revolvers

Learning new skills

Posted on by Caleb

I have been practicing with my new S&W 625 a lot lately, primarily trying to anchor the skills necessary to reload the gun quickly.  I took the factory wood stocks off and replaced them with an open backstrap Hogue grip, which in addition to being a lot more narrow than the wood stocks due to the open backstrap also are a lot thinner in the lateral cross-section.  That means I can get more “meat” on the gun, which means better recoil control, which of course means faster follow up shots.

However, I’m running into a problem with this revolver thing, and that comes when I’m reloading.  To reload revolvers the traditional way, you have to break you grip with your shooting hand during the reloading process, and eventually regrip the revolver.  Doing this has shown me why the top pros use smooth wood stocks with no finger grooves – as you re-grip the pistol you needs to be able to slide your hand around if your grip isn’t perfect on the first try.

There’s another solution though that I accidentally discovered last night, though.  Holding the revolver in my shooting hand (my right hand), I was able to load the cylinder using my left hand, without breaking my firing grip on the gun.  Now, this only works with revolvers that are loaded via moonclips, and it bears further investigation, however the technique works as follows:

  1. Cylinder is opened in the “traditional” manner
  2. Left hand whacks the ejector rod to clear the empties while the right hand retains a “shooting” grip
  3. Left hand pulls moonclip from belt as right hand moves gun to reloading position.
  4. Left middle finger is placed on the front of the cylinder while the left thumb pushes the moonclip in to the charge holes.  Essentially, you’re trying to touch your thumb to your middle finger.
  5. Left hand closes cylinder and regrips gun.

The disadvantage in terms of speed is that when you’re using the “traditional” loading method, while the left hand is clearing the empties, you let go with your right hand and grab the moonclip.  Because I’m not that fast yet, I actually get an advantage in speed this way, because even with smooth wood grips, I lose a lot of time messing around trying to regrip the gun.

The greatest advantage comes in terms of muscle memory.  Because the loading motion is more similar to that of reloading a semi-automatic pistol, my brain was able to adapt a little faster when I was practicing last night.  I was able to stick my reloads faster by about 0.3 seconds on average, primarly because the left hand is positively driving the cartridges in to the chambers, which means less time mucking around with a moonclip saying “go in the hole, the hole is your home!”

Of course, this idea is currently just sort of in its infancy, but I’m going to keep playing around with it to see if I can make it legitimately faster than a traditional reload, of I’m just wasting motion having the left hand do all that work.

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The new Brownells website

Posted on by Caleb

It has been mentioned all across the gun blog world that Brownells recently updated and completely revised their website.  I finally got around to making a purchase on the new website last night, I needed moonclip holders and a fiber optic front sight for my 625.  The new website made doing that almost ridiculously easy.  I found my moonclip holders, added them to my cart, found the front sight I wanted, hit it up and was on my way.  If you take out the time I spent clicking around looking at random things, the whole experience probably took 5 minutes, which is exactly how I like it.

My only issue was when I was shopping for the sights – I had to refer to an external website to figure out which models of HiViz sights fight my particular 625.  Brownells’ descriptions were less than clear, but other than that minor nitpick, everything was pretty much awesome.  Kudos to Brownells for their redesign.  Assuming that it stays stable, it’s actually going to take a lot of my business away from MidwayUSA.

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More cap and trade

Posted on by Caleb

Here is a complete list of the Representatives that voted “no” to the largest tax increase in the history of the US.  If your rep is on this list, make sure you thank them for supporting the Constitution, and standing for the principles on which this country was founded.

If your rep is on the list just above that one, the list that voted yes…well, next election time, we need to do everything we can to make sure they lose their seat.  Volunteer for their opponent’s campaign, send money to their opponent – whatever it takes.  Now we’re off to the Senate, and I’m not going to lie to you, the concept of relying on the Senate to actually defend the Constitution and do the right thing makes me want to buy a bunch of canned goods and ammo.

For my Hoosiers: Neither of our Senators are an automatic “no” on this issue, although they should be.  Manufacturing, coal, and “heavy industry” are going to be gutshot by this bill, and Indiana’s economy relies significantly on these industries.  We need to burn up the phone lines to Lugar and Bayh to make sure they don’t support this legislation.  If Evan Bayh ever wants to sit in The Big Chair in Washington, he needs to understand that the route does not include passing the biggest tax increase in American history.  Here’s Senator Bayh’s contact page.  Keep it clean and smart, and focus on the Hoosier jobs it’s going to destroy.  Here’s the contact page for Senator Lugar.

