Motorcycles, Scooters, Guns, Adventures, Opinions, and More
Our very own Joe Gresh was in Daytona last week, except the Daytona show did not go on. The formal show, anyway. What others do or don’t do would never put the binders on a Joe Gresh adventure, and he published the story of his visit and the mighty Indian FTR 1200 Rally on Motorcycle.com. It’s typical Joe G, which is to say it’s great, and you can read it here:
Social Distancing with Indian’s New FTR1200 Rally
Nicely done, Joe!
I’m using the time before I pick up my new Henry rifle to prepare the reloaded ammunition I want to test for accuracy. You will recall that in an earlier blog we discussed the three .45 70 load levels shown in modern reloading manuals. As I mentioned in that earlier blog, I use the loads intended for the 1873 Trapdoor Springfield. Those loads were powerful enough to take down all kinds of critters back in the 1800s, and in developing loads for other .45 70 rifles, I’ve found these to be fun to shoot and accurate.
My loads are based primarily on the components I have on hand and loads I’ve known to work well in the past. Powders include SR 4759, IMR 4198, IMR 3031, 5744, Varget, and Trail Boss. Bullets include the Remington 405-grain jacketed soft point, the Hornady 300-grain jacketed hollow point, and the Missouri 405-grain cast roundnose.
I like all of the bullets I listed above, but I particularly like the Missouri bullets. The Missouri cast bullets seem to always be available, they are relatively inexpensive, and they are accurate. I’m expecting to see great accuracy from these in the Henry, as they shoot well in the Ruger and the Marlin. The 405-grain Missouri bullets are accurate in the Chiappa 1886, too, but that rifle’s stock design and buttplate make the recoil painful when shooting the heavier Missouri bullets.
Here are the .45 70 loads I will test in the Henry:
For a more in-depth reloading process overview, I invite you to review our earlier series on loading .45 ACP ammunition. The .45 70 reloading process is very similar to loading handgun ammo. That’s because the .45 70 is nearly a straight-walled cartridge, so the steps are the same. This is what is involved in reloading .45 70 ammo:
I use mostly RCBS or Lee reloading dies for all of the cartridges I load. Both are good companies, and both offer superior customer service (if you ever need it, which has only occurred a couple of times for me). I’ve been reloading .45 70 ammo for close to 50 years now, and I’ve been using the same set of RCBS dies the entire time.
The expander die (the one in the center of the above three dies) is the one that flares the case mouth. It contains a threaded insert with a step in it to apply the bell mouth to the case.
This is what the case mouth should look like after it has been flared. You don’t want to overdo this step. You just want to get enough of a flare to allow the bullet to get started in the case.
After the case has the flare applied, it’s time to clean the primer pockets and then prime each case. I use another RCBS tool to clean any combustion residue from the primer pocket (see our earlier tutorial on loading .45 ACP ammo), and then I use a Lee priming tool to seat the primers.
After all the cases have been cleaned, flared, and primed, it’s time to add propellant. I use my RCBS scale along with a powder dispenser to add the right amount of powder to each case. To get the correct amount of powder, I always consult a load manual. I’m showing you different charge weights in this blog, but DO NOT rely on what I’m telling you (or what you read on the Internet from other people) for this information. Always consult a reloading manual. Several reloading manuals are available; I prefer the Lyman manual and it’s the one I use most often. Most of the other manuals are either from bullet manufacturers or propellant manufacturers, so they list only their components. The Lyman manuals are not restricted to a single brand of bullets or powders, as Lyman does not manufacture bullets or powders. Lyman does a good job, I think.
When I load different test loads as I’m describing in this blog, I’ll charge and complete each group separately. Typically, that’s ten cartridges in a group.
