Reloading .45 ACP for 1917-style revolvers

The Model 625 with a box of my reloaded ammunition. The ammo in this photo had Xtreme 230-grain roundnose bullets. I found the Missouri cast roundnose bullets to be more accurate in my revolver.

Good buddy Rick C., one of the world’s great philosophers, once told me that every time he reloads he learns something new. I think he was right.  This story focuses on reloading .45 ACP ammo for the Model 625 Smith and Wesson revolver, and what I learned during a recent reloading session.

The Model 625 is a beautiful revolver.  It’s a direct descendant of the Model 1917 that Smith made for the US Army in World War I.  The only thing I sometimes find annoying about the 625 is that sometimes reloaded 45 ACP that chambers easily in a 1911 auto won’t chamber in the revolver.  This blog focuses on that issue.

The 625 and a box of ammo. This is a sweet-shooting and accurate handgun.
A typical 6-shot, 50-ft Model 625 group with my favorite load. That ain’t bad from a 4-inch revolver.

There are two kinds of ammo for these revolvers.  The first is standard .45 ACP, firing the same cartridge as the 1911.  The other is .45 AutoRim.  Firing .45 ACP ammo in a revolver like the Smith and Wesson 625 requires the use of either star or moon clips (the star clips hold six rounds; each moon clip holds three rounds).  Individual cartridges clip into these.  The clips provide proper headspace by holding the cartridges in place in the cylinder, and they allow the extractor to push the rounds out of the cylinder.   They also work as speed clips because you can insert six rounds into the cylinder simultaneously.   Theoretically, you could fire .45 ACP ammo in a Smith and Wesson revolver without the clips, but then you would need a probe to knock each case out of the cylinder.  The .45 AutoRim cartridge is very similar to the .45 ACP round, but it has a rim.  That eliminates the need for the clips.

.45 ACP ammo in 6-round star clips. The clips allow chambering .45 ACP ammunition in 1917-type revolvers. They are necessary because the .45 ACP cartridges don’t have a protruding rim to allow extraction.

Over the years, I’ve found that .45 AutoRim always chambers easily in a .45 ACP revolver.   With .45 ACP reloads, however, that’s not always the case.  That’s not good, as it sometimes prevents closing the cylinder.  Even if you can close the cylinder with difficult-to-chamber .45 ACP reloads, the loaded cylinder will often drag on the frame, making cocking or double action fire difficult.

I recently loaded a batch of .45 ACP ammo that I intended to fire in my Model 625, and as is my normal practice when loading for the 1911, I put just enough of a flare on the empty cases to allow the bullet base to start into the case.  After priming the cases, charging with propellant, and seating the bullets, I adjusted the seating die such that the brass just kissed the crimping ring in the seating die.   At this point, I thought it would be a good idea to check the first 10 rounds in the 625 to see if they chambered fully, and you can probably guess where this story is going.  A couple of rounds only went about two-thirds of the way into the chamber. I put a little more crimp on the cartridge; of the two that would not chamber, now one would and the other wouldn’t.

In examining the loaded rounds, I could see where the case had expanded circumferentially slightly after the bullet had been seated (it had a slight bulge at the base of the bullet.  I wondered if perhaps the Missouri 230-grain roundnose bullets I was loading were just too big, so I measured them. The box told me the bullets had been sized to 0.452 inches, and that’s exactly where they were. Then I measured the case outside diameter for the loaded rounds just below the case mouth. They measured 0.475 to 0.476 inch.  Then I went online to see what that dimension should be.  Here’s what I found:

The drawing above is misleadingly dimensioned. The dimension we’re interested in is the 0.473 case outside diameter at the case mouth (it looks like an inside diameter on the drawing, but it’s the outside diameter.   My reloaded ammo was 0.002 to 0.003 inch above this. I played around with the crimp a bit, but I couldn’t get that number to come down via crimping with my RCBS bullet seating die.

Then I had an idea. I removed the decapping pin and threaded shaft from the resizing die, and adjusted it to just kiss the loaded round a little to square up the bullet in the case and decrease the diameter at the case mouth a bit. I adjusted the depth of the seating die in the press such that I obtained a 0.473 outside case diameter result at the case mouth.  The first case chambered.   I then repeated the partial resize on 10 cartridges; all but one sucked right into the chamber with no circumferential play. I still had that one, though, so I played with the resizing die adjustment again until the dimension was right at 0.472, and that did the trick.  It removed the flare completely, and every subsequent cartridge I loaded using this technique chambered perfectly. Basically, I was using the resizing die as a crimping tool.

It bothered me that I had to go .001 below the 0.473 inch spec to get the ammo to chamber 100% of the time in my revolver, and I was a little worried about what this might be doing to the bullet diameter. I wondered what factory ammo measures, and then I realized I had some. So I pulled it out of the ammo locker and measured it. The factory ammo measured 0.470 inch at that dimension (0.003 under the 0.473 specification), which explains why factory .45 ACP ammo always chambers so easily in this revolver.  I also checked the drawing for the .45 AutoRim cartridge. It shows the case outside diameter at the business end to be 0.472, which is coincidentally exactly what I found to work perfectly for my reloaded .45 ACP ammo in the revolver.

