Category: Guns

Rabbits to Rhinos…

It was a day on the range with three classic and regal rifles:  A .22 Hornet Winchester Model 43, a Winchester Model 70 chambered in .300 Weatherby Magnum, and a .416 Rigby Ruger Model 77 RSM Express.  These are rifles that can handle everything from rabbits to rhinos, although my only intent was to punch holes in paper, preferably with the holes as close to each other as possible.   It’s always fun doing so, and it’s even more fun when the rifles have  an elegance rooted in fine walnut, hand-cut checkering, and deeply polished blue steel.  To me, these things are art. Art you can take to the range and enjoy.  I’m going to tell you more about the load data for each of these rifles in subsequent blogs; today, it’s a bit of history about the guns and their cartridges, and how I came to own each of these fine rifles.

A study in extremes: From top to bottom, it’s the .416 Rigby, the .300 Weatherby Magnum, and the diminutive .22 Hornet.  All three are reloaded cartridges.

The rifles?  I’ve mentioned at least two of these in ExNotes blogs before, but for those of you who haven’t read those posts, let me bring you up to speed.  The first is a Winchester Model 43 Deluxe manufactured in 1949.

The Winchester Model 43 Deluxe, a .22 Hornet rifle that looks like it shipped from the factory last week.

The next is an early 1980s Winchester Model 70 XTR.  It’s one of a very small number of rifles Winchester chambered in .300 Weatherby that year.

Another magnificent Winchester, this time a Model 70 chambered in .300 Weatherby Magnum. Check out the walnut!

And the last is a Ruger Model 77 RSM Express.  It’s a monstrous rifle, chambered for a cartridge designed to slay monsters.   Rhinos, elephants, and more.  It’s a beautiful firearm.

The .416 Rigby Ruger RSM Express, a rifle so costly to produce Ruger had to stop making it.

As I wrote this blog, I realized that I purchased all three rifles from the same store:  Turner’s in West Covina, California.  Turner’s is the major hunting and fishing sporting goods chain here in California.  I’m usually not a fan of big chain stores, but I’ve found some good deals at Turner’s and I’ll give credit where credit is due:  Turner’s did good by me.  All three of these rifles were fantastic deals.

People ask how I find guns with great wood.  Part of it is I’m picky and I’m patient.  Another factor is that today’s firearms market is dominated by folks who want black plastic rifles and pistols.  That’s the market Turner’s serves and that’s good for me, because when collectible firearms with blue steel and walnut come into Turner’s they tend to sit for awhile.  Most guys who focus on ARs tend to ignore what, to me, is the good stuff.

The Winchester Model 43 was on the consignment rack at Turner’s several years ago.  It was the first Model 43 I had ever seen and I liked the look and feel.  I like the cartridge, too.  Turner’s had the rifle priced at $1000 and after doing my research, I thought that was fair.  But I’m not interested in a fair deal.  I want an exceptional deal.   I visited that store every week or so for a good month and a half, and that little Model 43 had not moved.   You see, in that neighborhood, there isn’t much of a market for a collectible Winchester.   Like I said above, it’s just not what sells around here.

Winchester only made the Model 43 from May 1948 through 1953, and as mentioned above, mine was manufactured in 1949.   When I bring my Model 43 to the range, folks who know what they’re seeing are all “ooohs” and “ahhhs,” as the crowd I run with consists mostly of guys who started driving when Eisenhower was in the White House.  These guys get it.

Name one modern rifle that includes a checkered steel butt plate. You can’t. They don’t exist. You have to turn back the clock 50 years or more to fnd this.
Hand checkering, too! Not laser cut, not pressed in, not machine cut, and not a rubber insert…but real hand-cut checkering. Somebody at the Winchester factory probably took the better part of a day 70 years ago to do this, and it was all done with hand tools. Checkering is one of the things that makes this Model 43 a Deluxe model.
Nobody has better rollmarks than Winchester, and these say it all: America, Model 43, Winchester, and .22 Hornet!
I pointed this out in an earlier blog, but it’s so cool I’ll mention it again. That front sight is not a separate part grafted on to the Model 43’s barrel; it and the barrel are machined from one piece of steel. Think lots of machine time and big production expense. Check out the stippling on the sight ramp (it cuts the sun’s glare). That would have all been done by hand.

So, back to my pining over the Model 43.  I stopped in at Turner’s for maybe the sixth time to look at the Hornet again.  I mean, the thing was on my mind.  I was thinking about it at night when I went to sleep, it kept me up, and then when I finally dozed off, I was still thinking about it the next morning.   To be a complete human being, I realized, I needed that Model 43.  I suspect that if you’re reading this blog, you understand.

If the Hornet was still on the rack at Turner’s, I reasoned, the guy who had it on consignment might be willing to negotiate.  I was going to offer $950.  The rifle was easily worth the $1000 they were asking for it; $950 would be a killer deal.   So I stopped in on the way home one day and asked to look at the Hornet again.  I sensed that the guy behind the counter (the Turner’s gun department manager) was a little hesitant to show it to me, but he handed it over after opening the bolt.

I looked at the attached tag. The price had been reduced to $850.

I’ll take it, I said.   The gunstore guy sighed.  He told me he had wanted to buy the rifle (he was an older guy, like me), but that wasn’t my problem.  I filled out all the paperwork, and 10 days later, I took my 1949 Hornet home.  I was a complete human being. I could sleep now.  All was well with the world.

I have no idea why Winchester stopped making these rifles, but I suspect it was because they were expensive to manufacture and the Winchester Model 70 was selling better.  Whatever.  And the cartridge itself?  The .22 Hornet was first fielded in the early 1930s and when it hit the market, it was a sensation.  It was a wildcat cartridge designed at the Springfield Arsenal and its focus was high speed (in those days, the 2400 fps Hornet was fast).   The Hornet’s low recoil, relatively flat (for the day) trajectory, and accuracy made it the hot ticket for sending critters to the Great Beyond. I’ve been with Hornet-armed guys chasing jackrabbits and coyotes in west Texas; there is no better  cartridge for this kind of hunting in the desert surrounding El Paso.  There are more powerful .22 centerfires available today, but the Hornet is the one that started it all.  It’s one of the world’s all-time great designs.

Winchester offered the Model 43 in two flavors – the Standard and the Deluxe.  My 1951 Stoeger catalog shows that a new Deluxe sold for $66.95 that year; the Standard was $12 less expensive.  Mine is a Deluxe, with checkering and a deep blue highly polished finish.  And wow, it does its job well.  It has iron sights, and I shot some amazing groups with it at 50 yards.  I’ll share the load data with you in a subsequent blog.

50 yards, the right load, open sights, and a well-mannered Model 43 all came together on this fine day. Any time I can get under an inch at 50 yards with open sights, I’m calling it a good day.
But wait, there’s more! This old Model 43 gets the job done!

I bought the Model 70 .300 Weatherby rifle in the 1980s.  I was an aerospace engineer working at Honeywell in Covina (we did naval gunfire control systems for one of the first cannon-launched laser-guided munitions), I met my wife Sue when I worked at Honewell, and I hung out with my good buddy Ralph.  Ralph, as it turns out, had the same affliction as me:  He was a gun nut.   Ralph told me about Turner’s.  I was new to California, and I had never heard of Turner’s.

You can guess where this story is going.  I went to Turner’s on my lunch break and I saw the Model 70.  I knew enough back then to know that a factory Model 70 chambered for a Weatherby round was an unusual rifle, and I also had a taste for fancy walnut (my Dad made custom gunstocks, so I guess the walnut thing is genetic).  The rifle was marked for something like $429 or $439 if I recall correctly (I might be off a little, but it was somewhere in the just-north-of-$400 range).  I knew that it was tough to lose money on a gun (not that I had any plans to sell it), but it was the wood on that Model 70 that cinched the deal for me.   I paid what they were asking because I wasn’t much of a negotiator back then.  Today, I know that gun shops always put the rifles with the most beautiful wood on display.   By definition, that’s the one I want and I’ll work hard to get it.   But now I always ask for a discount no matter how stunning the stock is, because, you know, it’s the display model.  Don’t laugh.  It almost always works.

Sweet. The Model 70 in .300 Weatherby Magnum. The time to buy a gun like this is when you see it. They don’t come along too often, and I’ve never seen another one like it.

Winchester introduced the Model 70 in 1936.  They value engineered the Model 70 in 1964 (that’s a nice way of saying they cheapened its looks and feel), and the pre-64s used to be far more desirable.  But that’s all changed.  I’ve owned pre-64s and modern Model 70 Winchesters, and I can tell you from personal experience the current production Model 70s are better guns.  You can argue the point, but like I’ve said, I’ve owned both, and you won’t convince me.  I’ve got the targets to prove it.

