I’m not the Joe in this story, nor is Joe Gresh. Nope, this is something altogether different…a guest blog by our good buddy Art, and it touches on a topic near and dear to my heart, the .44 Magnum Smith and Wesson Model 29. Let’s get right to it, and that would be Art’s blog on his friend, Joe, and their experiences with the mighty Model 29.
Joe Abbott was one of South London’s finest characters. Probably in his mid-fifties, this tough looking, gruff-talking individual of which at least one in three words was an expletive, was also a man of many diverse talents. He’d been in the fruit & vegetables and meat trade, blue movies, and had settled in the more lucrative scrap metal trade.
But what made Joe such so endearing was that he always came to the shooting club with a 6.5” barrel, lusciously-blued, S&W Model 29 tucked away in a suitable shoulder rig. This unloaded piece was also kept in fine company by a bullet belt with about 8 rounds.
Joe always graciously allowed people to handle his .44 Magnum. This experience was always accompanied by lurid stories about just how many engine blocks it could destroy and the unsavory whack the shooter would receive.
It was 1975, and I had not yet seen “Dirty Harry,” but the repeated references were made and after coming out of the cinema, I realized that I really needed one.
Getting a Firearms Certificate (FAC) in the UK is a drawn-out procedure and you must join a reputable shooting club. Once done, I obtained a ‘slot’ on my FAC for a 6”, Model 29-2 which I bought through “The Saddlery & Gunroom” in Biggin Hill, Kent – and which still exists today.
And so it came to be that on one fine October evening in 1981 I found myself on the “Stone Lodge” shooting range in Dartford, southeast of London – now long defunct due to the UK’s continuing anti-gun stance.
The dozen or so, pistol booths, divided by plywood walls had battered wooden counters which bore a few scattered marks of various NDs over the years.
With some trepidation, I partially loaded op the cylinder with 240-grain Federal JHPs, took my stance and gently bought the gun up one-handed as I had been taught for slow-fire. Joe Abbot’s biblical warnings returned to me when the next thing was a thunderous muzzle blast, a blinding flash that seemed to light up the skies and a mule’s kick to my right hand, which was still clutching my 44 in a near-vertical position.
“You OK, mate?” came a voice from the booth next to me. It seemed that the flimsy plywood had not been sufficient in dampening the 44’s roar.
When my fellow shooter peered into my booth, he found me gazing open mouthed at my new piece which I had placed on the counter, wondering what the hell I had just bought. That evening I only put five more rounds through it, the standard Goncalo Alves grips with its sharp checkering not giving any quarter.
The .44’s reputation preceded me, so every time I took it to any range, there was always a healthy line of people wanting to shoot it, and who offered their pieces in return to fire, which allowed for a good experience with a wide range of guns. One of the club’s members downloaded my brass into .44 Special loads, easing up the load on my gun and my wrist.
In 1997, the whole thing came to an end when the British government banned all handguns in private possession. Along with 40,000 law abiding sports men and women all over the UK, I was commanded to go to a local police station of their choice and hand in my 44 and Walther GSP .22 target pistol, never to be seen again.
As rumors persisted that the higher end guns would be stored for some years and then sold to lesser restrictive countries, I had written my full name and address inside the grips of both guns.
In 2015, I became a proud ‘Documented-American-In-Waiting’, my AZ residence allowing me to enjoy an unprecedented freedom that no other world country could dream of offering. I would continue to dream of owning another part of identical S&W history, despite the steep prices to which they had climbed over the years.
In the ever-increasing universe of polymer self-loaders, the appreciation of the traditional steel has begun a steady upwards trend. Revolvers with their near-clockwork mechanism are becoming increasingly in demand, especially from the younger shooters. Ex-police guns, predominantly the stainless autos, have found their way into the civilian market and are hungrily bought by discerning citizens who are swayed by historical interest and the very affordable prices.
One fine day, and at half the price of the blued ‘Dirty Harry’ model, a 6” stainless .44 Magnum Hunter Classic with unfluted cylinder followed me home from one of the Phoenix shows. The continued underlug, ventilated barrel rib, resembling the beautiful Colt Python, and Pachmayr grips sounded the bells of seduction. I was well and truly on the rocks.
Those 38 years must have dulled my initial reactions to Joe Abbott’s apocalyptic performance figures since I pointed my Model 29-2 downrange for the very first time. Perhaps it was the increased weight of my new piece that seemed to have tamed the ferocious recoil, or having fired a great many handguns of various calibers. Whatever, happy days are here again and I’m privileged to enjoy the 228-year-old rights and privileges that all Americans are born with. Long may it continue.
Art, I could not have said it better myself. Well done, and thanks for your guest blog. I enjoyed reading it and I’m sure our readers will, too. We’re glad you’re here in America with us, and it’s always good to hear from a fellow .44 aficionado (how’s that for alliteration?). Please shoot us a copy of your snail mail address, Art, and we’ll send to you a signed copy of 5000 Miles At 8000 RPM as a small thank you for helping us make the blog a success.
