Guns – Page 33 – The ExhaustNotes Blog

44 Special Loads

The .44 Special: It’s a classic cartridge, one that suggests sixguns, the Old West, and Dirty Harry. Elmer Keith, Remington, and Smith and Wesson created the .44 Magnum, but Clint Eastwood is the guy who put it on the map. Before Dirty Harry, gun dealers had to discount Model 29 Smith and Wessons to get them to move; after the movie, Model 29s were selling for three times MSRP. It was as good an example of product placement as ever existed, and it occurred before the concept of product placement was even created.

A Ruger Super Blackhawk up top, and a vintage, hard-to-find Smith and Wesson Model 24.

But this really isn’t a story on the .44 Magnum. Nope, this is about the cartridge that preceded the .44 Magnum, and that’s the .44 Special. If you were paying attention during the Dirty Harry series, that’s the cartridge ol’ Harry Callahan said he used in his .44 Magnum Model 29 Smith and Wesson. He explained to his sidekick (a wayward, perpetually-confused female detective) that the .44 Special had less recoil than the .44 Magnum (duh). To me, that was the best line in Dead Pool, arguably the worst of the Dirty Harry franchise. I think the producers tried to squeeze too much milk out of the Dirty Harry cow; they should have stopped at Magnum Force and called it a win.

The .44 story is a complicated one. There’s the .44 Russian (predecessor to and shorter yet than the .44 Special), the .44 Special (the topic here today), the .44 Magnum, and the old .44-40. To make matters even more confusing, the bullet is not really a .44 in any of these cartridges; it’s actually 0.429 inches in diameter. But cowboy songs about a .429 wouldn’t have the same ring as the ol’ .44 (think Marty Robbins and his Arizona Ranger ballad), so .44 it is.

The .44 Special and its big brother, the .44 Magnum, have a relationship similar to the .38 Special and the .357 Magnum. The .44 Mag is a longer version of the .44 Special (it has a longer brass cartridge case), just as the .357 Mag is a longer version of the .38 Special (it’s the same deal; the .357 has a longer case). The idea is the longer case holds more propellant, more propellant equals more pressure, and more pressure means more projectile velocity. Like Harry pointed out, you get a lot more recoil with a magnum cartridge (f still equals ma, as we are fond of saying in the engineering world), but real men ought to be able to handle it. Or so the thinking goes. Truth be told, the .44 Magnum is a bit much for me. I greatly prefer shooting the .44 Special (as did the fictional Harry Callahan). But I digress…let’s get back to the topic of this blog.

So Saturday was to be another day and another quest for a “secret sauce” recipe (this time for the .44 Special cartridge). The drill was to get out to the range before it started raining so I could test four different .44 Special loads in two different handguns: A 200th Year Super Blackhawk in .44 Magnum, and a Model 24 Smith and Wesson in .44 Special. I loaded 50 .44 Special rounds for this test; I just wanted to get a quick look near the top and bottom of the load range for two propellants (and those were Bullseye and Unique). The bullet du jour was a 240-grain cast Keith-type semi-wadcutter. I’ve been playing with .44s of one flavor or another since Dirty Harry first graced the silver screen, and the 240-grain cast Keith is as good as it gets. I have a bunch of them on my reloading bench.

I expected the Smith and Wesson Model 24 to do better than the Ruger, and it did. The Ruger can handle both .44 Special and .44 Magnum cartridges, as it is chambered for .44 Magnum. When you shoot .44 Specials (which are shorter than .44 Magnum cartridges) in a gun chambered for the .44 Magnum, the bullet has to jump another tenth of an inch or so to get to the rifling. The Smith Model 24 is chambered in .44 Special, so the barrel’s rifling starts closer to the cartridge than it would in a gun chambered for the longer .44 Magnum cartridge. But the Ruger is a .44 Magnum, and the .44 Special in the Ruger has to make that jump. It’s already smoking right along when it hits the rifling and it’s unsupported during that first bit of its flight. That induces some smearing and distortion when the bullet smacks into the rifling, and that hurts accuracy. The same thing occurs when shooting .38 Specials in a .357 Magnum revolver. It’s why I’ve never been a fan of .45 Colt handguns with the extra .45 ACP cylinder, or .357 Magnum handguns with the extra 9mm cylinder. Those auto cartridge bullets have an even bigger jump to the rifling, and I’ve never seen good accuracy in the shorter auto cartridges in these revolvers.

Anyway, to get back to the main attraction, as explained above I only loaded 50 cartridges for this test, so I couldn’t shoot three groups with each load. This was to be just a quick look, because I had another 250 .44 Special cases primed, flared, and ready to reload back at the ranch. I just needed to know how to load them.

Based on my testing, the near-max load of Bullseye is the cat’s meow. 4.7 grains of Bullseye with the 240-grain bullet was consistent and accurate in both handguns, and it was awesomely accurate in the Smith and Wesson. Here are my results. So you know, all groups were shot at 50 feet, and all were 3-shot groups.

Accuracy testing of the .44 Special in the Ruger and the Smith and Wesson. 4.7 grains of Bullseye is the secret sauce!