The funny thing about this particular Model 70 is that after I bought it, I didn’t shoot it but once or twice over the next 35 years.   I was happy just knowing I owned it, and truth be told, I was a little intimidated by the .300 Weatherby cartridge.   Yeah, I know, real men don’t flinch, but let me tell you, those .300 Weatherby rifles kick.   I started getting serious about mastering this cartridge recently, though, and that’s what led to my Three 300s blog a couple of weeks ago.  I guess I’m getting used to the recoil (a .300 Weatherby will rattle your fillings), because on this most recent range visit, the Model 70 graced me with a couple of 100-yard groups I found astonishing.  I can’t do this with a .300 Weatherby all the time, but when I do, I’ll brag a bit.   And I did.  And I’m bragging a bit.

100 yards, a Weaver T-10 scope, and flinch-free trigger time all came together for a half-minute-of-angle 100-yard group.  I shoot 3-shot groups when developing a hunting load. I’ve never been a fan of 5-shot groups, as I’ve found it’s very hard to get an animal to stand still for five shots.
Maybe that 0.519-inch group isn’t good enough? Hey, the very next one measured 0.371. This is from a .300 Weatherby, mind you, at 100 yards. I’m good to go!

The Model 70 Winchester has been called the Rifleman’s Rifle, and for good reason.  Model 70s have the right look and they are just flat accurate.  I guess you could go wrong with a Model 70, but I never have, and I’ve owned a few over the years.   And the .300 Weatherby cartridge?  There’s no question:  It’s a bruiser.   Developed by Roy Weatherby in 1944, it’s still one of the fastest 30-caliber rounds ever and as you can see above, it can be very accurate.

All right, on to the last one, and that’s the .416 Rigby.  Wow, what a cartridge that monster is.   It was the third rifle I brought to the range with me.   I was about five bays away from the rangemaster when I fired the first round.   He immediately came over to ask what I was shooting.   I thought he was intrigued by the thump (something that might have registered on a Richter scale somewhere), and I guess in a way he was.  I proudly answered that it was a .416 Rigby.  Then he asked me to move further away from his observation post.   The further the better, he said.

The rhino thumper. Big bullets, big bore, big rifle, big muzzle blast, and big recoil!  One box of unprimed brass (that’s just 20 pieces) costs $43!
It just looks cool, doesn’t it?

The .416 Rigby is a cartridge with an interesting pedigree.  It was first developed in 1911 by John Rigby and Company, the folks in England who made safari rifles for folks who liked to throw money around.  The cartridge was designed for dangerous game…big things that can bite you, stomp you, gore you, and maybe even eat you.  Over the years, Rigby built approximately 500 rifles chambered for its mighty .416 cartridge, and then it fell out of favor after the .458 Winchester Magnum entered the market.  The .416 Rigby probably would have died a graceful death had Ruger not stepped in with their .416 Rigby Model 77 RSM (the rifle you see here) nearly 30 years ago.   All told, Ruger built about a thousand of these rifles from 1991 to 2001.   Then, presumably because of the manufacturing expense and fewer guys going to Africa to chase the things that bite back, Ruger discontinued the rifle.

I bought the Ruger at Turner’s, and it was a repeat of the Hornet story.  The Rigby was on consignment (at the very same Turner’s in West Covina), and it was marked $1400.  That was not a bad price, and these Ruger Express Magnums are an investment (you see them now for numbers approaching $2000, sometimes even more).  I keep telling my wife that (you know, the line about collectible guns being investments and all).  She keeps asking me when I’m going to sell.

Like the Model 43, the barrel and sight are machined from one blank (it’s the rear sight on the Ruger rifle).  That means Ruger had to hog the whole mess out of a single piece of steel.  Think excessive machine time, and think high manufacturing cost.

The rear sight ramp is the same piece of steel as the barrel, similar to the approach Winchester used for the Model 43’s front sight ramp.  The three leaves are for close, mid-range, and long-range game.  This is an expensive way to go, but it makes for fast adjustments for someone pursuing dangerous game.   It was a common approach on high-dollar safari rifles back in the day. It’s elegant.

This .416 Rigby Ruger had an exceptionally well-figured Circassian walnut stock.  All of the Ruger RSM Express rifles had Circassian walnut, but I’ve only seen a few as fancy as this one, and when I saw this one, I knew I had to own it (it’s a disease, I know).   And this is another rifle in as-new condition. I can guess what happened…somebody bought it dreaming of Africa, the trip never materialized, the prior owner found out what .416 Rigby ammo costs (north of $200 for 20 rounds of factory ammo), the guy fired one or two rounds and felt the wrath of Rigby recoil, and shortly thereafter the rifle found its way to the consignment rack.  It happens more often than you might imagine.

Stunning Circassian Walnut. As supplied by Ruger, Circassian has an almost orange hue to it. This one is beautiful.

I offered the Turner’s dude $1200, and he said he couldn’t do that without talking to the person who had the rifle on consignment.   I looked at him and he looked back at me for several seconds.  I guess it was a standoff. Finally, I spoke:  Give the guy a call, I said.

He did, and yep, 10 days later the big Ruger came home with me.  It’s a monster.  It weighs more than any rifle I own, and a big part of what drives the weight is that monstrous hogged out .416 barrel.  But when you light one off, that weight is your friend.  It soaks up the recoil, of which there is plenty.

The Ruger was not nearly as accurate as the other two rifles I had on the range that day, but it still wasn’t too bad.  I was shooting at 50 yards initially, and this is the best group I could get…

.416-inch holes at 50 yards. This rifle will do better. I just didn’t have it in me that day.

After shooting five 3-shot groups at 50 yards, I had five rounds left in the box of 20.  I wanted to see where the bullets would hit at 100 yards, and I used a pistol silhouette target to make that assessment.

Meh, I could do better. With other rifles, I have on occasion shot groups under an inch at 100 yards with open sights, but it wasn’t going to happen that day (for me or the .416 Rigby).

I held at 6:00 on the target’s orange center, and I used that larger target because I didn’t know where the rounds would land at that distance (I wanted lots of paper around the point of aim so I could see what was going on).   I put all five shots on paper, but the group size was a disappointing 6.6 inches.   Oddly enough, the rifle was printing very slightly to the left at 50 yards, but it clearly grouped to the right at 100 yards.   I need to think about that a little bit.  Maybe it was the way the sun was hitting the front sight (that can make a significant difference), as I shot the 100-yard group later in the day.  I found the v-notch on the Rigby’s rear sight to be a bit difficult to use (I could not form a consistent sight picture).  I guess it’s okay for a charging rhino, but it’s not conducive to the accuracy I sought.  I’m not done with the Ruger Express rifle yet, and truth be told, I ‘m kind of glad the results weren’t stellar.   Half the fun with these things is searching for the perfect load.  Once you find it, for me at least, a lot of the excitement goes away.   I figure there’s still plenty of excitement left in the Rigby.

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A Model 700 Varmint Rifle

A Remington Model 700 BDL Varmint gun in .223. I spotted this at the Gunrunner in Duarte, and it followed me home.

There’s gun stores, and then there’s gun stores.  I can’t pass a gun store without stopping in.  The issue is that most gun shops today are soulless retail outlets with black plastic.  Glocks, ARs, you get the idea.  Guns with no soul and gun shop owners with even less.  But there are exceptions.  One that comes to mind is the Gunrunner in Duarte.  It’s a favorite, partly because the team working there consists of older guys a lot like myself (crusty, maybe carrying a few pounds more than they should be, and a sense of humor).   But it’s mostly because they get it.  “It” being, of course, blue steel and walnut.  And military surplus rifles.  I can’t drive by Gunrunner’s without stopping in.  You never know what they might have in stock, and even if I don’t buy anything, it’s always fun looking.

One day a few years ago on just such a stop, I noticed an older Remington Model 700. It was the varmint model and it had a price that was just too good to walk away from. And the photos don’t do it justice. It had a real contrasty bit of walnut with horizontal dark stripes that were unusually nice on a production gun. As the saying goes, I pulled the trigger. I bought the rifle for a scant $400, which I thought was a hell of a deal (I think new ones are about a thousand bucks now).

The Remington was pretty well gummed up with old oil (so much so the firing pin and trigger were stuck), and the standard M-700 BDL high gloss urethane finish was going south in a big way.  I took the barreled action out of the stock and gave it a thorough cleaning.  Then I spent hours on the stock with 0000 steel wool.

When I was finished, I was pleased with the results. The rifle looked way better than it did with the original high gloss finish (which never really appealed to me…it was too Hollywood for my tastes). The stock had a few nicks and scratches before; after the refinish, those completely disappeared. It became a thing of great beauty with a nice, subdued, European look.  I grabbed a few shots, and then I played with them a bit in Photoshop to subdue the background and highlight the rifle. I like how the rifle and this photo in particular turned out…

The results of 0000 steel wool and a bit of work on my Model 700 Varmint rifle.

I mounted an inexpensive Tasco 6×24 scope on the Model 700. I wasn’t wild about the scope, as it didn’t seem to be able to focus the reticle and the target simultaneously (or maybe it was just my old eyes). A new Weaver or a Leupold might have been in order, but the results with this resurrected old warhorse were still outstanding.  The rifle shot into an inch at 100 yards before I did any load development (which wasn’t too shabby) with what I regarded as junk .223 ammo.