I was a little bit worried that in running the cartridges part way into the resizing die I might be swaging the bullets to something below .451 inch (the minimum bullet diameter for this cartridge).  To check on this, I measured the case wall thickness. On my Winchester .45 ACP brass (which has a wall thickness perceptibly greater than other brass I sometimes use) the wall thickness is exactly 0.010. Since my ammo measured 0.472 at the mouth after my post-load resizing/crimping operation, that should leave the bullet at exactly 0.452 inch (or 0.472 – 2*0.010).  That’s exactly where it should be.  The cases hold that wall thickness for some distance into the case, too. I think what the operation is doing is aligning and straightening the bullet in the case.

I’m not using any lube for my secondary resizing operation. I have carbide dies, and they do not require it.

The proof on all of this was how the rounds grouped, and folks, they grouped well.  It was a little windy when I fired these groups at the West End Gun Club, but the gun and the ammo did what they are supposed to do.

Four groups of 6 shots each with the Model 625. 5.6 grains of Unique with a 230 cast roundnose bullet has always performed well for me in both revolvers and 1911 semi-automatics.

I like this modified approach (resize/decap, clean, prime, bellmouth, charge, seat, remove the FLRS decapper, and then crimp the ammo to 0.472 with the resizing die).  It works well, it produces an accurate load, and every round chambers easily in the Model 625.

My shooting buddies Rick and Robby tell me that the Lee factory crimp die does the same thing as what I’ve described above.  I ordered one for the .45 ACP and I’ll reload ammo using it, but that’s a topic for a subsequent blog.


Like what you read above?  More Tales of the Gun stories are here.

Day 2: Mompos!

The Colombia adventure continues.   For those of you just joining us, this is a series of blogs I wrote four years ago for CSC Motorcycles when I was rode an AKT Moto RS3 (the carbureted Colombian version of the RX3) through the Andes Mountains.  Day 2 of that ride was absolutely awesome, ending with a visit to an enchanted town after a ferry ride down the Magdalena River.


Our second day on the road in Colombia started in Coveñas, and the humidity was oppressive. It was going to get worse as the day went on. We’re in the tropics, not too far from the equator, and hot and humid is the normal way of things here. On the plus side, you don’t care if it rains because you’re already drenched. It actually helps because it’s cooling.

Anyway, back to the morning in Coveñas. We ate in the hotel, and while we were waiting for breakfast, this dude was selling some kind of yams or roots, and Juan Carlos pointed out the scale he was using. It’s about as crude a scale as I’ve ever seen, but it’s sound technically, and it sure makes for an interesting photo.

Here’s a typical Colombian breakfast: Scrambled eggs with tomatoes and onions, bread, and a corn or flour tortilla with cheese (that’s called arrepo). The Colombians are big on cheeses, with different regions producing unique cheeses. It’s quite good.

The guys pointed out this car as we packed the bikes. This probably didn’t end well for the passenger, who most likely was not wearing a seat belt. The riding in Colombia is glorious, but it is stressful. Juan and Carlos said when they ride anywhere else (other than Colombia), it makes them sleepy because there’s only scenery. In Colombia, there’s scenery, but you have to watch out for everyone else. It’s intense. In a country full of twisties, people pass on blind corners routinely. I guess the theory is you pray a lot. People think nothing of passing if the oncoming traffic has room to move over, or if the oncoming traffic is a motorcycle. It’s weird, but you kind of get used to it. But it is intense (just like the heat and the humidity).

When we got on the road after breakfast, we only went maybe a mile when Carlos had a flat tire. Watching the guy repair it was interesting, and so was hanging out watching the world go by in Colombia.

And here are some of those watching the world go by in Colombia photos.

Here’s a photo of our RX3s somewhere on the road, headed to the ferry that would take us to Mompos, a remote town 45 minutes down the Magdalena River.

This church was across the street and just down the road from the ferry loading spot.

I only grabbed a few photos while we were boarding the ferry. The heat and humidity were getting to me at this point. It was about 4:00 in the in the afternoon, and it was sweltering.

Once we were underway, it got a little cooler on the river. You probably saw my video of that ride.

We arrived in Mompos and it was impressive. It’s the oldest town in Colombia, and to say it is off the beaten path would be an understatement. We had dinner in a restaurant run by an Austrian, where I had the best pizza I’ve ever had in my life.

After dinner, we chatted with the owner for a bit, and then we walked along the river front…I grabbed a bunch of photos there.

Folks, that’s about it for now. I’m a day behind in keeping you up to date on this trip, but Internet connectivity is dicey in these remote locations. As always, more to follow, if not today, then in a day or two (or three). Stay tuned.


If you’d like to see our earlier blogs in Colombia, please click here.

Another 1917 Revolver Record!

You may recall that I posted a blog last year about a handgun I bought that is over over a century old.   It’s a pristine Model 1917 Colt, a U.S. Army handgun issued in World War I.  Mine was a real find…it appears to be unfired, it has the original blue (not Parkerized) finish, and it is just awesome.

