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Leam's Revolver Range Diary


leam

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30 Jan 11

Range time to work on first shot hits. Did about 100 "draw...shoot...reholster" Challenge area for me though I'm normally very accurate on successive shots. At 5 of 6 for 5 yards and large piece of paper with a "shoot when the sights are on the target" program. Very strong roll to off hand that I need to work on.

Bonus practice, timed Bill drill.

Draw, shoot 6 unaimed, reload, shoot 6 unaimed at 9.68 with a 5.22 reload.

Lanny Bassham's 21 Day Plan:

"My reloads are smooth in motion and in any direction."

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1 Feb 11

Grip reaquisition, off-thumb chamber pushout. Clickety-six for trigger finger endurance. Still have a lot of issues with trigger control throwing the front sight all over the target. But my reloads are getting smoother.

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2 Feb 11

Treadmill, crunches, pushups, squats, and a little of that "weight on a roller" thing for my grip and wrist.

1 shot between reloads, doing no ammo reloads walking side to side. Keeping things smooth and the gun controlled.

My reloads are smooth in motion and in any direction.

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5 Feb 11

Loaded up 50 test rounds to chrono. Bobby at Freedom Gun Works has offered to chrono my loads, for which I am grateful. While my barrel is 2" longer than the test barrel listed in the books, I never trust the books totally and they don't have the cylinder gap to worry about, either.

The bullets are MildAtlantic Bullets 158 RNFP. A random pull of 3 bullets from the same box as the test loads weigh 158.2, 158.5, and 158.8. While the FP part isn't ideal, Bob at MidAtlantic was a pleasure to work with. Maybe we can talk him in to a larger and true round nose at some point in time; I'd love a 180, Bob! :)

Loaded 5 each 3.0-3.9 grains of Bullseye, dribbling the last few grains in by hand. OAL length is 1.417 +/- .002 and all were double run through the RCBS Rock Chucker with hand-me down Dillon dies.

Until chrono results are in I'm running 3.6 grains so I shouldn't have to worry about sub-Minor PF. Hopefully we can tone it down a bit though. For no reason other than looks I'm lusting after a heavy slab side or large round barrel. Expensive, pointless, and cool looking. It would slow a real shooter down, but if you've seen me shoot you know speed is not a factor.

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8 Feb 11

Trigger finger placement and isolation. Long fingers and a lot of side pushing when I shoot. Faux reload and then regain trigger finger placement. Fun stuff!

Edited by leam
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Hey Hopalong, thanks! I'm targeting smooth and not much else. For months I tried to set goals that I didn't reach in any decent time, and got frustrated and depressed about it. This time it's just smooth, and just the small things. Hopefully they will add up in the end. I am about half way through this 21 day cycle so we'll see what's at the end and what's next in a couple weeks. :)

Leam

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12 Feb 11

Spent a good bit of time on Draw, shoot 6, reload, shoot 6. Par time of 10 seconds. Couldn't accurately time as I was on a busy public range. Target was a paper place at ~7 yards. I had one set of 17 where I hit all 12 times and was under par. So I know I can do it!

I had three instances of the reloader dropped a round on the ground instead of in the cylinder, one round that would not go in, and a few times where I didn't pull the trigger to the full distance to release the hammer. I think all of these can be dealt with; smooth practice for the trigger-monkey and chamber checking all the ammo before going to the range.

All in all, a fun day and I'm happy with my performance yet aware that there's room to grow.

Leam

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  • 2 weeks later...

Sorry to hear that. Were you looking for love in all the wrong places (again)?

No, nothing to do with Open...just medicine for one thing tripped off another, and I was already snow-balling down hill anyway...

JFlowers, a long time friend and tempter, has been encouraging me with revolver stuff so I'll be back to that as soon as I can.

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  • 1 month later...
  • 1 month later...

14 May 11

Who needs a grip strength workout? I just primed 1650 pieces WHO with my RCBS hand primer!

Many thanks to JFlowers for keeping me encouragd, in spite of myself.