More photos of the Model 700 after refinishing and with the new Tasco mounted.

I went to work on developing a load to get the rifle to shoot into a half-inch, and I succeeded: I broke the half-minute-of-angle barrier with a 0.498-inch three-shot group almost immediately!

A half-minute of angle!

That was with IMR 4320 propellant, and it prompted me to try several different propellants and charge weights:

Load results for the Model 700 .223 Remington.  All of the above loads used the Hornady VMax 55 grain bullet. You should always start at the low end of the charge range and work up; do not simply take my accuracy loads and try them in your rifle!

You might think that with the above results the rifle was a keeper.  It was, but not for me.  A couple of my shooting buddies wanted it, and I transferred it to a good friend for what I had into it.

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A day at the range…

I belong to a small circle of good buddies who, like me, are into shooting military surplus rifles and other cool old guns.  We get together every two months or so for an informal match at the West End Gun Club.   It’s a fun match, nothing terribly formal, and the winner has to buy lunch for everyone (and it’s usually me or Greg shelling out the cash for the fine Mexican lunches that follow our get-togethers).   Those events are a lot of fun and you can read about them (and the milsurp rifles) on our ExhaustNotes Tales of the Gun page.

Lots of times, though, it’s just me and good buddy Greg out there on the rifle range, and this past Friday morning was one of those days.  When that happens, we’ll usually send an email around to the other guys in our milsurp squad talking about what we shot, the loads we used, and how we did.  We did that last week, and I thought I’d share the emails with you.  First, my email to the boys…

Guys:

Every once in a while I get this feeling I need to sell a few guns, and that happened again earlier this week. I thought one of the ones I would sell was a pristine Model 43 Winchester Deluxe in .22 Hornet. This rifle is in as new condition with the original bluing. It was manufactured in 1949, 2 years before I was born. I took it out of the safe with the idea of taking a few photos for Gunbroker.com, and then I realized: What was I thinking? I don’t want to sell this rifle. Nope, a far better idea would be to load some .22 Hornet ammo and take it to the range.

The Model 43 Winchester, in .22 Hornet. This is the Deluxe version, with cut checkering and a deep blue finish. It’s hard to believe this rifle is 70 years old!
An elegant rifle, to be sure.

I bought the Model 43 about 6 years ago and until this morning I had never fired it. It found it on the consignment rack at Turner’s in Covina. After seeing the rifle there, I stopped by every other week for a couple of months, and then on one visit I saw they had dropped the price.   I thought it was fairly priced at the original number they had on the rifle, but I was initially hesitant.  It’s a beautiful rifle, but it didn’t really fit in with the other stuff in my modest collection and I didn’t want to shell out big bucks for another toy that would just sit in the safe.   When they dropped the price, though, I pounced. The gun department manager there was mildly annoyed because he wanted to buy it and it a weird sort of way that made me feel good. Hey, you snooze, you lose.

I knew I had waited too long to finally get around to shooting the old Winchester, but the Hornet’s day in the sun was today.  The Model 43 and I found our way to the WEGC range this morning, and as you might imagine, it was a good day.  Hell, any day on the rifle range is a good day.

22 Hornet ammo. It’s the original 22 centerfire cartridge, and in its day, it was the ultimate varmint round. Plus, it’s just cool.

About that .22 Hornet ammo: Good buddy Michael B sent some Hornet brass to me a few months ago. I loaded the brass Michael sent to me yesterday with a mild 4227 load (the powder came from Paul) and a box of 45 grain Sierra bullets that have been on my reloading bench since God was a roadguard.  (Thanks, Michael…I put your brass to good use!) Good buddy Greg was there with me. He can verify that everything you read here is true, unless he takes the 5th.

[Note for our blog readers…you’ve heard me talk about good buddy Paul, who was my next door neighbor when we were kids.   So was Michael.  He’s Paul’s little brother.]

Here are a few more shots of the Model 43…it is a beautiful little rifle. Clean, rare, collectible, and in fantastic condition. I mean, do any of you think you are going to look this good when you are 70 years old?

The Model 43’s front sight.  It and the barrel are machined from one piece of steel.

In examining the front sight and its ramp, I was surprised to see that it was a not a separate piece attached to the barrel. Nope, these barrels started as a giant hunk of steel, and were hogged down to shape. The front sight ramp is an integral part of the barrel. That had to be expensive to manufacture. Note the stippling on the ramp. Things were different in 1949.

I’m pretty sure that the bluing is original…the lettering and roll marks are all very crisp.

Note the checkering, a feature of the Deluxe version of the Model 43.
The rear sight and the fore end. This thing looks like could be brand new.

The stock may have been refinished, or at least had a coat or two or TruOil added to spruce it up somewhere along its life’s journey. The checkering is sharp, though. It might be the original stock finish. Overall, the rifle is in excellent condition.

And finally, a photo of Michael’s brass reloaded by yours truly in the original Model 43 magazine…I can’t imagine what a replacement magazine (if you could even find one) would cost for this rifle…

Good-looking ammo in a good-looking (and original) magazine.  It’s a magazine, not a clip.

The Model 43 shot well this morning. It had already been zeroed in by the previous owner and it shot roughly 1-inch above point of aim at 50 yards, which is about perfect for a rifle like this.  Recoil was very moderate, as you might imagine with a 45-grain bullet at 2400 fps. The groups were about 1.5 to 2.0 inches, which is, as they say, close enough for government work. Not too shabby for a 70-year-old Winchester.

Joe 

So that was my email, and it was quickly followed by a response from Greg.  Here’s what old Greg had to say…

Every word Joe says is true, I swear. That gun looked like someone just took it out of the box. And that machined ramp at the front sight was very unexpected. Anyone familiar with manufacturing techniques will immediately recognize the difficulty of machining that final few inches of the barrel. Eh, times gone by. You won’t find that on any guns today I think.

Greg firing his 7mm Mag Ruger No. 1 on an earlier outing.

My story-of-the-day is the 7mm Remington Magnum Ruger No. 1 I took out. I had the normal power loads that did about as they usually do at 100 yards, roughly an inch and a half. But the surprise was a very low power load I jinned up with Trail boss. I had a 140 grain Sierra Game King sitting on top of 20 grains of Trail Boss (I know, it sounds weird). The Hodgdon site has a data sheet (attached) that has loads all the way up to a .416 Remington Magnum. But for the 140 grain bullet in a 7mm RemMag they list a load starting at 17.2 grains and going up to a max load of 24.5 grains, so my 20 grains was somewhere near the middle.

Anyway, I had just put away the Mini-14 and thought I’d start the Ruger No. 1 off with the low recoil Trail Boss loads. I was stunned to see the five shot group pictured below (at .685”). It was easily the best group of the day for the rifle, though it ended up on paper about 12” below, and 1” to the left, of the “normal” loads for that beast. Recoil was extremely mild as you would expect.

A reduced-velocity 7mm Mag load loaded with Trail Boss propellant. This is a 5-shot group at 100 yards. It’s a phenomenally accurate load in Greg’s Ruger No. 1.

My problem with this Trail Boss load is that the scope, as mounted, doesn’t have the adjustment range to accommodate the 12” drop at 100 yards, so I may end up shimming its mount to enable the use of Trail Boss. Time will tell…

Greg

And there you have it.  More good times, good guns, good shooting, and good loads.  Stay tuned…because we’ll keep the Tales of the Gun stories coming!

Reloading Part IV: Wrapping It Up

This post wraps up our tutorial on reloading .45 ACP ammunition, although from time to time we’ll be posting favored .45 loads as we continue to add Tales of the Gun blog posts featuring this fine old cartridge.  If you’d like to catch up by reading the first three parts of this series, here they are:

Reloading Part I
Reloading Part II
Reloading Part III

So, on to Part IV.

We’re in the home stretch now, folks, with the last steps in creating our custom-crafted .45 ACP ammunition.  The tools and components we’ll use in these remaining reloading steps are the propellant, the powder dispenser, our previously prepped-and-primed .45 ACP brass cases, bullets, the third reloading die, a reloading scale, a caliper to measure cartridge overall length, and boxes and labels to hold and identify the ammo we’ve created.

That’s the powder dispenser on the left, and Unique propellant on the right. I use an RCBS dispenser. Several reloading equipment companies offer these.

My preferred propellants for .45 ACP ammo are Unique or Bullseye, and of the two, I prefer Unique.   Some folks prefer Bullseye.   Others may use different propellants.  One of the more enjoyable aspects of the reloading process is you can try different recommended propellants (and different charges of these propellants) to find the secret sauce that works best for you.

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What does that mean?  For a revolver, it usually means the load that is the most accurate.  For a semi-automatic handgun (like the 1911), accuracy is not the only requirement.  You also need to have a load with enough energy to cycle the action.  Usually, the loads shown in a reloading manual are powerful enough to cycle the action.  You should never go above the maximum propellant charge listed in any reloading manual, and you should only approach that by testing loads at the lower end first, and then working up to a higher level if you feel a need to for accuracy or functionality reasons (but never go above the max load).

Adding Unique propellant to the powder dispenser.