And to the rest of our readers: Do you have an idea for a guest blog? It can be any topic: Motorcycles, watches, guns, bicycles, travel, photography, and more. We’d love to hear from you. Write to us at info@exhaustnotes.us!
After reading one of the blogs I posted on my most capable, TJ-customized Smith and Wesson Model 59, good buddy Tom commented that he had a Model 659. “I always wanted a Model 659,” I said.
My custom Model 59. I’ve been sending lead downrange with this one for close to 50 years.
Well, you know how these things go. One thing led to another, and now I do. Own one, that is. A Model 659. Tom gave me a super deal on his Model 659, and after a visit to an FFL dealer and waiting the Peoples Republik of Kalifornia’s obligatory 10-day cooling off period, I had (in Kalifornia’s infinite left-leaning wisdom) chilled sufficiently. I took possession of this latest addition to the ExNotes Armory, and let me tell you, this new-to-me 9mm is a honey.
My 659, along with a few 9mm reloads. The 659 has an ambidextrous safety. Mine also has Pachmayr grips, which make it easier to get a good grip.
The Model 659 was the follow-on in Smith and Wesson’s 9mm semi-automatic handgun evolutionary arc, and it sold riotously well. The 659’s all stainless steel construction gives it a comfortable heft and provides a stable firing platform. High capacity, 9mm, stainless steel, and an American manufacturer with a storied reputation: What’s not to like? Police departments turned to the Model 659 in droves. It was the right gun at the right time as police departments abandoned their .38 Special six-shooters and moved to 9mm autos.
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As the police armament evolution advanced, the Model 659 Smiths were superseded by yet even newer wunderguns, and used 659s became widely available when the police departments traded them in. I don’t know that this is my 659’s heritage, but I suspect it was. My 659 was well worn externally with lots of fine scratches in the metal work, it didn’t have hardly any internal wear (it hadn’t been fired much), and the safety decocker didn’t work the way it was supposed to. All these things were signs that pointed to lots of carry but little actual shooting.
First, the safety decocker. It’s that gizmo on the rear of the slide that drops and blocks the hammer, and on mine, when it was fully depressed, the hammer wouldn’t drop the way it was supposed to. I guessed it wore out from having been actuated a ton of times, which is probably what happened when whoever carried it put it away for the night every night. This issue was slightly complicated by the fact that Smith and Wesson no longer supports these pistols (that’s the bad news). The good news is that the old Numrich corporation purchased Smith and Wesson’s entire inventory of Model 659 parts (Numrich is now known as the Gun Parts Corporation, but everyone still calls them Numrich). That’s where I found what I needed. Numrich has exploded drawings of these (and many, many other) old guns on line, and you can dope out how older guns work and identify the parts you need. With the help of their isometric drawing below, follow along with me as I explain how this safety decocker thing works.
The 659 Smith decocker is activated by a thumb lever. It’s Find No. 1 in the above drawing. The thing fits into a through-hole at the rear of the slide. When you rotate the decocker down to the safe position, a slot in it pushes the sear release lever down, which is Find No. 63 in the above drawing. When that happens, the sear release lever rotates and acts on the sear, which is Find No. 29. When that happens, the sear releases the hammer (Find No. 61). When the hammer falls, it can’t hit the firing pin because the hammer’s fall to the firing pin is obstructed by the decocker having been rotated to the safe position (which brings us back to Find No. 1). It’s all very clever.
So, like I said above, when Smith went to their newer series of handguns, they sold all their remaining parts inventory to Numrich. Numrich had the new sear release lever, and it was only $4.50. Weirdly, I could have bought a used part from Numrich for $3.50, but the used part would be worn and it would probably not correct the problem I needed to fix (a problem which resulted from wear). It was a no brainer to me, so I splurged for the extra $1 and bought the new part (I’m cheap, but I’m not stupid). My new safety release lever arrived in the mail a few days later.
The 659’s original safety release lever. This one was worn beyond serviceable limits and I bought a new replacement. The upper arrow points to the part of the safety lever that rides along the decocker drum. The lower arrow points to the part that actuates the sear. It was this area (the area designated by the lower arrow) that needed to be fitted to assure proper function. That .22 Long Rifle cartridge? It’s only in the photo to provide a sense of scale.
When the new sear release lever arrived, I had to strip the gun down to the bare frame. I installed the new sear release lever, but it needed to be fitted so that it actuated the hammer drop at the appropriate point in the decocker’s rotation. It was a matter of assemble the gun, try it, take it all apart again, file the sear release lever a little bit, reassemble the gun, try it again, and repeat the process until the decocker worked the way it is supposed to. The whole thing took me about an hour of disassembling, testing, filing, and reassembling. I like doing this sort of stuff. I imagine it’s a lot like resurrecting a 900cc Kawasaki.
