Good buddy Paul is a black powder enthusiast. I am, too, except I’m completely inexperienced as a shooter in the blackpowder world. I owned an 1858 Remington reproduction (it was a Pietta, I think, and it was beautiful). Good buddy Duane wanted one and I sold mine, new in the box, to him without ever firing it. I’ve seen it fired, as Duane is a range regular and he’s had it out a few times. And I have a beautiful reproduction Colt Walker (made by Uberti; you can read that story here), but I haven’t fired that yet, either.
But I digress; this story is about the Ruger Old Army. Two of them, in fact. The name notwithstanding, the Ruger Old Army is a completely modern gun, with the exception of it’s being a cap and ball revolver. Ruger made a few variations of this fine weapon, with the variations being barrel length (the ones Paul owns are both 7 1/2-inch barreled guns; Ruger also made 5 1/2-inch barreled versions), blue steel or stainless steel construction (the ones you see here are samples of each), satin or highly-polished stainless steel, and fixed or adjustable sights. Ruger also offered a brass grip frame on the blue steel version (those are beautiful handguns). Ruger also offered the Old Army with simulated ivory grips for a while.
Paul added custom grips to his Old Army revolvers, and in both cases, the grips add considerably to the revolvers’ appearance.
Big bore percussion revolvers have simultaneously been called either .44 caliber or .45 caliber. They are not a .44, though. They are all .45s, and you can fire either a .457 lead ball, or a .454 conical lead bullet.
Ruger introduced the Old Army in 1972 and discontinued it in 2008 as sales slowed. From what I’ve read, Ruger Old Army revolvers can be extremely accurate. I can’t tell you that from personal experience, however. As I said above I have absolutely zero range time with the Old Army or any other black powder firearm. Caps are difficult-to-impossible to find these days with the pandemic-induced components shortages (I haven’t fired my Walker yet for that reason).
Paul’s two Old Army Rugers are beautiful. One of these days, when components are flowing freely again, we’ll have to get them and my yet-to-be fired Colt Walker on the range.
With reloading components still hard to find, the question emerges: Can you use rifle primers in handgun cartridges? If you’re flush with rifle primers but hurting for pistol primers (as I am), it’s a logical question. To evaluate this, loaded a box of .357 Magnum ammo for my Colt Python. I tried to different loads of Bullseye (not an ideal .357 Magnum propellant, but it’s what I had available) and Winchester small rifle primers.
I thought I would simultaneously test for accuracy and reliability on Alco 4-silhouette targets at 25 yards, firing single action at the top two targets and double action on the bottom two targets. The first load was 3.2 grains of Bullseye, a 158 grain cast flatpoint bullet, and Winchester small rifle primers.
Accuracy was mediocre (if you’re ever assaulted by four little men with orange bullseyes painted on their chest, you’d be good enough for government work, but you won’t be taking home any accuracy trophies). The upper two little orange guys were fired single action, and every round discharged. The bottom two little orange guys were fired double action, and on those two targets, I had two misfires. That’s two misfires in 10 rounds, and that’s not good. When I fired the two misfired rounds a second time, they discharged normally.
The next target was a repeat of the first, except the ammo I shot at it had 4.0 grains of Bullseye. Everything else was the same. The top two targets were fired single action and the bottom two were fired double action. All rounds fired normally.
You can ignore the shots below the bottom two targets. I was just shooting up some ammo I had left loaded with different combos. The lower left group on the zombie’s green hand were .38 Special 148 grain wadcutter loads (with 2.7 grains of Bullseye); the ones between the two targets were .38 Special loads with the 158 grain flat point bullets and 4.5 grains of Bullseye (a very hot .38 Special load).
The propellant’s name notwithstanding, none of the above were not particularly accurate loads.
As to the primary question: Will rifle primers work in handgun cartridges, my take on this is yes, if fired single action. In double action, ignition is unreliable. On handguns with heavy hammers, you’re probably okay if firing single action. That’s true on the Colt Python, and it’s definitely true on single action Ruger Blackhawks (I have a .30 Carbine Ruger Blackhawk and I always load .30 Carbine ammo with rifle primers).
I suppose it’s possible that the two rounds that misfired double action in the Python may have been suffering from primers that were not completely seated, but I don’t see a need to continue testing. I learned enough from this quick look.
Good buddy and fellow Inland Empire shooter Jose recently posted on Facebook about what has to be one of the best deals ever for a highly collectible Ruger No. 1 in .405 Winchester. Ruger produced only a small number of these rifles (I’ve only seen one in person at a gun show a few years ago). This one has exceptional walnut, which makes it even more desirable.
Here’s Jose’s story. Enjoy, my friends.
I’ve never had any desire to hunt African game and I probably never will. But I’ve enjoyed reading about the African plains rifles since I was a kid in junior high school. Bringing a copy of Guns & Ammo magazine to school would probably get you a quick trip to the principal’s office these days…but I digress.
Exquisite walnut is often found on the older Ruger No. 1 rifles.
Quite a few years ago I saw an old Ruger No.1 Tropical in the consignment rack of a small gun shop that is now long gone. The owner said, “just pick it up and feel the heft.” And of course, I did and the next thing you know we were talking price, knowing I would never pay $2,000 for a collectible Ruger No. 1. Shaun confided in me that the rifle’s owner couldn’t find the obsolete 405 ammo for it anywhere and he wasn’t a handloader, so he wanted to sell the rifle. Another problem with the rifle was that a previous owner had cut down the front sight, probably because he had been shooting handloads with .41 caliber pistol bullets. So we settled on $500 and I became the owner of my first “unobtainable” Ruger No. 1!