Here’s another important point:  Whichever powder you choose to use, never have any propellant other than the one you are using on your reloading bench.  You don’t want to get the propellants mixed up, or mistake one for another.

After you’ve added propellant to the powder dispenser, tap the dispensing handle against the lower stop several times to settle the powder.  What we’re going to do next is to adjust the throw weight (the weight of powder dispensed) by adjusting the dispenser with the threaded adjustor shown in the photo below.

The dispenser’s adjustor. You can screw it in to dispense less powder, or out to dispense more powder. Once it dispenses the correct amount, lock it in place with the locknut.

What we do at this point is get our reloading scale, set it to zero grains, and make sure the indicator (the balance arm) is in a neutral position (as indicated on the left side of the balance arm against the graduations on the scale markings on the left of the scale.  Once the scale is zeroed, use the sliding and turning adjustors for the weight of propellant you wish to use.  After years of accuracy testing and shooting, I’ve settled on 5.8 grains of Unique as the load I use with a 230-grain cast roundnose bullet.

My RCBS reloading scale set to 5.8 grains.

Note in the photo above that the sliding weight is at zero grains, and further note in the photo below that the rotating adjustor wheel is set to 5.8 grains.  For anything under 10 grains, you leave the sliding weight at zero and set the weight with the rotating barrel as shown below.  For most .45 ACP loads, we use the rotating barrel only.

The rotating barrel adjusting wheel is set to 5.8 grains.

After adjusting the powder dispenser’s adjustor and checking the weight with the scale, we now have the dispenser releasing 5.8 grains of Unique propellant every time the dispenser is actuated.   I’ll throw several charges to make sure the dispenser is dispensing consistently, and once I’m satisfied it is, we’re now ready to dispense 5.8 grains of propellant in each of the prepped and primed cases we prepared in Part III of of our .45 ACP reloading series.

There are 5.8 grains of Unique in each primed case. Note that the propellant levels are approximately equal in all cases, and no cases have been missed.

When you dispense powder, it’s important to be consistent.  I don’t like to stop until I’ve done the entire tray of prepped and primed cases, and I don’t like to be interrupted while I’m doing this.   After you’ve dispensed the propellant in each cartridge case, visually inspect the tray to make sure every case is charged with propellant, and all propellant heights are approximately equal.  We’re looking for missed cases here (if that happens, the primer will push the bullet into the barrel just a bit, which requires disassembling the firearm to hammer the bullet back out with a rod, and that’s basically the end of your shooting session that day).  We’re also looking for any cases that are double-charged (i.e., cases that have two charges of powder in a single case).  A double charge is real serious and dangerous business, as it will most likely blow up the gun, injure you, or worse.   You have to pay attention to what you’re doing here.  Like I just said, this is serious business.

So, after we’ve charged the cases with propellant, we now ready to move on to the next step, which is seating the bullets.

.45 ACP 230-grain cast roundnose bullets.  I like this bullet design and weight.  It’s accurate, and it feeds reliably in just about any .45 auto.

We’ll now use the seating die, the last of the three dies in our die set.  This part of the operation requires a bit of adjusting and a bit of finessing on our part.  We’re actually doing two things with this third and final die.  We’re seating the bullet to the correct depth in the cartridge case (to meet the cartridge overall length requirement, which is found in your reloading manual), and we’re removing the cartridge case bellmouth that allowed the bullet to enter the case.

The business end of the seating die. The red arrow points to the part of the die that interfaces with and pushes the bullet into the case.

In order to make both adjustments, we’ll work with how far we thread the entire die into the reloading press (this affects both bullet seating depth and crimp), and we’ll also work with the bullet seating adjustor.  These two parts of the die are shown by the red arrows in the photo below.

The bullet seating die in the reloading press. The upper threaded adjustor (denoted by the upper red arrow) adjusts bullet seating depth. The crimp or bellmouth removal adjustment is made by how far the entire die is threaded into the press (denoted by the lower red arrow), Once the crimp (or bellmouth removal for the .45 ACP cartridge) is set and the cartridge meets the desired overall length, lock both the die and the bullet seating adjustor in place with the two locknuts.

Here’s how I do this.  I first screw the bullet seating adjustment all the way into the die, and then I’ll use this to seat the bullet to the right depth by threading the entire die into the reloading press, a little at a time.  With each adjustment, I’ll run the charged case (with a bullet on top) into the die with the press.  I keep doing this until the cartridge overall length is where I want it to be.  For a 230-grain roundnose bullet, I adjust the seating depth such that the cartridge overall length is 1.250 inches, as specified by my reloading manual.   That cartridge overall length is good, as it allows the cartridge to feed into the chamber, and it allows the cartridge to fit into the magazine.

Once I have the bullet seated to a depth that provides the correct cartridge overall length, I then back the bullet seating adjustor all the way out.  Then I’ll start the crimping adjustment process by threading the entire die deeper into the press, a little bit at a time, running the cartridge into the press with each incremental downward die adjustment.  The reason I ran the bullet seating adjust all the way out is that I don’t want it to push the bullet in any further while I adjust the crimp.

Here’s what going on here.  Remember that I said the seating die does two things:  It seats the bullet to the correct depth, and it crimps the cartridge.   In the case of the .45 ACP, we’re not really crimping the bullet into the case.  We just want to remove the brass case bellmouth that we previously added to allow the bullet to start into the case.  The inside of the seating die has a reduced circumference step.  Our purpose in making this adjustment is to thread the die into the press just enough to have the case make contact with the inner die step. That will remove the bellmouth.  We’re not crimping here; we’re just removing the bellmouth so that the brass case becomes a straightwall case around the bullet.

Once I have adjusted the die body by screwing it into the press enough to remove the case bellmouth (and with the press ram raised to position the cartridge all the way up in the die), I then run the bullet seating adjustor all the way down, such that it contacts the top of the bullet.  This will position the die such that it removes the case bellmouth, and simultaneously seat the bullet to the correct cartridge overall length.   At this point, I can lock everything in position with the two locknuts (one for the die body in the press, the other for the bullet seating adjustor in the die) while the ram is in the raised position with a cartridge in the die.  At this point, I’m ready to finish the rest of the cartridges.

A case with the bellmouth removed, and the bullet seated to the correct depth. The cartridge overall length is 1.250 inches. Life is good.  I can hit a gnat in the ass at 25 meters with this cartridge.

At this point, what I do is put a bullet on each charged case, and then I start running each cartridge, with a bullet on top, thr0ugh the reloading press.

Charged cases topped with bullets, ready for the bullet seating operation.

With each run up the press, I’ll create a reloaded cartridge.  Here are three reloaded rounds…

Reloaded .45 ACP ammo. It’s good looking ammo, and I know it will provide superior accuracy and reliability in my 1911. It will perform way better than factory ammo, and that’s what this reloading game is all about.

As I produce each round, I place it in one of the plastic boxes I use for my ammo.

Once the above steps are done, I then take the propellent remaining in the powder dispenser and return it to the propellant container (in this case, the Unique bottle).   That’s one of the reasons it’s important to only have one bottle of propellant on the reloading bench.  You don’t want to dump the leftover powder into the wrong propellant container. If that happens, you can’t use the container of propellant you just emptied the leftover powder into because now it contains a mix of two different propellants.  The only thing you can do is throw it away.  It’s just to risky to use it.  And yeah, I’ve had to do that before.

Reloaded .45 ACP ammo, ready for the range.  It looks good, doesn’t it?

There’s one more step, and that’s labeling each box of reloaded ammo with cartridge, bullet weight and type, cartridge overall length, propellant type and charge, primer type, brass type, brass trim length, and the date I manufactured the ammo.

At this point, I’m good to go.  It’s off to the range…

So there you have it.   Reloaded .45 ACP ammo, as good as or better than what you can buy anywhere.  I just returned from the range a few minutes ago, where I shot some of the ammo you see in the photo above, and yeah, it functioned flawlessly and hit the target every time.

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101 years old, and counting…

By Joe Berk

It was one of the ones that got away, that Colt 1917 was, and I regretted it for years.  I like to describe some of the firearms I’ve let get away as ones I’ve stupidly sold but I don’t like being redundant, so let’s just say I sold it.  It was stupid to sell any of them, and having been on a quest for a decade or so to replace the ones I’ve stupidly sold (oops, there I go again), I can tell you that I’m not selling any of my guns.  You might be wondering where I’m going with this story, but wonder no more.  It’s all about a magnificent score, in this case, a US Army Colt Model 1917 .45 ACP revolver.  To jump ahead for just a second, this is the one that is on its way to being mine…

A magnificent original finish Model 1917 Colt revolver. Those are genuine elk antler grips. What appears to be an unblued area near the front sight is not…read on for more information.

The 1917s are interesting handguns, and yeah, that’s plural.  There were two of them:  A Colt, and a Smith and Wesson.  In a very real sense, they are handguns that were never meant to be.  The 1911 Automatic came on the scene in 1911, and the plan was to ultimately incorporate it throughout our Armed Forces.  But life is what happens when you’re making plans, and the US Government generally moves slowly.  When we entered World War I in 1917, there weren’t enough 1911s to go around, so the US Army turned on Smith and Colt to make their large frame revolvers in .45 ACP, and that’s how the 1917s came to be.  It was an emergency measure to make up for what we didn’t have yet, and that was enough 1911s to go around.

