MattInTheHat

Note that of course I cheat a bit, I have skate tape wrapped around the bottom of my trigger guard and my sight bar is checkered. It can get . . . pretty fast.

Running at a short target is about how your platform is working, not about the sights. Running a trigger at full speed is the sights returning before you complete the next double action stroke, you're waiting on yourself, but you also don't have time to correct anything because your finger is at full speed. When I practiced at that distance I could usually dig a golf ball sized hole at seven yards, which was the bounce and chaos of my finger coupled with how good my platform had been trained at the time. Put the sight on the target and let loose, if the sight isn't bouncing back into the same spot you have to work on the whole body platform rather than sights or trigger work. If you throw five good and one bad, then trigger work. Essentially you have an expectation of results at different ranges. Without practice that expectation widens as you go farther, as is only logical. With practice it narrows. But this is only when you are running your hands at their maximum speed, because you've decided that you don't have time to refine anything between shots. Perfectly valid in the game and there are plenty of opportunities where you can go max speed. The big point: with practice your max speed doesn't become faster, it just becomes relevant at longer distances.

Slow is smooth, smooth is fast. Here's the big one: you have one unit of body awareness and one unit of visual awareness. You have to spend them correctly. For body awareness, for my reload as a lefty, I have to cross my thumb over the grip, actuate the release, chsng my right hand grip to grasping the whole revolver between my pinky and thumb, actuate the ejection rod while tilting the gun downward to help the empty clip fall, reorient the gun to be ready for the reload, grasp the new clip decisively in my left hand, insert the clip, close the cylinder with my right hand, get my strong left hand back on the gun, and get my weak right hand back on the grip, then back into the platform and shoot. In the middle of that I usually have my visual awareness flip down for a fraction to watch the clip go in. Before and after I'm spotting my next position, then finding my entry foot position, then up to the window/target as I enter and the gun comes up. So here's the gravy: I practiced enough that I can't really open a revolver cylinder without my hands doing the grip change/rod/tilt/strong hand off the gun. I just do that, whether in a match or shooting slow fire off a bag, it's built in. Attention cost is zero. Next zero cost is my strong hand going to my belt and back up with a clip, the body just does that. Last zero cost is closing the cylinder while reestablishing the grip and coming back into platform. No brain required. So, when I take off from a position this is where I spend my brain: 1. Burst outward (automatic ejection sequence) 2. On the move. Body awareness lets me feel my fingers on the clip and correct a wrong grip. (Ejection process is in motion) 3. Look the clip into the cylinder and also feel it into the cylinder. At this point I'm running or stopping automatically 4. Eyes up, spot your entry foot point, then up more to predict the target location as you clear the window (automatic closing of cylinder and reestablishment of grip.) 5. Enter the position on autopilot, prep trigger, SIGHTS SIGHTS FINGER SIGHTS break. That's what it's like when it works right.

No need to be contentious, but in a few million clicks I've never found a position that stalls a Smith revolver. I can't speak to other brands, the behavior you're talking about, in my experience, is a slightly open cylinder.

Helps a bunch bud, I really appreciate the time and knowledge that went into that. The first question I have is that .009 used to be my minimum on .45, are you getting a good visible anvil bulge in your primers at that depth? I found that below .007 failed just as past .015 did, assumption being that one didn't let the pin accelerate enough and the other was depth challenged. Like I mentioned I'm looking for about 1 in a 1000 failures so I'd like to dial it in pretty well.

I've always run bobbed primers but I don't know what the factory pin length is. I tried an extended pin on the .45 and had immediate failures so backed off. A SPP might be a different thing since there's theoretically a smaller diameter of similar metal to deform, this my question. Maybe an extended pin works better for the smaller primer?

Just a 650, but then mic'inc out a batch to test with, back in the day I could get a pretty consistent .01 to .014 depth by feel but those were Federal LPPs and I was probably shooting a pound heavier than most, usually clocked at 6.5 by a cheap pull scale. That said, they were 1/1000 reliable. Best case is always lightest possible pull through with strongest possible reset, and the 627 I shoot right now is not my own trigger job, it's very thin at the top so not much mass at the end of the lever.

Exactly, it's human to constantly go too fast and screw up, but you have to see that you did it.

Also take your own rope to extend the plate rack reset, I usually played at 25 yards but the rope was only 15. If you can recover from a reload and quickly make a 25 yard shot, then you know your mechanics are working.

I had my first range session in about 3 years, and have barely been out since 2014 or so due to lots of joint and muscle problems. I recognize that 8 shot is the only viable option so I'm trying to tune everything so that it works like my good old .45s. The two big issues I'm running into are lots of clicks and empty moonclips jamming up against the frame, grip, or ejector on reloads. I cooked up a batch of light, medium, and heavy primer stroke ammo but haven't found a recipe yet, trying from .01 to .015 depth in the pocket. I've shaved back the left side of the grip to give as much clearance as possible but I still get clips tangling on the ejector. That last part is probably something I can work through with mixtures of shaving, gun position, and different clip tensions, but I'm always open to suggestions. More to the point, does anyone have a sweet spot for primer depth on a 627 with Starline short Colt brass and Federal SPP?

Offhand, one very easy mistake to make is to look over your sights to either find the target or try and confirm a hole, and it happens in such a way that your brain doesn't notice that your attention moved off the sights at the last hundredth. Do a shot calling drill where you absolutely confirm that your visual focus never left the front sight, you called your shot, and your call was within a couple of inches at 15 yards. If you're getting surprised by results then the first problem is you didn't actually see your sights as the trigger broke.