In the gun shop years ago eyeing the Ruger No. 1. Salesman Shaun said, “hand me your phone and let me take a photo of you so you can see how good you look with that rifle!” Shaun passed away a couple of years ago, but I know he smiled down from Heaven yesterday as I fired the Ruger No. 1H Tropical for the first time. And he was right, this gun was meant for me!
It took me a lot of searching over the past few years, but I finally located a set of 405 Win reloading dies, the shell holder, and all the components to bring this rifle back to life.
Hornady had made a run of new 405 Winchester brass and I was lucky enough to find a New Old Stock box of 50 shells. I also located some new Barnes .412, 300 grain TSX bullets.
The first step in restoring the old 1H Tropical was to contact Ruger and purchase a new gold bead front sight. That was a simple install as the blade is held in place by a small detent spring.
New Ruger NOS gold bead front sight blade installed.
Not wanting to use the expensive Barnes TSX bullets quite yet, lead bullets were cast from lead wheel weights with a bit of tin added using a Lyman 412263 plain base mold to cast 288 grain bullets. These were sized to 0.413 inch and lubed with Alox. Lyman has since discontinued this fine old bullet mold.
A Lyman 412263 bullet, lubed and sized.
Finally, yesterday morning I decided it was time to resurrect this old rifle! Besides, the project would give me the opportunity to test some old “salvage” Hodgdon 4198 powder I’ve had sitting on the shelf for nearly two decades. The powder is probably from the 1950s or early 1960s. I also had some ancient CCI 200 large rifle primers on hand.
Hodgdon “salvage” 4198 smokeless powder. The powder is probably WW II US Military surplus powder that Hogdon bought in bulk and repackaged in the late 1950s or early 1960s.Vintage components for a vintage cartridge.
I loaded 20 rounds of 405 Winchester ammo using the cast lead bullets and a starting load of 38.5 grains of 4198 and headed down the hill with good friend Yvon to an informal shooting range on BLM land.
The obsolete 405 Winchester cartridge (left) and the popular 45-70 Government cartridge (right) used by 1880s plains buffalo hunters of the American west. I don’t shoot buffalo and never will. But I enjoy reviving and firing old guns!
Let me say that this Ruger No. 1H Tropical in 405 Winchester lives again. It shoots incredibly tight groups with the cast bullets and gold bead open sights.
My next project will be to develop a non-lead hunting load using the 300 grain Barnes TSX bullets.
Bringing life back into old obsolete rifles can be tons of fun.
That’s an awesome story, Jose, and thanks for allowing us to share it here on the ExNotes blog. Your No. 1 has to be one of the best deals ever. The dealer’s original asking price is probably what that rifle is worth if you could find one for sale. Well done, my friend.
This was another blog with a daunting title challenge. I went with the one you see above. Other choices were “The 6.5 Creedmoor No. 1” and “Surfing While Under The Influence.” The story goes like this: A few years ago Ruger built a limited number of their elegant single-shot No. 1 rifles chambered in 6.5 Creedmoor. They were built exclusively for a Ruger distributor, and as is that distributor’s habit, they were fitted with 28-inch barrels (the normal barrel length for the beavertail fore end No. 1 Rugers is 26 inches). If you tell me a rifle is a limited edition you have my attention. Tell me it’s a Ruger No. 1 and I’m about 90% of the way there. If it has fancy walnut, you can hear the cash registor go “ka-ching.”
I’d been watching the Creedmoor No. 1 rifles on Gunbroker.com, but I didn’t see any with wood that caught my attention. Then one night I’d had a beer or two (okay, maybe it was four or five) and I was surfing the Gunbroker.com site, and this 6.5 Creedmoor No. 1 appeared:
The Ruger No. 1 first hit the market in the late 1960s, and it is about as classy a rifle as ever existed. It’s a real specialty item. Today the craze is all about black plastic semi-automatic rifles with big magazines; but none of that nuttiness has ever appealed to me. A single shot rifle, on the other hand, gets my attention immediately. They are just cool. There’s something inherently worthy about having to make that one shot count.
The 6.5 Creedmoor cartridge was developed specifically as a target round, and it’s been catching on for the last few years. It has the same trajectory as a .300 Winchester Magnum but with substantially less recoil, and everything I’ve read about the Creedmoor said it is inherently accurate.
So, back to my quest for a 6.5 Creedmoor No. 1. The price on Gunbroker seemed right, I hit the “buy now” button, and the rifle had a new owner. The next day I looked at the Gunbroker ad again, and something I had not noticed the night before caught my attention. It was listed with a 26-inch (not a 28-inch) barrel. Hmmm. So I did a bit more research. What I had purchased was a rifle from Ruger’s earlier run of 6.5 Creedmoor No. 1 rifles, which folks tell me is even harder to find than the more recent group of 28-inchers. Hmmm. A rare No. 1 in the chambering I wanted with beautiful wood. Sometimes you just get lucky.
When the rifle arrived, I bought an inexpensive Redfield scope, a set of Lee reloading dies, a box of 6.5mm bullets, and a bag of Starline brass. I only loaded two different loads, and I was off to the range. All the hype about the 6.5 Creedmoor’s inherent accuracy? Hey, I’m here to tell you that if you’re looking for an argument, I’m not your guy. My No. 1 convinced me that the 6.5 Creedmoor is indeed an accurate cartridge.
I loaded two different recipes with the 140-grain Speer jacketed softpoint bullets seated to an overall cartridge length of 2.700 inches, IMR 4350 powder, Winchester large rifle primers, and virgin Starline brass. At 100 yards, I fired five rounds with the above load using 38.5 grains of IMR 4350, and those five went into 2.272 inches. I was just getting warmed up. I then tried the same combo but with 39.5 grains of IMR 4350. The first three-shot group was 0.701 inches, and the second three-shot group was 0.978 inches. This was outstanding for the first outing. Maybe I just got lucky. But I don’t think so. I think that the 6.5 Creedmoor is everything folks say it is.
