CocoBolo

Sold my U die after I got the G-RX. Have run about 3000 cases thur it shot more than 1000 of those with no issues. All were from the reject bucket that the UDie could not handle. Spray some one shot in a plastic bag throw the brass in shake it around run it thru the G-Rx put it back in the tumbler to get rid of the One Shot, toss it in the case feeder and load it. I still drop check every round after loading, thats when you will find one that has split or missed getting a primer etc. Now that my brass isn't fat on one end I can get one more round in the mag, nice to pony up with 22. In 38 Super Comp I use a CasePro 100, cost $400 used, G-Rx seems to work just as well for 40 and its a whole lot cheaper. If you have not noticed 40 brass is getting harder to find, eveyone is reolading and not much once fired hitting the ground.

I just looked over the stages and decided I made the right choice to leave the open gun at home and shoot Limited. Looks like a good mix of run and gun and plant and shoot. That BadBill is not a stage to win but it is definately a stage to lose the match on. Weak hand tight no shoots can lead to lots of negative points, I shoot better and faster weak hand anyway, I'm cross eye dominant. I looked at the VA-MD results and looks like you got a few sandbaggers roaming the woods up there. We don't see any C class shooters doing 92.89+% in a major match down this way, and if they happen to win their class they get the boot up to B. Looks like it is going to be a great match and the weather up there looks like winter compared to the 104 we have been shooting in here. Great stages Alan.

I sold my U Die, the G-Rx has cured the problem. I started with a 2lb Coffee can of Brass that the U-Die would not size, aka fat boys. I ran all of them thru the G-Rx and then loaded them up to major power factor and shot them in Local matches. This was just over 1000 rounds. No jams no heads blown off brass just sweet shooting fun. For lubricant, I put the brass in a plastic bag spray some one shot in there shake it up a bit and run them thru the G-Rx. Once that is done I put them back in the tumbler to get the One Shot off of them else they get funky in the case feeder. I like the clean and shiney. I still drop check every round, since I load very long they go in backwards and forward to make sure that they are crimped and that the are not bulged. I'm thinking about getting rid of the reject bucket but you still have a missed primer here and there so I will just have to keep it.

I use MTG and Zero. I prefer the Zero as it takes less powder for the same PF. The MTG will take about .2gr more to achieve the same velocity.

I have to agree if you are thinking new go for a Custom built gun the extra bucks will be some of the best money you spend. If $400 breaks the deal you can't afford to shoot it anyway as a case of bullets even cheap ones is $295. I have a Briley and a Competitor, these are at the extremes of lite and heavy, I like the way the lite gun drives but I prefer the feel of the heavy gun. Open is much more complex than people think when it comes to the gun, and it is a lot harder to shoot well than you expect. I have seen several production shooters and limited shooters switch and it slows them down for about 3 months, some don't make the transition they go back. If you can take few for a test drive you can figure out which one works best for you. If you check this forum, uspsa, gunbroker and gunsamerica every day you will see a lot of open guns come and go. Most of the time they are cheaper than limited guns, problem is you don't know if they are any good or not, its a crap shoot you might win and you might lose. Safe moneys on the Bedell, Millenium, Brazos. Jordano has a good deal on this forum for a starter gun just to get your feet wet in open.

At just about any major match you will find more Limited shooters than any other division and 99% of them are shooting 40 and 95% are reloading. I reloaded about 15,000 to 20,000 40's in the past year. I blew the top off of two cases. So I'm retiring some of my older brass. The EGW U die will help a bit with the buldged brass but the cure is the Redding G-RX its a 100% cure. The safest way to reload 40 is to use Lead or Moly coated bullets as you can make power factor with quite a bit less powder. In a 180gr jacketed its 5.0 gr of N320 but a 185gr Precision Moly will make major with only 4.4gr of N320. Less pressure, less recoil, and less flip = go faster and safer. Load them as long as will fit and run in your gun. You have already established your preference for a heavy gun with the SP01, forget the plastic lite weights, so the choice has to be if your going to shoot single stack or limited. In limited by order of cost I recommend 2 guns CZ 75TS, STI Edge. A used Edge shoud run about $1500.