Like I said above, the Bullseye load (again, that’s 4.7 grains with the 240-grain SWC bullet) is great in the Model 24 Smith, and it’s good enough in the Ruger. I mostly shoot .44 Magnum in the Ruger, and I will get better accuracy in that gun firing magnum cartridges than I would with the .44 Special rounds for the reasons explained above. I’ve already got a few great .44 Magnum loads; at some point I’ll develop lighter magnum loads for the Ruger. But that’s a project for another day.

Both the Ruger and the Smith are fine firearms, built in an era when attention to detail mattered to the manufacturers. The Model 24 Smith and Wesson is a real honey of a handgun. I’ve owned it since Mr. Reagan was in the White House, but until this weekend I had not shot it in years. It’s nice to know I can still make it sing. And I love my Ruger, too. It’s a 200th year Ruger made in 1976, the 200th year of American liberty (and all Rugers manufactured in 1976 carry that inscription). I bought the Super Blackhawk Ruger when I was in the Army. Understandably but regrettably, my battery commander wouldn’t let me carry the Ruger in Korea (I had to carry a .45 ACP 1911, but that was a good deal, too).

I’ll have the Ruger out next weekend for our Motorcycles and Milsurps match (watch for the story here on the ExNotes blog). I have a good load for it now, and I should do well. We’ll see.

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Marlin’s 336 Texan Deluxe

The latest rendition of a classic rifle: Marlin’s new 336 Texan Deluxe in .30-30.

Over the years, Marlin has offered more than a few variations of their venerable 336 lever action rifle in a variety of chamberings, with the most prolific cartridge being the tried and true .30-30. I’m a true believer in Marlin lever guns, as you know from reading the blog about the Marlin 336 Octagon earlier (it’s one of the super rare variants of this fine rifle). The Marlin boys (formerly of New Haven, now out of Ilion, NY) had versions of the 336 with long barrels, short barrels, in-between barrels, commemoratives of various flavors, straight grip stocks, pistol grip stocks, walnut stocks, birch stocks, laminated stocks, blued carbon steel, stainless steel, standard levers, big loop levers, and more. People have focused entire collecti0ns on (and written books about) Marlins.

One of the more graceful versions of the 336 Marlin rifle was the Texan, an earlier straight-grip, walnut-stocked number that to my eye just looked right. I like a straight-gripped stock, and to me blue steel and walnut is the Holy Grail. The older Marlin Texans are not super rare, but they’re not common, either, and when a used Texan comes up for sale it commands a premium price. As is the case with most guns, a used Texan today would sell for many multiples of its original price. That’s kind of the justification I’ve used whenever I’ve purchased any gun, but in the Marlin Texan’s case, it’s actually true. As an aside, guns of any flavor generally go up in value (they are one of the few things in life that do). And as an aside to that, most of us who play with these things generally tell our significant others that we paid less than we actually did, secure in the knowledge that the value is going to go up anyway. (We don’t spend too much; we just buy too soon sometimes.) It brings to mind the Gun Collector’s Prayer:

Lord, when I go, please don’t let my wife sell my guns for what I told her I paid for them…

So, to get back on topic: Several months ago, Marlin reintroduced the Texan. To back up a bit, I mentioned in an earlier blog that Marlin was acquired by Remington, and Remington moved the Marlin production equipment from New Haven (the old Marlin plant) to their plant in Ilion, New York. And as I explained in that earlier blog, there was a feeling that quality dipped during the transition. Well, you can rest easy, folks: Marlin quality is most definitely back now. In fact, I think the new Marlins are of even better quality than the rifles produced in New Haven. I know a little bit about quality and I know a little bit about guns, and unlike most of the people expressing opinions on the Internet, I actually own rifles made in both places.

Marlin is calling their new model the Texan Deluxe. The concept had my interest immediately. A new Texan, I knew, would be something special, and this one sure is. It has light engraving, a gold inlay of the Marlin ranger, and what Marlin is calling B-grade walnut. B-grade should indicate walnut with a bit of figure, but in following the auctions and sales on Gunbroker.com, everything I saw had plain, straight-grained wood. They were good-looking rifles, but I wanted something with fancier wood and I just had not seen anything online that met my expectations. In fact, I had not seen any of the new Texans in any of the gun stores I visited (I only saw these rifles on the Internet). But that all changed recently.

Fast forward to one month ago. I had taken my Subie in for an oil change. There’s a gun store not too far from the Subaru dealer (Ammo Brothers, a California chain). When I left, it was raining cats and dogs, traffic was terrible, and I thought I would kill some time by seeing what the Bros (as in the aforementioned Ammo Brothers) had in stock.

You can guess where this story is going.

I checked the handguns, the reloading components, and more. Reasonable prices, reasonable inventory, and then before I left, I did a quick scan of the rifles they had on display. To my great surprise, Ammo Brothers had a new Texan Deluxe in the rack. And, it had stunning wood. I asked to see it. The young dude behind the counter handed the rifle to me. It was flawless. No nicks, no dings, perfect wood-to-metal fit, and wow, the walnut was exquisite.

“Do you have any more in stock?” I asked. I always ask. They might have one in back with even nicer wood, although I knew the one I was holding would be impossible to beat. The guy checked; the one in my hands was the only one they had. “Can you knock anything off the price?” Nope, it was what it was. He told me they were hard to get. Tell me about it, I thought.

“I’ll take it,” I said. And as Forrest Gump would say, just like that I had me a new Marlin 336 Texan Deluxe. One with walnut I thought was way better than B-grade wood.