Last week I was on the range again with a different rifle, and good buddy Dan asked if I shot 6.5 Creedmoor. I do, I answered. It seems somebody shot a box or three of factory ammo and didn’t keep their brass. Dan wanted to know if I wanted it. Does the Pope poop in the woods? Is a bear Catholic? You bet, I answered. Any kind of brass is hard to come by these days. But 6.5 Creedmoor? For free? Like I said, sometimes you just get lucky.
6.5 Creedmoor brass in the vibratory cleaner. It’s looking good.6.5mm bullets in Speer and Nosler flavors. I only tried the Speer bullets so far. I’ll bet the Noslers are going to be more accurate.
I’ll keep you posted on 6.5 Creedmoor developments right here on the ExNotes blog. I’ll load more ammo this week and I’ll get on the range shortly after that. Stay tuned.
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The year was 1974. I had just finished grad school and I was at Fort Bliss, Texas, for the Basic Course and the Chaparral/Vulcan Course, which is to say I was there for another five months of school before heading overseas. There was no such thing as Gunbroker.com yet…in fact, there wasn’t a dotcom anything yet…this was all well before the Internet. But we had The Shotgun News, a print publication that served much the same purpose. I studied that newspaper like a Democrat looking for something new to tax.
Ruger did a very limited run of their Model 77 in .458 Winchester Magnum back in the early 1970s, and within that limited run, they did a few with Circassian walnut. I might be wrong, but I think this was the first limited production anything Ruger did with Circassian walnut. I read the ad and I immediately knew I had to have one.
Man, I was hooked. I needed a .458 Mag elephant gun. My Army gun was a 20mm Vulcan, and by comparison, the .458 didn’t seem so big. The rifle was $340 from J&G Rifles in Prescott, Arizona (an outfit that I think still exists), and in those days it was as easy as picking up the phone, sending a check, and having them ship the rifle to a local dealer. The amount seems laughably low today, but $340 was a big nut back in 1974. I borrowed the money from my sister and the rifle was on its way to Barney’s Guns out in the west Texas town of El Paso. God bless Marty Robbins and all that is west Texas. I loved it out there.
Not knowing too much about hunting elephants, I bought three boxes of .458 factory ammo with predictable results: Today, nearly 50 years later, I still have most of that factory ammo in its original yellow Winchester boxes. You see, there weren’t too many elephants in El Paso, and that ammo redefined recoil for me. Just a few rounds of the 500-grain, 2100 feet per second factory fodder convinced me there had to be a better way, and there was. I’ve loaded literally thousands of rounds in .458 Win Mag over the last 50 years, virtually all of it at .45-70 levels. It’s actually a nice shooting rifle when you drop it from “elephant” to “buffalo” on the energy meter. And that’s still plenty potent. People used to kill buffalo with 400-grain pills at 1200 feet per second (they killed nearly all of them, actually).
I picked up a Redfield straight 4-power scope that is still putting the crosshairs where I want the bullets go (I think it was something like $30 at one of the K-Marts in El Paso). Not surprisingly, the Circassian .458 is very accurate with both jacketed and cast bullets. It can easily put five rounds into an inch at 100 yards.
Every once in a while I’ll go on a tear experimenting with new loads, and I suppose when I exhaust my supply of 405-grain Remington jacketed softpoint bullets and SR 4759 propellant I’ll get serious about that, but for now I have a good stash of the Remington bullets and SR 4759. I’ll probably still be working my way through that stash when I ride off into the sunset. And when I enter the Happy Hunting Grounds, I’ll rub elbows with Karamojo Bell, Frederick Courtney Selous, Peter Capstick, and others who chased elephants in Africa and we can compare notes.
My buddies and I hunted jack rabbits out in the desert east of El Paso near Fabens, and I had a lot of fun with the .458. Yeah, it was massive overkill. But some of those jacks were big, man. Not that I needed a .458 Winchester Magnum elephant gun. But who buys these things because they need them?
I love the Ruger Mini 14 and I’ve written several blogs on it (I’ll give you a link at the end of this blog). The Mini 14 is not the most accurate rifle I’ve ever shot, but there’s something about it that just makes it fun. I think if Ruger had introduced the Mini 14 a few years earlier it might have been the next US service rifle instead of Mattel’s M-16. That statement might get a few trolls’ shorts in a knot, but hey, they’re young. They’ll get over it.
Photos from the original GunBroker.com ad for my Mini 14. It was a limited production item with a Circassian walnut stock. Very few had wood this highly figured.
I took my Mini to the West End Gun Club a couple of weeks ago to see what impact (if any) a new Lee factory crimp die had on accuracy. Usually when I reload rifle cartridges with jacketed bullets I don’t crimp. Part of this is because it’s a bit difficult to get a consistent crimp if the brass is not trimmed to exactly the same length, and part of it is I often find I don’t need to trim my brass to get good accuracy. That’s not to say case neck tension isn’t critical (it is; lube a couple of bullets before seating them and see how far out of the group they print). But it you don’t crimp, you rely on friction between the case neck and the bullet to control the case’s grip, and friction is a tough thing to control. Crimping should make the grip on the bullet more consistent (or so the theory goes). Crimping is also thought to provide more complete combustion, reducing pressure variability and the inaccuracies associated with it.
Conventional reloading dies rely on a reduced diameter in the bullet seating die, which rolls the case mouth into the bullet to achieve a crimp (such a crimp is called a roll crimp). Lee’s factory crimp die uses a different approach. It has four collets (each forms a quadrant) that work at 90 degrees to the case to crimp the brass. The collets are activated by the die’s base during the reloading press upstroke.
