Category: Guns

Another Tale of Two .45s…

We’ve done “A Tale of Two Guns” pieces before here on the ExNotes blog, and we’ve specifically done a “Tale of Two .45s.”  That earlier piece was on the Rock Island Compact 1911 and a Smith and Wesson Model 625.  The Rock Island Compact has become my favorite handgun and it’s the one I shoot most often.  I wondered:   How much accuracy am I giving up by shooting a snubbie 1911?

When I call the Compact a snubbie, I’m referring to the fact that it has a shorter barrel. You know, a standard Government Model 1911 has a 5-inch barrel, and the Rock Island Compact has a 3.5-inch barrel.  There’s nothing inherently more or less accurate about a shorter versus longer barrel.  What could make an accuracy difference, though, is the sight radius (the distance between the front and rear sights).  The longer barrel 1911 has a longer sight radius, and that theoretically should make it more accurate.

A Colt bright stainless steel full-sized 1911 Government Model, along with a box of reloaded .45 ACP ammo. The standard 1911 barrel length is 5 inches, and that’s what this handgun has.  This particular 1911 has been extensively customized, with a view toward extreme reliability.
The Rock Island Compact 1911. This inexpensive .45 auto has a 3.5-inch barrel. It’s become my favorite handgun.

I was taught to shoot the 1911 by one of the best. Command Sergeant Major Emory L. Hickman, a US Army Marksmanship Training Unit NCO, taught me the basics (you can read about that here). I’ve been shooting the .45 since 1973, and I’ve been reloading ammo for it about that long, too. I used to be pretty good, but I’ve slowed down a bit. Hey, speaking of that…here’s a video of me playing around at the range with the Colt bright stainless .45 auto…

The video above is real time…it’s not been modified from the video that came straight out of the camera. But I couldn’t leave it alone. My choices were to spend about a zillion hours on the range and maybe shoot up another zillion dollars of ammo to get really good, or to just use my video editing software to have a little fun. I went for Door No. 2…

Okay, enough goofing around. Let’s get serious, and get to the real topic of this blog.  I went to the range with the two 1911s shown above with two objectives in mind.  I wanted to test different loads to see which was the most accurate in each gun, and I wanted to see if there really was a difference in accuracy between a standard size 1911 and the Compact.

I brought along different loads with two different propellants (Unique and Bullseye) and several different bullets (a 230-grain moly-coated roundnose, a 230-grain plated roundnose, a 200-grain plated roundnose, and a 200-grain cast semi-wadcutter).  I fired all groups at 50 feet from a two-hand-hold, bench-rest position.   All groups were 5-shot groups.  I then measured the groups and took the average group size for each load.

Different .45 ACP bullet configurations. From left to right: A 200-grain roundnose plated bullet, a 200-grain cast lead semi-wadcutter bullet, and a 230-grain moly coated cast bullet.

I know that using a hand-held approach as I did is not the way to eliminate all variability except that due to the gun and the load, and my inability to hold the gun completely steady was a significant contributor to the size of the groups I shot.  A better approach would have been to use a machine rest (you know, the deal where you bolt the gun into a rigidly mounted support), but like my good buddy Rummy used to say, you go to war with the Army you have.  I don’t have a machine rest, so all you get is me.

Because I introduced so much variability into this accuracy assessment, I thought I would throw out the largest group for each combination of load and gun, and take the average of the four best groups.   I did that, and then I did it again by throwing out the two largest groups for each combination of load and gun.   Doing so predictably made the averages smaller, but the relative ranking of the different loads from an accuracy perspective pretty much stayed the same.   That’s good to know.

Before I get into the results, let me tell you a bit about the two handguns. The Compact 1911 is a stock handgun, as delivered from the factory, with the exception of a Klonimus extractor (which I installed because the factory extractor failed after about 1000 rounds). The Colt has been extensively customized by my gunsmith (TJ’s Custom Gunworks in Redondo Beach), with a view toward 100% reliability with any ammo.  That handgun is probably worth $2500 as it sits now. The Compact 1911 can be had for a little over $400.

Okay, that’s enough background.  Let’s get to the bottom line…

Interesting stuff, to be sure.  Most of the variability you see in the above table (and you can see that there’s a lot) was me.  A machine rest would have provided for better groups, but you get what you get, and what you get here is me.

As I expected, the 5-inch 1911 is a bit more accurate than the Compact. The best average group with the full size Colt 1911 was 2.018 inches.  The best average group with the Compact was 2.851 inches.   Okay, so at 50 feet that’s 8/10 of an inch difference, and as they say, that’s close enough for government work.  What was surprising was how accurate the Compact is.  You really don’t give up much in accuracy between the two guns.  And, look at the last row of the above table.  I fired one group with the Compact (and what is now my preferred load) that hung right in there with the Government Model.  More on that in a second.

In the Rock Island 1911, the 230-grain moly bullet was the most accurate load I tested.  After I did the five groups to get an average group size, I fired one more group with this load in the Compact and it was a scant 2.083 inches.   Yeah, this gun is accurate enough.

In the Colt, the most accurate load was with the 200-grain semi-wadcutter bullets over 6.0 grains of Unique.   This load fed flawlessly in both the Rock Island Compact and the Colt.  My Colt has been throated to feed semi-wadcutter bullets; the Rock Island has not been (usually, a 1911 requires that the feed ramp be opened up and polished, or throated as we say, to feed semi-wadcutter bullets).  But the 200-grain semi-wadcutter load failed to eject twice in the Compact.  The Compact is fussy about ejection, and the two failures convinced me that this load won’t work reliably in the Rock Island without additional work.  For now, I’m sticking with the 230-grain roundnose load.  It’s completely reliable for both feeding and ejection.

