of the scope barrel.
An ivory or maple stock inlay, darkened along with the rest of the stock. The inlay was almost certainly done in Weatherby’s custom rifle shop.

So there you have it:  John Wayne’s Weatherby at the Oklahoma City National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum.   We enjoyed our time there, and I’ll add more photos from the Museum in subsequent blogs.  If you’re in the area, the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum is a spot you won’t want to miss.


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Taking stock of things…

Good groups with cup-and-core copper jacketed bullets, but I had to slow things down to get the groups to shrink. What I need for this rifle to get the velocities up are solids.

Wow, I was absolutely elated with the groups I fired with the .257 Weatherby Ruger No. 1 and when I was cleaning my rifle, I was thinking about how much I was enjoying the rifle now that I had it shooting well.   I knew it wasn’t living up to its potential yet because of the excellent inputs I had received from my new good buddy David from Mississippi, who I think is maybe the most knowledgeable guy out there about the .257 Weatherby cartridge and the Ruger No. 1.   David explained that I really needed monolithic (solid copper) bullets to reach the kinds of velocities the .257 Weatherby attains, and I ordered a couple of boxes of Barnes solids based on his advice.

I was eagerly awaiting the arrival of my new Barnes copper bullets when I started cleaning my No. 1, thinking about them and admiring the grain in the rifle’s Circassian walnut stock.  Then something caught my eye.  Whoa, what’s this?

The stock had cracked.  I couldn’t believe what I was seeing, but there it was.  No, I didn’t get a photo.  But I had two small cracks, just behind the receiver, one on the top and one on the bottom of the rifle.  When you inlet and fit a stock to a rifle, you’re supposed to provide a bit of relief between the back of the tang (the rifle receiver’s rearmost structure) and the wood.   What you don’t want is the tang bearing directly on the walnut, as it can act as a wedge and crack the stock.   That’s what happened on mine.

Beautiful Circassian walnut; the best I had seen after looking at dozens of .257 Weatherby Ruger No. 1 rifles. But it was all for naught.

I felt sick about the stock cracking.  I had selected my .257 Weatherby No. 1  (after looking at a bunch of them) specifically based on its Circassian walnut stock and matching fore end.  Well, it is what it is, and bitching and moaning won’t make it better.  So I called Ruger’s Customer Service, they emailed a shipping label to me while we were on the phone, and I returned the rifle to Ruger.   I’m hoping they’ll find a stock that’s as nice (or nicer) than the one I had, but I’m not worried about it.  Ruger’s Customer Service is legendary, and I’m sure they’ll do good by me.  You’ll know about it as soon as I do.   And I’m eager to try the loads and new bullets my good buddy David recommended.  Stay tuned, my friends.   I’m going to explore the terrain above 3,500 feet per second with this rifle, and I’m going to produce tiny little groups doing so.  We’ll see what happens!


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