Once the cases have been charged with propellant, it’s time to seat and crimp the bullet. I typically use a light crimp for the .45 70. Crimping involves bending the flared case mouth into a crimping groove (sometimes called a cannelure) on the bullet. You crimp a cartridge for three reasons: To prevent the bullet from being forced further into the cartridge case if it is fed into the chamber automatically (as occurs with, say, a 9mm or .45 ACP cartridge), to prevent the bullet from backing out of the case due to the recoil of other cartridges (as might occur in a revolver or a rifle magazine), and to hold the bullet in place when the primer first fires (this allows the flame front to build to a consistent pressure in cartridge prior to driving the bullet down the bore). It’s that last reason that I’m most interested in here. It should make for a more accurate cartridge. Theoretically, neither of the first two reasons is a consideration for a single shot rifle.
Seating the bullet and crimping it is a bit of a dance. You have to get the bullet seated to the right depth, and then you have to apply the crimp. We use the third and final die in a three-die set to accomplish both. I screw the bullet seating portion of the die fairly far into die initially and then I screw the die into the press to get the bullet seating depth where I want it. In this case, I want the top of the brass case to be nearly even with the top of the bullet’s crimp groove. Then I back the bullet seat all the way up in the die, and screw the die body into the press such that it forms the crimp (there’s a tapered decreased diameter in the die insider diameter that forms crimp). Once I have the crimp where I want it (and the amount of crimp I want), I then screw the bullet seater all the way such that it contacts the bullet. I then make sure everything is jake on the next round (you know, the same crimp and the same cartridge overall length), I make any required small adjustments, and then I lock everything down with the die’s two locknuts and load the remaining cases.
After I’ve done all of the above, I immediately label the packaged, reloaded ammo so that I know what I have. I can’t rely on my memory and do this later; I always perform the labeling operation as soon as the reloading operations are complete.
There you have it. I have all the .45 70 ammunition I want to test loaded, boxed, labeled, and ready to go to the range. Now all I have to do is take possession of my new Henry, head out to the West End Gun Club, and see what works best. You’ll get to see it, too, right here on the ExNotes blog.
Check out our earlier Henry Single Shot stories here:
Developing A Henry .45 70 Load: Part 1
The Henry Is In California
Henry Rifles: Made in America Or Not Made At All
And check out our other Tales of Gun Stories here.
I’m about a week away from having sufficiently cooled (at least in the Peoples Republik of Kalifornia’s eyes), which is another way of saying I have 7 days left until my 10-day waiting period is over, and then I’ll be able to pick up my new Henry .45 70 Single Shot. (“Single Shot” is capitalized because it’s a proper noun; it’s Henry’s official name for this rifle.)
I am loading a series of cartridges to test for accuracy in the new Henry and I’m going to tell you about the loads, but before I get into that I want to tell you about the three levels of reloads you find in the .45 70 reloading manuals. I’ll post about the different loads (and reloading those rounds) in the next blog.
I’ve been a student of the .45 70 for close to 50 years, and the cartridge is nearly 150 years old. One of the best sources of information on the early .45 70 rifles is Jack Behn’s touchstone reference shown below.
At the end of the Civil War, the Army knew it needed a breechloading rifle (one that loaded from the rear with metallic cartridges). This resulted in development of the 1873 Springfield rifle and the .45 70 500 cartridge, so designated because it fired a 500-grain, .458-inch diameter lead cartridge propelled by 70 grains of black powder. That was later changed to a 405-grain lead cartridge because soldiers complained that recoil with the 500-grain projectile was excessive.
That .45 70 Trapdoor Springfield remained in service from 1873 through the Spanish American War and our wars against the Plains Indians. It was also the rifle most frequently used by buffalo hunters to nearly exterminate the American bison, which was really little more than an extension of the war against the Indians (it’s not widely known, but the dominant reason the U.S. Government encouraged eradication of the American bison was because it was the principal source of food, shelter, and clothing for the Indians).