A .223 Lee factory crimp die. This is the last step in the reloading process. The die is screwed into the press after the bullet has been seated to the desired depth (left photo); the amount the die is screwed into the press controls the interface between the shell holder and the die (center photo). When the ram is fully raised, the die has collets that compress the brass horizontally around the case mouth (right photo), thereby crimping the bullet in place in the same manner as factory ammunition.The view from above. The collets squeeze the brass around the bullet to crimp it in the case.A 7.65x53mm Belgian Mauser round with a cast bullet roll crimped in place (left), and a .223 Remington/5.56mm NATO cartridge crimped with the Lee factory crimp die. The difference is subtle, but you can see it if you look closely.
I loaded 15 rounds crimped in the Lee factory crimp die, and I used another 15 rounds without the crimp. I shot two targets at 100 yards from a rest using iron sights, with 15 rounds for each target. The target on the left is with no crimp, the one on the right is with the Lee factory crimp die (and I used a heavy crimp). The brass was fireformed in this rifle and neck sized only to get a good fit in the Mini 14’s 5.56 NATO chamber, which (as you know) is slightly larger than the .223 Remington cartridge. In prior load development work, I found that neck sized only brass is much more accurate in the Mini 14.
15 uncrimped .223 rounds at 100 yards (left target) and 15 rounds crimped with the Lee factory crimp die (right target).
The first five shots using uncrimped reloads all went into the left target’s 10-ring, so I thought I was doing pretty well. Then I switched to the Lee factory crimp die ammo on the right target. The first shot felt weird, and it did not fully extract. I think it was the one that went way low. The next four all went into the 10 ring. On the next five rounds (again, using the Lee die ammo on the right target), the first one did the same thing (it failed to extract and it went low). I fired one more magazine of Lee crimped ammo and all five worked okay.
Somewhere in those first two magazines of the Lee crimped ammo, I had two light primer strikes that did not fire. I extracted and chambered them again and they fired on the second attempt. I didn’t know why those two rounds had light primer strikes. Maybe the round had not fully chambered? Maybe because the Lee factory crimp die distorted the case mouth or something and it didn’t fully chamber? Or maybe something was interfering with the firing pin’s travel? I didn’t know and I wouldn’t find out until I disassembled rifle.
Then I fired 10 more uncrimped rounds at the target on the left and I had one failure to eject. My Mini 14 sometimes acts funny like that with the neck sized brass. It’s not a duty gun, so I thought I could live with an occasional failure to eject. But I don’t like it.
So back to those misfires. In the past, I’ve had to clean debris from around the firing pin, and it looked to me like it might be time to do that again. That could account for the two light firing pin strikes I had.
One other thing…I had painted the front sight with red nail polish, and that actually made the front sight’s top edge harder to see. I want to go back to the plain blued front sight.
I also want to adjust the Lee factory crimp for less of a crimp. These first rounds used a max crimp. I didn’t trim the brass for this test because it was only fired once, but I don’t know how even (in length) it was. I used bulk Remington loaded ammo to get the brass (having fired it previously in the Mini 14) because a couple of years ago that stuff actually cost less than unprimed brass. But inexpensive bulk ammo is not precision made and I suspect the case length had some variation (my suspicions were later confirmed, as you’ll read below).
A Lyman case trimmer I’ve been using for nearly 50 years. The Lee factory crimp die does not require case trimming, but the cases had enough length variability that I decided to trim them anyway. Cases that are too long can interfere with the bolt fully closing and raise chamber pressures.
When I reloaded the rounds fired in this test, I checked a few case lengths after neck sizing. The “trim to” length (per the Hornady manual) is supposed to be 1.750 inches, with a max case length of 1.760 inches. These cases (after two firings and neck sizing) were all over the map. They ranged from 1.752 to 1.780. That alone could account for some of the anomalies described above. I ran them all through the trimmer and reloaded a hundred for the next range visit. I backed off a bit on the Lee factory crimp die, too, as my good buddy Robby suggested.
I gave the Mini 14 a good cleaning and I was surprised at how filthy it was. This is not a rifle that I clean religiously…I’ll shoot it on several outings before cleaning (heresy, I know, but hey…it is what it is). I wanted to grab a few photos of what a funky Mini 14 can look like, but my hands were so dirty and greasy I didn’t want to handle my Nikon camera. After the most recent range visit, I Hoppes No 9’ed the Mini 14 bore for a couple days to get all the copper out (you know, until the patches came out with no green).
There were bits of what appeared to be very thin sheet brass in the bolt around the firing pin as well as a whole bunch of greasy carbon residue in the bolt. That could account for the couple of misfires. Removing the firing pin is not an easy job (it takes a special tool I don’t have or want); the drill here was to shpritz the hell out of the bolt with carb cleaner and work the firing pin back and forth to push the nasty stuff out. The thin brass bits might have been primer cup material. Or they might have been chips from the extraction operation that found their way into the bolt and were peened flat. There’s no way of telling, as some of that ejected brass ends up in the next county (a trait Mini 14s are famous for). By the way, when you’re working with that carb cleaner, you need to do it outdoors where there’s plenty of fresh air. It’s highly flammable and if I use that stuff indoors, I get lightheaded and nauseated pretty quickly.
There was a lot of carbon gunk in the stock channel clear back into the action. There was also a lot of carbon in and on the guide rod, as well as around the extractor. This could account for the occasional failures to eject. I blew it all out with WD 40 (in the stock) and carb cleaner (for the metal pieces). There was so much carbon residue in the stock’s barrel channel that I thought I might have a leak around the gas port, but I didn’t see any carbon residue around the gas port and I’ve got the Allen bolts around that part tightened as tight as I dare go. I tried the smaller diameter aftermarket gas ports last year, but every one of them gave me unreliable function, so I went back to the stock port.