You’ll notice that one of the Government Model five-shot groups with the 230-grain moly coated bullet and 5.8 grains of Unique was a tight 0.960 inches.  The bottom line is that this load is a good one.  Yeah, the other groups with that load were larger: It’s that shooter variability thing again. Both the Compact and the Colt are capable of greater accuracy than what I could do.

The moly-coated 230-grain bullets shot tighter groups in the Colt than did the plated 230-grain Extreme plated bullets.  That’s consistent with my observations over the years.  Cast bullets seem to be more accurate than plated bullets in any of the .45 autos I’ve shot.  But, the 200-grain roundnose plated bullet did pretty well in the Government Model, too.   I didn’t test that load in the Compact.

The bottom line to all of the above:  My standard .45 Auto load is going to be 5.8 gr of Unique with the 230-grain moly coated cast roundnose bullet.  It fired the best overall group (at 0.960 inches) in the Colt, and it was the best load for the Compact.  This load functions well in both guns, with no anomalies in feed or ejection, and it’s accurate.  The only problem I may have is that moly coating fell out of favor some time ago, and I don’t know if any one is still offering moly-coated bullets. I have a stash of the 230-grain moly bullets, so I’m good for a little while.  After that, it’s back to the loading bench and the range to find the next favorite load.

Regarding the two handguns, I love them both.  That bright stainless Colt Government Model has had a lot of work done to it (a Les Baer barrel, custom fitting, porting and polishing, engine turning, and Millet Hi-Viz sights).  The Rock Island Compact can be had new for something a little north of $400.  It’s a phenomenal value.  The Compact is a lot more concealable, and surprisingly the recoil is only very slightly more than the bigger Colt.  And, as I showed above, it’s accurate.   The Rock Island is a hell of a 1911 at any price, but at it’s current price, the Rock Island is an absolute steal.  I like the look of the Compact, too.  The Parkerized finish, simple wood grips, and low profile fixed GI sights remind me a lot of the 1911s I carried when I was in the Army, and I like that.

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The 375 H&H at 100 yards…

Here’s a quick update on the .375 H&H that I promised a few posts ago.  In that post, I mentioned that I had been shooting the Remington Model 700 Safari Grade at 50 yards for my load development work, and I mentioned that I wanted to try it at 100 yards.

The Remington Safari Grade Model 700, chambered in .375 H&H Magnum.

I did, and the bottom line is that I shot the tightest groups I’ve ever shot at 100 yards using iron sights (i.e., not a scope).   Take a look.

Two 3-shot groups fired at 100 yards, with iron sights, off the bench. The first round fired through a cold and lubricated barrel hit almost exactly to point of aim (it’s a little hard to see in the photo). Once the bore was fouled, the rifle grouped very tightly a couple of inches to the right.

My point of aim was at 6:00 on the bullseye, and the groups I shot were worthy of a scoped rifle.   I may need to adjust the rear sight to bring the group over to the left a couple of inches or so (which is a bit funny, because at 50 yards the windage seemed perfect).  The elevation is perfect; the point of impact is even with the point of aim for elevation.  When I shot those groups it was overcast, and that could account for the rifle printing a bit to the right.  Our range is aligned such that in the morning the sun is to the left, and that makes the left side of the front site a bit brighter than the right side.   Because it was overcast the day I shot the target you see above, the sunlight-induced bias wasn’t present.  That could account for the groups offset to the right.  I’ll wait and shoot it again when the sun’s out to see where the rifle hits.

I am enjoying this rifle more and more.  It’s got it all…good looks, power, and it groups like a target grade rifle.

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Reloading and Shooting Cast Bullets in the Mosin-Nagant Rifle

The Mosin-Nagant 91/30. These rifles are extremely accurate.  This one is 84 years old.

I’m a Mosin-Nagant fan, as you know from reading our prior posts on these fine old Russian warhorses.  I’ve got two, one I use with jacketed bullets and one I use exclusively with cast bullets.  Today’s blog focuses on reloading and using cast bullets in a Mosin.

So what’s the deal on cast bullets?   If you reload, you can use either factory-produced, copper-jacketed bullets, or you can use cast bullets.  Cast bullets are cast of lead, lubricated with an appropriate grease, and sometimes fitted with a gas check (a small copper cap on the back of the bullet).

The cast bullets I’ve settled on as best for my Mosin.  These are 200-grain, gas-checked bullets made by a local caster. The gas check is the little copper cap at the base of the bullet. It prevents the propellant gases from melting the bullet’s base and minimizes barrel leading.

Folks who shoot cast bullets either buy the bullets or they cast them themselves.  I used to cast bullets 40 years ago, but I found it easier just to buy them from folks who know what they are doing and avoid the hassles of melting lead, breathing the fumes, etc.

Cast bullets are a lot easier on both the rifle and the shooter.  The softer metal (lead versus a copper jacket) is easier on the rifling and the lower velocities reduce recoil.   The downsides are that the trajectory is more pronounced due to the lower velocities associated with cast bullets, and generally speaking, cast bullets are not as accurate as jacketed bullets.  But that last bit sure isn’t the case here.   My cast loads in the Mosin are every bit as accurate as jacketed loads, and the Mosin I use for cast bullets is another one of my all-time favorite rifles.  It’s the rifle you see in the first photo of this blog, and in the photos below.

My Mosin-Nagant has been worked on a bit.  I stripped and refinished the stock, I glass bedded the action, and I did a trigger job to lighten the pull and eliminate trigger creep.   It’s a great shooter.
The desirable hex receiver Mosin.   The Mosin-Nagant is an extremely accurate milsurp rifle.