My Colt 1917, chambered in .45 ACP. Read our earlier blog; this is a great story.

As you know from reading that blog, the Army had two versions of the Model 1917, one manufactured by Colt and the other manufactured by Smith and Wesson.  One of the Smith and Wessons (in comparable condition to my Colt 1917) closed on a Gunbroker.com auction yesterday for the astonishing price of $2,525.

The Smith and Wesson Model 1917 that closed on Gunbroker.com yesterday for $2,525. When the Army purchased these for World War I, they cost about 1/100 of that amount.

I spotted the Smith 1917 when it first appeared on Gunbroker and I thought it would be nice to own both an original Colt and a Smith, but the price shot up to over $1,000 very quickly (many days before the auction closed).   I knew I wasn’t a player at those prices.  And then it kept going up, and up, and up, all the way to $2,525.  Wow!  I’m feeling even better about my Colt, and I didn’t think that was possible.


More gun stories are here!

Day 1: Adventure Riding the Andes!

Our Colombia adventure continues…a circumnavigation of the Colombian Andes on a 250cc motorcycle.  For those of you just joining in, I’m reposting a series of blogs I did for CSC Motorcycles describing my ride through the Andes Mountains in December 2015.  After spending the previous day tearing around Medellin and its surroundings, I had become acclimatized to the mile-high altitudes.  As the adventure continued, we would head even higher, all the way up to 14,000 feet, but that’s all coming later.   On this, my second day in Colombia, we headed into the Andes and then down to the Caribbean.  Our real journey had started, and here is that story.


Wow! I never thought I’d been typing this, but here I am. I just rode across the northernmost range of the Andes Mountains.  On an RX3.  Here they are: The Andes!

I took that shot from a cool little spot where we stopped for a typical Colombian breakfast…hot chocolate, scrambled eggs, and arrepa. More on that later…here’s a shot of the bikes at what has to be one of the coolest biker restaurants I’ve ever enjoyed.

And here’s another shot of my AKT Motos RS3 (the RS3 is the carbureted version of the RX3).

I liked that restaurant a lot. They painted it to match my jacket.
We rode about 370 miles yesterday, and about half of it was in the Andes. 370 miles may not seem like a lot, but picture riding Glendora Ridge for 6 or 8 hours. The Andes are a motorcycling paradise. The Andes Mountains.

Wow!

I guess you never know what you’re going to see in the Andes. This old goat was kind of cool…and I had to grab a shot.

We stopped to take a break and some of the local paramilitary/police guys came over to check out the bikes. The RX3 is a prestige motorcycle in Colombia (just like it is in the USA) and these boys wanted a closer look. They gladly consented to a photo. They are most definitely well armed. You see police and military units everywhere.

These next photos are from the saddle after we descended from the Andes. Good times, my friends.

These next photos are of young ladies who are gas station attendants. When they saw our 250cc RX3 motos, they wanted to know what it was like riding such huge motorcycles. That’s a bit different from what you might hear in the USA, I suppose.

It was a long day, and it ended in a town called Covenas, right on the Caribbean. We stopped for a few shots with the sea in the background.

Keep an eye on the blog, folks. I won’t be able to post every day, but I’ll do my best.


And that wrapped up the second day of my time in Colombia, and the first day of our ride through the Andes.  We’re going to make it a little easier to track this adventure for our blog readers.  You can get all of the good stuff from our Colombian ride here.  I’ll post the next blog from our Colombia adventure in a few days, so stay tuned!

British Motorcycle Gear: Our newest advertiser!

Our good buddy Andrew Capone has taken the reins at long-established and legendary British Motorcycle Gear.  Located in Sea Girt, New Jersey and shipping all over the world, BMG sells a variety of Belstaff, Barbour International, and other top quality moto clothing and accessories.   You may recall Joe Gresh’s review of BMG’s outstanding Rapido gloves here on the ExNotes blog a few weeks ago.

While you’re on the BMG site, visit their BMG Moto Media page, too.  With articles on T.E. Lawrence, the Isle of Man, and more, it’s muey cool.  And on that Isle of Man TT topic, Andrew started going to that event several years ago and it has become an important part of his life.  He’s an Isle of Man marshal, he has been Motorcycle.com’s correspondent on the event since 2008, and he goes every year.

British Motorcycle Gear is a family-operated business and the principals are motorcycle enthusiasts, so when you buy from these folks you’re not just pumping money into a faceless corporate Internet outlet with no appreciation for our world.  Andrew owns 14 motorcycles, ranging from a 1961 Moto Morini 175 up to a Ducati Multistrada 1260S.  There’s a 1968 Norton P11 Ranger and a Triumph Thruxton in that mix, too.   He’s the real deal, folks.

And one more bit of good news…when you order from British Motorcycle Gear, use the ExNotes discount code BMGJOES and get 10% off any purchase.  Run your order up to over $199 and you’ll get free shipping, too.

Medellin!

