shred

Without a shooting buddy (which is most of my practice), you have to be a lot more diligent about noticing what you are actually doing and not what you think you're doing. A simple "Why do you dip your head like that?" can be worth hours..

A friend did some DIY grit-grips on an STI by sanding off the checkering, applying epoxy and sandblasting grit. It doesn't look super-good, but works well. Someplace else I mentioned 'sugar-decking' as in surfboards and windsurfers and such-- put down a thin layer of epoxy, sprinkle sugar (big or little crystal, your choice) all over it and wait for it to dry. Then apply water and wash off the sugar, leaving a nice grippy surface and a good view of your kewl graphics underneath. That should work for grips too.

Think about hard-cover on targets too.. takes more work & paint, but they're both easier on the new shooters and surprisingly challenging even when placed close (for some reason shooters that whine about a full target at 25 yards don't complain near as much about an A-zone-only hard cover target at 7 yards)

Well.. that's pretty much right. Chip McCormick is mixed in there somewhere at the beginning, and Dave Skinner showed up sometime after the STI/SV split, but the upshot is Virgil is in Alpine doing TrippResearch and CobraChrome and isn't directly involved in STI or SVI anymore (besides chroming a lot of their guns). Heck of a good guy too.

The tub rules. I can swipe a finger in there and come up with as big or as little a glob of SG as I want. Perhaps you could sell a separate "SG-safe" syringe as an extra like the brushes.

Probably my first pass will be for fixed cameras-- then it's easy to subtract out the background images and keep the shooters. You could then sync the video at various places-- on the beep, getting into position whatever, etc.. It would work well for "let me try doing it a couple of different ways" drills, or seeing where somebody pulls away from you on a stage.

Can we put this joke in the FAQ along with Detlef's favorite hunting story? (Edited by shred at 2:33 pm on Oct. 24, 2002)

Somebody was selling a couple of hydraulic-adapted 1050's on eBay a while back. I think they wanted $5K for two.

Cool.. This goes well with my next software project-- a ghost-shooter video setup, much like the olympics did with skiing this year.

Bag-within-a-bag is extremely popular with backpackers and anything with straps and parts sticking out-- the airports usually have a stock of thick plastic baggies to cover packs and strollers. Bonus is these are usually free and don't offer a good grip-and-throw to the baggage gorillas. Downside is they're transparent and hard to lock. If I was going to check my gun bag, I'd probably use either a military-style canvas duffel bag or ballistic nylon equivalent-- cheap, lockable, looks like a sack of clothes. Extra tip-- get a golf-club hard-case for checking rifles. Cheaper, lockable and not quite as much 'steal-me' factor.

This is a hero-or-zero stage. Shoot accurately and you'll be fine.

is this going to be fun... I'll be there shooting Open, unless all three of my open guns somehow get broken between now and then.. Should benos mock me, well, I'll have to haul out some pictures from my old Sierra handgun loading manual... Dunno what squad I'm on, but if somebody's planning to be going from the Country Inn to the range Thursday afternoon, drop me a line. My ride to the range doesn't get in until after dark. (Edited by shred at 8:08 pm on Oct. 22, 2002)

Look into the true old-west gunfighters. It wasn't the fastest guy to clear leather that won, it was the first accurate shot. Wyatt Earp and co usually shot last.

Thanks! I saw that episode years ago, and even last week was wandering around going "I really like the vest", which nobody else got..

5.0 gr Titegroup works for me in a comped .38 Super under a 115gr bullet (~135 PF). A friend uses 4.2 for steel in an uncomped gun, and 4.7 for 125PF IPSC minor.

FYi-- TJ teaches a bit of an outward flip as part of the reload-- well, not quite. It's more of a rotate the magwell away from the incoming mag while bringing the gun back to the reload position. Done fast and smooth it works well.

Any thoughts on the Miculek comp as seen in the Dillon catalog? The JP is way-cool, but not Limited OK.

Guns (unless they are very old, collectible or banned) seem to drop down to a certain value (about 10% below dealer cost for a new one for common guns) and very slowly drift downwards from there, as condition gets noticeably worse. Race guns can drop faster, especially if they're "old technology". There doesn't seem to be a steep drop in depreciation otherwise. Sell the ones you don't shoot anymore and have little emotional attachment to. If there aren't any like that, don't sell any. (Edited by shred at 3:01 pm on Oct. 16, 2002)

Scotch tape is the one to use. Best is the standard translucent-but-not-completely-transparent type.

From way back when Clark was around (is he still with us??), in this thread I theorized from the VV data that 0.1gr means about 10 fps and 800 psi plus or minus, everything else being equal. I've found this to be roughly true velocity-wise in my open blaster for "normal", 160 to 180 PF Vihtavuori N340, N350 and 3N38 loads with 115 - 124 gr bullets in .38 Super. Now I worry a lot less about +/- 0.1gr.

Ron's right-- HHF percentages in Open are generally (it varies by classifier, but the trend is there) harder to meet than HHF %'s in Limited, especially in the A, M & GM classes. My theory on this is that when they invented the HHF's, the top Limited skill levels weren't quite as refined as the top Open skill levels were. (Edited by shred at 2:50 pm on Oct. 15, 2002)

Yeah-- I've never been asked about ammo weight, though occasionally about how it's packed. What I tend to do at the check-in counter is check two bags-- one with ammo in it and the other with the guns. I don't even say "I need a firearms declaration tag for this bag" (note the language: it works well) until after the luggage routing tags are printed. At that point, they usually chuck the ammo-containing bag on the conveyor and do whatever fussing they are going to with the gun bag. Detlef is right that there's no US limit or law, despite what the airlines might say. Alaska airlines allows 40+ lbs, and last time I went Continental, it was 11lbs per gun. The other airlines wimp out and use the international IATA 5kg rule. Also, if you plan to ship ammo, by far the easiest solution is to go to a friendly gun store and get them to do it for you-- they already have the right boxes and a UPS guy that doesn't care what's in them. Going to the shipping counter yourself can be a nightmare.

Yeah, while 'common' is a bad thing, they happen occasionally. My feeling is that they're probably tiny cracks or defects in the brass that leak gas when fired. Back in the 9x25 days, I had some Remington nickel 10mm brass would crack 50% of the time on the second firing-- they didn't heat treat or stress-relieve that batch correctly.

20-something splits aren't bad for any normal revolver shooter-- Jerry M is some sort of space-alien. If you're worried about splits period, you should probably go read some of the other threads, since smoney asked us not to tell him to worry about other things than splits in this one..

Around here bypassing the firewall via modem might be frowned upon if discovered.. you may get more traction by finding some moderately-work-related sites that have the 'w-word' on them as in "This XYZ gadget is the latest w**** in the fight for customer service" or something, then bitch about that. Everybody that surfs ESPN at work should be hitting the same block, and enough pressure will get words removed.