Down here we got us a career slacker. He is alergic to tape. Set up, no how, arrives at that last moment before the hammers start falling, tear down, no he just tore outa here. He's a BigDawg, causes lots of delays and his middle name is ReShoot, a mike or a no shoot and its has to be a reshoot. One club gave him some static so he is boycotting their match. Thats $20 bucks they don't need. I'm going to save that much money in Sun Screen because the match will be over before I'm too darn old to drive home. Matches are fun and it is more fun when all pitch in and help out.

Is someone trying to say that the plastic C-More body is more rigid than the Aircraft Aluminum mount, I'm not buying it. I never carried locktite in my bag till I started shooting open, nor did I carry every type a Allen wrench and star wrench, open guns take a tremendous pounding. I even had to locktite the grip screws in the darn thing so I could finish a match. Nice Videos.

I use pretty much the same procedure outlined in the pervious post doing all the case prep in a cheap lee single stage press $24.00 with a Lee Loading Book. You will need a media seperator getting the corn out of the cases without one is agony. Also you will need to take an extra step to get the corn out of the primer pocket hole after the second tumbling, I use the lee trimmer shaft for this. Once cases are ready I just run them thru my Hornady Lock and Load and it goes very fast. Developing a load is I think the hard part. You need to make several loads at different powder levels then shoot them to find which one groups the best. This varies by gun and in my case I had a great load then put a comp on and it went to horrible and I had to go thru the same process. A 1/2 grain +- can move bullet impact 12 inches at 100 yards. I last loaded BLC(2) with Hornady 55gr FMJBT with between 26 and 28.1 gr and 28.1 started to do bad stuff to weak cases. I can pickup a 1000 or more cases at any carbine match as no one wants to do the work to reload them, so brass is basically free like 9 mm.

I was shooting limited with a CR Speed WSMII, bought a GoldTeam with a Ghost. After using both with Tanfoglio and with STI's I prefer the Ghost. I had two incidents with the CR Speed where the gun was knocked out of the holster. One was adjusting the carry on my range bag aka stupid. The second was while tapeing targets another shooter bumped the gun out of the holster. It is darn near impossible to kock the gun out of a ghost if it is locked. If you watch most CR Speed holster users draw you will see that the bottom of the holster comes out from the leg because it is hanging up I had the same issue because it is darn near impossible to pull exactly 90 degress up perfectly every time. With the Ghost it just comes out every time no matter what messed up angle you grab it at. I have never had my gun fall from the Ghost. The Ghost does not have the adjustment range of the CR Speed which can be tilted to illegal angles. With a CR Speed you may draw the gun with the holster locked, you are not going to be able to do that with a Ghost. My make ready always includes taking a sight picture so I have not had any trouble with trying to draw with it locked. I sold the GoldTeam to Jordano and he got a Ghost Block with the gun. I use my Ghost with 5 guns, 2 open, 2 limited, and a Caspian Single Stack at steel matches all with no adjustments. The other holster I like is the LimCat, it is very similar to the Ghost.

I must have a better chrono than your's shooting N320 with Precison (Moly) 185's my major load was only 4.4 gr out of my Edge. (both of them one has 40K rounds the other has <1K). +1 on WST 4.7-48.gr with 185gr Precision loaded at 1.185. For jacketed 180 you will need to bump it up to 5.1-5.2 gr.

San Antonio TX. Alpaha Mike Shooters about 50, BulletHole USPSA - 25, RiverCity - 50, and Austin Lonestar Practicle Pistol Club - 45. Texas Tatactical Carbine - 60 (IDPA)

Welcome to the forum. When I got started in reloading about 20,000 rounds ago or 1 1/2 years ago, I knew I would be doing 4 pistol calibers and a rifle or two. This put the SDB out to pasture. Looking at cost as it is a factor I went with the Hornady Lock and Load rather than a Dillon. Hornady has improved their LNL the past year with a better ejector. I loaded 1,000 rounds of 38 Super Monday night and last night in a couple of hours I loaded 800 rounds of 40 S&W. I also load 9 mm, 45 ACP, and 357 mag as well as .223 Rem on the loader. I have only one loader. Most of the Dillon guys I know have more than one. One friend of mine has 1 SDB, 2 550's, and a Super 1050, I load more ammo than he does. Most reloaders I know have Dillon but what gets me is if you talk about switching to another round they start crying like a little girl. With the Hornady and I have a case feeder switching to the next caliber is 5 minutes even going from small to large pistols primers. Definately go full progressive. I recently had a couple of squibs. Advice here is do not go to happy hour and come home and expect to produce good ammo. You will need a dial caliper to measure the length. If you go with a digital scale also get a beam scale, the digitals tend to get a little flakey from time to time especially when they get cold so its always nice to have the beam to double check the load. I recommend the Horandy Dies even in a Dillon 550 or 650. Good Luck and happy reloading.

Just shot my second match with the Quinn, I am buying a second Quinn for my primary gun. The darn ugly bugger is the greatest thing since sliced bacon. I am left eye dominant right handed and shoot with both eyes open by putting the gun in front of the left eye. I have not trouble shootling Iron sights. As mentioned earlier when bending down and around corners etc I had the C-more challenge of finding the dot, off the draw I had no problem. I move my eyes to the next target then bring the gun in front of the eye, dot or iron sight break the shot. I call all my shots with my eyes can't see the holes. No I didn't devote every waking hour to dry fire, I did about 15 min a day and shot open for six months, I was ready to sell both my open guns and all the bullets powder etc. So I tried the Quinn now I think I can do it and still enjoy shooting limited when I want with little or no adjustment. I saw a GM that shoots only open for many years lose his dot weak hand, the quinn makes weak hand strong hand no problem that is the place where it really shines for me. It is unfair to say the Quinn is Ugly it is actually a great looking mount that is well made and fit the Dawson pattern holes in my gun perfectly and the holes in the C-More. The only one calling it ugly are the shooters stuck in old school that think an open gun has to have the upright mount and the shooter must dedicate his life to over coming this in effective design, sort of a right of passage. The Quinn gets dirty from the blast at the same rate as a regular mounted C-More without a blast shield. This is a small price to pay for 3 or 4 seconds a stage.

I shoot 185gr Molly Bullets with WST at 4.8gr and have also shot N320 at 4.4gr oal is 1.185 5" STI Edge. I use TiteGroup with 200 (Zero) gr jacketed 40 at 4.3gr and in 9 mm with 125gr (MTG) at 4.3 gr as well. For 180gr 40 Zero Jacketed 5.1gr WST. I would say WST is just half as smokey as TiteGroup and never noticed any smoke with N320. WST is cleaner than TiteGroup.

Finally got the Quinn mount on the gun. The guys at the gun shop and of course the customers that came in all had to try it out. It was about a 50/50 split on if it was good or bad, but all agreed it makes a gun ugly. When I got it home I did about 15 minutes of dry fire. The first and most prominent feature is that Weak hand and Strong Hand are just fantastic throw it up and wow its there. Coming off the draw my consistencey of acquiring the dot improved, but the biggest difference is that it is spot on to where it should be, you know I'm ready to break the shot, no adjustment. I'm going to give it a ride this weekend at two matches and see how it goes.

I am reluctant to specifiy how many or what kind of and never give my address to strangers. When I buy a new one I don't tell the wife. If she notices something different I just say I traded for it or I won it. I got stopped coming back from a practice session at the range. I handed the officer my license and my CHL, he asked me if I had a gun I said "9", he said ok you can go now. I was driving a car I bought for one of my daughters, the plate had 16 warrants out on it, got her new plates before I gave he the car.

You are already beyond me but I will repeat what a GM told me yesterday, lock your wrists, this is basic form the wrists are locked. This is the advice he gave me when I was whinning about the lose of my dot in my open gun when traveling round poking into ports. Early on I had one gun that did dip when the trigger was pulled during dry fire. I changed out the 22 lb firing pin spring for a 15 lb and put a competition hammer on it, then it didn't dip anymore when the hammer fell. The trigger of course was a lot lighter. A stiff wrist would have cured it. My good friend an old bench rest rifle shooter, one of those camp perry kind of guys, sights in my pistols, he believes in the ultimate rest and 3 shot groups at 25 yards, once he has it hitting perfectly you know that when there is a bad shot it was the shooter and not the sights. From the sounds of things you don't know for sure where the sights are at 25 yards, maybe you need to have that established. Having confidence in your equipment makes a major difference. I did read all the other posts and they were all good, just thought that if none of that had worked and new approach was in order.

1.150 fits most mags that could be why Commercail Ammo is that length. I was loading at 1.160 and went to a 3-Gun with the Wife's Marlin Camp 9 which uses S&W 5900 mags and couldn't get the bullets in the S&W factory mags, I did get them into a MecGar mag. Won the Match.