Well, not quite just like that. I had to wait my 10-day Peoples Republik of Kalifornia kooling-off period. You know, so I wouldn’t run out and rob a liquor store or stick up a gas station. You never know.

My new Marlin at Ammo Brothers. Check out the highly-figured walnut. As walnut ratings go, I’d call this AA wood, not B-grade. Sometimes you just get lucky.

Light engraving, and the Marlin Ranger…it all works very well together.

A simulated ivory front sight. A white bead front sight is a great concept and it works. Good visibility and it doesn’t track the sun like a brass bead.

Even the fore end is highly figured. This is a beautiful lever gun.

Two weeks later, I had the new Texan on the range, and I have to tell you, it is a honey. The trigger is only slightly on the heavy side, and it is crisp. It has a white bead front sight, and I really like that (I don’t like a brass bead front sight, as that tends to shoot to a variable point of impact depending on where the sun is). The new Marlin shot to the right, but that’s something easily corrected with a brass drift, and it’s a normal part of zeroing in a rifle. Good buddy Paul made a brass drift for me and the sight has already been put where it needs to be.

What’s really nice about the new Marlin is that it groups well. You can see that in the photo at the top of this blog. I tried four different loads and all grouped well, including a reduced load with cast bullets and Trail Boss powder (that combo recoils and sounds about like a .22, and that’s really cool). Here are the results…

A few of the loads, which are very promising. WW 748 is another propellant that works well in the .30-30; that’s a load for another range session. These are the first four loads through this rifle. All groups were fired at 50 yards.

I didn’t measure the cast loads because I shot a bunch of them (not my usual three-shot groups) and I used a non-distinct aim point. The cast bullets shot about 6 inches low at 50 yards compared to a full-power jacketed bullet load. But the cast bullet group (using a flaky aim point) was relatively tight. Good stuff, and I’ll shoot more of those on my next visit to the range. I’m going to load some up today.

The other surprise was how easy the Marlin was to clean. Marlins break down for cleaning far easier than the Winchester 94 (I knew that going in). On a Marlin, you remove the lever pivot screw, and that allows withdrawing the lever, the bolt, and the ejector, and that in turn allows clearing the rifle’s barrel from the breech (rather than the muzzle). On a Winchester 94, it’s quite a bit more complicated (so much so that I’ve never kept a Winchester 94 for very long). Marlin builds a better mousetrap.

What I didn’t realize is how well Marlin is making these barrels. Marlin uses their micro-groove approach on the .30-30 336, which means there are a dozen relatively shallow lands and grooves in the bore. That makes for less bullet deformation, and the theory is the things are more accurate than a conventional rifle with Ballard lands and grooves (which are deeper than micro-grooves). Accuracy aside, micro-grooving also makes the bore much easier to clean. The bore in my new Texan is super polished, and it’s actually blued in there, too. Some folks think that micro-groove rifling doesn’t allow a rifle to shoot cast bullets, but I didn’t find that to be the case at all. My rifle handled cast 190-grain bullets with no problems, great accuracy, and no leading.

The bottom line: This new Texan is stunning. Marlin is back, folks.

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A tale of four 1911s…

My good buddy Paul, whom you’ve already read about on the ExNotes blog, is a retired aerospace engineer who has way more talent than me in the gun-tinkering arena. During one of our shooting expeditions, Paul brought along an interesting 1911…a .45 that he had re-barreled to shoot 9mm. There’s not a simple proposition, but hey, Paul’s good at this stuff and his 9mm conversion shot well. Then, a few months ago, we had a discussion about the merits of the .38 Super cartridge. That’s a round similar to the 9mm, but the case is longer, allowing for more propellant. The result? The .38 Super’s velocity is substantially higher than a 9mm (the .38 Super is roughly equivalent to a .357 Magnum).

Well, one thing led to another, I guess, and I received an interesting photo and email from Paul a few days ago…

A four-fer, so to speak….a 1911 that can shoot .45 ACP, .38 Super, 9mm, and .22 Long Rifle.

Joe:

I started this project about 5 or 6 years ago. My intent originally was to buy a stainless steel Springfield 1911 9mm target pistol. At the time they were very scarce and wait time was close to a year at an inflated price. I then decided to purchase a mil spec .45 and buy a Caspian 9mm slide, barrel and slide components to convert the .45 to 9mm. I said to myself that if I was going this far with the project that I would buy a .38 Super barrel and have a pistol that will convert into a .45, 9mm, and .38 Super. I did the Caspian slide and 9mm Nowlin barrel fitting first, a few months after I originally purchased the pistol.

I shot the pistol in 9mm conversion at Joe’s range a few years back and it performed very well. The .38 Super conversion was put on hold until now. I purchased a new oversized bushing and three different barrel links to get the correct lockup, which arrived from Brownell’s a few days ago. I recontoured the barrel and fit the bushing to barrel, and then to the slide. This took 3+ hours to do with a 0.0005″ to 0.001″ tolerance fit on all surfaces. Link and lockup fitting were next.

When I fit the link to the barrel, a job that I thought would take 10 minutes, it actually took 1.5 hours. That barrel must have been a budget-manufactured barrel because the workmanship was poor in the link recess and not deep enough to allow the link to fully seat. I’m glad I have a milling machine. The lockup is now solid and everything cycles as it should.