My cast bullet Mosin is just flat amazing.  It regularly cloverleafs at 50 yards, and when I do my part, I’ll get groups under 2 inches at 100 yards.  Yeah, I know, other folks talk about sub-minute-of-angle shooting at that distance, but we’re talking about iron sights and cast bullets here, folks, and it’s all being done with a rifle manufactured in 1935.   And wow, can that 84-year-old puppy shoot…

Open sights, 50 yards, shooting from a benchrest at the West End Gun Club.

This kind of accuracy doesn’t just happen and it’s usually not attainable with factory ammunition.  This is what you can get when you tailor the load to a particular rifle, and you can only do that if you reload.  I developed the load used to shoot the targets you see above trying different propellants and propellant charges, different cartridge cases, and different cast bullets.  The secret sauce?  It’s this recipe right here…

My Mosin load. SR4759 is a powder that works well for reduced velocity and cast bullet loads. It’s no longer in production, but I have a stash.  When I run out of SR4759, I’ll turn to a current production powder and start the development process all over again.

Good buddy Gresh suggested I do a piece on reloading, and I actually had done that already in the form of a video some time ago.   What you’ll see in the video below is the reloading process.   When you reload a cartridge, you lube the brass, resize it to its original dimensions, prime it, flare the case mouth (to accept the cast bullet), add the propellant, and seat the bullet.  With a little bit of music taken directly from Enemy at the Gates (a movie in which the Mosin-Nagant rifle was the real star), take a look at what’s involved in reloading 7.62x54R ammo with cast bullets…

Shooting cast bullets in a rifle is a lot of fun.  A good reference if you want to try loading with cast bullets is the Lyman Cast Bullet Handbook (it’s the one I use).  If you never tried reloading you might think about getting into it, and if you’re already reloading, you might think about giving cast bullets a go.

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A .300 Weatherby Vanguard

My “new to me” .300 Weatherby Vanguard.

You know, there’s more to the American Pickers television show than just watching a couple of cool dudes and their delightful inked-up assistant traveling all over the world buying cool stuff.  It’s really an education on how business works. Buy low, buy quality, rarity counts, treat everybody well, and sell at a profit. I love it, and I never miss an episode.  And I’ve watched a lot of the reruns.

The other topic American Pickers handles well is negotiation. These guys view negotiation not as an adversarial endeavor, but rather, a situation in which the buyer and seller are working together to find common ground. Backing off when things aren’t moving forward, bundling things to reach agreement, gentle suggestions…it’s all there. The show could be titled Negotiation 101 (it wouldn’t be as catchy a title, but it sure would be accurate).

I love negotiating. It’s a grand game and I love playing it.  Just the other day I took advantage of a negotiating opportunity. You know I’m a firearms enthusiast. I enjoy shooting and I enjoy reloading. I’m always on the lookout, too, for a few guns I still have on my wish list. One such firearm on the “someday” list has been a 300 Weatherby Magnum. I’ve been watching the Internet auction boards for 5 or 6 years now looking for one that was priced right, realizing I’d still have to pay the transfer fees, etc., to bring it in from wherever to California.

Why a Weatherby? Well, as you already know, I once met Roy Weatherby. He was a hell of man and a personal hero. He designed his own rifles and cartridges. The 300 Weatherby Magnum is his signature cartridge. It’s why I wanted one.

So one day a few years ago Susie and I had lunch in Pasadena with a fellow from India. That meeting may someday lead to another secret mission (this time to the subcontinent, which might be interesting as I’ve never been there).

But all that’s beside the point. On the way home, the traffic was terrible (it was the Friday before the Labor Day holiday). We diverted to surface streets on the way back and, what do you know, I spotted a little gun store (The Gunrunner in Duarte). We stopped in and they had a consignment rifle…and it was the one I’d been seeking for several years. A 300 Weatherby Magnum with a scope, a sling, and a case. It looked new to me, but it was used. Used, but in “as new” condition.

“How much?” I asked.

“$500,” the sales guy replied.

Hmmmmm. That was actually a great price. It was an especially great price considering I wouldn’t have to bring it in from out of state, there would be no freight or transfer fees, its condition was stellar, and it was what I had wanted for a long time. I didn’t answer, but I kept looking at the rifle. Susie just stared daggers at me. That’s another negotiating trick. Bring your significant other with you and have her pretend to be opposed to whatever it is you want to purchase. In this case, though, I’m not so sure she was pretending…

I was just about to say okay when the sales guy spoke up again.

“How about $500 and I’ll pick up the DROS fees,” he said (the DROS fees are the fees associated with the background checks, etc., so the State of California can be certain I won’t run out and hold up a gas station with the my rifle).

“Make it $475 and we’ve got a deal,” I said.

And that’s how you get ‘r done, folks, as another one of my heroes would say.

The test target provided with every new Weatherby…this one grouped 3 shots into an inch at 100 yards

So you can see that test target above.   All new Weatherby rifles used to come with a test target like that (maybe they still do; it’s been awhile since I bought a new one).  You might wonder if these targets are really representative of what the rifle can do, and I’m here to tell you they are indeed.  Take a look…this is what I shot with one of the loads I developed for my .300 Weatherby Vanguard the week after I bought it…

An awesome rifle in every regard…awesome power, awesome accuracy, and awesome recoil. The load is the 165 gr Hornady jacketed boat tail softpoint, a CCI 250 primer, and 80 grains of IMR 7828 propellant.  That’s a 3-shot, half-inch group at a 100 yards!

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Big recoil, tiny groups: A Model 700 in 7mm Weatherby

 

The Remington Classic 700 in 7mm Weatherby Magnum: An unusual, collectible, and as it turns out, extremely accurate rifle.

A short while ago I wrote about my Dad’s left hand 7mm Weatherby Mk V, and how Roy Weatherby personally helped me select it.  Well, here’s a story about another rifle chambered for the powerful 7mm Weatherby Magnum cartridge.