Leam

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18 May 11

Reloading manually, doing some mount and click drills to regain what smooth I had.

Pondering Northern Xtreme's 25-2. Nice gun, just hard to stay on track with anything.

Edited by leam
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22 May 11

A little dry practice with draws and first shot hits. I do mean a little. Life is dumping on me right now and I do what I can to stay mildly on the okay side of "sane". I'm working a Mental Management program and am starting the second of three weeks on the draw and first shot. Tallahassee on 4 Jun will hopefully give me another classifier so I'll have 2 in Revo. My first one was bad; I read the stage, made my plan, shot my plan, and then realized my plan missed the mandatory reload after shot #7! All them penalty points added up, I can tell you!

I'l confess that it's nice having a revolver; the trigger pull is a pain but it's always the same. Dry-fire is so much more like real shooting, as are reloads. :)

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25 May 11

Dry draws and one click, targetting 1.5 seconds par time on a medium target at about 3 yards. I could generally do that, but spent time trying to feel where the tension was so I could relax more and speed up.

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  • 2 weeks later...

10 Jun 11

Actual range time, woo-hoo! I worked on a couple things today. First was draw and fire one shot on an 8" metal plate at 10 yards. Main goal was a smooth draw and good shot with great sight picture. Per watching JM's video, I used the "use only as much accuracy as you need". At first I wasn't recording time on misses but then started to. Misses are in (), except the early ones with no time. They are "-"..

2.62, -, 2.32, 2.05, 2.17, 2.52

-, 2.26, -, 2.28, 2.04, -

-, 2.19, -, -, 2.43, 2.02

2.08, (1.92), (2.42), 2.26, 2.20, 2.01

2.17, 2.32, 2.08, 2.33, (1.92), 2.10

So an average is 2.22 on the hit. Fastest hit is 2.01.

Second exercise was all 6 plates at 10 yards. Per JM, trying to get consistant splits and keep the cylinder moving.

(2.24), 0.77, 0.69, 0.74, (0.68)

2.09, 0.71, 0.66, (0.69), 0.81, 0.67

2.30, 0.92, 0.71, 0.67, 0.62, (0.71)

(2.24), 1.24, 0.81, (0.87), 0.77, 0.76

(2.15), 0.85, 0.70, 0.66, 0.63, 0.59

(2.29), 0.76, 0.78, 0.70, 0.61, 0.65

(2.33), (0.93), 1.06, 0.89, 0.76, 0.67

2.38, 0.83, 0.70, 0.62, 0.67, 0.59

2.08, 0.71, 0.63, 0.54, 0.53, (0.56)

2.18, 0.67, 0.78, 0.83, 0.59, 0.57

So first shot hits average 2.206. However, a significant number of first shots where I took longer still missed. Issue there. Splits averaged 0.723 for hits. Low of 0.53. I forgot what little bit of statistics I used to know so can't figure Standard Deviation.

Thrid and final exercise was unloading 6 into the berm and just watching the sights lift. I did actually see the front sight go up! Woo-Hoo!

0.43, 0.46, 0.21, 0.21, 0.20, 5.09 (Missed a round)

0.34, 0.25, 0.48, 0.28, 0.33, 0.31

0.38, 0.40, 0.33, 0.34, 0.35, 0.37

So the fastest I can cycle the cylinder right now is 0.20. For my splits that means I'm taking at least 0.33 seconds to aim and confirm sight picture. Using averages, 0.333 for spinning the wheel and 0.723 for splits; so 0.39 to aim in addition to the trigger pull on average.

Leam

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13 Jun 11

Dry-draw and shoot one for Par time. Started at 2.50 and when south in 0.20 increments. Was doing occasionally well at 1.50, with focused effort on relaxing. I really saw a time lag based on starting to pull the trigger after acquiring sight picture. So that's the next area of attention; bringing the sights into visual line consistantly so that I am on target and don't have to manually adjust as much.

Also replaced the factory weight springs with some lighter ones, now that I have Federal primers. Makes this much easier!

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