My ride through Colombia started on 13 December 2015 (it’s hard to believe it was more than 4 years ago; it feels like it was last year).  What started this trip down memory lane for me was the Netflix TV series Narcos, and yeah, Susie and I binge-watched the first two seasons (which culminated in the Colombian forces taking down Pablo Escobar).  It was an awesome series, filmed in Colombia, and the scenery took me back to that awesome adventure ride with my good buddies Juan and Carlos.   Like I said in the last blog, I wanted to treat you to the blogs I wrote for CSC when I was on that trip, and this was the first one I did upon my arrival in Colombia.


There are no straight roads in Medellin, there are more motorcycles than cars, the weather is awesome, and the cuisine is incredible. If that doesn’t sound like heaven to you, well, you need to rethink your concept of fun. Colombia, folks! On an RX3! What an adventure!

So today is Day 1, we put a couple of hundred miles on the AKT Moto RX3 motorcycles, and we haven’t even started our journey yet (it officially begins tomorrow). My good buddies Juan Carlos and Carlos (there are a lot of guys named Carlos over here) set today aside just to let me get used to riding in Colombia.

Here’s a shot of me with my two moto buddies in a village somewhere in the mountains surrounding Medellin.

Back to the RX3 designation…AKT Moto is one of Zongshen’s largest customers, and they sell a carbureted version of our favorite motorcycle called the RS3. It’s a cool bike. Here’s a shot of mine…it’s the one I’ll put 2500 miles on here in Colombia in the next week or so.

And that village? It’s actually called Mesopotamia. Folks, I can’t make up stuff this good!

Motorcycling in Colombia is substantially different than what we’re used to. For starters, there’s the prevalence of motorcycles. I’m not exaggerating. I saw far more motorcycles today than cars. It seems to be the national pastime. There were thousand (maybe tens of thousands) of riders in the hills this morning.

More interesting facts:

    • Motorcycling is predominantly a social activity here in Colombia. We must have stopped at 4 or 5 coffee houses and restaurants today. The pattern is you ride for 45 minutes or so, and then stop for coffee. Hey, is this what café racing is all about? Juan Carlos knows everybody at these coffee stops, and they all know him. Juan Carlos founded the only motorcycle magazine in Colombia (DeMotos), and he’s an icon over here. Any you know what? Some of these guys recognized me! Juan Carlos ran a feature story in his magazine on our Western America Adventure Ride, and these guys were all familiar with it.
    • The bikes are predominantly in the 100cc to 150cc range, and these folks are all happy with that. Small bikes rule over here. We saw people dragging their pegs on these things having as much or more fun as we do on the big bikes in the US. Nah, scratch that…they were having more fun!
    • I asked about freeways and the guys laughed at me. They pointed to the winding set of twisties just outside the restaurant and told me, “that is our freeway.” These are my kind of people!
    • There are elite riders over here on Triumphs, Ducatis, BMWs, and MotoGuzzis. There are lots of large Yamahas over here, too (or, is they say in Colombia, Jamahas). They’re not arrogant. We had coffee with a bunch of them, and they were all great guys. The photo below is a typical roadside restaurant, and they all looked like this. What a place!

The food is awesome. Here’s a shot of my lunch at that restaurant above. The dish is called Capresse Buenaventura.

Ah, let’s see, a few more photos from some of the little villages we rode through today.

Juan Carlos picked up his cousin Heronimo (you gotta love their names!) and he rode with us in the afternoon.

After I took that shot above and Juan Carlos and Heronimo pulled out, I saw a cool police bike painted in fluorescent safety yellow (or is it a green?). I always wondered what a bike would like painted in that color.

Bikes are both sporting propositions and utilitarian vehicles down here. I saw bikes carrying all kinds of cargo (no photos, but I’ll get some of those later), and I saw a few bikes that had to be 20 or 30 years old and were still doing hard time.

One of the guys I met at one of our coffee stops is a retired US Army Colonel named Miles. I liked the guy immediately…he’s a dead ringer for Lee Marvin and he even sounds a little like him. Talk about stories…this guy has been everywhere and when he retired, he decided to hang his hat in Colombia. Here are a couple of photos of my new buddy Miles…the first one with the guys listening to him in Mesopotamia, and a shot at yet another coffee stop. I sure drank a lot of coffee today!

Well, I think that’s enough blogging for Day 1. We’re rolling out at 4:30 tomorrow, and I want to get a good night’s sleep. The altitude bothered me a bit yesterday and I didn’t sleep too well, but I think I’m used to it now. The plan tomorrow is to put 300 miles on the bikes, and like I said, there are no straight roads in Colombia. We’re climbing up over another mountain range and headed for the coast. It’s going to be fun!


So there you have it.  The above was my first day in Colombia, and it was sort of a “get acquainted” bit of tearing up the roads around Medellin.  The real journey, our romp through the Andes Mountains, would start the next day.  Stay tuned, folks.  There’s a lot more to this story.

If you’d like to see the entire Colombia ride, just click here!

