ttolliver

JGus - How would you describe the aggressiveness of the VZ vs LemonGraters? I use VZ on my 1911 and don't find them too aggressive at all. But for some reason the warnings on the lemon graters gives me pause.

I started with the Lee and then moved to the GRX. Both are push through designs that give you the same result, but the GRX is the better of the two. With the Lee you position the brass on top of a flat stem with no edges or registration groove or anything to guide you to the center. It's not particularly hard, but it is some effort. And every once in a while you'll be off enter enough to crush an edge. With the GRX the brass sits in a small pocket that removes all effort from centering the brass. That's all I can contribute. Good luck!

I switch back and forth between polymer and heavy guns (1911, 2011) depending on what the newest toy is or urge takes me. I never notice recoil differences between the lighter and heavier guns in the heat of the moment, although I know there is a difference. It just isn't a practical difference for deciding what to shoot. And that's what I think the big guys are actually saying. Once you get to a level of comfort it doesn't really matter what you shoot. If like me you're doomed to mediocrity, you'll find that point in whatever gun you choose, hehehe. Just like any of the top shooters would clean our clocks with anything you shove in their hands. I'd go with Maximis228, though, the question between Glock and 2011 is one of quality. Although to be fair, how often do you see a Glock shooter having reliability issues? 2011s aren't inherently unreliable, but that dialing in that gives you better accuracy, etc. also gives you a little less tolerance.

Welcome! Not sure where you are in the state, but give me a shout if you want help plugging into the USPSA scene around the twin cities. Although that's a bit of a misnomer, since our clubs tend to ring the metro at a decent distance -- near St Cloud, Harris, Forest Lake, Pine Island, etc. There are a couple winter leagues at indoor ranges going on right now too.

Nope I sure didn't. Sorry. Lack of an easy bolt on magwell solution ended up dampening enthusiasm for this project. I ended up going the 2011 route instead. Although a CGW accurized 97B is still on my wish list.

Flip a coin. Heads = production, tails = limited. If it lands on edge and rolls around a bit before settling then heads = carry optics and tails = lim-10. If it rolls into a crack in the floor you're shooting single stack. If it lands in any sort of dish or bowl you're going open. If you lose it for a bit in a fold of your clothes or the seat cushion or something like that, you're shooting Revo. No re-flips!

I started out dry and converted to wet. Even if you ignore the much cleaner brass (which is sexy as hell, but not really necessary), I think wet still wins hands down. The cleaning inputs are much cheaper (dawn, lemishine, and water) and you don't have any lead dust going into the air or to handle super carefully. Yeah, it'll take a good while for the cheaper inputs to offset the investment, but getting rid of the lead dust issue is a huge win day 1. And the sexy brass is the icing on the cake.

For those of us with custom barrels intentionally very tight a gauge cut to SAMMI max probably doesn't help. I've seen recommendations to get a gunsmith to cut one to the size of a specific chamber, but that seems excessive. I'd be more interested in one cut to SAMMI minimums. Anyone do that?

I used the Lee for 2-ish years and now use a GRX. They both get you to the same end goal, but there is one HUGE difference between the two that makes the GRX worth the extra cost. With the Lee you're centering your brass on a flat pedestal, for lack of a better term. With the GRX you're putting your brass into a small pocket that is auto-centering. With the Lee approach you're taking a little more effort and attention with every single piece of brass making sure it's centered. It isn't hard. And it's not that often you crush an off center piece of brass. So if the GRX didn't exist we'd all get by just fine with the Lee approach. But that feature really makes the GRX a superior product.

I put several thousand 200gr SNS through an M&P 40 with the greatly reduced smoke as advertised with coated bullets. Since we know TG runs very hot, my guess is the smoke you're getting is more powder choice than bullet issue. I don't get bad leading, but I get some. I shoot tons of traditional lead and shoot that with zero leading through 1911s, revolvers, etc. with zero leading. So FWIW, I still get a little leading out of SNS even using the various techniques I've learned. I just accepted it as part of driving these to 40 major speeds through a 4.25" barrel.