About a year ago, I saw something unusual on Gunbroker.com.  It was an ad for a Remington 700 Classic rifle chambered in the venerable 7mm Weatherby Magnum cartridge. This rifle is quite a setup and, I think, quite a score for me personally. I’ve been a huge fan of Weatherby rifles ever since I was a little boy, when my father chased woodchucks in New Jersey with a .243 Winchester Model 70.  Back in the day, woodchucks were about the only thing you could hunt with a rifle in New Jersey. I grew up in a farming community (there’s a reason New Jersey is called the Garden State), and the farmers in our area gave my Dad free rein to cull the chuck population. Those little woodchucks did a lot of crop damage, and the farmers were grateful that my Dad was able send those critters on to their reward. As a little kid tagging along with Dad, it was grand fun. It was not at all unusual for him to take (and make) 400-yard shots, with his rifle resting across the hood of his ’65 F-100 Ford (there were a lot of powder burns on that old pickup truck). Like I said, it was awesome.

Just before I went to Korea, my Dad bought a 7mm Weatherby rifle for me as a going-away gift, and I loved it. I shot the barrel out of that rifle (yep, I shot it so much I wore it out) and then I had it redone with a Douglas barrel in 300 H&H. But the 7mm Weatherby Mag cartridge had its hooks into me, and they never let go. The idea is that a 7mm projectile is aerodynamically more efficient than a .30 caliber bullet (the 7mm is 0.284 inches in diameter; a .30 caliber bullet is 0.308 inches in diameter). For the same weight, the 7mm cartridge has a lower drag coefficient, so it retains more velocity downrange and it has a flatter trajectory.

All of the above is probably more theoretical than real world, but I still like the idea of a streamlined, hard-hitting, flat-shooting, hot 7mm. And that’s what the 7mm Weatherby cartridge is. It was one of Roy Weatherby’s first magnum chamberings, and it has been the fastest 7mm cartridge ever for many decades.

The 7mm Weatherby cartridge. Note the classic Weatherby double radius shoulder…the theory is the double radii act as a venturi, providing higher projectile velocities. It’s probably more marketing magic than real world measurable results, but I’m a believer.

I’ve also always been a fan of the Remington 700 rifle. They are inherently accurate, and when I used to shoot high power metallic silhouette competition back in the ’70s and ’80s, it was rare to see anything other than a Model 700 in the winners’ circle.  I’ve owned a few of these rifles, and they are indeed extremely accurate.

Remington had a run of Model 700 rifles they labeled the “Classic” for a little more than 20 years, with the idea being that each year they would do a rifle in one chambering only.  Remington stopped making the Classic series more than 20 years ago, and I always wanted one.

Recently, I saw an ad on Gunbroker for one of the rarest of the Classic series, the single year they chambered these fine rifles in 7mm Weatherby Magnum.   That was a “must have” rifle for me.  A Model 700, chambered in 7mm Weatherby.  Wow.  The rifle was advertised as new in the box, the cartridge is an awesome one, and unlike most of the Classics I had previously seen, it had killer wood. Hey, what’s not to like? I bought the rifle from Heritage Shooting Academy in Triangle, Virginia, and it was a great deal. If anything, the rifle was better than advertised, and I sure couldn’t argue with the way it shot (more on that in a second).

When it arrived, I was more than impressed.  It was indeed new in the box, it was flawless, the walnut was understatedly elegant, and as I was to learn, it shot very, very well.   The only thing that initially concerned me was that these uber-velocity cartridges generally give up accuracy for what they gain in speed.  But that sure isn’t the case with this rifle. I reloaded different cartridges trying various powder charges using two different bullets, and the groups that resulted (all at 100 yards) were fabulous.

Whoa! Out-of-the-box accuracy!

My initial testing showed that the trick here was to load toward the higher end of the powder charge spectrum to more fully fill those big belted magnum cases.   The theory is that doing so results in a more uniform pressure wave/flame front when the go-juice lights up, and I guess it worked that way for me.   More powder results in more velocity and that meant more recoil, but wowee, the Model 700 provided great results!  It shot phenomenally tight groups and the little bit of dispersion you see is undoubtedly more me than the rifle or the ammo. I am one happy camper!

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The Early Machine Guns and modern Gatlings

A scan of a photo of a photo. I handled the original while researching the Gatling gun in the Colt archives at the Connecticut State Library and Museum in Hartford.

Yeah, I know…a Gatling gun is not a machine gun.  It was a hand-cranked weapon back in the day, but it’s still a fascinating a bit of machinery and this Civil War weapon concept is the principle behind modern high-rate-of-fire systems on combat aircraft, helicopters, naval vessels, and more.  I was so captivated by the Gatling design and how it extended from the Civil War to modern gun systems that I wrote a book about it (The Gatling Gun).   You may have already known that.

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The Gatling gun and its transition from the 1860s to today’s modern combat applications is fascinating.  To get that full story, you might want to pick up a copy of The Gatling Gun.

So how did it come to be that modern high-rate-of-fire gun systems use the Gatling principle?

Here’s the deal:  Around the end of World War II, jet aircraft entered service, and the old .50-caliber M2 Browning simply didn’t fire fast enough.  With the new jets, aircraft closing speeds in a dogfight might exceed 1000 mph (two jets coming at each other over 500 mph), and what was needed was a shot pattern rather than a steady stream of bullets.   In searching for higher firing rates, the Army discovered that Dr. Gatling and the U.S. Navy had both experimented with Gatling guns powered by electric motors, and way back in 1898 they attained firing rates over 1000 shots per minute.  In 1898, a firing rate that high was a solution looking for a problem that did not yet exist.  So, the concept was shelved for the next half century.  But after World War II, it was the answer to the Army Air Corps’ jet fighter gunnery dilemma.  The U.S. military dusted off the concept of an electrically-driven Gatling, gave a contract to General Electric, and the modern Vulcan was born.

