ewokUk

I'm new to reloading as well & had the same problem. I was using 185 gn LRN & new remington brass. Initially everything went OK but I started getting problems after I increased the crimp. This seemed to bulge the case around the bullet. I changed to a Lee factory crimp die & this improved things, but not 100% untill I backed off the crimp a bit. HTH Ewok

I've recently had a similar problem on a Taurus that I was having moon-clipped using a rather unusual method: Take 22 thou off the forcing cone end of the barrel & the same off the cylinder bushing. I was a bit dubious about this method but several of my friends had had this done by this particular method & gunsmith with good results, so I went for it. First off the head space was a bit tight & a little more was taken off the bushing. Then the B C spacing was a bit tight & a little more was taken off the barrel & everything spun & dry fired properly. Put in some dummy rounds on the moonclips & it worked fine. Put in live rounds & after firing a round it would bind just after the cylind started to turn. Turn the cylinder back by hand to free it & pull the trigger & it would turn freely untill the next round fired. Catch the hammer to prevent it firing & it wouldn't bind. let it fire & it would? No skid or witness marks on the front of the cylinder or recoil shield or rear of the cases, no primers out of pockets Swopping the crane from another Taurus solved the problem 99% of the time, it very occasionaly binds up now. The only thing that we could think of is that the geometry of the hand pushing on the star has changed & this was causing a geometric lock under recoil but why? Unfortunately sending a gun to Randy from the UK isn't too easy & getting Taurus parts here is near impossible, any ideas?

OK, here's a realy dumb question: Shouldn't the one with the firing pin on the hammer be able to give a lighter trigger job because it has less moving parts - no transfer bar etc. Or is the newer design just better?

Unfortunately I've had to DQ a friend for breaking the 180. The stupid thing was that he had finished shooting, took his brain out of gear & turned round facing up-range to check the targets that he had already engaged There were a few DQs at the world shoot last year on one particular stage, but I haven't seen any others. Thankfully most pracitcal shooters are aware of where their muzzel is pointing.

Hi guys & gals, I've just found out just why I've had a realy bad start to the season & though you might like to share in the problem and the fix. The year started with me shortening the stock of my Winchester 1300 by 3/4" & grinding down the but pad to fit. After this, the pull length was still slightly too long (maybe 1/8") but I didn't want to risk making it too short & some mounting & shoot 1 practice soon prooved that it was a whole lot better than before. This was followed up with some load 1-shoot 1 practice to get used to the new loading gate position, and a whole bunch of choke/buckshot/slug testing, but no real speed shooting practice. The first competition of the year saw me short stroking & wasting daylight on almost every stage - I put this down to lack of proper practice. No time for any practice & the second competition of the year saw more of the same & several jams as well. The third competition was the pits! Short stroking, empty shells left in the chamber & eventually I DQ'ed myself. The day before the British Open Shotgun Championship Steve Pike (Match Director, gunsmith & very good friend) found his stock of winchester parts & we changed the extractor & cured the extraction problem. Whilst testing it, Steve also short stroked the gun (un-heard of!), & asked me what I'd done to it to make it kick so much? I hadn't noticed, but apparently reducing the plastic stock length & recoil pad size had reduced the ammount of recoil adsorbed by the stock & I was now 'over-gripping' the gun to control the recoil, which ment I was not relaxing enough to operate the pump properly. Steve told me to put some lead in the stock before the competition the next day! I didn't know how much to use so I just filled a plastic bag full of all my old .45 LRN rejects, added some epoxy & wedged it into the stock. The next day it ran like a dream. Full load slug, OO buck, 32g & 36g birshot all fed, cycled & ejected perfectly. Who would have though that just fitting a stock to the shooter would cause a problem like this? - Of course I should have tested it fully after making the change.

Thanks again guys, Kimberkid - Yup the .338 was banned by name at Bisley, because the majority of its loads were over the velocity and muzzel energy limits for the Bisley ranges. As you said, there are longer ranges in the UK, but I think they are all in the north of the country & Bisley is on my doorstep. HighTechRedneck - Thanks for the info, I'll put those in the book to be tried, but at the moment I'm still having a few basic problems with my 70grain loads - see my post in the Beginners guns & reloading section. - What do you thing of the Lee Factory Crimp Die? M.E.Anglin - Well that's another vote for a Remi 700 in .308. I was looking at an Armalon tuned one, but have heard that occasionally they won't strip the round from the mag - any experience of this? Mike

Hi guys & gals, After reloading pistol rounds for about a year now, I've started reloading rifle rounds. I was having success with Lee Factory crimp dies for .45ACP, so I decided to use one on my rifle set up, but didn't know just how much crimp to apply. I set up the die to the minimum setting Lee advise, made up some rounds, then made two more sets, increasing the crimp 1/8 of a turn each set. I then discovered that I hadn't set up the auto disc correctly & it was producing light & inconsistant powder loads, so I pulled all the bullets & was shocked to discover the amount of distortion applied to the bullets. Even on the lightest settings, the die produced a crimp ring deeper than any cannalure ring that I've seen on a bullet. Won't this upset the BC of the bullet? Does it have a detrimental affect on accuracy? Does anyone have experience with these dies & how to use them? Thanks in advance for any help/advice Mike

This might sound like a stupid question, but why would I have to single load an AR? Is it because the round would be too long to fit the mag? My rifle is an AR clone (see here) but it is a straight-pull bolt action (centre fire SLRs are illegal here ) with a 20'' 1:8 twist heavyweight barrel. I'm currently using 70 grain matchpoints & getting good results - I haven't had it long enough to try the heavier bullets yet.