I’ve got a little more than a pound of ARComp, and that has been my “go to” Mini 14 powder for several years. When things started to get tight last year, my reloading outlet had an 8-pound bottle of XBR 8208 (it was the last bottle of anything he had). I had never heard of that powder before but I figured it would work in something, and in poking around on the Internet I found that 8208 gets the nod as a great powder for the .223 cartridge. The hundred rounds I just loaded are with ARComp, but I think I will do another 100 or so with different 8208 charges to see how they do. I’ve still got several hundred 62-grain Hornady full metal jacket bullets and I have another 500 55-grain bullets that just arrived from Midway. And I have small rifle primers and a potful of .223 brass. Unlike a lot of folks, I’m in good shape for .223 for a while (and no, I don’t want to sell or trade any components).
What’s the bottom line to all this? Did the Lee factory crimp die improve accuracy? The short answer is: I don’t know yet. I think it does, but I had too many other things going on with the rifle and the brass to be sure. If you ignore the first two rounds that went low, I think the accuracy edge goes to the Lee crimped ammo. Bear in mind that I was shooting with iron sights at 100 yards, so the differences may be more due to me than anything else. There were only four rounds outside the 10 ring with the Lee ammo; the uncrimped ammo had six rounds outside the 10-ring. But again, it’s iron sights at 100 yards, so who knows?
I’m going to share this post on Facebook, and you can bet some yahoo will tell me that he shoots 1/2-inch groups at 200 yards with open sights on his Mini 14 all day long. Hey, it’s the Internet. You have to ignore those buttheads. As far as the Lee factory crimp die’s accuracy edge goes, I think it’s real. I’ll find out for sure (maybe) the next time I go to the range. Everything in the Mini is clean, lightly oiled, and ready for action. We’ll see what happens on the next outing, and you’ll read about here on the ExNotes blog.
Colt has a custom shop, Remington has a custom shop, Winchester had a custom shop, Savage has a custom shop, Springfield Armory has a custom shop, CZ has a custom shop, and Smith and Wesson has a custom shop. It seemed Ruger was the only one of the big players that didn’t have a custom shop.
That’s changed. Ruger recently announced that they, too, now have a custom shop, except they do things differently. Rather than taking orders for custom features on their regular line of firearms, Ruger’s approach is to produce limited numbers of highly-customized guns. Stated differently, Ruger picks the features they want to add to their custom guns; your choice is to purchase it (or not). It’s not a bad way to go.
Note the new Super GP100’s dark PVD finish, the green fiber optic sight, the slotted barrel shroud, and other custom touches.
Ruger’s two most recent custom shop models are revolvers they call the Super GP100; one chambered in 9mm and the other chambered in .357 Magnum. These revolvers have a number of custom features, including a shrouded and vented barrel, 8-shot capacity and the ability to use star clips for speedy reloads, radically-fluted cylinder (I like the look), PVD (that’s physical vapor deposition) finish, polished and slicked up trigger and internal componentry, oversized Hogue hardwood grip, an 11-degree barrel crown (that’s supposed to enhance accuracy), and a fiber-optic front sight (never had one of those before; I’m eager to see if it really does anything for me).
Befitting its custom status, the Ruger Super GP100 comes with a higher-quality carrying case.
The Super GP is offered in two chamberings: .357 Magnum and 9mm Parabellum. The 9mm version is not approved here in the Peoples Republik of Kalifornia. That’s probably okay, as I would go for the .357 if given the choice. But that’s not a choice that’s going to be offered any time soon. Read on, and you’ll see what I mean.
The 9mm version of Ruger’s new Super GP100 revolver. It looks good. Note the shorter cylinder.
I like the way Ruger handled the 9mm Super GP100. The cylinder is shorter to match the 9mm cartridge, and the barrel extends back into the frame. This means the 9mm bullet has less of a jump to the rifling in the barrel, which should improve accuracy. It’s the same thing Smith and Wesson does on its .45 ACP revolvers.
Ruger doesn’t stock these guns. True to the custom shop concept, Ruger builds them as orders are taken. But it wouldn’t do any good to order one now, unless you just want to get a place in line. Due to the press of handgun orders induced by the election, the pandemic, and the recent civil rioting in major US cities, Ruger has its workforce focused elsewhere on meeting the unprecedented demand for its standard guns. As an aside, it’s tough to buy ammo right now, too, for the same reasons. That’s not bothering me, as I reload on my RCBS reloading gear and I’m well stocked.
I’m in the market for a .357 Mag revolver, but I’ll probably go with a more traditional handgun. Maybe a .357 Blackhawk or a S&W Model 27. I’ll keep you posted.
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Good buddy Greg and I (along with about a gazillion other people) are long term Ruger Blackhawk fans, and last week we were on the range with a new .357 Magnum Blackhawk Greg recently acquired. It’s one of a limited run offered by Talo, a distributor specializing in custom guns from a variety of manufacturers.
Greg’s Blackhawk has a 5 1/2-inch barrel (standard New Model .357 Blackhawks have either a 4 5/8-inch or 6 1/2-inch barrel) and really cool birdseye maple grips (most Blackhawks these days have black plastic grips). The birdseye maple grips contrast well with the Ruger’s deep bluing, and that 5 1/2-inch barrel just flat works on a single action revolver. At 40 ounces (one ounce heavier than a 1911 Government Model .45 auto), the Ruger balances well and feels right. Greg’s birdseye Blackhawk is beautiful, it groups well, and it has a superb trigger. This particular offering from Talo includes an extra cylinder chambered in 9mm, so Greg can use .357 Magnum, .38 Special, or 9mm ammo (I guess he won’t be running out any time soon).
Greg loads the same .357 Magnum ammunition that I do (a 158-grain cast lead bullet with 7.0 grains of Unique), which is the “go to” accuracy recipe in .357 Magnum. It sure shoots well. A target load that is superbly accurate in a Blackhawk is the .38 Special with a 148-grain wadcutter bullet and 2.7 grains of Bullseye propellant (that’s been a preferred .38 Special accuracy load for decades).