I think it’s ready to test fire but first I have to reload some ammo for it. I’m going to do a Cerrosafe casting of the bore to see what the diameter is. The spec for the bullet diameter for the .38 Super is 0.356-inch and the 9mm it is 0.355-inch. I have some Berry’s plated bullets that are 0.356 but I’m not sure if they are 115 or 124 grains. I want to use 124 to 130 grain bullets. I do have a fair amount of 124 gr semi-wadcutter cast bullets that I did many years ago for my Colt 9mm target bullet experiment but I never sized or lubed them (looks like I’ll be bringing out the bullet sizer/luber). Not too sure that this style of bullet will cycle, but it’s worth a try.

I also purchased a .22 LR conversion kit for this pistol about four years ago, which I have also previously shot. So, now this 1911 Springfield Mil Spec will shoot .45 ACP, 9mm Luger, .38 Super, and .22 LR when it’s finally finished…how neat is that!

Paul

That’s awesome, Paul…and thanks for taking the time to explain your approach and for the photo. It’s a cool handgun and having that kind of versatility is a slick concept. I think it has to be especially satisfying knowing that you built it yourself.

We’ve found that folks who ride are frequently into guns, and vice versa (like good buddy Paul). It’s why we include interesting Tales of the Gun stories on the ExNotes blog. Want to see more?

A Wind River Marlin rifle…

You remember my post on being a bad influence? You know, I get a new rifle, get all pumped up about it, and then my buddies buy the same thing? And you remember that at least couple of the gun blogs we’ve done have been “A Tale of Two (fill in the blank)” gun stories, with the other guns owned by good buddy Greg, or Paul, or one or another of my shooting buddies?

Well, it turns out I’m not the only bad influence in town. There was a movie not too long ago (Wind River) where the main character carried a stainless steel, scoped, .45 70 Marlin lever gun, and he reloaded his own ammo to boot. Good buddy Greg saw that movie and decided his life wouldn’t be complete unless he had a similar rig. Here’s the trailer for Wind River to give you a bit of background if you haven’t seen the movie…

You might have noticed the Harvey Weinstein credit at the start of the movie (now there’s a guy who’s fortunes have certainly reversed). I saw Weinstein speak (in person) at a Bud Ekins and Steve McQueen motorcycle tribute event about 10 years ago, but I digress…that’s a story for another blog and another time. Back to the main attraction for this blog.

Anyway, Greg pulled the trigger on what I’m calling the Wind River Marlin, and we took his new rifle to the range this weekend. Greg’s new 1895 is awesome from both accuracy and power perspectives. Highly-polished stainless steel, laminated stock, big loop, long-eye-relief scope, Picatinny rail mount, 16-inch barrel, and more. It’s very impressive…

Greg and the Wind River Marlin, settling in to drop the hammer.

Deep breath, let it halfway out, gently squeeze…

…and another 400-grains of lead heads downrange. I tripped the shutter just as the rifle was recoiling and caught the thing in midair. Note the rifle lifting off the rest in recoil.

Here’s a very short video of Greg firing the Wind River special…watch it bounce around when it recoils. The lens caps dance around a bit, too!

And here’s what it looked like on the target at 50 yards…that’s outstanding accuracy and great shooting.

The guy is good. That’s four 5-shot groups, and it’s great shooting in any caliber. It’s amazing in a cartridge as powerful as the .45 70.

The concept of a scoped lever action rifle, and particularly one with a long-eye-relief scope, kind of fits in with the Jeff Cooper Scout Rifle idea. I like it because I’ve always wondered what kind of accuracy these big bore lever guns are truly capable of, and Greg’s new stainless steel 1895 confirms that the Marlin lever guns can be tack drivers with the right load and a skilled rifleman. Some might argue that a lever gun should use iron sights (the traditionalist approach), or that a scope looks out of place on a lever action rifle. Greg’s rifle dispels both notions. The Wind River rifle looks great, and it has the accuracy t0 match its looks.

Another school of thought holds that the modern Marlins are not as good as the older ones. These folks generally push the notion that when Marlin was an independent company (before Remington acquired Marlin a few years ago) the quality was better. That’s hogwash, again as shown by Greg’s stainless steel Marlin 1895 and Paul’s blued-steel version of the same rifle. The current production Marlins are every bit as good as the older ones.

I, too, had a new Marlin on the range today (mine was of the .30- 30 flavor, but it was different rifle than the 336 Octagon covered here) . But that’s another story for a another blog, which is coming up in the next few days. Stay tuned!

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The .30-30 Model 336 Marlin

I’ve been a huge fan of the .30-30 since the mid-1970s, which is when I first owned a Marlin 336. I think I paid something like $50 for it, and it was an incredible rifle. We hunted jackrabbits in west Texas in those days and that rifle seemed to be laser guided. I just couldn’t miss, even when Bugs Bunny was on the run. The old Marlin had a front sight shroud, and it served as a good aiming device when Mr. Bunny was vigorously hopping down the bunny trail. I just held on the rabbit between the front sight post and the inner edge of that shroud, and whump! Yep, I did my duty as a soldier in the Great Bunny Trail Traffic Reduction Wars of the mid-1970s. As I recall, one of my friends offered me $70 for that first Marlin back in those days, and that ended my .30-30 career for the next several years. But I remembered the .30-30’s light recoil (it’s only about half that of a .30 06), its tremendous accuracy, and the off-the-charts fun factor.