Plata O Plomo: Filmed in Colombia

Susie and I are hanging out at home, getting out for our daily walk or two, and generally obeying our fearless, fiercely-partisan, and fear-mongering leaders as we wait for them to declare a CV19 victory.  We’ve been watching a lot of TV while under house arrest, and it’s a big deal when we find a series we haven’t seen before.  We had one such discovery last week with Narcos, a series on Netflix about the drug wars in Colombia.

Silver or Lead, Amigos y Amigas. Or in this case, a Model 625’s stainless steel and six full metal jacket .45 ACP rounds.  That hat is one of my favorites.

Somehow we missed Narcos the first time around, although I was vaguely aware of its existence from a hat I picked up at an International Association of Chiefs of Police convention in San Diego two or three years ago.  Good buddy and retired police chief Mike was going to the IACP convention and he invited me along as his official “Assistant to the Director.”  I was even issued an official laminated ID card, but Mike drew the line when I asked him if I would get a gun, too.  His answer was immediate and clear:  No.  That’s okay, I already had a gun.

Mike and I had a good time at the IACP show and we came home with a lot of swag.  One bit of that haul was a Narcos hat embroidered with the show’s tagline:  Plata O Plomo.  If your Spanish is a bit rusty, it means Silver or Lead, with the premise being (if you were a Colombian cop or politician) your choice was either a bribe or a bullet.

The Narcos Netflix series is the story of Pablo Escobar, the activities involved in taking him down, and the drug wars in Colombia.  From the first episode, I thought the scenery was stunning.   I mentioned to Sue that it looked exactly the way I remembered Colombia from my Andean adventure.  We started in Medellin’s Antioquia neighborhood (which, by the way, was Pablo Escobar’s old stomping grounds).   Sue checked it out on her cell phone and, sure enough, Narcos was indeed filmed in Colombia.

Riding with good buddy Carlos in Colombia.  That’s me in the green jacket.  Photo by good buddy Juan DeMotos.

We’ve been binge-watching Narcos and every scene brings back a memory for me.  Colombia is a magnificent place, and I loved every minute of that adventure.  I’m going to recreate that ride by posting some of the photos (the one above is but a sample) of one of the grandest adventures I’ve ever enjoyed.   I’ll post a series of blogs from our Colombia trip over the next two weeks.

Stay tuned, folks.  This is going to be good.

CSC’s new colors and some good adventure video…

I stopped by CSC Motorcycles last week to visit with my friend Steve and see the new TT250, San Gabriel, and RX3 colors.   I and my camera will try to do justice to the new CSC paint themes, and hey, while we here, we’ll share a few videos.

The TT250 line has an entirely new set of colors, and I like the new look.

There’s a cool decal on the TT250 side panel, too, which i like a lot.  It reminds me a bit of what new Triumphs had in the 1960s, when every one of their bikes had a “world’s fastest motorcycle” decal on the tank.

As you know, I have a TT250, and mine is from the very first shipment that came into CSC a few years ago.  Mine is black with bold TT lettering on the tank and side panels.  I like that bike, I’ve ridden it in Baja (the video below is taking it through the Rumarosa Grade in northern Baja), and I’m going to fire it up and ride it around a bit today.

Next up is a photo of the San Gabriels. The new colors on the SG250 work well, too.

You know, I did one of the very first San Gabriel videos when those bikes first came to America.  It, too, was a hoot.

And here are a few photos of the CSC RX3, a bike that has generated lots of smiles and lots of miles since its introduction to the United States in 2015.  The new colors are much more interesting and maybe a little more subtle than what we’ve seen on RX3 motorcycles in the past.  There’s a gray and turquoise theme, and a silver and red alternative.  They both look good.

I like the new RX3 paint themes, and I like the original ones, too.  I ride an RX3.  Mine’s a 2015 model and, like my TT250, it’s one from the very first shipment to the US.  My RX3 is orange (the fastest color, as good buddy Orlando knows), and it’s one of the early ones that faded to a kind of subdued yellow (that’s before Zongshen started adding color stabilizers to the paint).   I like that look and I’ve had a lot of great rides on RX3 motorcycles, starting with our initial CSC Baja run.  That ride was a hoot and a half.  Imagine that:  A brand new shipment of RX3 motorcycles (the first in the US), and yours truly and 15 other intrepid CSC riders did 1700 miles in Baja on these bikes.   Take a look:

Our next big RX3 ride was the Western America Adventure Ride…5000 miles across the Western US, from So Cal to Sturgis to Portland and then down the Pacific coast to home. I didn’t do a video on that ride, but good buddy Joe Gresh sure did!

We did several more CSC Baja rides, a bunch of rides in the US, and our absolutely amazing 6000-mile ride across the ancient kingdom on RX3 motorcycles:

Not enough?  Hey, how about a ride through magical Colombia on RS3 motorcycles?   The RS3 is the carbureted version of the RX3, and it, too, was an amazing adventure:

If you enjoy watching YouTube videos, we have quite a few more on our YouTubby page.   Grab a cup of coffee, click on the YouTubby link, and have fun.  I sure did.

Time To Split: An Open Letter to Car Drivers

Jack Lewis and I platooned in Motorcyclist magazine for many years. How Jack managed to avoid writing about concrete in all that time I’ll never know. Here’s a bit on lane splitting for America.