The “Trapdoor” designation for the 1873 Springfield refers to the action design. The Springfield’s action had a hinged element that rotated forward to allow loading a cartridge, which was then closed and locked in place prior to firing a round. It was state of the art in 1873, but it was inherently weak and limited the pressures to which ammunition could be loaded. But it was enough. The Springfield action could withstand pressures up to around 17,000 psi, sufficient to launch a 405-grain projectile at velocities a little north of 1400 feet per second. It was more than enough to kill a man, and in fact, it was enough to kill a buffalo.
The .45 70 cartridge had a lot going for it, and in 1886, Winchester introduced a .45 70 lever action repeater (their Model 1886). Marlin had previously introduced a .45 70 lever action repeater in 1881. The Winchester and Marlin rifles had two advantages: They could fire repeatedly by operating the lever action and squeezing the trigger, and the lever gun actions were stronger (so they could be loaded to higher pressures with resulting higher velocities). I don’t know that any of the ammo companies loaded the cartridge to the higher pressures the Winchester and Marlin rifles could handle back in those days (probably out of a fear that the ammo might be used in the weaker Springfield action), but folks who reload today and who have either a Marlin or a Winchester can load their ammunition to the higher levels allowed by the lever gun receivers.
The reloading manuals show that the Model 1895 Marlin and Model 1886 Winchester lever actions can handle chamber pressures in the 27,000 psi range. That’s enough to drive a 405-grain bullet out at about 1700 feet per second. That’s a smoking hot load.
The next step in the .45 70 evolutionary chain? That would be the single shot rifles offered by Ruger starting in the 1970s. Ruger had two: Their No. 1 rifle and the No. 3. Both use the same action, and it’s strong. In the Ruger rifles, you can load .45 70 ammunition to nearly the same velocities and the same pressures as a .458 Winchester Magnum, which is to say, crazy levels (at least in terms of recoil). Ruger rifles chambered in .45 70 can handle pressures approaching 40,000 psi, with 405-grain bullet velocities north of 2,000 feet per second. I’ve done this. It’s no fun.
The upshot of all this? There are three levels to which you can reload .45 70 ammunition: The Trapdoor Springfield level, the 1886 Winchester/Marlin level, and the Ruger level. When you see this in a reloading manual, you’ll see three sets of reloading data, designated separately as explained in this blog.
What does all this mean in the real world? Your mileage may vary, but for me, I never venture into the Marlin/Winchester and Ruger .45 70 reloading levels. There’s just too much recoil, and you don’t need to go there for accuracy. I would argue further that you don’t need to go there for lethality (the .45 70 in 1873 Trapdoor Springfields killed a lot of buffalo). I stick to the Springfield levels for all of my rifles (even though I could go higher), and that’s how I’m going to load for the new Henry rifle, too.
More Tales of the Gun here, including detailed info on each of the rifles shown above!
So we’re stuck at home by government direction, common sense, and maybe fear. Are you bored yet? You need not be. We still have the Internet, we still have Amazon.com, and we can still read. Which I do. A lot.
The latest book for me was Undaunted Courage, by Stephen Ambrose, and it’s good. It was a little slow getting started (that’s the only criticism I have), but once the Lewis and Clark Corps of Discovery was underway, Undaunted Courage was a real page turner.
You know, my interest in the Lewis and Clark expedition (which is what Undaunted Courage is all about) was ignited on a visit to New Orleans 12 years ago. Susie and I stayed in the French Quarter of that American jewel of a city, and we started each day with breakfast just across the street from Jackson Square. There was a museum there and it focused on the Louisiana Purchase, something I had a very foggy memory of from maybe the fifth grade.
The Louisiana Purchase story basically goes like this: Thomas Jefferson wanted to buy New Orleans from Napolean Bonaparte because the US needed a port where the Mississippi met the ocean. Napolean needed cash for his war with the British and in response to Jefferson’s overture, he offered to sell us not just New Orleans, but the entire Louisiana Territory. Jefferson didn’t have the money, so he borrowed it from England so he could pay Napolean and then Napolean had the money he needed to fight England. Who’s on first?