Hi Ian, Looks like you're nearly ready for your comp. sorry I can't be there. Was the cylinder release a direct replacement or did you (or Steve) have to fit it? I was wondering if they would fit the Taurus aircartridge revolver as well?? I saw an interesting moonclip job done on a .357 the other day. It worked very well, without machining the cylinder at all, & of course he'll have the extra shot advantage over you! Good luck with the comp Mike

Thanks Guys, It looks as though .308 would be the best for me, at least for a year or so, although I won't be doing too much long range work so barrel life isn't that important. Zak, I'm not sure if there is a 1500 yard range in the UK, I know Bisley tops out at about 1200 yards, so I don't think I'll need 338 Lapua , but thanks for all the advice.

I’ve been shooting different disciplines at up to 600 yards with my .223 and am now looking at getting a new gun for 1,000 yard shooting. What would be the best calibre? A few friends suggest that .308/7.62 is really limited to 800 metres & 7.5 or 6.5 Swiss would be a much better calibre. Any ideas or experience with .308/7.62 at long range would be welcomed. Thanks in advance Mike

The objections raised by the IPSC over the Texas Star were mainly that it wasn't 'practical' But a target array that dosen't move once you have have shot the first one isn't practical either??? Also rejecting unusual & difficult stages/arrays seems to be at odds with the IPSC rules: Rule 1.1.6 Difficulty – IPSC matches present varied degrees of difficulty. No shooting challenge or time limit may be appealed as being prohibitive. This does not apply to non-shooting challenges, which should reasonably allow for differences in competitor's height and physical build. As long as the stage is consistant - i.e. the starting conditions of the Star/Windmill must be the same for each competitor, I cannot see any reason to reject this sort of target. Unless the problem is image If the IPSC want to project a professional image & shy away from 'carnival' props then OK, there are enough open matches where we can shoot fun targets. But the IPSC will have to come up with some rules & definitions of what targets are & aren't acceptable.

So would a 110 grain bullet with a PF of 115 (at the target) drop a ful-sized popper? I'm thinking of using a hot .30M1 & this is what the ballistic calculator come out with at 300m. Mind you I'll have to use 40" of Kentucky windage!

Don't bother ringing just yet, I'm stuck in Saudi Arabia & after that I'm moving on to Azerbaijan. I'll give you a call when I get back

Ian, If you want, I can get you some 185 grain LRN that is pre-ban & as hard as nails! This is what I was using before moving up to 230 grain & shoots pretty well & hardly leads at all. Mike

Thanks for the comments - I'll pass on the modifications, how much of the bolt do you have to bevel, just a small amount or would he need to get it machined? Thanks mike

How different are the new batch from the old ones? I saw a guy competing with one a week ago & his mag changes were more like 25 seconds, not 2.5! He had a system where he dumped the original mag, turned the gun over, held open the bolt with his left hand & tried to cram in the mag (plastic 10 shot ones) with his right. He always seemed to be fighting it & nothing went smoothly.

You've got a good memory Kurt! But it was two weeks since I had used any, and the gun had been cleaned twice since then & was almost totally clean after the comp? I've just had a friend suggest cleaning with brake cleaner & running it almost dry using a dry, teflon based lubricant like Tri-flow. Would this harm the gun? I should say that this is how he runs his single stack 1911 & he never has a jam. Thanks Mike

Hi Guys & Gals, I wonder if you could help a newby with a problem? I was using my Winchester 1300 in a PSG comp the other week when I started missing loads - I initially put this down to me short stroking the gun, but throughout the day it gradually got stiffer & stiffer & on one occasion I had to use both hands on the pump to get it to open & eject the spent shell. Thinking that I had just let it dry out, I drenched it in oil (a light spray oil) & it was OK for a stage but gradually got worse again. After the match I stripped it completly, but found nothing strange, the bolt carrier internals were all clean, the lugs of the bolt were clean & the area where they engage in the barrel was clean as well. I normaly strip & clean the gun after each use & lubricate it with a light spray gun oil. I've had it 6 months & this is the first problem that I've had with it. I've seen one other guy have a similar problem with the same gun, but does anyone know what caused it & how to prevent it? It seems to me that the bolt was not rotating to release the mecahnism. Could this be due to the light oil that I'm using? Would it be better to strip the bolt carrier & lubricate the bolt rotating mechanism with something like Slide Glide? I don't think it was anything to do with the shells that I was using, because I'd used that type in a competition a few weeks before with no problems. Thanks in advance for any advice

Guess there's no market for me there! Dave Ummmmm Those clips are from you!!!!! Ewok, No, but they could be. Dave Dave, I'm pretty sure they were from you - You have PM

Guess there's no market for me there! Dave Ummmmm Those clips are from you!!!!!

One of the revolver shooters at the World Championships was using Winchester brass with small primers. I never found out who it was, I just got given one of his moonclips by mistake by the range crew. Discussing this with the local guys down there, they seemed over the moon with the idea. Apparently they find it very difficult to get hold of large pistol primers down there???

Hi Guys, I've got a manual AR15 clone in .30M1 & am looking for a load to push out the effective range to the max. Any ideas??

Congratulations Bjorn & best of luck for your future matches, but please please stay with revolver. Production division just dosen't deserve you

I've got video of Jerry & Pat on most of the stages, but I can't up-load at the moment because I droped my camera at the airport & it's in the shop being fixed. I'll post some the moment I get it back. Pat, are there any stages that you don't want posted? 15 & 24 come to mind