Like I said earlier, the Gatling gun and its variants are used on many different combat systems.   One of the earlier ones was immortalized by Puff, the Magic Dragon, in The Green Berets.  The Green Berets is one of my all time favorite movies and the scene I’m describing shows up at around 1:20:

The first Vietnam-era gunship used old World War II C-47s (that’s what you see in the video above).  Then the Air Force went to the C-130, a much larger aircraft, because it could carry more cannon.  Then, because they couldn’t get C-130s fast enough, they turned to old C-119s.   When the Air Force did a range firing demo to convince the folks who needed convincing at Eglin AFB, the gunship Gatlings fired continuously until they had no more ammo, and I’m told it was so impressive the project managers secured an immediate okay to proceed.  The bigwigs viewing the demo firing thought the sustained burst was all part of the plan; what they didn’t know is the control system malfunctioned and the aircrew couldn’t turn the Gatlings off.  Hey, sometimes things happen for a reason.

I know a fascination with Gatlings is unusual, and you might wonder how it came to be.   It goes like this:  When I was in the Army, my first assignment was to a Vulcan unit in Korea.   To ready me for that, I had orders to the US Army Air Defense School’s Vulcan course in Fort Bliss, Texas.  Vulcans were the Army’s 20mm anti-aircraft guns, and on the first day of class, the sergeant explained to us that the Vulcan gun system was based on the old Gatlings.  Whaddaya know, I thought.  The Gatling gun.

Then things got better.  After a few weeks of classroom instruction, we went to Dona Ana Range in New Mexico to fire the Vulcan.  I thought the Vulcan would sound like a machine gun…you know, ratatat-tat and all that.  Nope.  Not even close.  When I first heard a Vulcan fire I was shocked.  If you’ve ever been to a drag race and heard a AA fuelie, that’s exactly what a Vulcan sounds like.  I heard one short BAAAAAARRRKKK as the first Vulcan fired a 100-round burst at 3,000 shots per minute.  Jiminy!  The effect was electrifying.  We were a bunch of kids yammering away, and then the Vulcan spoke.  Everyone fell silent.  We were in awe.

At the Dona Ana range, the effect was even more dramatic…there was the soul-searing bark of the actual firing, and then an echo as the Vulcan’s report bounced off the distant Dona Ana mountains.   Then another as the next gun fired, and another echo.  And another.  Cool doesn’t begin to describe it.

A Vulcan firing at night. Think that shot pattern is impressive? Hey, you’re only seeing every 7th round (the combat mix was one tracer every 7 rounds).  This is a US Army photo included in The Gatling Gun (along with many others).

After I left the Army, my next job was on the F-16 Air Combat Fighter, and it used the same 20mm Gatling as did the Vulcan.  After that it was General Dynamics in Pomona, where I worked on the Phalanx (a 20mm shipborne Vulcan).  Then it was on to Aerojet, where we made 30mm ammo for the A-10 Warthog’s GAU-8/A Gatling.  It seemed that every job I had was somehow tied to a Gatling gun variant, and that was fine by me.  I loved working with these systems.

And there you have it.  If you’d like to more about the different systems using Gatlings today and the early history of the Gatling gun, you can purchase The Gatling Gun here.

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The 7mm Weatherby Magnum

This is a hot rifle with a cool story. Folks, check out this left hand 7mm Weatherby Mark V…

A 7mm Mk V Weatherby. Note the left hand bolt and the exquisite walnut.

It’s one of the great ones, and the story behind it goes like this. About 35 years ago I was an engineer working for Aerojet (we manufactured cluster bombs and artillery ammunition) and the Weatherby plant was just up the road from us in Southgate, California. Weatherby had a retail sales outlet there, too.   It was awesome.  Hunting trophies (including an enormous full body mount of a standing polar bear that must have been 10 feet tall), all kinds of shooting gear, beautiful Weatherby rifles…you get the idea.

I stopped in one day and mentioned to Pat, the sales guy I had come to know, that I wanted to buy a Weatherby in 7mm Weatherby Magnum for my Dad.  I told him it had to be a left handed action (Dad was a southpaw), and I wanted a rifle with exceptional walnut.  “If you see one that has particularly nice wood, let me know,” I said.

Pat’s answer was immediate:  “Let’s go in the back and pick one out now,” he said.  In those days, they would take you into the Weatherby warehouse deep in the facility to select the rifle you wanted.

It was awesome.  Imagine being in an Army armory, you know, the ones with the plain wood racks and zillions of rifles stacked in them.   Now imagine those same plain wood racks filled with Weatherby Mk V rifles.   That’s what it was like.  I could have spent a year in that room, but after an hour I got it down to two rifles and I told Pat it would be cool if I could tell Dad that Roy Weatherby helped me select the rifle.

“Let’s go,” he said, and that’s exactly what happened. In two minutes I was in Roy Weatherby’s office and there he was.  I remembered my father and I studying the Weatherby catalogs when I was a kid.   They all had this photo of Roy Weatherby in his office, surrounded by animal skins, his personal gun collection, and hunting trophies.  Suddenly, Pat and I were in that photo.  And there was Mr. Weatherby.

Roy Weatherby, in his office. I was there. Photo from the Weatherby catalog.

Roy Weatherby was one hell of a man.  He spoke to me like we had known each other for years, and I guess in a sense we had.  He knew his customer base, and I had read about Mr. Weatherby growing up.  He wanted to know about the velocities of the 25mm ammo we manufactured at Aerojet, he wanted to know about me, and he wanted to know about my father.  Dad was a world-class trapshooter, and Roy wanted to know all about that, too.  The entire time we chatted (maybe 30 minutes), Pat and I were holding the two Weatherby rifles I had selected.