Fast forward to about 10 years ago when I told the above story about that old Marlin to my good buddy Chris. I mentioned to Chris that I would like to own a .30-30 Marlin again. A week later, Chris emailed a link to a California sporting goods store’s online used gun listing, and there was a Marlin 336 for sale. The store was in Redondo Beach (about 60 miles away). I called and asked them to hold the rifle for me, but they wouldn’t do it. “You need to get in here if you want it,” the kid on the phone said.

Which I did. I told my boss I wasn’t feeling well, and his response was “Another gun?” Yep, you got it, Boss, and it was Subie WRX wheels-in-the-wells time. I was Redondo-Beach-bound.

I arrived at the store and explained to the kid the behind the counter that I was there for the Marlin. The gun department manager overheard me and told the sales kid, “Good! Take that damned thing off the Internet. The phone’s been ringing off the hook.”

I didn’t know it at the time (even though I considered myself to be a knowledgeable gun guy) but this particular Marlin was highly collectible. It wasn’t just a Marlin 336. It was a 336 Octagon. The story goes something like this: In 1970, Marlin produced a run of commemorative 336 rifles with fancy walnut, real cut engraving (not the rolled-in cheapo engraving you see on most commemorative guns), and octagonal barrels. The commemorative rifles were offered to celebrate Marlin’s 100th year in business. The Marlin wizards in North Haven had purchased a run of octagonal barrel blanks and after producing the commemorative rifles, they had a few octagonal blanks left over. The Marlin guys decided to use up the extra octagonal blanks, which they did with an uncatalogued run of standard Model 336 rifles. And that’s what this rifle was…one of the overrun 336 Octagon models that never made it into any Marlin sales literature. They’re scarce. The sporting goods store guys, not being experts (it was a chain store) didn’t understand what they had. Nor did I, at the time. I paid what they were asking for the rifle (which was $300, a fair price for a used Marlin .30-30). Then I found out what I had. Wowee! I’ve since turned down offers of $1000 for this rifle. My 336 Octagon was a real score, not that I’d ever be interested in selling it.

Yep. There are only about 300 of these in the world, all made in 1970. The Marlin 336 Octagon was a real score for me. Nope, it’s not for sale. Never will be.

The 336’s standard post front sight. The 336 I owned in the mid-1970s had a front-sight shroud. A shroud would look out of place on an octagonal barrel.

Caliber .30-30 Winchester. In the 1890s, Marlin didn’t use the Winchester designation for the chambering; Winchester and Marlin were competitors.

I added a Williams receiver aperture rear sight with oversized eyepiece, undersized aperture, and click adjustments. Even though it’s 50 years old, this is a very accurate rifle.

The .30-30 is as cartridge with a history. It was introduced in the mid-1890s as the .30 Winchester Smokeless for the Model 1894 Winchester. I’ve played with the 1894 Winchester and I don’t much care for it. The Winchester is a lever gun (like the Marlin), but it’s not as accurate (in my opinion) and it is a much more difficult gun to disassemble for cleaning and reassemble after cleaning (in everybody’s opinion). Nope, I’m a Marlin guy when it comes to lever action rifles. It’s a Ford versus Chevy, Republican versus Democrat kind of thing. I like Marlin.

My reloaded .30-30 ammo. This particular load used 22 grains of IMR 4198 powder and a 150 grain Speer flat point bullet. I have other reduced loads using Trail Boss and Unique powder with Extreme plated bullets. This is one of those rifles that seems to shoot everything well.

You might wonder about the .30-30 cartridge designation. It goes like this: The first .30 refers to the bullet diameter (it’s 0.308 inches in diameter), and the second 30 refers to the grains of smokeless propellant behind the bullet in the original factory loading. That’s another thing…this was the first cartridge to use smokeless powder (instead of the smoke-belching, corrosive black powder in use up to that point). It has a muzzle velocity of about 2400 feet per second. The experts say it is a good for deer up to 200 yards. I would pass on a shot at that range. I can tell you that in the 50-to-100 yard range, the .30-30 is awesome. I once shot a 5-shot, 1.25-inch group at 100 yards with this rifle (using open sights). I only did that once, but I’ve been bragging about it ever since.

In its day, the .30-30 was a real breakthrough cartridge, and even today, it is wildly popular as a deer cartridge (it’s estimated that more deer have been taken with the .30-30 than all other cartridges combined). It’s a hoot to shoot (especially in a rifle as classy as the one you see here), and it’s one of my favorites.

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How does this old Marlin compare to a modern one? Hey, check out this Marlin Texan!

A bad influence?

I may be that kid your mother always warned you about. You know, the bad influence. The one who might do something she wouldn’t like, and then you follow suit. Moms live in fear of guys like me.

Paul’s .45 70 Marlin 1895. These are impressive rifles.

When it comes to guns, I am pretty sure I’m the guy she had in mind. On more than a few occasions, I’ll get fired up about a firearm (no pun intended), and then several of my friends will buy the same thing. It’s happened with Mosin-Nagants, 1911 .45 autos, Ruger No. 1 rifles, and most recently, big-bore Marlins. Caliber .45 70 Model 1895s, to be precise. Several of my friends now own these rifles and they are a hoot. One of these days we’ll have one of our informal West End Gun Club matches and restrict it to .45 70 rifles only. That should be fun.