Think about what these men of the Lewis and Clark Expedition did and what they faced. They entered and explored an unknown world with dangers beyond imagination: Indians, grizzlies, disease, weather, starvation, distance…you name it. It is a hell of a story
Anyway, once we owned the Louisiana Territory, Jefferson wondered: What’s out there? No one really knew. That was one of the key reasons Jefferson funded the Lewis and Clark expedition. That, and Jefferson wanted our boys to find a northwest passage (a way to get from the Atlantic to the Pacific by water). That waterway didn’t exist (and that’s what Lewis and Clark discovered), but their struggles and the story of the expedition is, like I said above, a real page turner. What made it even more interesting was that, like many of the good folks who read the ExhaustNotes blog, I’ve ridden my motorcycle through many of the regions Lewis and Clark explored. This is good reading, folks.
An interesting component to this story is that all of the enlisted men on the Lewis and Clark expedition contracted venereal disease (specifically, syphilis and gonorrhea). It seems the Native Americans had no qualms about sharing their wives as a form of bartering for trinkets and tools (hey, it is what it is), and that’s how these diseases were transmitted. That touched a nerve with me. As a young Army officer in Korea, venereal disease was a problem that plagued us constantly. The Army tracked this sort of thing and my artillery battery ran a VD rate over 100% (I think the exact number was something like 112%). When I first saw that statistic I knew it had to be wrong (I didn’t have VD), and I said so. The guy who presented the statistics patiently explained that some of the guys in our battery had more than one venereal disease in the 30-day reporting period, and that’s why the number exceeded 100%. Wow.
Another interesting fact: Lewis carried an air rifle on this trip, along with several other flintlock rifles and handguns. I didn’t know air rifles even existed back then, but apparently they did, and Lewis used his to put meat on the table.
Trust me on this: Undaunted Courage is a superbly written book. I think you’ll enjoy it.
I recently wrote to my good buddy Sergeant Zuo, who led our 2016 ride across China. Zuo lives in Lanzhou, a huge refining center we visited on the China ride. He and I became great friends on that 38-day adventure. Zuo is a former Chinese Army senior NCO and in an earlier life I was a lowly lieutenant in the US Army. But hey, a lieutenant outranks even a senior noncommissioned officer, and every morning (even though we served in different armies), he’d snap to attention and salute me. And I would then return the salute. It was cool and it added to the good nature and relaxed camaraderie we all felt on the China adventure. Zuo is that rare natural leader you sometimes encounter when groups gather and he was perfect for the China ride. He made what could have a been a scary undertaking into a grand adventure. I would follow him anywhere, and I imagine the troops in the Army units he led felt the same way.
Zuo owns an RX3 (he was one of the very first people to buy an RX3 in China) and it is his daily driver. He doesn’t speak English and I don’t speak Chinese, but that had no impact on us. We spoke RX3 and riding, I guess, and we formed an immediate bond. A good motorcycle can do that, you know.
Our trip started in Chongqing, we rode to northwest China (the Tibetan Plateau and the Gobi Desert), then back to central China, and finally over to Beijing and then Qingdao. Qingdao was a name that stuck in my mind. Nearly 50 years ago I was on a US Army missile site in Korea and our primary target line pointed straight across the Yellow Sea at Qingdao. And now, here we were at the end of our China ride five decades later in that very same city.
Zuo, Gresh, I, and a dozen others rode our motorcycles right onto the beach at Qingdao, stripped down, and went swimming in the Yellow Sea’s cool waters. Damn, that felt good. After fighting the oppressive heat and humidity of a damp Chinese summer, I could have spent all day in that cool ocean water. Back in the day I was ready to launch missiles at bad guys coming from Qingdao; 50 years later I swam in the Yellow Sea with Zuo at that very same spot to wrap up the grandest adventure of my life.