Finally, Mr. Weatherby said to me, “Joe, I understand you’re buying a Weatherby for your Dad and you need help selecting the rifle.”  We hadn’t told Mr. Weatherby that yet, but he knew.   Then he said to Pat, “Pat, let’s put those two rifles up here on my desk,” and we did.

“You know, from this side I like that one best,” old Roy said.  “Let’s turn them over.” We did, and then he said, “Oh, I see the problem.  From this side, I like this one best,” pointing to the other rifle.

Then he looked at me and said, “Joe, which one do you like best?”

“I like this one,” I said, pointing to the rifle in the photo on top of this blog.

“That’s the one I would have selected,” Roy said, with a knowing smile.

Mr. Weatherby obviously had done this before. He had helped in the selection, but it was my choice.  This was a wise man.  In a different time, I could imagine him suggesting slicing the baby in half like old King Solomon.  Just being in his presence was an amazing experience. Like I said, he was one hell of a man.  It was easy to understand why he was successful.  My guess is everyone who met Roy Weatherby loved the guy.

“Do you think your Dad would like a Weatherby catalog?” Roy asked.  Would he ever, I thought.  I still have memories of Dad reading those Weatherby catalogs when I was a kid.  They were big, glossy, full color affairs showing Weatherby custom rifles, famous people who hunted with Weatherby rifles, and more.   Roy pulled open a desk drawer, took a catalog from it, and inscribed the inside cover with a big Roy Weatherby signature.  It was a moment I’ll remember for the rest of my life.  The he gave me a Weatherby hat and a Weatherby belt buckle, and he said, “Give these to your Dad, too.”  It was an incredible day.

I was a Weatherby fan when I went in; when I left I was even more so. On the way out, I bought a Weatherby scope and a Weatherby rifle case.  Pat, the sales guy, told me they had other cases and other scopes that cost less, but I knew that wouldn’t do for me.  It had to be a Weatherby product.  If they had a guy there offering Weatherby tattoos, I would have opted for one of those, too.

I gave the rifle to Dad and he loved it. We spent several days on the range shooting the Weatherby, and then shortly after that, Dad’s number came up and he was gone.  Dad had heart disease, and it was his time.  That was a tough pill to swallow, but life goes on.  It was one of the lowest and saddest times of my life, but I will forever be grateful that I was able to give Dad the Weatherby and see him enjoy owning and shooting it.

The Weatherby had not been out of my safe since then, other than to run a patch through the bore and to keep it oiled. I didn’t shoot it because it’s left handed (I’m a righty), and then one day recently I was thinking about that. My Dad was left handed and he shot right hand bolt action rifles, so I reasoned that as a righty I could shoot a left hand rifle. And last year, I did.

Me, with Dad’s Weatherby.  Dark striped walnut runs the length of the stock on both sides.

That 7mm Weatherby Magnum cartridge is a real powerhouse. It’s hotter than the 7mm Remington Magnum by about 200 feet per second and the bark is ferocious. The recoil is significant, but truth be told, when I’m hunting I never feel the recoil and I never hear the shot.  That’s because my concentration is elsewhere.

My reloaded 7mm Weatherby Magnum ammunition. Weatherby cartridges have a unique double radius shoulder. The theory is it provides higher projectile velocities.

I’m working on different loads trying to zero in on the secret sauce that will provide the tightest groups in his magnificent old rifle. And I’m having a lot of fun doing it.  Every time I head to the range with the 7mm Weatherby Magnum, I’m thinking of Dad and that day with Roy Weatherby.

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375 H&H Loads…

A couple of folks wrote to me asking about the loads I used for the recent blog about the Model 375 H&H Model 700.  Say what you will, but most folks are fascinated by these big bore rifles (including me), and I figure if a couple of guys took the time to write, there are probably a bunch more out there with the same question.

When I shot the 375 H&H Model 700 last weekend, I wanted to work up some loads for it but I ran out of time. I grabbed what I had in the ammo locker, but I couldn’t find a record of having developed specific loads for this rifle earlier. Maybe I did and the loads were ones I had tested already (you’ll see from the dates on the load labels that I preppred this ammo a few years ago), or maybe I loaded them and just never got around to trying them.  In any event, these were the loads that went to the range with me last weekend.

I did all my shooting off the bench at 50 yards, and here are the results…

I used a 6:00 hold on all the targets.   All of the loads were accurate.  The recoil on the Trail Boss loads was light, about like shooting a .223.  The full power loads (the ones with 66.0 grains of IMR 4320 propellant) was accurate, but recoil was significant.  It’s probably okay as a hunting load (no one notices recoil when hunting), but shooting off the bench with this load didn’t quite move the needle into the fun range.  The 33.0 grains of SR4759 was potent, but recoil was manageable, and it was very accurate.  It’s the one I’m going to use.

These .375 H&H rifles are normally big ticket items, but Weatherby recently introduced their synthetic-stocked Vanguards (with iron sights) in a .375 H&H chambering.  You can pick these up for around $600, and that’s a phenomenal deal.

See our other Tales of the Gun stories here.

A .30 06 Mk V Weatherby…

After a couple of months of not being able to shoot because the creek was too high, good buddy Greg and I were finally able to get out to the range this weekend. It was sorely-needed range time, and I brought along two rifles. One was the .375 H&H Safari Grade Remington you read about a few blogs down; the other was a very nice Weatherby Mk V you haven’t heard about yet.  It’s the one you see in the photo above.