Major General James E. Rudder, who carried a Colt 1917 when ascending Normandy’s Pointe du Hoc cliffs on D-Day.

When World War II happened, the US military had plenty of 1911s, but there was at least one soldier who preferred the 1917.   Interestingly, I recently read an account in American Rifleman magazine (yeah, I’m a strong NRA supporter and I watch Fox News, too) about 34-year-old Lieutenant Colonel James E. Rudder, who led the U.S. Army Rangers when they scaled the cliffs at Pointe du Hoc in Normandy on D-Day.   Colonel Rudder carried a 1917 Colt instead of a 1911 auto (presumably, a 1917 that had been through the arsenal refurb and wore a Parkerized finish).  Rudder was an interesting man.  He held numerous awards for valor, he retired from the Army as a Major General, and he then went on to become president of Texas A&M University.  The American Rifleman article was about Rudder’s 1917 Colt, which he preferred to the 1911 auto because of its greater reliability.  Ah, if these guns could talk…

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In the 1970s, when I was in the US Army stationed at Fort Bliss, Texas, I bought a 1917 Colt revolver at the El Paso gun show.  I didn’t know too much about these guns then, except that they were large frame revolvers and they didn’t cost too much. I think I paid something like $125 for mine.  It was cool. Big, heavy, Parkerized, and it shot the .45 ACP cartridge, a round I had already recognized as the ultimate handgun chambering.  I had a .45 auto (a Government Model 1911), and having a revolver chambered for the same round felt like it was the right thing to do.  My 1917 had interesting markings…it said US Army, United States Property, and all kinds of cool stuff.   I liked it.  I shot that revolver for a while, I had fun with it, and then I sold it to someone who wanted it more than I did.  I think I got $200 for it, and in those days I fancied myself a Texas wheeler dealer gun guy.

But that 1917 danced around in my head for decades. I liked it and I missed it,  and I wished I had kept it.  Finally, a few years ago I started hunting for a replacement.  The problem is, living  here in the Peoples Republik of Kalifornia, I couldn’t look outside the left-leaning anti-gun liberal looney bin we call home, as the Model 1917 isn’t on our roster of handguns approved for sale here.  If I was to find one, it would have to be one already here in LeftyLand, and that cut my options considerably.  I kept an eye on the local gun shops (it’s okay if the gun is already in California, but the way the law is written I couldn’t bring in a 1917 from out of state). I checked Gunbroker.com (the premier site for gun sales) every few weeks.  And I watched a California-specific site, Calguns.net.  I kept looking, but none of the 1917s I saw looked nice enough for my tastes, or they were out ot state, or they were priced in the stratosphere.

Then I hit paydirt.  Big time.  I saw the 1917 you see in the photo above in a post on the Calguns.net site a couple of weeks ago.  It looked to me like it had been reblued (because my earlier 1917 had been Parkerized and I’d never seen one that wasn’t) and the genuine stag grips were appealing (the 1917s originally wore uncheckered walnut grips).  Those genuine stag grips all by themselves are a big ticket item and to me they look like they belong on a 1917.  Unoriginal, yeah, but they sure looked good.  The reblue (I thought) and the elk grips took away from the gun’s authenticity, but I liked the look. In fact, I liked it a lot.

I sent a message to the advertiser (who became my new good buddy Jim), and I learned that the gun had not been reblued.  It wore its original brushed blue finish, and the direction of the brushing was an indication of its originality.   The 1917s went through an arsenal refinish between the wars, Jim explained, and that’s when they were Parkerized.  The original finish is the one you see in the photos here.  I researched what Jim told me, and yup, he had it right.  That made the gun even more appealing.  (That brushed blue original finish and the brushing direction is what made the area on either side of the front sight look unblued when the camera’s flash hit it, but it is, in fact, blued). This particular 1917 is unfired other than proof rounds at the Colt factory, and this particular handgun was manufactured in Hartford, Connecticut, in 1918.   Yep, it is 101 years old.  And it’s essentially a new gun.

All right, I decided, I’d most likely never get an opportunity like this again.  Jim and I met at Imbert and Smithers in Redwood City to legally transfer ownership, and I was blown away when I saw the revolver in person.   It is stunning.  The guy behind the counter, a dude about my age, was similarly impressed.  “I’ve never seen one in this condition,” he said, and he called the gunsmith over to look at it. I’ll admit it: I like having a gun that’s the center of attention in a circle of folks who know guns.  It’s a cool feeling.

Okay, enough bragging with words.  Let me do so with a few photos I shot yesterday at the start of my 10-day cooling off period…

The 1917 Colt, chambered in .45 ACP, wearing the factory original finish.
The view from the left. The elk antler grips work. It’s an elegant handgun.
The Prancing Pony. Colt more properly calls its logo the “Rampant Colt.” Prancing Pony works for me. It’s one of the world iconic logos.
The proof mark, showing that the revolver had been fired with a proof pressure test round at the factory.
Yep. US Army Model 1917. Lanyard ring. I love the look of this thing.
Good buddy Jim explained the brush blued finish on these guns to me. They have a unique pattern, and you can see some of it on the right side of the 1917’s frame.   It’s beautiful.
The Colt roll marks on top of the 1917’s 5.5-inch barrel.
United States Property, the rollmarked lettering on the barrel’s underside.

You might be wondering:  Am I actually going to shoot this revolver?

You bet.  And you’ll read about it here when I do.  Just 9 more days, and I’ll be fully cooled off.  And then this puppy is mine.

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A Tale of Three 300s

The word “wow” might have been invented in anticipation of the .300 Weatherby Magnum.   It’s that impressive.  I’ve owned and fired a lot of different cartridges over the years, and the one that I find the most interesting, the most intimidating, and the most coolest ever is the .300 Weatherby.  For a lot of years it was the most powerful .308-caliber cartridge on the planet.  Roy Weatherby, my personal hero, created the cartridge in 1944 and it’s only been in the last few years that two or three more powerful .30-bore cartridges emerged, but these new .30-caliber cartridges are overkill.  In fact, I could make a good argument that the .300 Weatherby is overkill.  But I won’t.  I love the round and I love the fact that it scares me a little every time I shoot it.

A sense of scale. From left to right, it’s the .22 Long Rifle, the .45 ACP, the .223 Remington (essentially, our M-16 round), the .30-30 Winchester (America’s premier deer cartridge), the mighty .30-06, and the last two are .300 Weatherby Magnum cartridges. Every cartridge shown here (with the exception of the .22 Long Rifle) is a reloaded round.

The first rifle I ever bought chambered for the .300 Weatherby, oddly enough, was not a Weatherby.  It was a Winchester Model 70 that I bought maybe 35 years ago.  It was a limited production item and that might have been a good reason to buy it, but the thing that grabbed my attention on this particular rifle was the walnut.  You just don’t see factory Model 70s with fancy walnut, but this one had it in spades.

A 1980s Model 70 Winchester in .300 Weatherby Magnum, wearing a Weaver T-10 telescopic sight.
The right side of the .300 Weatherby Model 70.
Ah, that beautiful walnut. It’s not often lumber like this appears on a Winchester.
Both sides, too! When I saw this rifle I was still in my 30s. I really couldn’t afford it, but I couldn’t afford to let it get away, either.

I think I paid just over $400 for that rifle back in the 1980s, which is what they were going for then.  I had a Weaver T10 target scope I had used when shooting metallic silhouette and it went on the Model 70.  It’s most definitely not the scope for a .300 Weatherby, but it’s what I had at the time.  The scope is a collectible item all by itself…it’s steel and it was manufactured when Weaver made their scopes in El Paso.

So that’s the first rifle in this trio of .300s.   The next is one I bought exactly 10 years ago, in 2009, at the height of the Great Recession.   I was lucky in 2009…I was working, and lots of folks were selling things to raise cash, including more than a few gun stores.   An outfit called Lock, Stock, and Barrel advertised a new-in-the-box Mark V Euromark on Gunbroker, and I was on that in a New York minute.  The store was in the upper Midwest somewhere and they stated in their ad they would not sell to California (our state commissars make life difficult in a  lot of ways, and more than a few sellers simply won’t ship to California).   But I wanted that Euromark something fierce (the Euromark is a Mark V Weatherby with a satin oil finish, rather than the Mark V’s usual high gloss urethane finish).  I called the guy, did my “woe is me” routine, and he agreed to ship the rifle to my FFL-holder here in the Peoples’ Republik.

Saw it on Gunbroker, saw the wood, and I couldn’t say no.
It was nice on both sides, too. Rosewood accents, beautiful walnut, and the mighty .300 Weatherby Magnum in a Mark V. What’s not to like?

I bought a new Weaver 4×16 scope, put it on the rifle, and then I put the Mark V in the safe.  It stayed there for 10 years.   I fired it for the first time this weekend, for this blog.

