5.56 versus .223

Posted on June 21, 2012 by Joe

This is probably more information than you are really want to know—unless you are a gun geek. 5.56 vs .223 – What You Know May Be Wrong

The differences between .223 Remington and 5.56mm NATO have been hashed out many times on the internet. Unfortunately, many of the “facts” that are often thrown around are simply what someone has heard from someone else, leading to a lot of misinformation being accepted as gospel.

…

My findings, and the opinions of many experts in the industry who deal with the topic every day, were not exactly what some might expect. In fact, many of them had already discovered what I am reporting, although my research was conducted independently.

I liked it.

Velocity

Posted on March 20, 2012 by Lyle

As kids, we liked to shoot, and one of the things we liked to shoot was cans. Bottles were cool too, but we mostly did that at the dump since it sprays broken glass all over the place. One of the first cans I shot was with .22 Shorts (very low power ammunition) from a handgun. One bullet entered a can at a tangent and spun several times around the inside (“PZzzzzit!”) making the can levitate off the ground a little and leaving raised ridges protruding around the outside of the steel. Fascinating. That was in the 1960s.

So of course when I recently got some good performing loads worked up for a 30-30 Winchester carbine model of 1894, I was going to shoot some cans. It’s the natural order of things.

The two milk cans below (both were filled with water) were shot using the same 170 grain bullet cast from #2 lead alloy, from the same carbine at the same distance. The only difference was the powder charge. The can in the first photo was hit at around 1600 feet per second, with the bullet coming in from the left and exiting to the right. Note that the entry side is blown out much more than the exit (a not uncommon phenomenon when you have a harder outer shell containing a softer, more fluid material). You can see that the neat little bullet entry hole is split in half.

The can below was hit at around 2000 fps, again with the bullet coming in from the left and exiting to the right. It’s more like a cherry bomb went off inside it. The top separated and flew waaaay up into the air. I never did find it.

Yes it’s a little bit childish, and yes it is a lot of fun. Though I’ve done this sort of thing hundreds of times and I’ve had this carbine since the mid ’90s, just the other day I found myself chuckling like a ten year old boy with a new toy. It’s hard to explain. Several previous outings were for the purpose of recording velocities, accuracy and sight adjustments for various loads. That may be some fun, but it resembles work too. This time out, just for shooting, was very different– more like a meditative state of near total concentration and peace. Would that we could spend most of our lives in that state.

In case you’re wondering; I doubt there was any significant bullet expansion. The hard cast round nose bullets were not recovered, but at those low velocities (for a rifle) I’d bet they held their shape fairly well. I plan to try recovering some later, using several water jugs as a trap. So we’ll see.

Laser Guided Bullets

Posted on January 31, 2012 by Lyle

We had radar proximity fuses in use in AAA rounds during W.W. II, and they of course used vacuum tube technology. One of the members of our local ham radio club worked on that project in the ’40s. One of the challenges for his team was developing tubes that could withstand the 10s of thousands of Gs at launch. Ouch.

Now we have this, via an e-mail from my nephew. I find it fascinating, funny, and a little disturbing all at the same time. Ordinary rifles spin a bullet at 2K RPM? They missed that one by an order of magnitude or two. A rifle chambered for the 5.56 NATO round for example rotates the bullet at around 300,000 RPM, more or less depending on barrel length, rifling twist and bullet weight. But as I often say; what’s an order of magnitude (or two) between friends?

It is very telling, if not entirely predictable, how they smear the general public in the article– government = good, whereas regular citizens = dangerous or at least troubling. They of course have it entirely upside down and backwards in that department.

Standard Deviation = 1

Posted on January 30, 2012 by Lyle

Never heard of it, though mnaybe y’all are getting it all the time and haven’t told me. The first time I thought is was a fluke. 20 shots from a G20 pistol with SD of one foot per second. During the string I thought something was wrong with the chrono, because shot after shot it displayed the same number. Then there’s the saying; if you test your velocity once, you’ll know it. If you test it a second time, you’ll never be sure again. Though I never got any error readings, I discarded the data.