Paul and I both appreciate fine walnut, and Paul’s recent purchase of his brand-new Marlin is no exception. It’s unusual to see wood this highly figured on a production rifle. Take your time, peruse what’s available on Gunbroker.com on a regular basis, visit every gun store you can, and every once in a great while you find something like this.

I was in northern California last week and that’s always a good opportunity to visit with my good buddy Paul and send a little lead downrange. Well, maybe not a little. You see, Paul recently purchased a .45 70 Marlin 1895, and these rifles send lead downrange at the rate of 400 grains a shot. There are 7,000 grains in a pound. Do the math…that’s a big-ass bullet. Hell, they used to use these things for shooting buffalo.

There’s no way I’d ever shoot one of these magnificent creatures, but back in the day when the buffalo hunters did, more often than not they were using a .45 70 rifle. I grabbed this photo on a recent trip to Tennessee.

The Marlins are great rifles, and you can pick up a 45 70 Model 1895 for around $600 if you shop around for a bit. Marlin was acquired by Remington a few years ago, and their quality took a hit during the transition as they moved production from the old Marlin factory in Connecticut to the Remington plant in New York. Judging by the recent rifles I’ve examined (including Paul’s), the quality issues are all in the rear-view mirror now. The new Marlins sure shoot well, too.

A Williams peep sight on Paul’s Marlin. If you know what you’re doing (and Paul does) these can shrink your groups significantly.

Paul added a Williams aperture rear sight to his 1895, and this was the first time he shot it. I had spotting duties. The first round went low left about 10 inches, and then Paul walked succeeding rounds up and to the right by adjusting the rear sight as I called the shots to him. It didn’t take too many shots to zero the rifle, and from that point on, it was simply a question of evaluating which of several different handloads grouped best. Paul had prepared test rounds using Unique and IMR 4227 propellant, all using the Missouri 400 grain cast lead bullet. The winner was 13.0 grains of Unique behind the mighty Missouri slug. At 50 yards, this load grouped well.

The target. Low, adjust, a bit higher, adjust some more, and well, you get the idea. It took only a few shots to get the Marlin dialed.

We were at a Santa Clara County public range and it was a rainy day, but we managed to have fun on both the rifle and handgun ranges. We shot the .45 70 and then my personal favorite handgun, the 1911 .45 Auto. Yep, Paul had his 1911 out, and we had fun with it, too.

Paul shooting his 1895 at the local gun club.

Paul let me try the Marlin. He tried to capture the muzzle blast, but timing the camera to the shot is tough.

Yours truly behind the 1895. From the rear, Paul and I could be twins. We’ve been shooting buddies for more than 60 years. This photo shows the smoke just after I fired, and that’s good enough.

Paul’s “Mil Spec” model Springfield 1911. These are fine guns, way better than what I carried in the Army.

Other folks on the range are always intrigued by the .45 70 cartridge. Compared to the most common rounds seen on rifle ranges these days, they’re huge. The perception is that the recoil must be horrendous. It can be if you load near the upper end of the propellant charge spectrum, but at the lower powder charge ranges, these guns are a lot of fun. That’s a topic for another blog, one that will appear here soon. Stay tuned!

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A Tale of Two No. 1s

…and those two would be Ruger No. 1 single-shot rifles, arguably the classiest rifles on the planet. I smile when I hear folks talking about high-capacity magazines and black assault rifles. One shot, folks. That’s all it takes if you know what you’re doing. When you see someone hunting with a single-shot rifle, you know that rifleman knows how true sportsmen play the game.

My Ruger No. 1 in 7mm Remington Magnum. It has a period-correct Redfield Widefield 3×9 scope, and magnificent walnut.

Ruger introduced these rifles in the late 1960s, and they are still in production. In 1976, like I mentioned in an earlier blog, Ruger stamped every firearm they manufactured with a “Made in the 200th Year of American Liberty” inscription. I bought my first one back then, and I’ve had a soft spot for the Ruger single-shot rifles ever since. Both of the rifles you see in this blog (mine and good buddy Greg’s) are 200th Year Rugers.

Several years ago, I found a clean, used No. 1 in 7mm Remington Magnum. I had never owned a rifle in that caliber before, and I always wanted one. I bought it and I kept it for several years without shooting it, and then good buddy Marty gave me a stash of new-old-stock 7mm Mag brass. A few years before that, good buddy Jim had given me a set of 7mm RCBS dies. With the addition of Marty’s brass, all of a sudden I was in the 7mm game. I had the rifle, the dies, and the brass.

I loaded some 7mm ammo last summer and took the No. 1 to the range. I was disappointed but not surprised that it did not group well with that first load. It takes a while to find the right load, and the load I tried that day was only the first of many. It’s okay. These things take time.

Good buddy Greg’s No. 1, also in 7mm Remington Mag, and also a 200th Year Ruger. You just don’t see walnut like this on rifles today. The wood on Greg’s rifle is nicer than mine.

Good buddy Greg (I have a lot of good buddies) saw my No. 1 and he decided that his life would not be complete unless he owned one, too. He found one with even nicer wood than mine, and it, too, was a 200th Year Ruger. Yowwee, our load development time was cut in half! Greg was chasing the proverbial secret sauce and so was I.