You know, the funny thing is my good buddy Marty saw the Weatherby before I put it in the safe and he decided he needed one, too.  He tried calling Lock, Stock, and Barrel a week after I received mine, but they had already gone out of business.  The Great Recession was rough.  My grabbing that rifle was a lucky break.

These photos impart a bit of an orange hue to the Mark V’s stock. It’s really a bit more subdued.
Like the Model 70, this Mark V is pretty on both sides. The stock profile is the classic Weatherby Monte Carlo look, which actually works very well in reducing felt recoil.
Unlike the other Deluxe Mark V rifles, the Euromark has a classic, low-sheen satin finish. It works well with the rosewood accents.
It was sunny when I was on the range this weekend. I get better photos when it’s overcast, but you get the idea. The 4×16 Weaver on this rifle is a magnificent optic.

The last .300 Weatherby I’m going to talk about today is my Vanguard.  It’s one of the original series Weatherby Vanguards, and it has what we tongue-in-cheek refer to as the Tupperware stock.  I’ve written about this rifle on the ExNotes blog before.  I wasn’t looking for a Vanguard when I bought this one, but I saw it at the Gunrunner gun shop in Duarte, the price was right, and, well, you know how these things go.  It came home with me.

My Series 1 Weatherby Vanguard with the plastic stock. It’s accurate. And it’s hard-hitting (on both ends).
A view from the port side. You can see the profile similarity between the Vanguard’s composite stock and the Mark V’s walnut stock above.
The Vanguard came from the factory with a Bushnell 3×9 scope. It needs more eye relief. Before I go into the field with this rifle, I’m going to replace the scope.

The deal on the Vanguard rifles is that Weatherby wanted to bring a lower cost rifle to market without cheapening their flagship Mark V, and they contracted with Howa of Japan to build the Vanguards.  The principal difference is that the Vanguard has a 90-degree bolt lift compared to the Mark V’s 54-degree bolt lift, and the Mark V sells for about $1400 more than a Vanguard. I’m here to tell you that the Vanguard is an outstanding rifle, every bit as good as the Mark V, and in many cases, more accurate.

So how do these three puppies shoot?

Like I said at the beginning of this blog, the .300 Weatherby is intimidating.  I like to think I’m not recoil sensitive, but the .300 Weatherby is right on the edge of what I think I can handle shooting from the bench.  It’s not an easy rifle to shoot for accuracy.  To get the best groups from any rifle, I like to minimize contact with the rifle.   I let the rifle lay in the benchrest, lightly hold the fore end with my fingers, barely touch my cheek against the stock, move my head to an appropriate position to get a full image through the scope, and just touch the recoil pad with my shoulder.  The idea is that I don’t want to exert any force on the rifle, as that can move the rounds around on the target, and I’m shooting for the tightest group.  That works with rifles that have light to moderate recoil, say, up to the .30 06 level.   Try that with a .300 Weatherby, though, and you’re going to get popped in the face by the scope when you drop the hammer.  Really.  Trust me on this; I know.  Nope, when you shoot the .300 Weatherby from the bench, you need a solid grip on the rifle, and you need to pull it firmly into your shoulder.  It’s a little harder to get tight groups doing that.   But it’s easier than getting smacked by the scope.

Before I get into the accuracy results, I’ll share my impressions of the three rifles based on trigger pull, felt recoil, fit, and optics.

The Mark V has the best trigger. I broke cleanly at about 3 lbs, and it made shooting the rifle easier.  I guess that’s to be expected with a rifle that has a price tag like the Mark V (these things ain’t cheap).   The Model 70 had a crisp (no creep) trigger, but it was heavy.  That made it a little harder to shoot well, especially when shooting it right after I shot the Mark V (I got spoiled; it’s pretty hard to follow the Mark V act).  The Vanguard trigger had a bit of creep in it, and it was about as heavy as the Winchester’s trigger, which is to say both the Vanguard and the Winchester triggers were heavier than the Mark V’s trigger.

The Mark V is a clear winner from a felt recoil perspective.   There are several reasons for this.  One is that it is the heaviest of the three rifles, with its dense walnut stock and 26-inch barrel.  Another is the Weatherby stock profile.   Folks make fun of it, but it works.  When the gun recoils, it draws away from your cheek, and the perception is that it has less recoil.  Another factor is Mark V’s recoil pad.  And the last one is the Weaver 4×16 scope’s eye relief.  Head position isn’t critical, and you’re far enough back from the scope that it doesn’t hit you in recoil.  Don’t get me wrong:  The Mark V still packs a wallop.  It’s just easier to shoot than the other two.   The Winchester Model 70 was a close second, most likely because it also has a real stock (read: walnut), but it’s thinner recoil pad made it slightly more punishing than the Mark V.   Third place from the felt recoil perspective was the Vanguard. It has a big recoil pad like the Mark V, but the plastic stock and 24-inch barrel make the gun lighter, and like we say in the engineering biz, f still equals ma.  Also, the Vanguard’s low end Bushnell Banner scope does not have generous eye relief, and I got smacked a couple of times.  Not enough to draw blood, but enough to get my attention.

I’ve already started talking about scopes, so let me continue that discussion.  The Weaver 4×16 I purchased for the Mark V is a killer scope.  It’s incredibly bright, crisp, and clear.  In fact, it’s so good I didn’t realize I had it turned down to 4X for the first couple of groups I fired.   Eye relief on this scope is generous enough for a bucking bronc like the .300 Weatherby.  It’s the clear winner.

The Weaver T-10 on the Model 70 was out of its element.  It’s a target scope. Eye relief was good enough, but alignment and distance were hypercritical; move just a little too far forward or backward, or left or right, and you’ve lost the image.  I like the scope (I’ve owned it for over 40 years), but it’s in the wrong place on a hunting rifle.

The Vanguard’s Bushnell Banner…what can I say?   Maybe this:  Halitosis is better than no breath at all.  I played around with the focus adjustment, but the Bushnell just isn’t as clear or crisp as either of the Weavers.  That said, it’s considerably less expensive than the other two scopes.  When I bought the Vanguard, it was essentially in as new condition, and the Bushnell was part of a factory package (it came with the rifle).   If I was do it over, I’d get the Weaver 4×16, or maybe a Leupold, for this rifle.  I may do that anyway.  I know this is heresy, but I actually think the Weaver has a crisper image than a Leupold scope.

Of the three rifles, the Mark V fits me best, with the Vanguard a close second.  I like the Weatherby profile.  It just works for me.  If I had to choose one of these three rifles for a hunting trip in the mountains (and I do, as I’m chasing deer with good buddy J later this year in Idaho), it would definitely be the Vanguard.  It’s lighter, and that counts on a hunt like the one I’m headed into.  Yeah, I know…a .300 Weatherby is a bit much for deer. You take what you want when you hunt.  I’m taking my .300.

Okay, so the big question emerges:  How about accuracy?

I almost didn’t include this.  I did a bit of accuracy testing, but my advice is to take my results with a grain of salt.  A big grain. Maybe a barrel of salt.  I hadn’t been on the rifle range in a month or two, and firing 50 or 60 rounds of .300 Weatherby Magnum ammo in one sitting is not the best way to do this kind of shooting.   Stated differently, I was not really giving these rifles a fair shake in this test.  The first few groups you see below are me getting settled in, and the last few groups you see below are more likely than not me deteriorating after getting smacked around all morning.  These rifles are better than what the results below indicate.

That said, here we go.  All groups you see in the chart below were 3-shot groups at 100 yards from the bench. There was no wind, it was a bit warm, and conditions were about ideal.

The loads. Don’t take my word for this stuff; get thee to a load manual, study it, and do your own testing. Start low and work up.

I knew from past dealings that IMR 7828 propellant is good stuff in the big magnums, and I think that my 76.5 grain load with the 180-grain Remington jacketed softpoint bullet is a great load.   I was a bit off on the first group I fired with this load (two shots were touching; the third was a flyer most likely induced by me) and then the other two groups with this load were at minute of angle.  I could do better if I shot this rifle more (yeah, that’s another factor; this was the first time I had this rifle out and the barrel is not broken in yet).  This is not a max load (I could go hotter) and the group size was smaller with the warmer of the two loads I tried with 7828 and the Remington 180-grain bullets.  That suggests an even warmer charge of 7828 under this bullet is where greater accuracy lives, but I just don’t feel a need to go there.   No animal on the planet would be able to tell the difference from an energy-on-target perspective and minute-of-angle accuracy is close enough for government work (especially for the game I plan to hunt).  Dead is dead.  There’s no sense getting beat up by more recoil to make an animal more dead.

The 80 grains of 7828 with the 165-grain Hornady bullet I show in the table above is near a max load, and I think it’s obvious I was losing my edge toward the end of this range session.  I shot a 0.507-inch group at 100 yards with that same load in the Vanguard a couple of years ago; I just couldn’t duplicate it near the end of my range session this past weekend.

Yeah, this dog will hunt.