This particular rifle is a bit unusual. It’s a Mk V Weatherby (Weatherby’s top of the line bolt action rifle), but it’s not chambered in a Weatherby magnum cartridge. This is one of the very few rifles Weatherby has offered over the years in a standard chambering, and in this instance, it’s the mighty .30 06 Springfield. You’ve read about the .30 06 on these pages in earlier Tales of the Gun blogs.  It’s one of the all-time great cartridges and it’s my personal all-time favorite.

So, back to the Weatherby.  There were four things that made this rifle particularly attractive to me when I first spotted it on the rack in a local Turner’s gun store: The stock was finished in their satin oil finish (not the typical Weatherby high gloss urethane finish), the rifle had an original 3×9 Weatherby scope, the .30 06 chambering, and the price.  It checked all the boxes for me.   Those early Weatherby scopes are collectible in their own right.  I like an oil finished stock.  And the price…wow.

The Weatherby was something I knew I had to have the instant I saw it, and (get this) it was priced at only $750. This is a rig that today, new, would sell for somewhere around $2500.

The shop had this Weatherby on consignment at $750. It would have been a steal at that price; I got it for $650.
Pretty walnut on both sides. Weatherby builds a fine rifle.

Back in 2008, when the Great Recession was going full tilt and still gaining steam, there were fabulous firearms deals to be had if you knew what you wanted and you weren’t addicted to black plastic guns.  Nope, none of that black plastic silliness here. For me, it’s all about elegant walnut and blue steel.  I carried a black plastic rifle for a living a few decades ago. Been there, done that, don’t need any more of it.

When I spotted the Weatherby I asked the store manager about it. She told me it was a consignment gun, and when I asked if there was any room in the price (it’s a habit; I would have paid what they were asking), she asked me to make an offer. So I did. $650 had a nice ring to it, I thought.

“Let me call the owner,” the manager said. She disappeared and returned a few minutes later. “$650 is good.” Wow. I couldn’t believe I scored like this. I felt a bit guilty and asked her if I was taking advantage of the guy who had put it on consignment, and she told me not to worry. He needed the money, I needed the rifle, and the price was good for both of us.

The Weatherby had a few minor dings in the stock and the finish was a bit worn in a few places, but the metal was perfect. Because it was an oil finished stock, it was a simple matter to steel wool it down and add a few coats of TruOil, and the Weatherby was a brand new rifle again.

TruOil and fine walnut…a marriage made in Heaven. TruOil really brings out the grain. You can leave it glossy, or knock it down to a luxurious subdued satin finish with 0000 steel wool (which is what I did on this rifle).

I’ve shot this rifle quite a bit over the last 10 years and I knew it shot well, but I hadn’t recorded which load shot best. I had several loads I’ve developed for other .30 06 rifles over the last few decades (like I said above, it’s my favorite), and I grabbed three that have worked well in other rifles.  The good news is the Weatherby isn’t fussy. It shot all three well.  The bad news is…well, there isn’t any bad news.  It’s all good.

A few favorite 30 06 loads developed for other rifles.  They all worked well in the Weatherby, too, as you can see below.
The Weatherby did well with all three loads.  All were fired at 100 yards.  If you’re going to develop loads for your rifle, start lower than these and work up.   These loads worked well in my rifle; you need to roll your own to learn what works well in your rifle.

The first load is one with a lighter bullet that has worked well on Texas jackrabbits in a single-shot Ruger No. 1.  I found that load back in the 1970s when I spent entirely too much time chasing rabbits in the desert east of El Paso.  It’s the 130 grain jacketed soft point Hornady with a max load (52.0 grains) of IMR 4320 powder.   Yeah, the first two groups were larger than I would have liked, but don’t forget that I had not been on the rifle range for a couple of months.   Folks think that shooting off a rest eliminates the human element, but it does not.  I was getting my sea legs back with those first two groups.  It’s the third group that tells the story here, and that one was a tiny 0.680 inches.  If I worked on this load a bit and shot a bit more, this is a sub-minute-of-angle rifle.

The next load is the hog load I used in a Winchester Model 70 on our Arizona boar hunt last year. That one uses a 150 grain Hornady jacketed soft point with 48.0 grains of IMR 4320 powder. It shot well in the Model 70 and it shoots well in the Weatherby, too. The Weatherby averaged 1.401 inches at 100 yards with this load.  The point of impact was about 3 inches lower than the 130 grain load described above.

The third and final load I tried this weekend was with a heavier 180 grain Remington jacketed soft point bullet. I had originally developed this as the accuracy load for an older Browning B-78 single shot rifle (I’ll have to do a blog on that one of these days; it, too, has stunning wood).  This is a near max load (48.0 grains of IMR 4064 propellant) and with those heavier 180 grain bullets, recoil was attention-getting. But it was still tolerable, and the average group size hung right in there with the 150 gr load.   It averaged 1.456 3-shot groups at 100 yards.  Like they say, that’s close enough for government work.  Another cool thing…the 180 grain load point of impact was the same height above point of aim as the 130 grain load, but the group centers were about three inches to the left of center.

There’s one last thing I wanted to share with you before signing off today.  Good buddy Greg is an accuracy chaser like me.  He was out there with his rifles this weekend trying a few of his loads.   When I measure group size, I always use a caliper.  Greg has an app on his iPhone (it’s called SubMOA and it’s free) that allows him to simply take a photo of the target and it computes group size and a bunch of other good data.  I always wondered if the results from Greg’s iPhone app were as good as the real thing, so I asked him to take photos of two of my targets and tell me what the iPhone app felt the group sizes were.  He did.

I measured this group size with a caliper and found it to be 0.680 inches; the SubMOA iPhone app clocked it at 0.640 inches. That’s a 0.04 inch difference, or 5.8%. That’s pretty close, I think.
I measured this group size to be 1.245 inches; SubMOA found it to be 1.200 inches. That’s a 0.045 inch difference, or 3.6%. In both cases, the SubMOA program found the group size to be smaller than my measurements.

