MemphisMechanic

Interesting topic idea. Ive always just tweaked my “average” OAL and charge weight until I find something that shoots the smallest group possible, while letting my crappy pickup brass variations do their thing.

Shop-vac. After every session. (If I weren’t renting the house, there wouldn’t still be carpet in the guest bedroom at all.)

I haven’t seen anyone do this before. So. Here’s how I fit all of my reloading gear into the guest room closet: I have been loading in the garage on a spacious workbench for ten years. I do a lot of welding and fab work so grinding dust and clutter and the humidity of a southern climate have always been concerns. I decided to move my 650 / bulletfeeder / all the upgrades setup into the house. I built a very solid but ultra light and compact frame from 1” square tubing and a leftover section of angle iron. Two solidly braced legs and two 3” screws lagging it into the wall studs. Ford blue engine paint matches the Dillon halfway decently (it’s a shade darker) and a red oak stairway plank from Home Depot got coated in polyurethane as the tabletop. My old bench was six legs made with 4x4 lumber and long drywall screws and is not nearly as solid as this. Nothing flinches if you hang off the handle anymore: the old bench had some flex I didn’t notice until now. Additionally I screwed a power strip to the wall next to the door that powers up my lighting and everything else with one flick. Added cheap compact shelving from HD that suited my space. Added wall storage for grip trainers and my USPSA belt rigs. A 24” LED light provides a shocking amount of light in such a small, reflective space. Table is 20” x 18” and the top is 36” from the floor. I’d prefer it to be 2” higher for my 6 foot tall height... but this gives me six inches between the top of the ceiling and the casefeeder. I leave it permanently full now: I can walk in and just resume pulling the handle at any time. I’m trying to load ~50 rounds a day, which is 3-5 minutes of work work with the bulletfeeder added... so I’m never in need of ammo before a match. Ford Blue engine paint from Autozone: Welded up and primed painted: Lagged into two wall studs: Table top installed, no organization on the shelves: Press freshly bolted down. Cords and unorganized mess: Cabled all the cords together neatly, starting to figure out where I want to store things: Finished. Aerosols and such on the door. Belts hung on the wall. A cleaner cardboard box to store tumbled brass on the floor, and the primer catcher kit bolted on to route spent primers into my trash bucket under the bench:

It also heavily depends on the burn rate of the powder that was used.

Johnbu is on the ball. The hammer spring doesn’t have nearly the effect on SA triggers that it does on the DA stroke for the Production guns. Mirror-polish everything and stick a 15.5 or a14 at least in there, and you’ll probably be in love with the trigger.

You’re on the right track. In an el prez a novice will split too fast, and transition too slowly. Their second shot will go wild or low because they didn’t really see the sights on shot 2. Sounds like: “Bangbang! ...bangbang! ... bangbang!” Shooting a cadence will teach you to shoot the complete array in the same overall time with better points. You’ll drop your split times from .20ish to .30ish but you will more than make that up by snapping your eyes and driving the gun with your legs. Instead of what sounded like three double taps, a person in the next bay would hear a steady bang bang bang cadence and not be able to tell how many targets are shot. The trick is not to be a slave to that cadence: if the sights get a little wonky or you transition to a spot in the C Zone accidentally, you need to have the discipline to wait for enough sight picture to know you’re in the A zone.

You’ll find that most of us don’t clean our guns very much. We used to before we got into USPSA, but shooting and practicing multiple times a week fixes that fairly quickly. I’ve gone over 5,000 rounds with every gun I own except my Tanfoglio, and that’s only because I sold it first.

Cadence shooting is not a good habit to fall into in a match environment. It is good, however, for learning how quickly you can accomplish specific tasks - like transitions. You simply don’t give yourself permission to transition slower.

Shoot with a metronome app on your phone. Live fire. (Or just force yourself to shoot a cadence at .25 manually) 7yds. 3 Targets. A yard apart. bang bang bang bang bang bang No exceptions for moving the gun between targets. Fire the second round at that pace anyway, even if it’s a miss. Make yourself snap the gun. Learn to look away from the sights on round #2 and snap them to the new target. Then bring the gun to your eyes. In slow transitions the shooter is always swinging a full sight picture to the new location.

Get some thin high quality skateboard tape. You can buy it off the web. Clean the grips with alcohol. Stick a thin strip of grip tape down the smooth front and back edges of the scales. Heat it with a hair dryer and the glue will really lock in once it cools. The only problem with the scales is the “corners” of the grip are where you most easily apply pressure, and they’re smooth on the ends.