Dear automobilists – you, in the shiny red pickup and that girl in the flashy BMW and yes, even you in the dented Subaru with the sticker-patched Yakima box up top and dog slobber lathering your windows – please don’t misunderstand us.

When we rip along the dotted lines, zipping between door handles in a manner that must look crazy-dangerous to you, we’re not actually trying to rub your noses in the hell of stop-and-go traffic. We’re not trying to cheat you out of your transportative birthright, nor play some weird Russian roulette with spit cups and trailer mirrors.

Motorcycle lane splitting is legal in California — and it works. © Eric Schmuttenmaer

We’re just trying to get out alive.

See, while you may perceive motorcyclists mostly through GoPro silliness and X-Games heroics, a lot of riders actually give real thought to which measures might bring us through our riding day intact, arrayed as we are with nothing but a bit of thick foam and thin plastic between our squishable bodies and your 3,500 lbs. of moving steel.

Still, I get what it’s like to be startled, whilst sitting in my car, by a motorcycle howling past in a sudden rush. It’s a little spooky, and I always feel like I should have been paying better attention.
That’s how you feel, right? Like you should have been paying better attention?

Sure ya do! Just before you wonder out loud why anyone let those irresponsible dingbats loose on their murdercycles in the first place. How dare they discompose you, let alone proceed at a pace slightly faster than the turgid sloth of gridlock?

Being stuck in traffic is ugly for everyone. On a motorcycle, it’s worse. Yes, your kids may be fighting in the back seat, but they were gonna do that, anyway. The biker is juggling variables that include overheating, keeping his bike upright, clutch wear, where to put his feet (Pegs? Ground? Pegs? Ground?), and the friction-free contact patches ensured by the overflowing coolant of pissed-off cars.

Motorcycles are built to go, and they’re built elementally light. While your car does its engineered best to trade off its BTUs to the surrounding atmosphere on a hot day, and swaddles you in a full metal jacket against winter rain and snow, that rider tap dancing along the Botts’ dots either needs continuous air flowing over her engine to keep both it and her body from overheating, or would very much like to get home and take Mom’s advice to get out of those wet things. Hypothermia is a risk they cover in basic riding classes.

Serves those fools right, you say? Fine, but remember: if the motorcycle breaks down and has to be pushed out between the choked lines of traffic to meet a tow truck, that ain’t exactly gonna speed you up.

If the driver behind a stuck rider gets distracted by the radio or her kids or a super-important tweet, she may roll up into the rider who obediently parks between cars, virtually disappearing in a long line of tail lights. Or some other driver may spot a “hole” in the next lane, yank over and park on our hapless moto-jockey. Aside from the bloody consequences for some poor dumb motorcyclist, that accident holds up traffic even longer while EMTs slowly wail their way up the breakdown lane.

But isn’t it dangerous for those guys to go between the cars, where nobody can see them coming? Well, if you actually use your mirrors, you can see bikes much better when they’re moving between the lanes. Our eyes are designed to notice movement and anomalies.

Moreover, in any accident occurring between your car and a motorcycle, it won’t matter one bit how the lawfully the rider was behaving, or how badly you screwed up. All you have to say is “I never saw him,” or, “He came out of nowhere!” Once you’ve articulated those magic words, your police report will reliably read “DRIVER NOT CITED” — even if you blew a red light, made a left against traffic, or ran him down from behind. Tuck that knowledge away for later use, because it. Is. Awesome.

It’s even kind of true. Even with decades of motorcycling under my (continuously expanding) belt, I’ve overlooked motorcycles from behind the wheel. No one can see bikes as well as cars. You can’t judge their distance effectively whether they’re coming (only one headlight) or going (only one taillight). At night, they’re practically invisible and during the day, they may as well be.

Cars and trucks grow logarithmically in your vision as they approach, while bikes are always just… small. Your brain doesn’t process them as a real vehicle, and the courts know that. Killing a motorcyclist is kinda like hitting someone’s beloved terrier: the family may be broken up about it, but everybody else understands that it wasn’t really your fault.

We implore you not to use this powerful knowledge to hit the next rider you see, though, as it will definitely slow down your commute. We’re talking efficiency here.

You can’t see them, but they can see you. Lane splitters keep an eye on your movement the way mice watch owls, and they won’t carelessly ding your car. Think about it: catching a handlebar end means they go face down on the freeway. Nobody volunteers for that.

Lane-splitting motorcyclists tend to be well-trained, fit, decently equipped riders, and they’re statistically safer than riders who never split lanes.
Kinda flies in the face of common sense, dunnit? But then, so does motorcycling. Not everyone wishes to be common, or sensible.
We know it seems like cheating for them to weave through the blocked ranks of Good Suburban Taxpaying Folk – and it is. If you ain’t cheatin’, you ain’t tryin’.

That’s why you get to do what bikers can’t: control your climate with dashboard switches, sip the beverages nesting in your cup holders, flip through the FM dial for Sigalerts, call your sweetie through the rear view mirror (that you never glance at) with a dinnertime update, and scroll GPS maps for the clearest route. If you’re unwilling to give up your car full of traffic hacks and blissful comforts, why should riders sacrifice their ability to proceed elegantly through smaller spaces?