Ruger makes a beautiful revolver, and this Talo birdseye Blackhawk’s limited production run almost guarantees these will be investment grade guns. Most dealers are sold out, but if you poke around a bit on Gunbroker.com, you may still find one.
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I had a hard time selecting the title for this blog. I ultimately went with the one you see above because I think it will show up better on the search engines. But I almost went with Stupid is as Stupid Does (you know, from the Forrest Gump movie). Read on. You’ll see.
I am a big fan of the Ruger Blackhawk, and I wanted to try something different a few years ago, so I bought an older .30 Carbine Blackhawk on Gunbroker. I was excited about getting it, but I have to tell you that revolver had issues, one of which led to its ultimate destruction. One issue was that every case stuck in the cylinder after firing, and the other issue was that the cartridges dragged on the frame and the cylinder wouldn’t turn freely.
The first Ruger .30 Carbine I owned. It was the original design, informally referred to as the Old Model. It was a beautiful handgun, but it had problems.
I doped out the cylinder drag issue fairly quickly. You have to trim the brass after nearly ever firing, and you have to make absolutely certain the primer is at or below flush after seating (something you should do for all cartridges). The .30 Carbine is a cartridge that is unusually sensitive to all this in the Blackhawk. .30 Carbine cases shrink in length when fired, and then they grow in length when you resize them. The cartridge headspaces on the case mouth so case length is critical, and the .30 Carbine case seems to grow and shrink more than others. Let it get too long, even by just a few thousandths, and the based of the cartridge will drag on the frame and the cylinder won’t turn freely. I learned to check case length every time I reload this cartridge, and I usually have to trim about half of them.
I use a old Lyman case trimmer I’ve had since the 1970s. It’s a little manual lathe (I’ll let Gresh handle the big ones). That’s a .30 Carbine case you see in there.
The next issue is primer seating. Even though I clean the primer pockets each time I reload, I found that a handheld priming tool won’t always fully seat primers in a .30 Carbine case. Hey, I’m not looking for an argument here and if you can do this with your hand priming tool, more power to you. I’m telling what my experience has been. I have another priming setup (also made by Lee), and it’s the Auto Prime tool that mounts on the press. It positively seats the primer below flush on every cartridge. It’s what I use now when priming .30 Carbine cases.
A Lee Auto Prime tool mounted on an RCBS Rockchucker reloading press. The shell holder mounts on top of the tool (upper arrow). A ram (lower arrow) pushes a machined rod that seats the primers.A .30 Carbine brass case in the shell holder waiting for its primer.A Winchester Small Rifle primer properly seated in a Federal .30 Carbine cartridge case.
All the above is a prelude. I fixed the cylinder drag issue on my first .30 Carbine Blackhawk using the reloading process shown above, but I still had the extraction problem. The cases just did not want to leave the cylinder. The extractor rod was bending and the cases still wouldn’t extract. It was so bad that I usually had to take the cylinder out of the revolver to drive the cases out with a cleaning rod. I tried everything to fix that problem. I polished the chambers and I swabbed them with alcohol to remove any traces of oil (an oily chamber or cartridge case allows brass to flow into any machine marks in the chamber, locking it in place), but I still had the extraction problem.
Then I tried lighter loads. A little bit lighter wasn’t doing it with the propellants I had been using, so I went to Trail Boss (a powder known for working well with lighter loads). That’s how I got in trouble. You have to understand that reloading manuals don’t include data on Trail Boss for many cartridges, and in particular, there was no data in any of the several reloading manuals I own on using this powder with the .30 Carbine. The Trail Boss manufacturer’s guidance is to load to the base of the bullet for a max load, and not less than 70% of that amount as a minimum load. I loaded at just under the max load.
I thought I was doing pretty good when I fired the first Trail Boss load and ejected the case. It extracted easily. This is progress, I remember thinking. Things are looking good. So I fired the remaining four rounds. Then I walked downrange to check the target.
Hmmmm. That’s odd. Not a single shot was on the target. My first thoughts were the load was either terribly inaccurate, or it was so light the bullets were hitting below the target. Then, when I walked back to the firing line, I saw it: A sickening glint of copper peeking out of the Blackhawk’s barrel. A stuck bullet. Five of them, actually. I got a bullet stuck in the bore and didn’t realize it. Then I had fired another, and another, and…well, you know. They liked that barrel, those bullets did, and that’s where they stayed. I felt even worse when I ran my fingers along the length of the barrel. I could feel the swells in its diameter from each bullet to the next. Good Lord, they build Rugers tough (that’s why I’m here to tell this story). Forrest Gump has nothing on me. Like I said at the beginning of this blog, stupid is as stupid does. The weird part to me was that I couldn’t feel anything different when firing the gun.
I was embarrassed and thoroughly disgusted. It was the dumbest thing I’d ever done. When I got home I put the gun in the back of my safe and I left it there for a year. I didn’t want to think about it and I didn’t want to see it. But I knew it was there, bearing silent witness to my stupidity. I wanted to get it fixed, but I didn’t want to admit to anyone I had done something so dumb. The barrel was toast, and the revolver’s frame looked a little distorted to me. Best to just forget about it. Maybe save it for a gun buyback program.
Then one day I figured I had waited long enough, and I called Ruger. I told them my story and the nice lady on the other end told me I wasn’t the first one to call with stuck bullets in the barrel. I felt a little better. I asked if they could re-barrel my Blackhawk. Sure, she said, and off it went. A few days later Ruger called me, and that same nice lady told me a new barrel would be $400.48, but they weren’t too sure about the gun’s structural integrity. Or, they could sell me a brand new Blackhawk. How much would that be, I asked. $400.48, she said. Ah, I get it. What they were really telling me is to buy the new gun at the steeply-discounted price (MSRP on a new .30 Carbine Blackhawk is $669). I was in. Here’s my credit card number. Send me the new gun.