Then you dremel the long one down to fit in the box more easily, beat the frame up enough it blends in, and tell everyone your gun has the new style of frame.

The ones molded into my Walther PPQ. I really liked the SSI scales for my hands though: my palms aren’t ginormously wide and meaty, I just have long fingers. The Patriot Palmswells weren’t for me at all. The scales hit the sweet spot for me: right between the Hennings and the fatter wood or PD grips.

I answered that in the post you quoted. You coat the grip in epoxy and dust black sandblast media onto it.

Cheapest two-piece belt that is high quality? Easy. Shooters Connection’s belt. $40.

Smaller hands. Wants a grip tha doesn’t have skateboard tape (or presumably, silicon carbide glued to it for a similar look.)...? Grippy. Thin. High quality. That’s easy. Put Henning grips on it. I wear a size L glove and all my polymer guns were slathered in grip tape. I found no lack of traction with Hennings- they were just too thin for me and my long, skinny fingers.

Mine gets 20-30 minutes in PetCo lizard bedding, a torn up dryer sheet (absorbs dust) and a pinch of Nu Finish. Come our clean enough. I’d rather hit it with a very light coat of one shot than wait any longer on the buzzbox to clean things. The fastest method to prep so that it glides through the press and the gun? That’s the way I’m going to go. Personally, I think guns with beaten and worn-off finishes have much more curb appeal, and see no need for pristine shiny brass.

Most of us won’t shoot a power pistol & 115gr load because it’s so snappy, but for someone looking for cheap plinking ammo this could be helpful.

This. You’re currently shooting 111 PF. As an experiment, load up some 130ish PF loads and shoot 20 rounds of each over the chrono and shoot them both for groups. There’s a point below which you inherently be inconsistent with any power: for example titegroup behind a 147 @ 120ish PF is beyond filthy and always had a high SD in my experience. Bring the load up to midrange in the book, and both of those things improve sharply. Also echoing the sentiment that anything less than 10 rounds is statistically irrelevant for SD/ES purposes: particularly if you don’t consider your data carefully. Were all of them spread over 100fps? Or did you have 9 close ones and one round 97 FPS slow because some powder slopped out of that case or the bullet was cast a few grains heavier than most of them, or had a defect in the coating.

Because the felt recoil of a faster burning powder is lighter. Slower burning powder = a gun which has more muzzle rise (flip) and what feels like more recoil at the same power factor. Every once in a while we get a newbie coming along who insists this isn’t the case, but light recoil spring + heavy bullet + fast-burn powder actually is the ticket to a flat & soft shooting gun. It seems counterintuitive, but it’s very much the case.

It’s posted on page one. Link to Ben Stoegers site. A sheet of notebook paper with 6 2” circles on it. Starting out, do it at 5 or even 3 yards. Fixed 5 second par time. At the beep, draw and fire six shots without any missing the dot. In Ben’s class our first target was a warmup: dot 1 for sighting in and getting the feel. Dot 2: two shots in 5 seconds. Learn not to rush shot 2 and take all of that time to get 2 clean hits. Dot 3: A slight challenge, 3 shots in 5 seconds on a tiny target from the holster. Dots 5 and 6: obviously, the corresponding # of rounds in 5 seconds. When you master that, shoot the full 36 (each circle gets 6 shots in 5 seconds from the holster) and when you can clean it? Back out a yard and repeat until GM. This drill makes any deficiencies in grip (the sights aren’t aligned or don’t return there) and trigger control (they don’t stay there) glaringly obvious.

They’re all doing it right. That’s the thing that frustrates new shooters. You need to get the sights on target, pull the trigger straight back without moving the gun, and do it using an aggressive enough grip to return the gun back to the A-zone quickly. Thats it. That’s all there is to shooting - it’s not complicated. The complication is that there are a dozen ways to do some of those things that might work for you, and might not. And just because something is simple does not mean that it is easy.

http://benstoegerproshop.com/tanfoglio-witness-g10-textured-grips-by-lokgrip/ ...an alterantive to the Toni’s which I think is similar in profile.

I ran my gun with a completely dry firing pin channel. Always have - from Glock on down through the guns that have replaced it. Never had a problem.

The Scorp Just has more muzzle rise / fet recoil than the other two. Good gun. But you get what you pay for.

If they allowed single action guns in Production (and that’s exactly what your gun would effectively be) there would be even less difference between Production and Lim 10 than there already is.