So there you have it.   If you’d like to read more of our Tales of the Gun Stories, you will find them here.

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The Remington Safari Grade .375 H&H

Two of the all time greats…a Safari Grade Model 700 Remington, and the .375 Holland and Holland cartridge.   Check out the walnut on this magnificent rifle!

I started playing with guns when I was a youngster and the disease progressed as I aged.  I almost said “matured” instead of “aged,” but that would be stretching things, especially when it comes to shelling out good money for fancy guns.  When I see a rifle I want, I haven’t matured at all.  I sure have aged, though.

So anyway, when I was a young guy, I read everything I could about all kinds of guns, and I especially enjoyed reading about big game rifles. Really big game, as in Peter Hathaway Capstick chasing cape buffalo, Jim Corbett chasing man-eating tigers in India, and Colonel John Henry Patterson chasing the man-eating lions of Tsavo.  It was all books and magazines back in those days. Al Gore was still a youngster and he had not invented the Internet yet, and if you wanted to read about cool things you went to a place called the library. One of the cool things to read about there, for me, was the .375 Holland and Holland cartridge, along with the rifles that chambered its Panatela of a cartridge.  The descriptions were delicious…a magnum rifle firing a 300-grain bullet 3/8ths of an inch in diameter at 2700+ fps with the trajectory of a .30 06.

The .375 H&H goes all the way back to 1912, when it was developed by the great English firm of Holland and Holland. It’s still one of the best cartridges ever for hunting big beasts that snarl, roar, bite, stomp, and gore those who would do them harm.   It was the first belted magnum cartridge. The idea is that cartridge headspaces on the belt (a stepped belt around the base), a feature that wasn’t really necessary for proper function, but from a marketing perspective it was a home run.  Nearly all dangerous game cartridges that followed the mighty .375 H&H, especially those with “magnum” aspirations, were similarly belted.   Like I said, it was a marketing home run.

As a young guy, I was convinced my life wouldn’t be complete without a .375 H&H rifle.  You see, I had more money than brains back in those days.  I spent my young working life on the F-16 development team, and my young non-working life playing with motorcycles and guns.  I was either on a motorcycle tearing up Texas, or on the range, or hanging around various gun shops between El Paso and Dallas.   In Texas, some of the shops had their own rifle range.  People in Texas get things right, I think.

One of the shops I frequented was the Alpine Range in Fort Worth, Texas. The fellow behind the counter knew that I was a sucker for any rifle with fancy walnut, and when I stopped in one Saturday he told me I had to take a look at a rifle he had ordered for a customer going to Africa. He had my interest immediately, and when he opened that bright green Remington box, what I saw took my breath away.  It was a Safari Grade Model 700 in .375 H&H. In those days, the Safari Grade designation meant the rifle had been assembled by the Remington Custom Shop, and that was about as good as it could possibly get.

The Model 700 was beautiful.  Up to that point, I’d never even seen a .375 H&H rifle other than in books and magazines. This one was perfect. In addition to being in chambered in that most mystical of magnums (the .375 H&H), the wood was stunning.  It had rosewood pistol grip and fore end accents, a low-sheen oil finish, the grain was straight from the front of the rifle through the pistol grip, and then the figure fanned, flared, flamed, and exploded as the walnut approached the recoil pad. I knew I had to own it, and I’m pretty sure the guy behind the counter knew it, too. Did I mention that the rifle was beautiful?

“How much?” I asked, trying to appear nonchalant.

“I can order you another one,” the counter guy countered, “but this one is sold. I ordered it for a guy going to Africa.  I’ll order another one for you. They all come with wood this nice.”

“Has he seen this one yet?” I asked, not believing that any rifle could be as stunning.  I knew that rifles varied considerably, and finding one with wood this nice would be a major score, Remington Custom Shop assembly or not.

“No,” the sales guy answered, “he hasn’t been in yet, but I can get another for you in a couple of days. Don’t worry; they’re all this nice.”

His advice to the contrary notwithstanding, I worried.  This was the one I had to own. “How much?” I asked again.

“$342,” he answered.

Mind you, this was in 1978. That was a lot of money then. It seems an almost trivial amount now.   The rifle you see in the photo above, especially with its fancy walnut, would sell for something more like $2,000 today.  Maybe more.

“Get another one for Bwana,” I said. “This one is mine.”

“But this is the other guy’s.”

“Not anymore it’s not. Not if you ever want to see me in here again,” I said.  Like to told you earlier, I was a young guy back then in 1978.  I thought I knew how to negotiate.  My only negotiating tool in those days was a hammer, and to me, every negotiation was a nail. You know how it is to be young and dumb, all the while believing you know everything.

“Let me see what I can do,” the sales guy said, with a knowing smile. When the phone range at 10:00 a.m. the following Monday, I knew it was the Alpine Range, and I knew the Model 700 was going to be mine. I told my boss I wasn’t feeling well.

“Another rifle?” he asked.  He didn’t need to ask.  He knew.  We were in Texas.  He had the disease, too.

In less than an hour, the rifle you see in that photograph above was mine. The guy behind the counter at the Alpine Range was good. He had already received a second Safari Grade Model 700, in .375 H&H, so the safari dude was covered. I asked to see the replacement rifle and the walnut on it was bland, straight grained, and dull…nothing at all like the exhibition grade walnut on mine.  It made me feel even better.

I’ve owned my Model 700 .375 H&H Remington for more than four decades now.  I’ve never been on safari with it and I have zero desire to shoot a cape buffalo, a lion, a tiger, or anything else, but I do love owning and shooting my .375 H&H.  I’ve never seen another with wood anywhere near as nice as mine, and that makes owning it all the more special.

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