The Hornady bullet in the picture is a flat nose bullet, these need to be a lot shorter than round nose bullets. Typically a 38 Super RN is set to no more than 1.240-1.250, so that it will work in an STI mag. Albiet I have loaded some of mine out as long as 1.270 without having an issue. I have not loaded the Flat Nose bullet in a 38 Super, but I have loaded them in 9 mm and this is where I learned about them being a lot shorter. The method used was to take the barrel out and hand fit them till they dropped in freely which was about .010 down from not droping in freely.; When I first started picking up 38 Super brass I had a lot of bulged brass, this is because some open shooters put way too much of the wrong kind of powder behind their bullets using rifle primers to mask the pressure signs. I bought a case pro and have had no further trouble. You didn't say you were using a SAMMI Gauge to drop check the rounds, if they fall in and out of the drop check they should do the same in the gun. If you have to force them in the same thing happens in the gun. These are rimmed cases unlike 45, 40, or 9, but I have not had issues with damaged rims, but from the looks of the one that blew up that Master reloader may have been putting too much of the wrong stuff in those rounds and they may well be bulged down by the rim. From your description of the ammo it all needs to be pulled, just so that you can keep your face and hands. You can buy a 1000 cases from StarLine for about $125.00 might be a wise move. You couldn't in good canscience sell that stuff to some one else but it might save you a lot of money to just get rid of it. VV N350 is a low pressure slow powder for compensated guns start out at about 7.5 gr if your trying to make USPSA major power factor that happens at about 7.8gr with a 125gr bullet.

Its an idea who's time hasn't come yet. Carry guns may compete in production. We had a CHL division in AASA then the IDPA guys wanted their on division so we put all of them in one called IDPA, cover and service type rig and gun. USPSA is not IDPA, and we don't want it to be. A bunch of us got tegether and they lets us shoot our Open Guns in OutLaw Division at the IDPA match, we run big sticks so we don't reload behind cover. Maybe this new unrestricted class with lasers etc should be called Outlaws or run what you brung like stock cars. To keep it honest make it a claimer division we had that in figure 8 cars, at any time another competitior could claim your car for $2,000 this kept it from being a money race. In this case a $600 claiming rule would work, if you win the match anyone could claim the gun for $600. I think we have a adeguate number of divisions, Revolvers got it tough in USPSA matches but they are just competiting against other revolvers right?

Thanks everone for your input. I have decied that a 6" makes the most sense, anything that can help with accuracy will help you do better in a match. So it will either be a 6" top or a whole new gun. If you see a good deal on a 6"er pm me. Right now it looks like Bedell has the best deal on a build and it appears to be a fine looking gun. I did check with Benny, however I don't know that his gun is worth $500 more than a Bedell.

+1 On the chrono. You can't trust the human body for hearing or feel those senses are just not that accurate. I would sooner trust a 10 shot group on a bulls eye target at 25 yards from a shakey rest. One thing I would do is pump the charge up to about 4.2gr so you can get to 165pf. The Wheel Heads aka Revolver guys talk about getting squibs when they are trying to use Clays as a minor steel load, picture that a Squib that has powder in it, not all but one here and there. My unsupported theory is that the large volume of a 38 Special and the small volume of Clays are too far apart in the case, its like having a high primer things just don't come together. When I load WST another flake powder I leave my tumbler running on the bench, it seems to always be running but I get pretty consistent Chrono results. I use range brass, RO matches come home with a bucket full, so that's probably not the issue, it could maybe account for 10 fps or so. +1 on consistent ram yanking, when I got my Case Feeder and started running a 100 rounds every 6 minutes my Extreme Spread and SD grew, so like shooting I had to slow down a notch to get accurate powder drops. My reject bucket also filled up. Bottom line with no Chrono pump up the load to major PF somewhere between 4.0 and 4.4 gr in a 40 with 180gr. As always check for pressue signs as you move up.

Thanks for asking about the Clays in a 40 with 180gr. I just started using Clays in my SingleStack 45 and it works great. I'm going to try it for a Limited Load in my 40 with precision 185gr. I've been using WST but it gets pretty unstable at 104 degrees and its been hot like that all summer.

Divorced Twice widowed once Married again for 8 years, proof life does go on. If you have children spend some quality time with them, and leave them out of the fight. This is a time when children need to know you care about them.