The difference between a cup of coffee and my advice is you might have asked for a cup of coffee, but I’ll give you my advice anyway.  If I was going to get one rifle in .300 Weatherby, I’d get the basic model Vanguard with a walnut stock, and I’d put either a Weaver 4×16 or a Leupold scope on it.   You’d be getting the Vanguard’s accuracy, with the walnut stock you’d get a little added weight to soak up the recoil, and you’d save a cool $1400 over the Mark V.  I think the Weatherby Vanguard is the best rifle value on the market today.  Shop around on Gunbroker.com for a bit and you can find new walnut Vanguards for about $600.   That’s a phenomenal deal and owning a Weatherby will make you thinner, taller, and better looking.  It will make you a better man.  Trust me on this.

One last comment:  The results you see above regarding different loads are my loads in my rifles.   Your mileage may vary.  Consult a load manual, and always work up your own loads starting at the low end of the manual’s recommended propellant charges.

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More random walking…

It’s another one of those stream-of-consciousness blogs, folks…things I’ve been meaning to mention but forgot, new stuff that’s cool, and more.

For starters, you all will remember my good buddy and former US Army paratrooper Mike.  I first met Mike on one of the CSC Baja rides and we’ve been friends since.

Airborne all the way…that’s Mike.

Mike posted a photo on Facebook over the weekend of himself and, well, take a look…

Hmmmm….

I saw that photo, and I realized:  This is an image that cries out for a caption. So, we’re having a caption contest.  There’s no prize, other than seeing your entry posted here on the ExNotes blog.   There’s all kinds of possibilities with things related to being Airborne, being a turkey, sitting under a turkey, that “almost airborne” T-shirt Mike is wearing, and on and on it goes.  Let’s hear your thoughts in the Comments section, or shoot us an email.

If you missed this one, you gotta go back. And if you didn’t miss it, read it again. I have. Several times.

More good stuff…I keep returning to Gresh’s blog on the BMW R18.   I first read it when I was enjoying an Einstein’s bagel in the Denver airport a couple of nights ago, and I realized that folks were looking at me because I was laughing out loud.  The writing is classic Gresh.  Funny as hell.  My good buddy Arjiu can write.

Another one…you might remember my blog on the Sand Creek Massacre National Historic Site a few weeks ago.

Sand Creek Massacre National Historic Site.  It’s in southeastern Colorado and it’s worth a visit.

While I was out there, I asked the US Park Ranger which of the several books they offered for sale he would recommend, and he suggested A Misplaced Massacre by Ari Kelman.

A Misplaced Massacre is a great read.

The Ranger’s book recommendation was solid, and A Misplaced Massacre was a fascinating read.   Part of the book was about the massacre, but most of it was about the controversy in contemporary Colorado associated with recognizing that Sand Creek was a massacre (and not an heroic battle, as claimed by the cowardly cavalry officer who led it).   Another aspect to the story I had not heard before was the uncertainly associated with the actual massacre site (since resolved, but the effort involved in finding it was one hell of a story that resulted in the title of this fine book).  And yet another aspect was US Senator Ben Nighthorse Campbell’s involvement in designating the site as a national historic site.  I met Senator Campbell over 20 years ago at the Laughlin River Run.  Yep, Senator Campbell is a motorcyclist.

Gordon Smith as the XO of VA-152 during a deployment in Southeast Asia.

More good stuff…30 years ago, I managed the Sargent-Fletcher plant in El Monte, California, where we designed and manufactured aerial refueling equipment and combat aircraft fuel tanks.  It was a fabulous place to be and I had a wonderful team, but the best part was that I worked for Rear Admiral Gordon Smith, one of the best bosses I ever had.   I learned more about leadership working for Gordon than I did in any other job, and I’ve worked for several truly outstanding leaders.  Sue and I reconnected with the Admiral a few weeks ago, and we’re having dinner with him this week.   I’m really excited about that.  It’s a story we may share here on the ExNotes blog.

A 2014 L.A. Cetto Malbec.  This, all by itself, is worth a trip to Mexico.

Another random thought…Joe and I did a Baja run a few weeks ago for Royal Enfield, and I mentioned that story is running in the current issue of Motorcycle Classics magazine.  On our way home, as I always do on any Baja run, we stopped at the L.A. Cetto vineyard along the glorious Ruta del Vino between Ensenada and Tecate.    It turns out that I am somewhat of a wine snob.  Well, not really a wine snob…that implies a degree of sophistication I don’t possess.   What I am is a guy who appreciates a good Malbec, a wine I learned about on a business trip to Colombia 15 years ago (I had never heard of Malbec before then).   When you re-enter the US from Baja, you can only bring one bottle of wine, and when Joe and I visited the L.A. Cetto vineyard, I asked if they had a Malbec.  It turns out they had a couple, and the guy there recommended the 2014.  It cost a little more than the other one so I figured it must be good (like I said, being a real wine snob requires a level of sophistication I don’t have).  Based on my wine selection logic (more expensive must be better), I bought it.  Susie and I barbequed salmon last week and we opened the Malbec (another demonstration of my lack of sophistication…drinking a red with fish).  Good Lord, it was wonderful.  I checked, and you can’t buy L.A. Cetto Malbec in the US.   You know what that means:  Another trip to Baja!

And finally, I was out on the rifle range yesterday, and we’re working up a good story tentatively titled A Tale of Three 300s.

Winchester made a small number of Model 70 rifles chambered in .300 Weatherby in the 1980s, and I managed to get one.  Nope, it’s not for sale.

A Tale of Three 300s will be up in another day or two after my shoulder recovers from the recoil.  In the meantime, if you need more gun stuff, just mosey on over to Tales of the Gun!

Random Sunday Thoughts….

I’m up early before I head to the rifle range, poking around a bit on the Internet, checking the news sites and reading the latest propaganda from both ends of the political spectrum (is anyone objective any more?), and generally just catching up on things.   This is another random  walk through an ever-increasingly random place (i.e., my mind).  Bear with me; here we go…

One site I’d like to alert you to if you don’t know about it already is Bator International:

Check out the vintage iron for sale at Bator International.

Bator International popped up in my Facebook feed.  I knew of it, but I didn’t know much about the place, so I clicked and wow I was impressed.   The photographs of vintage motorcycles are awesome, and I saw more than a few I’d like to own.  Bator International is in Ojai, California, and I know that makes for a nice motorcycle ride.  Take a look.  You can thank me later.

The sticker business is going well.  Gresh had a great idea with this stickers, and we’ve been getting lots of signups for our automatic email update notifications…

Do you have your ExNotes sticker yet?

You can get your ExNotes sticker by signing up here…

We’ve had requests and your two Joes have been talking about organizing the Baja staff ride we mentioned earlier.  We’re thinking maybe a 7-day ride to see the whales in Scammon’s Lagoon, and that puts it sometime in the first quarter of next year.  You’d have to have your own motorcycle, of course, and you’d have to be on our automatic email update list.   If you want to go, let us know, but only let us know if you’re willing to commit.  You know how that goes…you say you want to do a big ride, 200 guys say they’re going, and the morning you roll, it’s you and one other guy.  So if you say you’re in, please be for real.  And those whales….wow!

So I’m leaving for the rifle range in a little bit, and I’m pumped up.  I bought a box of once-fired vintage .300 Weatherby brass at a gun shop in Lamar, Colorado a couple of weeks ago, I loaded it last week (we’ll be doing a series on reloading rifle ammo in the near future), and I’m going to send lead downrange through a rifle I bought a decade ago but never fired.  It’s a Weatherby Mk V I saw on a Gunbroker.com auction at the height of the Great Recession.  A gun shop in the upper Midwest was going under, and this one was a real find.  These photos are from that Gunbroker ad…

A Weatherby Euromark in .300 Weatherby. Check out the wood!

The price was right, the caliber was the quintessential .300 Weatherby, and I pulled the trigger (figuratively speaking).  I just never got around to firing it, and today I’m going to correct that character flaw.   I’ll post more photos of the Euromark later this week, and we’ll add a feature on this fine rifle to our Tales of the Gun page.

And that, folks, is a wrap for today’s ExNotes blog.  Stay tuned; we’ve got more good stuff coming your way.

A Pair of Prancing Ponies…and that first No. 1

Good buddy Python Pete and I went to the range a few days ago to let loose with a pair of prancing ponies (that is to say, Colts), in both revolver and automatic flavors.  The auto was my tried-and-true bright stainless Colt Government Model 1911; the wheelgun was Pete’s stunning 8-inch Colt Python.   Both are stunningly beautiful and both are good shooting guns.

A custom bright stainless Colt, with Baer barrel, Millet sights, and a few other nice touches.

I bought the 1911 you see above at a pawn shop brand new back in the mid-1980s for just over $500.   Colt no longer offers bright stainless steel guns, so I guess you could say mine is collectible, and when you see bright stainless Colt 1911s come up for sale (which doesn’t happen very often), prices start at $2,000 and go north from there.  I guess you could say I made a good investment (except I won’t ever sell it).