With that as a backdrop, here’s the note from my good buddy Zuo:
Joe(大舅）：
谢谢您给我的信。
从网络里看到新型冠状病毒（CV-19）在美国蔓延，这个可怕的家伙成了人类共同的敌人，但是我们应该相信，它是会被战胜的！
我们这里的疫情虽然得到控制和缓解，但是疫情警戒还没有结束。
J，我很好，谢谢您。
阅读您和二舅的博客是我生活中的最大乐趣，看到你们快乐的玩很是高兴。因为你一直相信在大洋彼岸有一个和你惺惺相惜的好朋友一直在关注这您们，是吗？
等到疫情结束，如果能和您一起摩旅那将是我最幸福的等待。
非常想念您——我的良师益友。
代为向您的爱人问好。
祝愿您和二舅一切安好。
—— 左振义 2020年3月20日 于中国.兰州
Yeah, I know, you don’t speak Chinese. That’s not a problem; we’ll just turn to Google’s translation site:
Joe (big uncle):
Thank you for your letter.
Seeing the spread of the new coronavirus (CV-19) in the United States from the Internet, this terrible guy has become a common enemy of humanity, but we should believe that it will be defeated! Although the epidemic situation here has been controlled and alleviated, the epidemic alert has not ended.
J, I’m fine, thank you.
Reading your and Erji’s blog is the biggest joy in my life, and it’s great to see you playing happily. Because you have always believed that there is a good friend who cares about you on the other side of the ocean, has you been paying attention to you.
When the epidemic is over, it will be my happiest waiting if I can travel with you.
I miss you so much–my mentor.
Say hello to your friend.
I wish you and Erji all the best.
—- Zuo Zhenyi in Lanzhou, China, March 20, 2020
About that “Erji” business…the Chinese quickly gave Gresh and me Chinese names. I was Dajiu (big uncle), and Joe was Erji (little uncle). After that initial christening, those were our names for the entire trip. It was cool.
You know, when this CV19 business is over, it would be grand to get Zuo over here for a US and Baja ride. It’s something to look forward to, and I promise you it’s going to happen.
Edit: Just in case you haven’t seen these videos, here you go. The first is Gresh’s China Ride video, the second is the one released by Zongshen. They’re both great.
Joe has a new story published on Motorcycle.com! Take a look when you get a chance. I’ve always wondered what it was like to ride one of these 3-wheeled wonders, and now I know.
I sure was surprised a couple of days ago. While sheltered in place, or locked down, or in self-isolation, or whatever the nom du jour is, I received an email from my local FFL telling me that my Henry Rifle had arrived. Wow, I didn’t even know it had been shipped yet! You know the deal…I’m here in California and I have to wait 10 days so that I can cool sufficiently before taking possession of the new rifle, but I wanted to get the process started. I made an appointment so as not to be around too many other people and off I went. Truth be told, it felt great just getting out of the house, and I felt even better when I saw the Henry .45 70. It’s beautiful.
You can refer to our earlier blog for the first part of the Henry story. In it, I told about asking their marketing director (good buddy Dan) to try to get me one with a nice piece of walnut, and wow, did they ever! When I arrived at the FFL, the lighting at the store was not conducive to great photography, but I did my best:
What’s really nice about this rifle is that the stock is highly figured on both sides, and it is what I would call exhibition grade walnut. I’m guessing it’s American walnut, as Henry prides itself on being made in America. I’ve been collecting rifles for a good half century now, and I have some with really nice wood. The new Henry jumped to the head of the pack. It’s stunning.
I had hoped to have a more in depth chat with Dan this week, but like all companies, Henry has its hands full right now. That’s okay; we’ll get to chat later. What Dan told me earlier is that all these rifles are nice, and they are a cut above what one would normally see in a rifle in this price range. I think he’s being too modest. I’ve seen and I own rifles that cost two to four times as much as this Henry, and the fit and finish on those is not as nice as this. It truly is a beautiful rifle. My compliments to Henry USA!