As second-class traffic citizens, speed, wariness, and maneuverability are the only tactical advantages motorcyclists possess. Don’t think of them as a safety threat to your armored carapace. They’re more like furry little rodents, juking between the footfalls of mighty dinosaurs.

“Fair” is a utopian concept and you can’t get to Utopia from here. What you can get is home a little faster, every time a rider splits lanes. Think this through with me: when a rider lane-splits, he transcends the traffic jam, flowing through it with mercurial ease while you sit there, stymied and cursing your ugly luck. Advantage: rider. Kinda gets your goat, doesn’t it? They shouldn’t be able to do that!

But wait… she also removes one vehicle from the impacted sludge of traffic. Advantage: EVERYBODY. Will you receive a benefit equal to the rider’s? Nope. She assumes more risk, makes less ecological impact, trades comfort for freedom and burns less fuel. Seems only fair that she should get through the fastest. Let ‘er go, mate. Don’t swing that door out!

When two percent of vehicles slip out of the traffic stream and split lanes, that’s two percent fewer vehicles getting in your way, threatening your family’s safety, and farting their carbon monoxide straight through your cabin filter and into the soft, vulnerable fat of your cerebral cortex. Can you imagine if it were 15, 20, or as much as 50 percent of traffic that was bled off by those dynamic pressure relief valves? Lane splitting makes riding more attractive, increasing the number of people willing to deal with the disadvantages.

We all know what causes traffic jams: too many vehicles occupying the same road space at the same time. One social engineering tool to purge that clog is HOV lanes allowing more efficient transport – e.g. buses, motorcycles, and carpools – to move faster. Studies show that such lanes also speed up main lines of traffic. Still, it’s danged annoying to watch privileged eco-prudes whiz by in their Teslas, and we all know it costs tens of millions of your dollars to build those lanes that you usually can’t use.

When interstate flyers shine on the dotted line, though, three or four de facto diamond lanes spring up at no cost — but offer benefits to every vehicle’s progress, from buses to Jeeps to Peterbilts.

And in town, when scooters and motos slip between cars and filter up to the front of an intersection, they’re not ripping you off. When the light changes they’ll accelerate celeritously, maneuvering between late-walking pedestrians without risk. Then they’re gone and out of your way, cutting down both on your total sum of obstacles and on the safety variables you have to reconcile.

Filtering to the front helps everyone. © Roland Dobbins

Poof! They just vanish, right off your cloud. You won’t have to navigate cautiously around their wobbling butts the way you do with bicycles. Also (unlike those free-loading pedalers), motorcyclists pay disproportionately high license tag fees to help maintain your roads.

No one is harmed, and everybody wins. Ever wish a whole bunch of drivers would just get off your damn road? Yeah. It’s like that.

Traffic works better when we all work together. No man is an island, entire of itself. Therefore, ask not for whom the rider lane-splits; she splits for thee. Next time you’re asked, vote to allow lane-splitting in your state for the benefit of every driver… and the true safety of every rider.

If you still think all lane-splitting does is give a huge advantage to motorcycles, why not ride one yourself? Nothing prevents you from stepping out of your big, safe box, swinging your leg over a bike, and winging it through traffic in swift, sexy, highly maneuverable freedom.

Do it for yourself. Do it for society. All you have to fear is fear itself — plus, of course, the savage vindictiveness of unenlightened drivers (no, don’t be that guy; nobody likes that guy).

So come on over the dark side. We throw the best parties – and you’ll get there fast, looking fly on your bad motor scooter.

Everybody wins.


If you’d like to see more Jack Lewis, you can do so here on his blog.

The Henry Single Shot: A Tack-Driving Buffalo Gun!

It’s time to get out and do stuff.  Yeah, this CV19 thing is a disaster, but it looks like what the wizards recommended is starting to produce results, and that gave me an excuse to get to the range again.   Not that anyone ever needed an excuse to get to the range, but I felt like it was time, and that beautiful Henry Single Shot I’ve been writing about (but had not yet fired) was calling my name.

Exhibition-grade walnut, blue steel, polished brass, and a box of .45 70 ammo. Life is good!

I had my Nikon with me, too, so I was finally able to get some good D810 photos of this beauty from Henry’s Rice Lake, Wisconsin manufacturing operation.

A view from the right.
And the view from the left.

I wanted a couple of photos showing the entire rifle, and then I wanted to get a couple more showing the highly-figured walnut stock.   The folks at Henry sure did a great job.

Sweet, huh?  The polished brass buttplate works, too.  This is a stunning bit of American firearm artistry.  Like Mr. Imperato says, made in America, or not made at all.
What’s nice is the stock is highly-figured on both sides. It’s hard to find wood like this on a production rifle these days. Always has been. I believe it’s getting tougher, too.