A few years ago the front sight popped off my 1911, so I took it to a local gunsmith to have it restaked. That repair lasted all of 50 rounds, and I realized I needed to see an expert.  That’s when I hooked up with TJ’s Custom Guns, and I had TJ revamp the Colt.  It’s got a Les Baer match barrel, an extended one-piece guide rail, an engine turned chamber (I love that look), high profile/high visibility Millet fixed sights, and TJ’s exclusive high reliability tune.  That last little bit means that my Colt 1911 will reliably feed any bullet configuration (semi-wadcutters, hollow points, etc.) and it will work no matter what.   Folks, I’ve put tens of thousands of rounds through my 1911 since TJ massaged it, and it’s never had a failure of any kind (no failures to fire, no failures to feed, and no failures to eject…it just goes and goes and goes).

On to the Python.  I’ve known good buddy Pete for more than 30 years (we sort of grew up together in the aerospace industry).  Pete owns a Colt Python, a gun that is arguably the finest revolver ever made.  His is the super-rare 8-inch model, too.

Revolver royalty…the stunning Colt Python. The Colt Python is perhaps the finest revolver ever made.

Colt no longer makes the Python, probably because they were too expensive to produce.  The fit and finish are superior, and the feel of the thing is just sublime.  It’s a .357 Magnum, one of the world’s all time greats, and a cartridge that dominated the police market before 9mm became all the rage.  Colt revolvers were hand-fitted and involved lots of custom assembly, and I suppose it just didn’t in with the need for low cost manufacture in a market dominated by black plastic 9mm handguns.   No, the Python is from another era characterized by highly polished blue steel and finely figured walnut, an age in which I felt more comfortable.   Seeing a Python on the firing line again was a treat, and when Pete asked if I wanted to try the big Colt, he didn’t have to ask twice.

Pete and I had four handguns with us (the two mentioned above, plus a SIG 9mm and my Rock Island Compact 1911).   I shot my two 1911s offhand for a while, and then I tried my luck with Pete’s SIG and the Python.  It was fun.

You can argue about a good automatic being as accurate as a high-end revolver, but you won’t convince me. The Python is a tack driver.

I fired 5 shots of “nothing fancy” factory ammo with the Python, and the accuracy was superb.   The targets don’t lie, folks.

I’ve owned two Pythons in my life, and both were back in the 1970s.   When I was in Korea, I found out I could order one though the Base Exchange at a substantial discount.  I couldn’t believe what the nice lady was telling me at the Kunsan AFB Exchange, so I ordered a 6-inch blue steel Python for something like $150 (it sounded too good to be true).   Incredibly, it came in the mail to me in Korea.  Before I rotated home, I had to submit a form through the Army to get permission to import the revolver back to the US.  I did that, and a few weeks later I had a letter signed by the Director of the Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms Bureau allowing me to bring my Python home.  It went into my duffel bag, I produced the letter when I went through Customs in San Francisco, and that was that.  Better times.

You know how it goes with these things.  When I was back in Texas shortly after my stint in Korea, I saw a Ruger No. 1 single shot rifle in .30 06 I couldn’t live without, and I traded the Python for it (the guy at the store through in a couple of boxes of .30 06 ammo, too).  Then I felt a void in my life because I no longer owned a Python, so I ordered another one (this time a 6-inch nickel-plated model) through the Fort Bliss Gun Club.  It was under $200.   Then I traded that for something else (I can’t remember what).  Ah, the mistakes we make.  But maybe they weren’t all mistakes.  I’ve sent a lot of lead downrange with the Ruger No. 1 over the last 45 years, it’s one of the most accurate rifles I own, and it has stunning walnut.

The Ruger No. 1 in 30 06 I traded the Kunsan Python to get. It’s a 200th Year Ruger.  I miss the Python, but I love my ’06 No. 1.  Some day I’ll do a blog on this rifle.

Today, Colt Pythons typically sell for something in the $3,000 to $4,000 range.   Pete’s would command even more, because it’s the 8-incher, which is a rare item.  I’ve asked Pete if he wanted to sell his, but all I got in return was a smile.  That’s probably just as well; I couldn’t afford it at today’s prices.

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Reloading Part III: Expanding and priming

In our prior two blogs on reloading .45 ACP ammunition, we discussed the equipment and components needed, and the first steps (cleaning the brass, case resizing,  and depriming).  If you’d like to catch up on those two steps, you can do so on our Tales of the Gun page.  In this blog, we’re going to continue the reloading process.

So here we are, with 150 cleaned, resized, and deprimed .45 ACP cases neatly arranged in three reloading trays…

150 resized and deprimed cases.

We’re now going to use the second die in our three-die .45 ACP set.  It’s the die in the middle of the photo below…

The center die is the one we’ll be using this time.

The die is the expander die.  It has an insert that opens the case mouth to the required diameter.  It also flares (or bellmouths) the forward rim of the case to accept the .45 bullet.

Note the expander plug inside this second die.

The drill here is to thread the die into the press.

The expander die body threads into the press, and the expander plug threads into the die.  The trick is to put a resized and deprimed .45 case into the shellholder, lift the press ram all the way up, and adjust both the die and the plug so that the case mouth is very slightly flared.  You’ll have to lower and raise the press ram several times, tweaking the die and expander plug position each time, to get the proper amount of flare.

You’ll need to grab a bullet to assess this adjustment for the amount of case mouth flare.  Once the die is adjusted so that the bullet just enters the flared case mouth, lock the die and the expander plug into position with the locknuts shown in the photo above.

Here’s a .45 bullet on top of a case that has not yet been expanded and flared.  Note that it will not enter the case.

This next photo shows a .45 ACP case that has been expanded and flared.

Note the very slight flare on the case mouth.

As you can see in the photo below, the slight case mouth flare now allows the bullet to start into the case.

A properly-flared case mouth. The trick here is not to overdo the flaring operation. You want to open the case mouth just enough to allow the bullet to start entering the case. The idea is to prevent the case mouth from shaving bullet material in the reloading step that pushes the bullet into the case.

Once the flare is acceptable, we lock both die locknuts and run all of our cases through the press.  This concept of doing one step on all of the cases  at the same time is an important part of the reloading process.  We want to do each step on all of the cases in one run to assure consistency from case to case.  It’s this consistency that leads to enhanced accuracy.

Once all of our cases have been through the above operation, we can now move on to priming, and at this point, it’s time to introduce another optional equipment item.  Most reloading presses come with a priming arm, which is a feature that allows inserting a new primer on the press downstroke.   I don’t use this feature any more, as it never performed consistently enough for me.  Instead, I purchased a separate priming tool made by Lee.  It’s what you see in the photo below.

The Lee priming tool.  This is an older one.  The newer design looks a little different; we’ll see it when we do our series on reloading .300 Weatherby rifle ammunition.  The operating principal is the same.

And we’ll need primers.  There are two or three primer sources. I use whatever I have available, and for now, that’s Winchester.  CCI and Remington also offer primers, and maybe a few other companies.  I buy whatever the store has available.  I’ve not found that primer brand makes any difference in accuracy.

A case of Winchester large pistol primers.

The box you see above holds 1,000 primers.  There are 10 trays of 100 primers each…

A tray of 100 primers. The priming tool cover has been removed in this photo.

The next step is to add primers to the primer tool.  We have to remove the priming tool cover (you do so by rotating it a few degrees), and then adding the primers to the priming tool…

100 primers in the Lee priming tool.

When you drop the primers into the reloading tool, take care not to spill any outside the tray.  They’ll be facing up, down, and some will be on their sides, as you see in the photo above.   See those little concentric striations in the priming tray?  They serve a purpose.  The trick here is to jiggle the priming tool slightly from left to right, and it will make all of the primers orient in the face up position, like you see below.  Don’t shake the priming tool too hard, or primers will go flying out.  Jiggle it just enough to get them all facing up.

100 primers, face up.  Note that there’s also a shell holder in the priming tool.  Different shell holders are required for different cartridge calibers.  When you buy the Lee tool, it comes with a collection of shell holders that covers most cartridges.

Once all of the primers are face up, reinstall the priming tool tray cover.

The priming tool cover, back in place over the primer tray.

At this point, jiggle the priming tool again to feed a primer into position.

A primer, ready to be pressed into the empty case.  Note the No. 2 shell holder.  It’s the one used for the .45 ACP cartridge.   This shell holder also works for the .30 06, .308, 7.65 Belgian Mauser, 7×57, and several other cases that share a common base.

We can now insert a .45 ACP case into the shell holder, squeeze the priming tool handle, and a primer will be seated into the case.

A .45 ACP case in the Lee priming tool.
Squeezing the priming tool lever to seat the primer.
A new primer, seated in the .45 ACP case.

And there you have it.   We’re going to repeat this operation to prime all 150 cases.  That, my friends, is enough for today.

We’ll complete the reloading process in our next and final .45 ACP reloading blog.

Me?  I’m headed out to the range this morning, where I’ll be firing reloaded .45 ACP ammo prepared just like I described here.  I’ll grab a photo or two show you, too.

Stay tuned!

Want to read more about reloading and our other cool gun stories?  It’s all right here on our Tales of the Gun page!