The next step was to go to work on all the minor scratches on the gun’s slide and frame. That’s one of the great advantages of a stainless steel firearm. With a little bit of 600-grit sandpaper, you can keep a stainless gun looking new forever. I was really pleased with the way this one turned out. It looks like a new gun now. Nah, scratch that (pardon the pun). I think Smith finished these guns with 400-grit abrasive, which is a little rougher than 600-grit. Mine looks better than new. Polished, almost. It really is a thing of great beauty.
My standard 9mm load is 5.0 grains of Unique behind a 124 grain roundnose bullet, and I’ve got a bunch reloaded and packed away in my ammo locker. It’s an accurate load and it’s reliable. Yeah, I know, you can buy 9mm ammo cheaper than you can reload it these days. I don’t care. I like to reload. Logic doesn’t always prevail when it comes to guns and ammo.
I grabbed a few hundred rounds and it was off to the range for me and the 659. I was more than pleased with the results. I didn’t have a single failure to feed, fire, extract, or eject, and the 659 is accurate. It’s a lot of fun to shoot and the 9mm is a great cartridge.
50 rounds at 50 feet, fired offhand from the standing position. The 659 is a keeper. It’s a lot of fun to shoot, and the bullets go where you tell them to. Nearly all shots were in the 10 ring, and only a few dropped into the 9 ring. The shots that went low? I mostly likely shifted my focus from the front sight to the target. That’s what makes shots go low, and that’s the subject of an upcoming blog.
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I mentioned last week that Speer offers 168 grain jacketed hollow point boat tail bullets, and that I was going to load a few rounds for the Garand to see how they performed. My initial results with the Speer bullets were not as good as with Sierra bullets, but I’m just getting started. The Speer Competition Target bullets are much less expensive than the Sierra MatchKings, and I want to make the Speers work. I’m basically a cheap SOB.
Speer’s 168 grain target bullets are just $25 for a box of 100; the comparable Sierra bullets are $37.
My accuracy load with the Sierra bullets was 47.0 grains, which did well in my Garand. That’s the load I used with the Speer bullets. Here’s what I did at 100 yards:
Two clips of 8 rounds each. There’s potential here.
I shot two clips of 8 rounds each at the above target. The promising part was that the second 8 shots grouped better than the first. Not quite as good as the Sierras, but the Speer bullets are hinting there’s more accuracy hiding in those shiny copper jackets. I didn’t exercise the care and consistency I normally would when I loaded these; I guess I was in a hurry. I used brass I had fired four times in the Garand, the brass is getting longer, and I didn’t trim it. I didn’t clean the primer pockets, either. For the next load I’ll trim the cases to a consistent length, I’ll clean the primer pockets, and I’ll use all the other little tricks I’ve learned over the years.
I called the Speer folks yesterday to see if they had any further insights on accuracy with their bullets in the Garand. Reaching the Speer guy was not easy; they don’t list a number on their website and I hate those website “ask us your question” pages. I finally got through to a guy who knew what he was talking about. The Speer rep said he couldn’t tell me the Garand accuracy load because they use a different barrel in their rifle and the harmonics would be different. After asking about the load I was using with the Sierra bullets, he told me their IMR 4064 propellant range with this bullet goes from 45.0 grains up to 49.0 grains (higher than the max load with the Sierra bullets). He also said that the Speer bullets do better with higher charges. He recommended I start at 47.0 grains of IMR 4064 and go up from there. The Speer bullets have ogive and boat tail profiles that are longer than the Sierra bullet, so the Speers have less bearing area in the barrel (that’s why they can be loaded hotter). The Speer dude told me they also load to a longer cartridge overall length of 3.295 inches (which basically defines how deep the bullets are seated in the cartridge case). For someone who couldn’t give me their accuracy load, he sure had a bunch of good information.
So, that’s my plan for the next load. I’ll pick up another box of the Speer bullets and I’ll shoot them later this week, assuming my component dealer still has the Speers in stock. It would be good if I can get them to shoot as well as the Sierras. They are way less expensive. Did I mention I am a cheap SOB?
On to that motorcycle commercial thing mentioned in the title of this blog. Good buddy TK sent this YouTube to me last week, and it’s a hoot. It looks like the Harley and Kawi commercials overseas are a lot better than the silly stuff we see here (although I don’t think I’ve seen any motorcycle commercials for at least a couple of years now).
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
Art, I could not have said it better myself. Well done, and thanks for your guest blog. I enjoyed reading it and I’m sure our readers will, too. We’re glad you’re here in America with us, and it’s always good to hear from a fellow .44 aficionado (how’s that for alliteration?). Please shoot us a copy of your snail mail address, Art, and we’ll send to you a signed copy of 5000 Miles At 8000 RPM as a small thank you for helping us make the blog a success.