The .45 70 cartridge is a big one, and I’ve written about it in earlier blogs.  There’s a list of links to our earlier blogs on the Henry single shot at the end of today’s post, along with a few other cool links.   Take a stroll through them to get a feel for how I came to acquire this magnificent rifle (after you’re read this blog and shared it on all your social media platforms, of course).

If you have one of these and someone says “bring enough gun,” you’ll have all the bases covered with the Henry Single Shot.

It was fun shooting the Henry, both literally (more on that in a second), and figuratively (with the Nikon).  The brass receiver on these guns photographs well, I think.

The rear sight is a standard folding leaf. You can flip it to the other side so that you don’t have the white diamond, and you can invert it to get a square notch instead of the U-notch. I’ve left mine as it was delivered from the factory.

On to the good stuff, and that’s an answer to the most basic question for any firearm: How does it shoot?  In a word or two, superbly well.  I had a big plan to test all kinds of different loads, but I don’t want to bore you with the details of what didn’t work well and get right to what did.

First, a word on my marksmanship.   It had been about 9 weeks since I’d been to the range, and the ability required to shoot a rifle well is not something you just pull out of drawer and pick up where you left off.  Nope, rifle marksmanship is an art, and I needed to put a few rounds downrange before the Henry started performing.  Well, actually, that’s not quite accurate: I had to send a few rounds downrange before I started performing.  There’s a skill set involved in shooting a rifle well.  You can read our treatise on rifle marksmanship later (I’ll include a link for that at the end of this article, too).

I started with four targets this morning at 50 yards and the results were not what I wanted, but I knew it was me and not the rifle.  So I put another four targets out, and I started to settle down.  It was a beautiful morning out at the West End Gun Club.   Bright skies, mild temperatures, no wind, and I had the range to myself.  It wasn’t too long before I was in the groove.  The first target (the top left) was a bit shaky (good enough for deer or hog, and especially good enough for buffalo), but not what I knew I should be able to do with this rifle.   The second target (top right) was a lot better, as I was kind of figuring out how to get the right sight picture.  Shooting with iron sights is much more challenging than simply laying a scope’s crosshairs on the bullseye.  Iron sights demand skill and practice.  With 9 weeks away from the firing line, I was coming up short on both, but I was getting my groove back.  I could feel it.  The third target (bottom left) was another good deal, and then the fourth target sealed the deal.   That one was a 0.740-inch group, with all the holes touching.  With open sights on a lightweight .45 70 at 50 yards, I’ll take three-quarter-inch groups all day long.

50 yards, with a 6:00 hold on each target. Top left, top right, bottom left, and bottom right. Not bad, if I do say so myself.

Here’s another photo of my last target of the day, showing that beautiful 0.740-inch group.  Bring on the buffalo.  I’m ready.  So is my Henry.

I think I’ll leave the Henry’s adjustable rear sight right where it is.

The secret sauce?   It goes like this:  A 300-grain Hornady jacketed hollow point bullet crimped in the cannelure, 16.2 grains of Trail Boss powder, a CCI 200 primer, and Federal brass.  I don’t think the brass makes much of a difference when shooting .45 70, as long as the brass is trimmed to a uniform length.  I used Federal brass because it’s what I had, and I’ve had it a long time.  My .45 70 brass is over 40 years old.  It’s been loaded a lot of times, but when you load at Springfield levels, brass lasts a long time.

So what’s it like to shoot the Henry .45 70 Single Shot?  It’s fun.  The Henry is more of carbine than a full-sized rifle, although the length of pull is the same as my other rifles and the barrel is a full 22 inches.  It’s that single shot design that allows the overall package to be shorter.  It’s a compact, hard-hitting package with recoil that is one thin red hair on the good side of tolerable.  The rifle’s brass buttplate adds substantially to the rifle’s overall rich appearance, but let me tell you, you feel it when the hammer drops.  I was glad the 300-grain bullets worked well; the 405-grain loads I had were just a hair over a tolerable recoil level for me.  My shooting was all in shirt sleeves shooting off the bench, though.  With a winter jacket or on a hunt, making friends with 405-grain bullets would be a lot easier.

It’s stunning just how elegant the Henry .45 70 Single Shot is, and what’s equally stunning is the amount of “cool” you get for the price.   The MSRP on this rifle is $628, and Henry tells you on their website that you should expect a discount from that price.  To me, the benchmark single shot rifle is Ruger’s No. 1, and that rifle is something like $1500 these days.  I believe the Henry’s fit and finish are actually superior to what you get on a Ruger No. 1.   The walnut on my Henry is exceptional.  I think Henry is undercharging for these rifles.   They’re that good.

So where am I on all of this?  The Henry likes 300-grain bullets better than the heavier 405-grain stuff, and that’s where I’ll focus future load development.  Several suppliers offer 300-grain .458 bullets, and there are other powders to try.   One more thing I want to make sure you know:  I love this rifle.  Life is good.  I’m having a lot of fun with my Henry.


Check out our earlier Henry Single Shot stories here:

Henry’s Home
Developing a Henry .45 70 Load:  Part 2
Developing A Henry .45 70 Load:  Part 1
The Henry Is In California
Henry Rifles:  Made in America Or Not Made At All


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