So about this load development business: Every rifle is an entity unto itself. I’m not certain what that phrase means, but I like the way it rolls off the keyboard. I think it means every rifle is different, and if that’s the case, it sure is an accurate statement. What you do when you reload ammo (what most of us do, anyway) is look for a load that delivers superior accuracy. The gold standard is getting a rifle to consistently shoot three shots into an inch at 100 yards. Most of the time, factory ammo won’t do that. You’ve got to experiment with different combinations of bullet weight, bullet design, bullet manufacturer, bullet seating depth, crimp, powder type, powder charge, primer type, and brass case manufacturer, and if you get lucky, you might find that magic MOA load (minute of angle, or one inch at 100 yards) before you run out of money for reloading components. It is amazing how much difference finding the right load can make. It can take a rifle from 4-inch groups to the magic MOA.

In the case of my 7mm No .1, I’m getting pretty close. I tested a load this past weekend that averaged 1.080 inches at 100 yards. It shot one group into 0.656 inches…

Getting there…that old No. 1 sure likes this load!

I think I’m just about there. This weekend I was using old brass with old primers, it had not been trimmed to assure consistent length, and I did not weigh each powder charge individually (I just let the powder dispenser add the same volume with each throw). Those are all tricks we use to improve accuracy. If I resize and trim the brass, use new primers, and individually weigh each charge, things should get even better. That’s the next step. Then I’ll start experimenting with bullet seating depths. I’m thinking I might get this nearly-50-year-old rifle to shoot in a half-inch at 100 yards. That would be cool.

Like I said, it took awhile to get here. Here are the loads I tried before I shot that group above….

The best and most consistently accurate load is the second one from the bottom. The next steps will be to refine this load.

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A quick update…

Wow, we sure are generating a lot of interest, a lot of hits, and a lot of comments here on the ExNotes website and blog. We appreciate the comments, folks, so please keep them coming.

I need more form-generated junk emails like I need a summer cold, and I’m willing to bet you feel the same way. That said, please consider adding your email address to the list of folks we auto-notify every time we post a new blog. We try to post every day, and I know many of you probably just check in when it’s convenient. Getting on our email list, though, will add one advantage you won’t otherwise get. On a quarterly basis, provided we get at least another 200 folks sign up each quarter, we’ll give away a copy of either Moto Colombia, Riding China, or 5000 Miles at 8000 RPM to a name drawn at random from our email database. The first winner will be announced sometime around Christmas this year. Please encourage your friends to sign up, too. If you’re already on the list, you’re eligible for the first drawing. We don’t give or sell our email list to anyone, so your address is safe with us.

More news: The next Long Beach Moto Show is just around the corner. I’ll be there, and I’ll have lots of photos of Bold New Graphics from the Big 4, and interesting new models from everyone else. And yeah, I’ll get a few photos of the young ladies in the Ducati, Harley, and Indian booths, too.

Make sure you check the newsstands for the latest offering from Motorcycle Classics magazine. It’s titled Tales from the Road, and it’s a dynamite collection of great travel stories that MC, one of the greatest motorcycle magazines ever, has run in the past. Two of my stories are in there, and I know you’ll enjoy them.

We’re going to be adding a couple more index pages to the ExhaustNotes site, as we have already done for the Resurrections, Baja, Dream Bikes, YouTube, Tales of the Gun, and Books pages. We’re thinking the next index pages will be on e-bikes, and another one for the CSC RX4. Those areas are getting a lot of attention and a lot of hits on the blogs we’ve done, and the idea is to make it easy for you to find all of our blogs on a particular topic. And speaking of resurrections, Joe Gresh tells me we may not be too far from hearing Zed, the star of the Resurrections page, fire up. I’m excited about that. Joe’s work on that barn-find Kawasaki Z1 sure is interesting. And there’s more good stuff in the works…a feature on an old Ruger rifle in 7mm Remington Magnum for which I finally found the secret sauce (a load delivering less than 1-inch groups at 100 yards), and a special feature on something that weighs more and has less power than a full-dress potato-potato-potato cruiser (I know you didn’t think that was possible, but I have the photos to prove it).

It’s getting dark what with the time change being in effect, and my keepers are telling me I have to take my pills and get ready for bed. Stay tuned; there’s more good stuff coming your way.

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The Rimfire Series: A 200th Year Ruger .22

Purchased used in the early ’80s for $125, this super-clean 200th Year Ruger .22 semi-auto has sent a lot of lead downrange. A comparable Ruger today costs more than $400.

The story goes something like this: William Batterman Ruger (we all knew him as Bill) was a government engineer in the late 1940s who had a good idea for an inexpensive semi-automatic .22 handgun. Ruger’s design featured a grip frame constructed of two steel stampings (left and right sides) welded together, a tubular receiver, and a reciprocating bolt. Most folks think it looks like a Luger (the famed German semi-auto handgun of both world wars), and the name Ruger sounds a lot like Luger, but the new Ruger operation was nothing like the old P-08 Luger. Ruger’s new semi-auto was actually based on the World War II Japanese Nambu pistol. It’s where the idea of a simple back-and-forth bolt in a tubular receiver came from.