I’ve already started loading .45 70 for the Henry ammo development effort, and I think the next blog will be on that topic. This is going to be fun, folks. I can’t wait to talk possession of the rifle and I can’t wait to start shooting it. I’m eager to see how the rifle performs, and I’m equally eager to get the Henry on the bench and out in the sunlight so I can get better photos for you…this rifle deserves it!
More Tales of the Gun can be found right here!
We’re going through a rough patch right now, and when I say we, I mean that literally. We, as in the whole world, are working through a terrible situation. But it will pass, and when it does, we’ll be better people. I’ve cut back substantially on the time I spend on social media for a lot of reasons, not the least of which is my deep disappointment in people who are using the current world health situation to post stupid stuff. But every once in a while you see something good, and this meme from Southern Pride and Dixie Proud was one of those rare occasions:
Man, we are through the looking glass, living in what feels like a bad science fiction movie. The freeways and malls are empty, parking lots are empty, and we are sheltered in place. To top it all off, Susie and I are recovering from two of the worst colds we’ve ever had, and you can imagine what we’ve been imagining. And it may have all started because some dude in Wuhan wanted to eat a bat. A bat!
This current situation will bring out the worst in us, and it will bring out the best in us. We’re already seeing some of the worst, with the accusations flying back and forth about where the virus originated, who did what to who (or who failed to do what and when), and on and on it goes. But we’ll get through it, and we’ll come out on the other side better. We always do.
I have good friends in China, and I feel for them. I think I feel for us, too, with the COVID-19 virus emerging here. The market is way down, on paper we’ve lost a ton of wealth, and people are losing jobs. I had a gig in Singapore and I would have been heading over there. Nope. Not now.
All the above aside, I find myself thinking more and more about my friends in China, and the ride Joe Gresh and I took across China. And the food we ate (we ate a lot of strange stuff, and a lot of watermelon). And the pretty girls. And the roads and the people. This summer it will be four years since that ride. It was the grandest ride I’ve ever done and the greatest adventure I’ve ever had. With that as an introduction and without a lot of narrative, I’ve got a ton of photos to share with you from that epic road trip. Enjoy, my friends…
Riding China was a good ride. I’d like to do it again someday. In the meantime, keep the faith, folks. Things will get better.
The story today, boys and girls, is about Ruger’s Gunsite Scout Rifle, or as Ruger calls it, the GSR.
To keep a short story short, here’s the bottom line: This thing is one of the most accurate iron-sighted rifles I’ve ever owned. To make a short story a little less short, I have to tell you the rifle’s background and a bit about how my good buddy Jim Wile (rest in peace, Jim) and I came to buy our GSRs.
A long, long time ago, in a far away galaxy, there was this guy named Colonel Jeff Cooper who sort of became a god among mortals on all things gun related. Cooper had a lot of good ideas on handguns and was well published in his field. The Colonel started a shooting school (it still exists) that teaches marksmanship and tactics in Arizona called the Gunsite Academy (attending one of their classes is on my bucket list; good buddies Marty and Rex have done so). The good Colonel also had a few ideas on what would make a good scout rifle, with his concept being something light, accurate, short barreled, chambered in a respectable cartridge, and capable of mounting a low-powered scope with lots of eye relief. The idea floated around in the gun world for a few years, Steyr produced an overpriced rifle meeting the criteria, and then Ruger picked up the concept. About a decade ago, Ruger introduced their GSR, chambered in .308 Winchester (the 7.62 NATO round). At the time, they retailed for about a thousand bucks. That’s a lot of money, but as you know, I know people. Jim and I got our GSR rifles for $800 (a pretty good deal, I think).