I've developed loads 1.150 and 1.160 for my M&P 40 Pro CORE and shot them all last season. First the longer one with N320 and when that ran out I finished the season with the shorter and CFE Pistol. Never any issues feeding at those lengths with the SNS 200gr round nose profile. After feeding experiments with some dummy rounds I picked 1.160 as the longest I cared to go and still feel like there was enough wiggle room in the magazine. Maybe could have gone longer. All I can really say is that 1.160 never disappointed me and it leaves darned little space between the round and the walls of the mag. Good luck!

I too ran across recommendations of Longshot for 40 major here when I was developing a load a couple years ago. It produced velocity effortlessly and was actually quite accurate. But the recoil was absolutely ridiculous. This went far beyond, "Oh, I like snappy" and was well on it's way to .357 magnum. So no, I wouldn't give it the time of day for our sport. Quick edit -- it may be appropriate for Open. That's the one division I haven't really tinkered in yet.

My best recommendation is to get a local stage designer to mentor you. They can give you their initial tips and help debug your first tries. The short answer to your question is no -- aside from Classifiers, there is no ready-made resource. Mainly because it's intended that our stage designs are unique. I can't cite it off the top of my head, but that's in the rules somewhere. That being said, if you googled "uspsa nationals match booklet" you'll get some PDF hits that will give you dozens and dozens of ideas for warping into something of your own. This next bit isn't exhaustive, but some starting tips -- Read the rule book section on stage design so you're not wasting time with your mentor on easy stuff that's right there in black and white. Don't place targets that can only be engaged near the 180. It may be the shooter's responsibility whether they break the 180 or not, but it is a very poor stage design that forces them to be close to it in the first place. Make sure you don't have one or two magic spots the entire stage can be cleared from. Constantly be double checking for shoot-throughs. And even if all of the angles worked without shoot-throughs on paper, your setup crew can gift you with some anyway. Look at likely stage breakdowns for each of the divisions. How would shooters at the different capacities shoot it? If mag changes are too obvious and easy, consider changing the sizes of some of you arrays to make them work a little. By the same token, a stage that forces shooters into a bunch of standing reloads is frustrating as well. There's a balance there somewhere between too easy and too hard. The best stages have multiple options for engaging at least some of the targets. If you have the shooters thinking, "I can take that target from here as a riskier shot and eliminate that whole position or I can take the guaranteed double A from there" you're going in the right direction. Good luck!

Congrats sporter! Here's a list of the goodies I hung on my 45acp RO and haven't regretted one bit -- Dawson FO front sight G10 grips Extended mag release Smith and Alexander magwell Dawson grip tape on the front strap I also switched springs, but you'll need advice from 9mm 1911 shooters on what springs you may expect to be best. I know in the 45acp models the factory springs are a couple pounds heavier than we want for competition loads. You may also want to go with a magwell with a bigger flare. I like the trim look of the S&A, but I also know I'm giving up some magwell size with that choice.

Well, there's a formally correct way to store powder/primers and there's the way most of us tend to do it -- mostly from a sense of, "Oh, that'll never happen to me". And I'm as bad as anyone. But a quick google search will get you information pretty quick. I don't remember the quantities off the top of my head, but basically powder should be stored in a 1" nominal wooden box with one side designed to easily come off to vent pressure and positioned away from any sources of heat or spark. As I recall there is a limit to the number of pounds per box, but there is no limit on the number of boxes per home. Well, no limit under commercial quantities. Although a serious hoarder might hit it, hehehe. The intent of the wooden box is simply to provide some insulation from heat and spark. If the house is going up in an inferno, so is the powder. But if you have a smaller fire the box should do its job. And yeah, the absolute worse thing you can do is put powder in a container that will allow pressure to build. No wait...the worst would be a metal container that would allow pressure to build (aka the aforementioned pipebomb). It seems to me the guidance on primers was pretty much the same. Again, I don't recall quantities. But they go in their own wooden box away from spark or heat and away from the powder box. And in the case of primers the worst thing you can do is take them out of the original packaging before you're ready to use them. Anyway, that's a general rundown of what you'll find fire departments want you to do. Google can fill in the fine details. And now that the topic came up again, I really should spend some time over the long weekend building some boxes.

I'm not sure this is the product for me, but I have a couple friends who are lower volume shooters and on the cusp of starting to reload. This would solve a couple problems for them. They could get a bench up and running almost effortlessly and they could bring it to my place to learn on their own press.

