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Post by AxeHandle on Apr 26, 2015 7:04:21 GMT -5
Hard to beat getting to the range and competing with friends. You'll find that shooting out in the pasture with the guys is fun but just isn't the same. Shoot with the best shooters you can find. You will rise to the level of your competition.
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Post by seancass on Apr 26, 2015 14:46:43 GMT -5
Hard to beat getting to the range and competing with friends. You'll find that shooting out in the pasture with the guys is fun but just isn't the same. Shoot with the best shooters you can find. You will rise to the level of your competition. I agree! A small event like the Texas Stars, I was immediately competitive and eventually strung a few wins in a row and won the bracket. However, at USPSA, I'm SO FAR behind the curve it's hard for me to even see how I could be competitive, let alone get towards winning! I haven't quit yet, I think I could learn a lot if I stick with it.
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Post by seancass on Jan 14, 2016 18:34:06 GMT -5
I figure now that it's the off-season, I should update this thread. Since we last chatted, I've started shooting it more regularly. Nearly every weekend in fact. Sometimes more than once per weekend. Something beyond 30 competitions. Something closing in on ten thousand rounds down the tube. After several competitions and speaking with a Grand Master shooter I decided to do a little tweaking to the gun it's self. As I said at the beginning of the thread, the action of this gun wasn't good. It smoothed out with a few thousand rounds, but it still wasn't as good as it should be. The above mentioned master also happens to be quite the gunsmith. I think he took pity on me and gave me a good rate on the work. Pictured below is the result. Fully polished guts, heavily chamfered chambers, lightly polished forcing cone and a recut crown. More visually obvious than all of that is the chopped hammer. Chopping the hammer lets you chop the weight of the main spring and still get solid strikes on the primer. Well, mostly solid. This gun is running so light, I must run Federal primers. This is very common in racing style guns. This action is slick. The trigger weight was cut in half. Before it was about 12 lbs. You could pick up a dumbbell with the trigger! Now, it's about 6 lbs. What a trigger, I had to relearn how to shoot the thing! Totally different animal! Around this time, I also added the big-butt grips. They also require some adjusting. Suddenly your off-hand pinky was directly involved in steering the gun. Very unusual. But it works! Now that I had a proper racing machine, I had to take it racing. I tend towards the slow-and-steady mentality, so racing doesn't really make sense as a hobby for me. Fortunately, I've had a couple good coaches thru the year and met lots of great people. After nearly a year of competing I've reached a level where I'm just good enough to see all my mistakes and get mad at them, but not good enough to stop making all those mistakes. My main game is USPSA. It's all about speed. It does require a bit of equipment. You'll need a holster and a way to carry about 50 rounds of ammo. The longest stage is 32 rounds, but misses or strange reloads happen and necessitate extra clips and ammo. It's very convenient to add a competition belt to that list. It is made of two separate belts, an inner belt thru your loops and an outer belt that holds the holster and mag holders. The two belts are held together by velcro. The game I really enjoy is steel shooting. This typically involves only a few targets, but you shoot the array 3-5 separate times and your score is the sum of your individual times. Steel shooting lets you try and try again. I like that. In many matches, your slowest time is thrown out! So you shoot a stage five times, but only the four fastest times count. I really like that! Steel shooting also levels the playing field. Without reloads, the revolver can run right with the semi-autos. Well, most of them! That brings me to the best part of racing a revolver: Surprising people! You can really raise some eyebrows when you start beating a few guys with your lowly little revolver. I still remember an early match when a guy I get along with well got Mad at the world when I beat him on a stage. Some folks have a hard time believe that a Glock could ever be beaten by some silly old revolver. Fortunately, in racing, there's always somebody faster to put you back in your place! (Did i mention the Grand Master revolver shooter? Yeah winning isn't really an option for me...) I dragged a couple of my friends to a competition. If you haven't tried it, find something local, preferably a Steel match, and get to it. If you really want to raise some eyebrows, take your revolver! You'll notice in the pics that this gun is dirty. Well, it's lightly cleaned, not dirty. This is a working gun. It gets cleaned when it needs it, not before. And certainly not for a photo shoot!
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Wasp
.30 Stingray
Posts: 312
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Post by Wasp on Jan 15, 2016 1:02:49 GMT -5
Thanks for the update, I'm still reading some of the rest. I really like that revolver for all that it is and especially the 9mm part. Wish they made it in a 4".
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Post by AxeHandle on Jan 15, 2016 7:57:50 GMT -5
Go to see the moon clip issue on these guns yesterday on the range. Unlike all my 45 ACP revolvers, that camber and fire factory ammo but have headspace issues with my handloads, this 9mm revolver seems to have chambers that are just to big to headspace on the case mouth with factory ammo and require moon clips to headspace properly.
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Post by seancass on Jan 15, 2016 8:06:02 GMT -5
Axe, my gun isnt even close to being chambered in 9mm! More like 38 Super! A 9 sinks to flush with the cylinder, about an eighth inch from the firing pin. It completely spaces off the moonclip. This makes moonclip selection important in theory, but the three versions I've tried all work. A fourth version, called super thick or max thickness, caused a different issue. It grabbed the round like a vice, which i loved. Unfortunately it made rim thickness too critical and some cases ran too tight for my comfort. They pressed hard to frame(?) and made the action hard to cycle/rotate.
Not captured in my pictures, the firing pin shroud(?) Is slightly convex, dished outward. Can exasperate the above issue and make every primer show high pressure when it's not there. Primers from this gun are always super flat, you'd swear i was shooting magnums.
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Post by contender on Jan 15, 2016 8:22:43 GMT -5
I've been shooting USPSA for a bit over 15 years now. Mostly,,, I've used a 1911 45. But a few years ago,,, I scored a S&W 646 in .40 S&W with the idea of having some fun in the revolver category. I didn't run out & spend a lot of $$ right away,,, as I wasn't in a hurry. I studied things a bit. I got a holster, a spare belt, changed grips, some action work, added an extended cylinder release, received a competition moon carrier as a B-day gift, bought clips, etc. Well, just about the time I was ready to start shooting classifiers with it,,, the revolver bunch got into using the 9mm S&W 8 shot guns like yours. It seems the gamer guns are all 9mm & 8 shot now. I'm back seat again. But my USPSA shooting is more for fun & practice than winning. So, I've shot my classifiers & I'm having some fun. I've shot a few matches,,, and I can see where I need to have a few more little things done to make the gun a bit better, and I need to work on my skills a bit more. Too many years of SA shooting has affected how I shoot a DA revolver. I recall this thread, and have enjoyed following your progress.
I made a de-mooning tool out of an old golf ball water retrieval handle. It has a plastic handle, easily cut off to a usable length, easily notched to work on de-mooning. They are aluminum, and can be found in yard sales or junk bins at places like Goodwill.
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Post by Alaskan454 on Jan 15, 2016 21:44:08 GMT -5
Not captured in my pictures, the firing pin shroud(?) Is slightly convex, dished outward. Can exasperate the above issue and make every primer show high pressure when it's not there. Primers from this gun are always super flat, you'd swear i was shooting magnums. My 625 does the same thing, looks even more pronounced since switching to the Apex firing pin. Minimum loads with Trail Boss look like I was shooting a 454.
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Post by cas on Jan 16, 2016 13:56:10 GMT -5
Nice setup there. I miss shooting revolver, it was my favorite division, but the 8 shot rule disgusted me so much that I gave it up. Revolver was the one division where everyone was fairly equal equipment wise (with 90-95% of the people shooting 625's) and then they went and forced anyone who wanted to stay competitive to spend a couple grand on new equipment.
The irony is a few years back I was looking for one of the 8 shot .38 Super's to shoot in Limited-10 and Production. Now I can buy one and shoot it in revolver and I have no interest.
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