The profile is thought by most to be of the more widely-known German Luger, but the design is actually based on the Japanese Nambu.

Ruger left the government, hung out a shingle on a barn in Connecticut, and built 2500 of the things in 1949. They cost under $40 and they sold quickly. Ruger tweaked the design a bit and called the updated version the Mk I, and that version remained in production from 1950 to 1981 in both fixed-sight and adjustable-sight versions. The new Ruger was wildly popular, and for good reason: It was accurate, it was well built, it was nicely finished, and it was inexpensive. In 1976, every gun Ruger produced had a cool roll stamp: Made in the 200th Year of American Liberty. 1976 was the year I came back from an overseas US Army stint, and I started collecting Rugers with the 200th year stamp. One is the Ruger you see here.

Every Ruger manufactured in 1976 carried a 200th Year of American Liberty roll mark. They’re kind of cool, I think.

I picked up the Ruger you see here in the early 1980s, used, for $125 from a small gun shop in Pomona, California. The gun shop is no longer there, and it’s been so long I can’t even remember the name of the place now. You don’t see many small gun shops anywhere in the US anymore (the regulatory hurdles are just too burdensome for most small businesses) and these days, you don’t see too many gun shops of any size in California. Some think that’s a good thing. As you’ve no doubt guessed, I’m not one of those people.

This old Ruger is one of my all-time favorite guns, and I was out on the range with it yesterday. It’s fun to shoot. It was windy as hell out there (so much so, that ultimately the wind peeled the cardboard target board completely off the posts it was nailed to), but I managed to squirt through four boxes of ammo first (that’s 200 rounds). Even with winds gusting somewhere north of 50mph, this 40+ year old beauty (the handgun, not me)gave a good accounting of what a well-built American pistol can do.

Not too shabby for an old guy and an old gun on a windy day. That’s 50 rounds at 50 feet with up to 50 mph gusts. I think maybe I sneezed for that one lower left shot (the only one that didn’t break the 10-ring).

The Ruger 22 semi-auto is now in its fifth design iteration. There were the originals (the first 2500 referenced above). The Mark I followed. Then the Mark II in 1981. The Mark II had the bolt stay open after firing the last round (on mine, it closes on an empty chamber, so you have to keep track of how many shots you’ve fired). The Mark III arrived in 2004, and it featured a magazine release on the side of the grip frame, unlike the prior models’ latch release on the grip bottom (the Mark III’s mag release was more like a 1911’s). Ruger introduced the Mark IV a couple of years ago, and its claim to fame was a tilt-up receiver that made disassembly and reassembly a lot easier. Disassembly has always been easy on these guns; it’s the reassembly part that some folks find challenging.

The Ruger grip frame, formed from two welded steel stampings. The magazine latch is at the bottom of the grip frame.

I love my Ruger. That said, I really wanted a Mark IV when I found out a limited number were available with Turnbull’s color case hardening (which is a beautiful thing to behold). But alas, the Ruger Mark IV is not on the California list of approved handguns. Like I’ve said many times before, we have our share of nutty gun laws here in the Peoples’ Republik, eclipsed only by our healthy dose of nutty politicians.

A Turnbull color case hardened Ruger Mk IV. This is a beautiful handgun. It’s not available in California, unfortunately, or I would own one.

There are some collectors who focus exclusively on Ruger’s extensive array of .22 auto handguns. Lord knows there’s been a bunch of them, from the original through the Mark IV, in blued steel and stainless steel, some with plastic frames, different barrel lengths, bull barrels and tapered barrels, fixed sights, adjustable sights, one with a 1911-style grip frame, and many more. My fixed-sight 200th Year Ruger, the one you see in this blog, is one of the simpler ones and it has served me well. I’ve put a ton of .22 ammo through it in the last 40 years, and I aim to send another ton downrange over the next 40 years.

Good old .22 ammo. Check out the price on this box!

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A Ducati story, and more…

I get four motorcycle magazines: Motorcycle Classics, RoadRUNNER, American Iron, and Motorcyclist. Every once in a while, a story comes along that goes way beyond simply being good. The current issue of Motorcycle Classics has such a story: Tempting Fate: Around the World on Ducati 175 Tourismos. Landon Hall is the Motorcycle Classics Managing Editor, and he (along with Richard Backus, the head honcho) have a winning formula: A great team of writers and photographers, an eye for a great story, a focus on vintage bikes, and the ability to pull it all together in every issue. I once told Landon that each time I get the latest copy of Motorcycle Classics, I get concerned because it is so good I don’t know how they’ll be able to do better in the next issue. And then they do. Every time.

World travelers from the 1950s…two well-worn Ducati 175s.

The story, Tempting Fate: Around the World on Ducati 175 Tourismos , is about two young Italians (Leopoldo Tartarini and Giorgio Monetti) who went around the world on Ducati 175cc motorcycles in the early 1950s. The tale appealed to me immediately because it involved a long journey on small displacement motorcycles, and the writing and the photography sealed the deal (Hamish Cooper penned the story and Phil Aynsley did the photography). The details made it come alive, like this one: Ducati actually issued these guys handguns as part of their kit (Steve Seidner, are you getting my drift here?). And more. Lots more. Trust me on this: You’ll enjoy this article.

More good info…the index page for our ExhaustNotes gun stories is up, and you can get to it here: