Cherryriver

I'm taking the liberty of rolling this one back up to the top because the WGR is only three weeks out and we still have a good twenty slots available. Sign up now, good people! The Bruce Cook barbeque is worth the trip all by itself.

As soon as I finish washing my head out with bleach to get rid of these mental images... US31 is that big four-laner going north past the airport. It hooks up with I80/90, the Indiana Toll Road, which cuts the south edge of Michiana Regional. A lot of hotels are on the roads kicking off to the east of 31, including and especially Cleveland Road- which is where the Super 8 is that I'm staying at. Take 31 north to US12, turn left at the bottom of the ramp, go just a little bit west to Mayflower Road, where the gigantic truck stop is. Incidentally, the Diesel Diner there is perfectly good and we do all kinds of non-spooned meetings there. Go north on Mayflower about a half-mile and keep your eyes peeled for the club gate and sign on the left/west side. See you out there. Writing up the stages tomorrow for a match book. The rest of you guys... sign up so it doesn't get so obvious JD's more popular than I am.

I'm aware of a tolerably decent strip mall sports bar on Cleveland Road just east of US 31... is that it? Chicagoans are so fussy about cuisine, you know.

I'm pleased to announce that Bruce Warren of East Leroy, Michigan is sponsoring six shooters to the WGR. Bruce is fine revosmith and the proprietor of BC Armory. Be sure to thank him when you see him on the range. And... those of you who still haven't gotten your applications in... only 39 more days left! Bill

Entries are finally starting to come in at a better pace for the 13th Wheelgunner's Revenge, July 17th, 2011. So are sponsors. Tom of TK Custom is not only sponsoring, he's offering a free entry to a female competitor. Get back to me if you have an interested person of the female persuasion wanting to shoot on TK's dime. He'll be on site with moonclips on the prize table and a vendor table of his own to display his wares. Entry forms are available for printing yourself at http://www.borcc.org/icore/2011/ICORE%202011%20APPLICATIONREVB.pdf or you can shoot me your postal address and we'll mail you one. For those wishing to pitch in, I'm planning to do stage building on the Thursday, the 14th, and Friday, the 15th. Staff shoot will be Saturday late morning after final paper hanging and tuning, and then Sunday's showtime. In the past, once everyone's done gorging themselves on Bruce Cook's sensational barbeque, most folks are able to hit the road by around 2 or 3-ish, eastern time. We're back to eight field courses and one classifier at the moment, as the planned range construction hasn't happened. Hope to see you down on the range. Bill Zeller, MD

Dean- Thanks for coming down. It was great having you and Darren on the range. We got lucky on the weather, too. Hope to see you at Bend for the WGR. I'll be saving that parking spot for you...

Time to bring this one back to the top and to everyone's attention. We had another planning meeting last night and Danielle tells us that the registrations are running behind compared to last year. The WGR has a proud (recent) history of filling up to the cap of 100 and I'll be needing to get some more folks signing up. Kick back to me if you'd like a registration form sent. JD mailed out some to past participants, too. There's eight field courses and a classifier planned for this year. The round count isn't finalized yet but should be along the lines of 210-220. Setup, stage design, and stage director help can still be used. Much of this is settled but more hands make for lighter work. Staff gets the shirt included with the reduced match fee. Bend of the River Conservation Club is in Niles, Michigan, ten miles north of South Bend, Indiana's Michiana Regional Airport (and I-80/90 Indiana Toll Road US31 exit). There are good motels around the airport; I prefer the Super 8 on the north side off Cleveland Rd. It's barely 15 minutes up US31 to US12 and Mayflower Road. www.borcc.org

Wait... isn't Tom M. coming Saturday and Tom E. coming Sunday?

Hello, all Well, the bay reconstruction went down to the last few days but it got done in time, so... This Sunday, May 22nd at 9am will be the Will County Wheelgunners first ICORE action revolver match of 2011. The newly-recut bays at Oak Park are beautiful and safe. We look forward to taking advantage of them with six stages, three field courses, an all-steel stage, and two classifiers for a total of 123 rounds. The match fee will be $20, $15 for Oak Park SC members. You will need a safe holster that covers the trigger guard and holds the revo securely. In ICORE, all reloads come from the belt. You'll need at least four, preferably more, speedloaders or moonclips, and belt carriers to suit. The ICORE power factor requirement is 120K, bullet weight times velocity. More on the rules is available at the ICOREpage. Oak Park's page is here. The club is in Plainfield, IL, just off I-55 at the Rt. 126 exit. Setup is Saturday morning before, starting at 8am. Help is needed to haul props down the drive to the new bays; a flat snowmobile trailer would be even better. This time, we will experiment with a Saturday shoot-through. After setup, those who have helped may shoot through immediately for a $15 match fee. There are some Sunday match conflicts, we know, so we're hoping this helps. Any questions contact Bill Zeller at bill@exceltraininggroup.com See you out there, Bill

Tom- Always an honor and a pleasure to be on the range with you. Consider your slot on Saturday to be secured. I hope to be able to get first shot off around noon, Eastern. That should give your Glide plenty of time to mosey on down I-94 and join us. Thanks Bill

The ICORE Central States Regional is Sunday, July 17th, 2011. Planning is of course underway and some things are already done. A couple of sponsors are on board, the food (the food) is mostly settled, and now it's time to bring in the troops. Help with stage building, stage design, and props management is next on the agenda. To that end, the first of the planning meeting breakfasts is this Sunday, March 27th, 2011, at 7am Eastern at the Diesel Diner just south of the club at the junction of US Route 12, US Route 31, and Mayflower Road (the road the club's on). Here's to all of the volunteers who make a good match happen. If you're in the southwest Michigan area and would like to chip in, there'll be a place for you at the breakfast table. Further meeting announcements as they come up. Thanks Bill Zeller WGR 13 MD

I was in the squad. It was the first time I ever heard a bunch of typical USPSA hotshots saying they were glad it was a revolver! Could you imagine an open gun skittering around on the floor? Gave everybody the willies. Don't know if I've ever seen a better sport about getting the DQ. It so happened I ROed the same stages the next day of the match. I was glad of the cautionary tale we had to tell aspiring rocketeers... and one guy went ahead and got so close to the orange grabber that I could hardly see daylight between his 1911 muzzle and the wicker, all while we were going about a hundred mph. It wasn't gonna be good.

We're looking forward to the 13th Wheelgunner's Revenge at beautiful Bend of the River Conservation Club in Niles, Michigan Sunday, July 17th, 2011. This is the ICORE Central States Regional match. We'll be limiting the number of shooters to about 110 at this time pending some range expansion that might be in the works. The last two years we sold out early, so get it in your sights and get your application in. The app is here. For the time being, we're looking at seven good-sized field courses (as Bend is so famous for) and two classifiers. Another field course is a possibility but we won't know for sure until May. The round count should run into the 200 range. Bend is about ten miles north of South Bend (Indiana) airport and there's hotels in the area. We'll have some more of that support kind of info later in a separate website. We're at work planning the stages and securing the sponsorship ties. If you have any questions on these or any other topics, please e-mail me, Bill Zeller, the match director, at billATcherryriverDOTcom. Past match director JD Cleminshaw is still on hand and still involved, but he's been promoted to ICORE Competition Director, a job anyone who's shot this match lately will tell you is an appropriate position. See you out there in July. Bill

I heard a call to action! Well, there's lots of things I should know about my Mk VI .45ACP clunker, but here's the whole story. I bought it out of a shoebox of Mk VIs back around '75, for $75. I used the then-current half-moons in it and just plain shot the same ammunition I was feeding my Combat Commander. Many years later, having spent serious money on a new 625 in the interest of competing in the cardboard sports, and finding it unpleasant to shoot, filled with a depressing amount of dross, and none-too-reliable in the ignition department, I remembered the old Limey buried on a garage shelf, loaded with 250gr Keith semi-wadcutters as the garage-stash gun. Lo and behold, the full moons of the '90s worked perfectly and off I went. I shot the thing with everything from Winchester White Box to cruddy old reload rejects- just like always, it shoots anything you can cram in the capacious chambers. It does, oddly, seem to love jacketed bullets. Never expected that. It's really almost accurate with the White Box, excepting the old V-notch rear sight confounding my now-older eyes. In one of the more bizarre days of my competition "career", I did an all-classifier match about three years ago and was mysteriously spot-on with my shooting and everything else. I actually classified "B", far above my native skill and practice level, and so pretty much gave myself a hoot and a half over the goofiness of it all. Yeah, I shouldn't be shooting full-power stuff by the thousands. I shouldn't have lightened the pull by bending the mainspring with a drill rod a la Colt's factory method. I shouldn't have cleaned up the finish. And I certainly ought not to be shooting it in USPSA. But I did, and still occasionally do despite my pretty much abandoning revo division in USPSA now that it's strictly an eight-shot game, and I still get a huge kick out of innocent ROs flinching when the smoking empty moons launch over my shoulder straight at them. Guess I shouldn't do that, either. Still another thing I shouldn't do is post the only video I have of it in action. Since I blew the stage by taking an unnecessary shot at the swinger after already two-alpha-ing it, I look even dumber than usual, not to mention the 30-some pounds I since left off the spare tire carrier. Still, the gun works and if the distance isn't so far I lose the little front sight in the haze, it works okay. And, it's entertaining as hell.

I hesitate to chime in with my own brutish method in the midst of all of the elegant and sophisticated solutions presented here, but for the terminally lazy, the bandsaw-in-one-piece method is fast if ugly and not likely to get you the pretty girl on the range. Here's a picture. The key element is the V-block. Similarly crude, all it is is a nice 2x4 block with a V bandsawn into the middle. It hold rounds... like dowels, or pipe, or Comp III handles. This really should be done with a metal-cutting, finer-toothed blade, but I'm out of serviceable 18tpi blades so I just hauled off and cut. I go a trace shy of the centerpost and then finish the cut with a utility knife, then dress the holes a little and go. Hard to believe I once was a cabinetmaker, huh?

I think I go with the weak hand reloads most of the time because of two things: one, I saw Miculek's vid with the weak hand 625 reload and just went with it; and two, the worst thing about my shooting is my terrible grip. After many decades as a carpenter, where you learn to relax your hold on the tool just before impact so as to save your hand, wrist, and elbow, changing back to where you keep a solid hold is tough for the weak-minded. So keeping the gun in the shooting hand during the process helps me with the grip problem slightly. If you do go with the weak-hand reload, learn to curl your right hand's index finger into the frame window and against the open cylinder. It helps to stabilize everything and keeps the cylinder from turning in case you're fishing for holes. All this is inoperative when I'm working the Webley, my regular USPSA Revo gun. It simply must be reloaded strong hand since the left is holding the barrel after the break. I go speedloaders/weak hand in IDPA and ICORE.

Here's hoping Hop comes to the 2011 Wheelgunner's Revenge Central States Regional on July 17th and wins it all again. It was a pleasure having such a gentleman on hand. It's my privilege to take over as match director this year. What with all of the improvements Bend of the River has seen lately, mostly driven by the Michigan USPSA Sectional match in September, 2010, we should be able to do a bang-up job again. Planned are six field courses and two classifiers. Hope to see a bunch of you. On the other topic here about ICORE local struggles, I happened to have started a new local at another club I belong to in the SW Chicagoland area, Oak Park SC in Plainfield, IL. I guess our turnouts were good- the four matches we had in 2010 were 28, 27, 24, and 20. Unfortunately, I've lost the battle for 2011 dates and at the moment I can't even get a Sunday to work with. I will be considering moving the local an hour east to another club with dates to spare. If it's not one thing, it's the other.

Thought I'd roll this one back up for a look. Folks in the Chicagoland area, southwest and all points, head on over on Sunday the 14th. We're off I-55 at the Illinois Rt. 126 exit, a little ways north of I-80. www.opsc.ws Weather? Of course it'll be hot and sunny like it always is at our ICORE matches. We have some new and better bays to work with (even though the grass hasn't gotten going yet) and are looking at four or five field courses and one or two classifiers. Setup is early the Saturday morning before. We could use a hand or two. Lots of folks are looking to get classified in Classic Division and so we're looking at ways of piling on some extra CS stages. We're considering doing an indoor one during the winter in our indoor range. If there's enough interest to round up 12-18 shooters we could do that. We have a quick-change setup in mind to make it all fit into a morning. Since we share the range with PPC on second and third Sundays, a Saturday could even be a choice.

Wanna see my switch key? The irony here is that my several decades of volunteer work in the "rail heritage movement" were spent working on an electric line; electrics, being the precursor to the diesel-electric, arguably being the real beginning of the end for steam traction. Be that as it may, yours truly goes agape at the sight, sound, and smell of the giant teapots as thoroughly as anyone. Oh, and wheelguns as well. See you all at the Wheelgunner's Revenge next July in Michigan! (Felt I had to get that revo reference in somehow.)

Revolvers are the sort of machine that wears a lot of its guts on the outside. You can see the cylinder going around, you can see the sweep of the trigger powering all that whirly stuff, you can see the hammer cycling, and during the reload, you can see all kinds of important mechanical gadgets and even, all of the chambers. Not so much with autos. Get up with the modern ones with strikers and you can't even pick up that little bit of hammer moving action. Everything seems to be going on inside, where it's an unseen mystery. The best analogy I've ever come up with is locomotives. A half-dozen brilliantly efficient EMDs can gurgle by, producing horsepower by the many thousands with calm, even effortless, slickness. They work so well we almost cease to marvel at 10,000-plus tons of freight under the sweatless control of a single operator. But let a steam locomotive clank by and crowds gather by the zillions, snapping photos and inhaling coal smoke (and getting pelted with cinders), breathless and completely in thrall by all of the motion. The steam locomotive wears its guts on the outside, just like revolvers. The wheels are seven or more feet tall and turn like vertical merry-go-rounds. The main rods are almost the size of a man's trunk and fly, absolutely fly, back and forth with impossible speed, seemingly ready to launch off into the sky... but they don't. There's fire and smoke and steam everywhere, pouring out of stacks and pop valves and slide valves and who knows how many leaks. That's the enchantment- mechanical activity. So it goes for revolvers. You can see stuff happening. Now, for the disclaimer- revos actually have all kinds of teeny, flimsy little guts things under the plate that aren't too keen about either daylight or dirt. They're touchy in the real world and need more fussing and cleaning. And, heaven knows, reloading. Revolvers never stop demanding to be refilled. In fact, I tell newcomers on the USPSA range that revolvers are easy to spot: they're the ones that are almost always empty.

I may be biased as all heck, speaking as a staffer and "honorary" Bend member, but I came away amazed at a couple things, even my jaded self. The stages were just excellent, uniformly thought-provoking, complex, with all kinds of possibilities, the best of USPSA stage design. Every single one of them was absolutely top-rank, yet memorably different. Things ran well and I can't say I've ever had more fun working a match. The folks we had working on the match were just plain great- as usual- and it was a pleasure "working" (if you could call having that much fun "work") with the shooters, who were just terrific to us, too. Of course, the lunch barbecue gets mentioned, because it's about as good as pork gets. Lots of "mmmm-ing" going on in the clubhouse. Extra-special mention ought to go out to the match directors, Paul Eger, Larry Hupp, and Dave Warren. Along with the other Bend guys, they worked harder than ever getting the range ready, the props made and refurbed, and the whole thing set up to a T. Nice work, lads, and it's a privilege to be able to lend a hand to your superhuman efforts. Rangemaster Jon was supremely professional, too, and very generous with his time for this club match director with all kinds of arcane rules questions. Pardon rolling the credits here. Kudos deserved by many. I haven't had a better (multi-day) weekend in a long time. Thanks!

34s are six-shooters, at least the older ones.

Whoa, you sure provoked a looong reply from Mr. Bubber, there! The postal stages are something more akin to classifiers, or standards as they might be called in USPSA. They have less movement than what we think of for field courses; more like the old '70s box-to-box sort of design. But for a newer competitor, that's actually good. There's a bit less to memorize in terms of stage planning so you can keep the targets in sight. Since you're already experienced in IDPA SSR, though, I'd say stop thinking and start stapling targets up. Actually, when I describe ICORE to other action pistol shooters, I call it USPSA gone six-shot neutral but with more demand for center-ring accuracy. In ICORE's time-down scoring (really, more akin to IDPA's), if you get a C (charlie), that's kind of bad. Get four charlies on a field course and you're toast- eight seconds are added to your stage time. The accuracy emphasis tends to mitigate the slowness of the constant reloading. If you can shoot a match all alphas and bravos, you'll be way near the top overall, no matter what else you do (apart from procedurals, of course).

For this neck of the woods, $400 is indeed a good price for a quality gun. Of all the guns I've sold and regret selling, the 34 I bought new in '75 for my small-handed wife might be the most regretted. I've since gotten an older 63, the same but stainless. Fitted with a superb rosewood Eagle grip it's my basic trainer and many a newbie has fired their first shot with it. I'd trade it in a blink for a 34, though... that old blue gun still rides near the top of my favorite guns memories.

The Will County Wheelgunners, the ICORE affiliated club based in Plainfield, Illinois invites one and all to our third and last outdoor club match of the 2010 season at 9am CST, Sunday, November 14th, 2010. The WCWs are based at the Oak Park Sportsmens Club located at 14732 W. Frontage Road, Plainfield. This is just off of the Rte. 126 exit of I-55, about 40-some miles southwest of downtown Chicago. Full directions are available at the club's website at www.opsc.ws. If you're around and can help, we set up at 8am of the Saturday morning before. We can always use a few extra hands. We're expecting to have five field courses and a classifier, maybe even two. There is significant bay construction going on at OPSC and we're hoping the bulldozer man gets those forty loads of fill we just got dumped at the south end of the property turned into some new bays. If we get more bays, we'll add another classifier. Match fees this year have been fifteen bucks for non-club-members. Feel free to contact me if you have any questions.