jmbaccolyte

Well, I've learned something again here. I guess I've been lucky and haven't had to pick up range brass. Pretty much I just pickup my own brass, because I spent 20 years picking up my employer's truely "once fired" brass.

What are you trying to accomplish? Plinking loads, minor power factor, major power factor, nuclear loads? And do you have any other powders available? Longshot is great for max power, but not the hot tip for moderate lead bullet loads.

Reloading for 45 years and no clue. Clays at major with 180 grain coated bullets at O.A.L. of 1.23" caused some flattening of the softist primers available, but nothing like that. That's ugly.

Yes, it's from a video that I saw on youtube. Just search "57 states" on youtube.com

Enis, a friend of mine went back to New Jersey. I never really understood why. I know that parts of that State are beautiful; but if you think about it, there are 57 States to choose from and some other States might be a better choice. Best Wishes, Enis.

http://tooltechgunsight.com Their website says they are proud to be considered Trijicon's speciality shop. I haven't tried them, just thought about it.

Probably he means Bill Wilson.

I have a Match with over 13,000 rounds through it and had my first failure of any kind this morning, when it failed to feed a cartridge. I didn't shoot much over the winter and this spring, so I may have bumped the safety up or something. I plan to install a fresh recoil spring and see if it happens again. It's probably time to change out all the springs. My experience is that they are very reliable but kind of heavy. I had some problems with the rear sight, until I cleaned the adjustment screw with brake cleaner and dried it and then used blue lock-tight on it- no problems since for 10,000 rounds.

Or you could load several dummy rounds (without primers or powder) and see what the longest cartridge length your chamber can handle (plunk test) and then work the load up with a chronograph at that overall cartridge length if you want the longest possible. But I wouldn't stop there because each gun is different and it may be more accurate or have the same accuracy with less powder (ie cheaper) or it might prefer a different powder or bullet. Happy trails or as benos would probably say, "Life is a journey."

People say Clay Dots is a good replacement for Hodgdon Clays, if you can find it. Personally I switched to Winchester WST when the Clays ran out. I was using Clays for minor pf and WST for major, both with 180 grain coated (Hi-Tech? brand coating- anyway Bayou and BBI) bullets, so I already had some WST. The powder supply seems to be coming back slowly, let's hope nothing happens to cause people to start panic buying powders they don't even use, just to have something to barter or trade. That's pretty much how the communist and/or third world countries do things.

WST if you can get it.

Atlas is just working harder than we are. My grandfather used to say, "There's no rest for the wicked". Then he would continue and say, "So there's no rest for us either or the wicked will out work us." Not to imply Atlas is a bad guy, just that most of us need to work harder to earn more money and buy more really cool pistols, train more and load more ammo to shoot more. If it was easy then everyone would do it.

Wow. It's beautiful. But I was ruined on DA (Double Action) triggers when most of you were still in school, because of what some bureaucrats decided would be the best model of handgun (best for the government) for us to be mandated to carry. First it was a snubnose .357 revolver. Who in his right mind buys a .357 magnum snubnose (very short barrel)? The powder is only half burned in a barrel that short and the sound is horrendous without hearing protection, which you don't have because you're executing a warrant (this is back in the day- they probably have hearing protection now that allows them to hear too) at night in a dark room and indoors (which makes it louder) and you have to shoot- then you can't see or hear for several minutes because of the muzzleflash and you can't hear either because of the noise (usually short barrels are louder all else being equal) . The second genius selection was a DA every shot semi-automatic pistol which had a large grip diameter; I was okay but the women and some of the smaller guys had problems. The only problem I had with it was the long, long, long trigger pull. But for everyone else who doesn't have my baggage, that's probably the holy grail. I might buy it just to look at it (after the last of my kids gets out of college next year).

CHA-LEE- How did you set the extractor depth? I mean were you bending the extractor or filing on it?

R.Elliot- the lugs sheered off- do you mean where the barrel locks into the slide? What part was more damaged the barrel or the slide and was the other part reusable? I had to locktite the rear sight bolt and since then its been great.

I have a 1988 Dillon 550RB. I load a few hundred or several thousand rounds and then adjust the the powder measure or change powders and crank out a few more. The die settings stay the same until I have to qualify with the contract pistol.

Nealio- so, you're saying that maybe a shark tank isn't necessarily the best place to start?

jom- Or you could re-train yourself in how you grip the pistol. It's cheap and no one could complain about modification in production class. And the extra dry-fire and range time might be a good thing. Tell your wife that it's either that or you'll have to buy a new pistol that fits your hands better.

I'm learning things everyday here. And they say you can't teach an old dog new tricks. Wait, I mean "tricks" as in dog tricks- not human tricks. PS: This wasn't the Great post that the Duke is waiting for in case anyone was confused, I just couldn't resist.

Why does he want to shoot production? Does he think it will easier to achieve GM? Or for some other reason? Maybe if he switches classes and shoots a pistol with a good stock trigger he can spend the savings on ammo and range time. My Tanfoglio Match cost just under $600 a few years ago and has never seen a gunsmith or had a "trigger job" (by that I mean internals were modified and/or polished. But it's got a really good trigger at least my friends and I think so. It's a single action and as the round count mounted the internal parts seem to have polished themselves. Just my two cents. I never measured the trigger pull weight because I care more about a crisp break, really smooth trigger movement and a short reset.

My Match has 13K+ mostly minor .40 loads with no problems. I can't check for the relief cut that praetorian mentioned (nice photo-by the way) because I can't find the right screwdriver and I don't want to use a regular screwdriver and mess up the grip screw.

He said that he wants to start shooting Open, not that he has been.

170-172 powder factor, that's major with a margin, not a hot load. I'd think the 10mm or .45+P guys would be having lots more problems than the .40 major guys. Did both cracks start from the magazine release opening in the frame and how close are the serial numbers on these two frames? If so, maybe we could smooth the sharp edges of the magazine release opening to reduce the chance of stress risers (cracks) starting there. And maybe the heat treatment or the hard chrome finish (which can make the underlying metal brittle if done wrong) were below Tanfoglio's usual quality standard. Or do they even heat treat cast steel/iron frames (I don't know whether Tanfoglio uses cast iron or cast steel in the frames). You might write Tanfoglio and ask them if they will make it good on the frame you couldn't get fixed. They might be aware that they had a problem in that production run. What were the round counts on the frames? And what weight recoil springs were you using with that load? I've got more questions than answers, I guess. Must be time to go back to bed.

cslafrain- What's a small difference in velocity? What kind of power factor margin do you suggest?