Jim Wile and I bought the GSRs at the same time while shopping under the influence. I had lost a couple of teeth (sometimes this happens in political discussions, sometimes it happens as we grow older, and sometimes it happens in motorcycle crashes; I need not go into the details of my toothlessness here). I was getting a new implant (yep, I have a couple of fake teeth), and that required oral surgery and anesthesia. Good buddy Jim drove me to the oral surgeon and I was still half looped from the anesthesia when we got back to my place. We’d been talking about these new Ruger GRS rifles for a while, and I guess I called a woman I know at Turner’s. I can’t say I wouldn’t have done it if not under the influence of the tooth doc’s elixers, so I won’t, but to keep this story from growing too long, I’ll just say I was a little surprised when Jim told me the next day what we had done. Ten days later we both owned new GSRs.
They are cool rifles. The GSR rifle has a Parkerized finish (which made it an immediate winner in my book), a laminated stock, scope rings and a Picatinny rail, and a couple of recoil pad spacers so you can increase the length of pull to adjust it to what you like. I didn’t put my two spacers in; I liked the rifle as delivered with its short stock. The rifle had two 10-round metal mags that rattled a lot; I bought a plastic 5-round mag and that’s all I use (I like the sleeker look and the fact that it doesn’t rattle). I don’t need 10 rounds. Five will do just fine, thank you.
I don’t shoot the GSR that often, but I like it a lot. It is a comfortable and handy rifle. If I had a truck it would be a truck gun.
Before Jim went to his reward, he and I spent a lot of time doing the things God put us here to do, which is to say we covered a lot of miles on our motorcycles and we spent a lot of time at the gun club sending lead downrange. On one of our trips to the range, Jim brought along a sheet of bulletproof glass. I was kind of floored when he pulled it out of his car and told me what it was. Bulletproof glass? Bitchin’! I’ll take that challenge!
That big old pane of superthick glass was the same stuff you see in banks. Before he retired, Jim owned one of those PayDay advance stores and I think the state required him to use bulletproof glass. Or maybe Jim just thought it would be a cool thing to have in his store. Whatever. It was a good inch (at least an inch) think and the pane was about 15 inches tall and 3 feet wide. Maybe it was designed to go on top of a counter. It had a real light greenish hue to it. If you’ve ever been in a bank, you’ve seen this stuff.
You can probably guess where this story is going. Yep, we set that pane up, leaning against a rock, about 50 feet out and went to work. Jim started shooting at it with a .357 Magnum Ruger SP 100 revolver. Pew! Pew! Pew! You know, just to see if it really was bulletproof. I mean, he had owned it for years, and I suppose ol’ Jim had been wondering for a long time. Just curious, man. Big kid stuff. And that’s what we were that day. Two kids in their 60s shooting at bulletproof glass. If we had been 50 or 60 years younger, we would have been blowing up model cars with cherry bombs. This day was devoted to shooting bulletproof glass, just to see if it really was. Bulletproof glass. Let’s check it out!
Jim’s .357 bullets didn’t even dent that glass. We looked at the pane’s surface up close, and we could maybe see a dust shadow where the .357 slugs had flattened. But they didn’t penetrate or mark the glass at all. This was cool stuff. It really was bulletproof. If I worked in a bank, I remember thinking, I would have felt pretty good about all this, hunkered down behind that green translucent armor. John Dillinger? No big deal. Bulletproof glass, see?
Okay, I thought, enough pussy-footing around (can you even say that any more?). It was time to call up the heavy artillery. I loaded the Ruger GSR with one of my .308 cartridges using a 173-grain full metal jacket bullet and drew a bead. You know, just to see what would happen. Sight alignment. Front sight focus. Breath control. Concentration. Slow, steady squeeze, and BOOOOM!!!
You know, a .357 Magnum is a powerful handgun, and you can sort of feel its power in the air when a round lights off. But when you hear a .308 rifle let loose, there’s no comparison. It’s God calling, and He wants to talk to YOU. You damn well better be paying attention. Firing a high-powered rifle, you see, is a religious experience.