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To the 44

Posted on by Caleb

Democrats that voted against the cap-and-trade bill, thank you.

To the eight Republicans that voted for it, we’ll see you on Election Day.

http://mobile.nytimes.com/article?a=381171&single=1&f=19

It’s been said before, and I’ll say it again: if Democrats were serious about clean energy, we would emulate France (that hurt a little to say that) and go nuclear.

self defense

Knife thought

Posted on by Caleb

There are some days when carrying a gun, even my super concealable .25 ACP Jetfire just isn’t feasible. On those days, I’ve often toyed around with the idea of carrying a fixed blade knife as a backup, because that I can still manage to conceal. So what are you thoughts on packing a knife as a substitute for a gun on those rare occasions when you just can’t conceal a firearm? Should I carry the knife, or just skip it and pray for the best?

revolvers

Ruger SASS Vaquero

Posted on by Caleb

You get the best Cowboy Action shooters in the world together and tell them to design a Vaquero that will be ready to rock out of the box for SASS shooting?  You get the Ruger SASS Vaquero, which is available now from Ruger in 2 pistol sets with consecutive serial numbers.  Thanks go to Steve for the tip, because now I’m sitting at my desk wondering exactly how many pints of blood I’d have to sell to come up with the MSRP of $1500 for these guns.  Now, they will probably “street” for lower than that, but these guns are definitely loaded out for Cowboy shooting.

Two of the biggest “SASS” features are the reverse indexing pawl, which allows the cylinder to rotate in the opposite direction of a traditional single action revolver, which makes loading and unloading much, much easier.  The lower Montado style hammer also helps with your split times between shots – for people with smaller hands it’s a lot easier to get to than a traditional “full size” hammer.  The final “neato” feature designed into the SASS guns is that the rear sight notch has been widened to allow for a faster sight picture.  With a wider rear sight, it’s much easier to pick up that front post for the ridiculous target transition shots that Cowboy Action requires. Of course, any “hey look at this new gun” thread is worthless without pictures, so here you go.

From Gun Nuts: The Next Generation

Makes me want to wear cowboy boots to work…

self defense

Flashlight bleg

Posted on by Caleb

Mrs. Ahab’s place of gainful employment has a strict no weapons policy, which includes things like pepper spray and .25 ACP handguns.  She and I spoke the other day about some sort of force multiplier that she could carry with her that would have some sort of distance deterrent effect, as well as be a viable last ditch striking weapon.  We came to the conclusion that a good tactical flashlight with a strike cap on the end would be ideal for this.

One of the things they talk about a lot on The Best Defense is the “stand off” ability of a flashlight.  While I’d personally prefer the the flashlight be backed up with 10 rounds of 147 grain JHP, we don’t live in a perfect world.  However, being able to light a potential attacker up at a distance can serve as a deterrent in some cases, because it lets them know that you’re situationally aware, which means you’re not necessarily an ideal target.

The reason I want to get her a light that has a strike cap on the end is that my wife has tiny, tiny hands.  Seriously, her index finger is the same size as my pinky finger, and I don’t exactly have big hands.  I spent the better part of 15 years in competitive martial arts, and if there is one lesson I learned, it’s that striking a human being with your bare hand sucks real bad for your hand; so if Mrs. Ahab were to get in a worse case scenario, I’d want her to be able to have a decent striking weapon.

So let’s see, what are my criteria?

  1. Brightness: I want this light to straight up blind a person (read: BRIGHT)
  2. Size: Think “roll of quarters” for the size of the handle, something that a person with teeny tiny hands will be able to get a solid fighting grip on.
  3. It has to be activated by an end-cap switch
  4. Must be designed for striking, so shock resistant, with a cap on the end for hitting folk.
  5. Must be small enough to fit in a sexy Banana Republic purses.

Tam actually had a really good light at the last blogmeet, with some kind of wicked strike cap on it that was crenelated and nasty looking.  But I forgot to write down the name of the thing.

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FYI for my readers

Posted on by Caleb

If you put a comment up for a post, and your comment contains two or more links, it is going to get picked off by my spam filter pretty much every single time.  Please don’t send me emails asking me why I deleted your comment, because I (generally) won’t have any idea what you’re talking about.  The exception to that rule is if I actually did delete your comment, but I usually only do that to pdb, and then it’s an accident because what I really wanted to do was make fun of him for being a WARRIORZ.