So I received the Blackhawk, but like its predecessor it went in the safe. I still didn’t want to be reminded of what I had done. And, I had managed to convince myself that shooting a 40,000 psi M1 Carbine cartridge in a handgun maybe was just not meant to be. What I was really afraid of was that the new Blackhawk would have case extraction issues like the first one.
Another three years went by, and then something clicked: I woke up and felt like shooting my .30 Carbine revolver. I can’t say why it took three years. It just did. I had the urge and I loaded a box of .30 Carbine ammo in different flavors to test what worked best. And a couple of days ago, we went to the range.
How did it go? In a word, awesome. Take a look:
Six different loads tested on two targets each. All groups are 5 shots, and all are at 15 yards.The loads. My .30 Carbine New Model Blackhawk seems to like everything.
This new .30 Carbine Ruger Blackhawk revolver liked every load I tested. One was exceptional:
The secret sauce: 13.0 grains of 296 and the 110-grain Hornady jacketed soft point bullet. It’s consistent, too.
Shooting a .30 Carbine Blackhawk is fun. You get massive muzzle blast, a huge muzzle flash, and major noise (hey, 40,000 psi is 40,000 psi), but little recoil. And, as the above target and load data show, it is accurate. This puppy can shoot.
You know what else? The spent brass practically fell out of the cylinder when I emptied it. The extraction problem is gone. I’m wondering if something was wrong with the first .30 Carbine Blackhawk that caused the pressures to go excessively high and seize the brass cases in the cylinder (the chamber exit bores could have been too small, or maybe the barrel was undersized). I’ll never know, but I don’t care. This new Blackhawk is a honey.
A bit about the gear I use in my .30 Carbine reloading activities. I use Lee dies, although just about .30 Carbine reloading dies will do the trick. I normally stick with RCBS reloading gear, but I could get the Lee dies quicker so that’s what I bought. I like them. Most of my other reloading gear is RCBS, including the RCBS powder dispenser, the RCBS Rockchucker press, and the scale. Again, any brand will work. In looking at the prices for RCBS gear, I notice that it has become fairly expensive. If you want to get into reloading for a lot less, you might take a look at this LEE PRECISION Anniversary Challenger Kit. It contains most of what you need except for the dies. Knowing what I know after having been a reloader for 50 years, it’s what I would buy if I was starting out all over again.
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A favorite load that seems to work well in any .357 Magnum revolver, including my stainless steel Ruger Blackhawk, is 15.7 grains of Winchester’s 296 propellant and the Hornady 158-grain jacketed hollow point bullet. I use standard rather than magnum primers. This was a 25-yard target.
The .357 Ruger Blackhawk
Ruger’s Blackhawk is an iconic firearm, one that’s been in production since the 1950s in one form or another. I bought my first one in a department store in Texas for under a hundred bucks back in the mid-1970s, and I’ve bought and sold several since. I wish I had not sold any of the Blackhawks.
I’ve owned a few .357 Magnums over the years…Rugers, a couple of Model 27 Smiths, a Model 28 Smith (remember that one?), a Model 19 Smith, and a Model 65 Smith. I’ve owned a couple of Colt Pythons, too. The Pythons were nice, but not nice enough to command the premium prices they pulled in the 1970s, and certainly not nice enough to pull the exorbitant amounts they sell for today. The Smiths were accurate, but they didn’t hold up under constant use with magnum loads. I had a new Model 27 that I wore out in a couple of seasons in the metallic silhouette game; it suffered from extreme gas cutting under the top strap and a cylinder that sashayed around like an exotic dancer in a room full of big tippers. The Ruger Blackhawks seem to last forever.
Every Ruger firearm manufactured in 1976 carries the 200th year bicentennial stamp, just like the one on my 200th year Blackhawk. On my gun, the liberty scrollmark is on top of the barrel.
I’m down to one .357 Magnum now and it’s a 200th year stainless steel Blackhawk with a 6 1/2-inch barrel. It’s one of my favorite revolvers and it’s not for sale (it never will be; I learned my lesson about letting good guns get away). I have a few favorite .357 Magnum loads I’ve used over the last 50 years. I thought it might be a good idea to document how they did in the Blackhawk, try a few more to see how they do, and share it all with you here on the ExNotes blog. I guess this is the appropriate place for the disclaimer: These are loads that work well in my Blackhawk. You should never just take these loads (or any others from the Internet) and simply run with them. Always consult a reputable reloading manual (I like the Hornady and Lyman manuals best). Always start with lower charges and work your way up, looking for any signs of excess pressure, and go no higher if you see signs of excess pressure. Okay, so that’s out of the way. Let’s get to the good stuff.
Last week’s .357 Magnum testing at the West End Gun Club.
.357 Magnum Accuracy Loads
I’ve played with a lot of different .357 Magnum loads over the years. I have a few favorite .357 Mag loads that have been superbly accurate in any of the .357 sixguns I’ve owned. That’s a bit unusual because frequently a load that is accurate in one gun won’t be accurate in another, but that rule doesn’t seem to apply here. The loads I like have worked well for me in any .357 I’ve ever shot. I verified these loads in my Blackhawk with this latest round of testing, and like I said above, I explored a few more loads.
A few of the loads tested for this blog. From left to right, the first five are .357 Magnum cartridges and the last three are .38 Special cartridges (you can fire .38 Special rounds in a .357 Magnum handgun). The bullets (from left to right) are the 110-grain Hornady jacketed hollow point, the 158-grain Hornady jacketed hollow point, the 158-grain Hornady jacketed flat point, the Xtreme 158-grain plated flatpoint, a cast 158-grain flatpoint, a cast 158-grain flatpoint in a .38 Special case, a powder-coated 158-grain semi-wadcutter in a .38 Special case, and the Missouri 148-grain double-ended wadcutter in a .38 Special case.