The result? The .308 went through the “bulletproof” glass like it wasn’t even there, with severe spall on the exit side. It made a .30-caliber hole going into the pane and left a two-and-a-half-inch conical hole going out. And that 173-grain copper-jacketed-boat-tailed projectile probably didn’t even notice what it had just whizzed through. Good Gawd!
So, about that spall thing: Spallation is what happens when a high-speed projectile encounters a brittle barrier. It’s a cone of material that splinters into whatever you are shooting. You’ve probably seen this without realizing what you were looking at if you’ve ever seen a window shot with a BB gun. It’s the conical shaped hole on the opposite side of glass, the glass that shatters and flies in the direction of the BB (don’t ask me how I know this; let’s just say there were a lot of windows where I grew up that displayed classic spallation, and leave it at that). Spallation is the same physics effect that does most of the damage in an enemy tank when you hit one with an antitank warhead (the tank’s armor “spalls” into the interior of the vehicle and completely ruins the rest of the day for the crew). It’s what you see in that photo above.
Anyway, seeing that coned-out “bulletproof” pane really opened my eyes to the tremendous power a .308 rifle has over a .357 handgun. Yeah, it was bulletproof glass, but only up to a point. Bring enough gun, and bulletproof don’t mean diddly squat (“diddly squat” is a munitions term meaning of negligible value). And while I’m expanding the lexicon here, I guess I’ll mention that “bring enough gun” probably applies to a lot of situations. In this situation, bulletproof glass was no match for the Ruger GSR. If I had been thinking, I would have grabbed a photo or two of that pane, but I wasn’t and I didn’t. I was thinking if I was a pencil-necked geek of a bank teller and Dillinger walked in with a .308 rifle, I would probably pee my pants.
The bulletproof glass engineering evaluations aside, I had my Ruger GSR and you know I had to start testing its accuracy with different loads. What I noticed right away is that the rear aperture sight on my rifle didn’t have enough range of adjustment. With the rear sight cranked all the way over to the left, the rifle still shot to the right of my point of aim at 100 yards. I thought maybe I could compensate for it with the right reload, but I couldn’t, so the rifle went back to Ruger. They had it back to me in a couple of weeks after hogging out the stock to completely free float the barrel, and the problem was gone. I thought they did an amateurish bit of woodworking on the warranty repair, but it sure did the trick. The GSR shot to point of aim with the rear peep centered on the rifle. I went through my standard load development program with a variety of loads and propellants, and one stood out. Here’s the target I shot with it:
The load for the target you see above used 180-grain Nosler jacketed softpoint boattail bullets (their Part Number 27567), a 2.800-inch cartridge overall length, no crimp on the bullet, 40.0 grains of Varget propellant, a CCI 200 primer, and Remington brass. The Nosler bullets are expensive, as I recall. I had them on the bench for probably 20 years or more and I just decided to use them up as part of the load development for the Ruger. I still have a few left, and when I use them up I’ll buy more.
The Ruger GSRs list at around $1200 now on the Ruger website (the typical retail price is about $1000), and you can still find good deals on them. I’ve seen the .223 GSR go on sale for as little as $599 at Turner’s, our local gunstore chain here in California. That’s a hell of a deal. They are offered in more calibers, too, including the new 350 Legend and the 450 Bushmaster (two cartridges with which I have zero experience, but they sure seem cool). The other calibers aside, the .308 is still the king in my opinion, and I sure can’t argue with its accuracy. These are cool guns. You need one. Colonel Cooper was right.
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More Tales of the Gun here!
We’ve previously posted info on CSC’s electric bicycles, and in the last few days a couple of super videos popped up on the new CSC products. One is from good buddy Kevin Duke, CSC’s Brand Manager, and the other is from Micah Toll, an expert on EVs of all kinds. Enjoy, my friends!
The FT750s are available in Gloss White or Matte Black. You can order one via CSC-ebike.com.