Good on ya. Just close it firmly, cylinder position doesn't matter.

Every 3 or 4 stages, back in the day. That little but of friction on the reload can cause a lot of seconds to add up.

Best bang for buck/time I ever came up with was a long plate rack and reloading between every shot. The shakiness of grip, body, and trigger after a reload is a big deal.

I've posted this before, but no, major 6 isn't competitive with minor 8 ultimately. 2012 Nationals I had a stage I shot as well as I could shoot, and not to buff my nails on my shirt but at the time I was good enough to know that while any performance is beatable it would take an exceptional effort on that stage to be in my same ballpark. I was the only 6 shooter on the super squad, and came in 7th on that stage or something awful like that.

Any change to IPSC? I always ran close to the belt so that I would have a single setup for both.

I think the 5" is better in every way from the 4". Before the 8 shot emergence there were exactly zero super squad shooters with a 4", and maybe a few percent with a 6". It's a sweet spot.

Pulled a thousand or so today, I'm seeing that getting the trigger farther out towards the tip is keeping the sights steadier. This will be tough because the impulse on a timer with adrenaline is to let more finger onto the trigger, even to the joint, which requires more hand strength to overcome. The question now is can I train the more delicate position so that it doesn't leave me when things get frisky.

I wish I could grab the gun as hard as I used to, but post-injury I don't want to risk it, plus I'm plain-old in worse shape and older than I was. The ideas I'm going to use: 1. The grip needs to be tight enough to return the sights faster than you can pull the trigger cleanly, remembering that 2. You need to pull the trigger cleanly enough not to disturb the sight picture That's circular and changes with distance/target difficulty, with minor loads it's a different amount than with major. I used to crush the gun and yank the trigger as fast as I could, letting the grip cancel the yank. Think I have to make some changes these days.

Some thoughts after I just shot my first match (steel challenge) in five years: 1. The 8 shot experiment seems to have failed. Too much good data in this thread to rehash but it seems obvious. 2. Apparently people compare themselves to other equipment divisions? This one mystifies me, why would you do that? Do people who head out to the local dragstrip bemoan their 200hp classic car vs. the local funny car? Why? 3. Revolver is NOT slow. Revolver is the fastest division in USPSA, if you're talking about action. That action isn't necessarily shooting, and I think people keep trying to chase that feeling in the hopes that it will draw in other division shooters. It won't. It's fast because it's complicated. It isn't hard, just complicated. When shooting a stage that isn't dumbed down for revolvers (looking at you, Revo Nationals) you never have a fraction of a second where you aren't reloading, shooting, or moving, usually at least 2 of the 3. 4. Money and complexity IS a problem. I got into revo because I'm a juggler, not a bobsled. I like chaos, I like complexity, I like a bunch of stuff going crazy all at the same time. Again, you're not going to figure out how to make a wheelgun feel like a semi and somehow rope people in. If they want easy and bang-bang, then they are going to get it in the other seventy divisions. 5. Six shots cannot compete with 8 shots, just stop that argument. There is no way to make it true, and I suspect the same of optics. I shot a stage at the 2014 Nationals as good as I can shoot a stage, which to be non-humble was pretty damned good. It was a "Well, I won that stage" event. Came in seventh on that stage. Further dilution of the perception of winning can't help. 6. One of the silly arguments I heard when 8 was proposed was that people didn't want to deal with the recoil. Now we're discussing adding major back in, which is it? 7. Participation. The numbers don't lie. We had a solid cadre of revolver shooters that had a hell of a time hanging out, competing, yapping over drinks, etc. That seems to be gone. We had the most people and the most fun and the most support when it was a clear division, six shots, iron sights, don't get worked up. The moonclips cost fifty cents and worked beautifully for everyone. Put a fiber sight on the front and you were done, Smith 625 or 25 were relatively cheap and the pinnacle of equipment. Now we need eight shots, optics? Think about why you love shooting competitions and see where the equipment race fits into that perception. What I really want is the experience of going to a major competition, sitting around with my revolver buddies, and broadly speaking never talking about guns or equipment at all. Dem good ol' days. Matt

Excellent analysis. It's hard to learn the next five things if you're fighting your equipment. 99.9% reliability is really a minimum to let your mind roam free and start working on the other issues. Stage analysis and planning are what makes a B an M and beyond, but you can't work on that with having to constantly recover from a plan-breaking failure.

The trick is to practice about 25 percent on the ragged edge, that's what makes your brain and eyes faster, but you need to compete well below that. USPSA is a marathon, you can wreck an entire match with one bad stage. The rest of training is always grooving that good shot, which does change based on the Target at hand. Ten yards, you just need to see your front sight somewhere in your rear sight. Twenty yards, you need to see some air on both sides. Fifty yards, you need to see the corners.

Shot Glocks and Berettas until I just wanted to maximize travel value at a double Nationals so I also shot revolver. It clicked. Fast hands but maybe not so fast eyes or feet (even if they called me Crazy Legs) just worked. I enjoyed the enhanced importance of manipulation vs. shooting.

Interesting! Maybe just a barrel out of spec or a factory load that is slightly undersized. I just can't picture how the firing mechanism could be involved, but maybe there is some way. My only experience with keyholing was trying to use undersized Cowboy bullets at small velocities.