So, with the above as background info, let’s get into the loads. I’ll start with one of the standard “go to” .357 Magnum loads. That’s the 158-grain cast semi-wadcutter bullet (the Keith-style) over 7.0 grains of Unique. This is not the hottest .357 load (it’s a mild-recoiling .357 Magnum load), but it’s hot enough, it’s very accurate, and it’s relatively flat shooting. I have a guy who casts 158-grain flatpoint bullets for me and I like those with 7.0 grains of Unique even better than the semi-wadcutter bullets. The load is very consistent, and with the same zero and six o’clock hold I use at 50 feet (seen in the target below), I pretty much hit right on target at 25 yards, 50 yards, and yep, even at 100 yards. I was hitting a steel gonger last week at 100 yards consistently with this load. My shooting buddies were impressed, and after all, that’s what a lot of this is all about. This is a good load.
A 50-ft target with the .357 Blackhawk using 158-grain cast flatpoints with 7.0 grains of Unique. Like they say, this is close enough for government work.
For hotter .357 Magnum loads, any of the Hornady 158-grain jacketed bullets (hollow points, flat points, and full metal jacket flat points) work superbly well with 15.7 grains of Winchester’s 296 propellant. These loads have a distinctive bark, high velocities, snappy recoil, and they are superbly accurate.
15.7 grains of WW 296 and the 158-grain Hornady jacketed flat point resulted in the best group fired in this test series. Two shots went through the hole in the lower right.
Another long time favorite load is a bit unusual but it’s accurate as hell. That’s the 110-grain Hornady jacketed hollow point and a max Unique load (10.0 grains of Unique, as listed in a Hornady reloading manual from the 1970s). I first tried this one 40 years ago when I had a Colt Python and I was impressed with its accuracy. I tried it again in this test series and the results were similarly impressive. It’s probably the fastest load I tested because of the max load and the light bullets. My old Hornady manual indicates the 110 grain Hornady bullet with 10.0 grains of Unique exits the muzzle at 1450 feet per second. That’s fast.
If light bullets and high velocity float your boat, try this one (but work your way up to it): 10.0 grains of Unique with Hornady’s 110-grain jacketed hollow point.
Plated Bullets: Are They Any Good?
Surprisingly, the 158-grain plated flatpoint bullets I tested didn’t do well with any charge of Unique, and in the past, they have performed very poorly with 296 (the bullets frequently shed their plating in the bore). These plated bullets are offered by Berry and Xtreme. These are not jacketed bullets; the copper plating is chemically applied and the coating is very thin. I did get one decent showing with a lower-end charge of IMR 4227 propellant, but given the choice, I’d go for a plain cast bullet rather than plated bullets. You may feel differently. Please leave a comment here on the blog if your experience is different than mine.
Powder Coating and Paint Fumes
I tried powder-coated bullets last week, too, to see how they would perform. Powder coating is a concept that’s been around for a few years as an alternative to lubing cast bullets. I found that accuracy was more or less on par with lubed bullets, but not really any better. The powder-coated bullets look cool (the cartridges kind of look like lipstick). When I fired several powder-coated bullets fairly quickly, I could smell the paint. Some folks swear by these bullets and love them for IDPA and similar competitive pistol events. For me, performance was the same as conventional cast bullets. Your mileage may vary. Leave us a comment if you feel differently.
Powder-coated 158-grain semi-wadcutter bullets. I found their accuracy to be comparable to conventional cast and lubed bullets.
A Metallic Silhouette Load
When I shot metallic silhouette competition I used a 200-grain cast roundnose bullet in my .357 Magnum Model 27 Smith and Wesson. That bullet worked extremely well, and because of its heavy-for-caliber nature and high length/diameter ratio, it carried a lot of energy downrange. It was superbly accurate with 12.4 grains of 296. But finding those bullets is next-to-impossible today. It used to be a standard .38 Special bullet for police duty, but very few (if any) departments carry .38s today, and nobody seems to stock the 200-grain bullets. Maybe I need to get back into casting. I sure loved that 200-grain bullet in the .357 Magnum. They actually made the .357 Magnum work better on the 200-meter rams than a 240-grain .44 Magnum. The .44 Magnum wouldn’t consistently take down the rams; the 200-grain .357 Magnum did so every time.
.38 Special Loads
One of the great things about a .357 Magnum handgun is you can also shoot .38 Special loads in it. I guess that’s a good thing, as the .38 Special cartridges have lighter recoil. I tried three .38 Special loads with three different bullets. The accuracy load in .38 Special is a 148-grain wadcutter bullet seated flush with the cartridge mouth over 2.7 grains of Bullseye propellant. That load is super accurate in my Model 52 Smith and Wesson target pistol, and it did okay in the Ruger, too. I’ve always believed that a .38 Special cartridge would never be quite as accurate in a .357 Magnum handgun because the bullet has to make a longer jump to reach the rifling, and my testing last week did nothing to change my mind on that count. The .38 Special does okay in a .357 Magnum handgun, but I believe the best accuracy resides in a .357 case.
.357 and .38 Accuracy Testing Results
Here’s a chart summarizing my accuracy results:
Ruger Blackhawk accuracy testing results. All testing was with a two-hand hold at 50 feet. All groups are five shots. All loads (except the plated bullet loads) were crimped. All cast bullets were sized to 0.358. Note 1: Two shots went off paper. Notes 2 and 3: One shot went off paper.
There you have it. If you have a load that works well, please leave a comment. We’d love to hear from you.
and I’m well stocked.