Most people dislike 700x because it doesn't meter well, but it's an excellent 45acp powder and should have plenty of load data out there.

I shoot tons of cast lead bullets, even dabbling in casting my own. I've put thousands of 230gr LRN though my SA RO and my S&W 625JM. Neither have had leading issues with my standard major load of 3.9gr Clays at ~1.250. So lead and Clays are a well behaved combination in general. I would expect the issue to be elsewhere. Depending on the source of your bullets, I suppose it's possible you have some very soft lead bullets. I'm used to shooting from a local manufacturer that advertises a 16 Brinnell on their packaging. That's a typical hardness for general purpose cast bullets. But if you got these through a trade or from someone who dabbled in casting it's possible they didn't alloy the lead up high enough. I don't know that over crimping lead would promote severe leading, but we're always warned not to over crimp. So make sure you're just crimping enough to basically straighten the casing back out. I generally set my crimp to .001 less than the case just above the crimp -- just enough to have a measurable narrowing of the crimp and no more. Last, but not least, you'll also hear people who otherwise shoot lead successfully say they have one gun that just doesn't like lead (as in fouls badly). I assume the issue is maybe the barrel lands or rifling aren't cut as smooth and develop more friction with the lead. Or something like that. Anyway, those are some ideas. Good luck!

I for one want to know how to load one to bounce off a target. That would be awesome. I thought I'd toss this one idea out there. Definitely not new. But if there is any worry at all about wet tumbled brass still being wet use a cheap food dehydrator. It does an amazing job, cheaply and quietly. And never apologize for being anal about anything reloading related

Here's another believe it or not -- When my N320 was running low and I was scrambling for a replacement about this time last year, I found CFE Pistol to be indistinguishable from N320 for velocity and recoil in my 200gr SNS coated 40 major load. Different charges and CFE Pistol did like a COAL .010 shorter. I wouldn't expect CFE Pistol to have the same temperature stability at the extremes, but it did the job at the chrono all last year.

I don't have a perfect match either, but here's a little I can share. I was doing concurrent load development with 200gr SNS coated bullets and found the 200gr recoil was less and didn't bother to keep pushing the powder charges up to get major on 180s. But with the exception of this being the shorter barrel M&P, the steps in powder and resulting velocity gives you some indication. All loads N320, Missouri Bullet 180gr LTC at 1.126", Winchester brass, KVB-9 Tulammo primer. All from a M&P 40 CORE 4.25". Chronoed on an overcast day at 38 degrees. Grains PF 3.2 129 3.4 139 3.6 143 3.8 149 Good luck!

Thanks. I suspected that might be the case. I knew the PaperWhite wasn't android. But there was always a chance they merged development paths at some point. I'll keep hoping I guess.

Our club has NSTs right now, but I'm also expecting a transition to one of the lower cost Kindles at some point. It looks like Amazon introduced a lower cost e-ink with touchscreen model that's likely to be our next step late in 2014. Just curious if anyone has given these a spin yet. http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00I15SB16?ref=spks_0_0_2059610842&ie=UTF8&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=desktop-auto-sparkle&pf_rd_r=09C58JXZ6D6X69VS0D0B&pf_rd_p=2059610842&pf_rd_t=301&pf_rd_i=kindle&qid=1428676660 One particular question is whether these would have the same touch screen issues that make NSTs very challenging to use on rainy days. I'm guessing not since the NST screen (infrared, I believe) seemed to be characterized as the odd man out in touch screen design. Thanks!

I know exactly how I've done it. I started out with a Pro Chrono too (and never managed to shoot it). Then I upgraded to a CED M2 with the remote bench top display. Having the remote display to the left on the bench rather than front an center on the front of the unit was my undoing. I like to glance at the chrono display after each shot to see if I had an error or to correlate any difference in feel in the gun with differences in velocity. During a longer chrono session -- and I do tend to have several loads and calibers saved up when I get the chrono out -- if I glance a little early the muzzle will follow. On a COF that'll get you a D zone hit. On a chrono that'll get you a sky screen arm hit.

You ever ground looped one? Oh heck no. I'm just steeped in the lore, hehehe.