So I went out a second time on Saturday with the same load. The CED chrono was unwilling to get any readings from the 30-30 loads I really wanted to test. It’s like that sometimes, even with the IR LED screens. But it took readings from the slower, bigger 10 mm bullets just fine. I only measured ten shots this time, so a SD is of little meaning, but the extreme spread was 6. It might correlate to a SD of 1. I don’t know about anyone else, and the ammo manufacturers rarely say anything about it, but I’ve thought I was doing pretty well in the past if the SD was 12 or so.

This is a light load for the ten, getting barely under 1100 fps. More like a 40 S&W. It’s 9.6 gr. Blue Dot (checked against a check weight) with new Starline cases, 180 XTPs and a CCI 300, just going by the dimensions in the Hornady manual. Nothing special. This was my starting load, but it may end up a keeper. We’ll see. At the moment it’s my carry load, with 43 rounds on board.

I know – handloaded ammo for self defense, blah blah. Don’t care. I can practice a lot more with this stuff because I can afford a lot of it, and practicing with the same load you carry makes sense. That’s what I’ll tell the lawyers– I can shoot this load more accurately and therefore more safely, etc., because it’s exactly what I use for practice. I tried some of the hot Double Tap 200 grain FMJ stuff. It’s affordable for practice, and while I’m sure it’s fine ammo for some guns, my Glock did something with it that it’s never done before. The fired case would stick in the chamber (that’s what you call a pressure sign, right there) the extractor would strip off over the case head, and a fresh round would feed into the back of the fired case. Yikes that’s some hot stuff, but no thanks. Two stoppages or so per magazine is more than a deal killer. If your 10 mm can cycle it properly, it would make a good deep penetrator though.

The crimp has to be a touch under the case diameter just below the crimp though, whereas I went with “about equal”. A couple of these XTP handloads (2 of about 150) did fail to lock up all the way – something else that’s never happened with this gun. I’m sure it’s the crimp, and maybe that I need a new slide spring as this one is the original from the early 1990s and has been cycled umpteen thousand times. A gentle “forward assist” on the back of the slide was all it took. Yes; more crimp.

Help Me Understand

Posted on January 17, 2012 by Lyle

Why is it that so many rifle scopes, even very high-end scopes, have their BDC or BDC/rangefinding reticles on the second focal plane, such that the reticles features are only valid at one specific magnification setting?

That seems like a handicap to me. What are the arguments for or against?

Tree Rides, a Hair Trigger and a Very Bloody Flashlight

Posted on December 29, 2011 by Lyle

That’s right; it was varmint control (hunting) season, also known in my house as step-one-food-processing season. So this is a month late (and I’m sure you all were chomping at the bit for it).

It was windy on the first day of muzzleloader season and the deer tend not to roam or forage as much in high wind, so I saw nothing, but I did get a nice “tree ride”. I wrote a little song while swaying this way and that in my tree stand;

Rock-a-by hunter
In the tree top
When the wind blows
The tree stand will rock
When the bow breaks
The tree stand will fall
And down will come hunter
Rifle and all

But later I realized that thousands of tree-climbing hunters must surely have thought of those exact words over the years, and so I can’t claim patent rights to the song. Anyway; I’m not sure you can call it “hunting” when all you’re doing is sitting there waiting to snipe a deer. “Waylaying” maybe, or “Ambushing”.
“I’m going ambushing, Honey. I’ll be back after dark.”
“OK. Good luck, Deer.”
“Wait. What? No– it’s good luck me, bad luck, deer.”

Thanksgiving evening I saw a nice buck come in from the wheat fields (our deer feed off of the farmers’ efforts most of the year in these parts). Now I never thought I was capable of doing this – you only take a shot if you’re going to make the shot, right? Therefore you don’t miss. That’s been my understanding and my experience up until now. In practice I’ve hit a target the size of the kill zone virtually 100% of the time, and in hunting previous years I’ve always put the ball close enough to where it belongs. So much for that as an axiom. I attribute it to a combination of a hair trigger on this percussion lock and cold fingers, but mostly to a timing error of the brain at that moment when timing is everything. Line up the sights under the target so you can keep the target in view the whole time, raise the front sight up to the A zone, fire. 1,2,3. Steps two and three ended up reversed somehow, such that once I got onto the A zone the ball had already escaped my control. The shot went right under the brisket, he jumped a little at the flash, the huge smoke cloud and the horrific blast, and went sauntering off unperturbed, flipping his tail and sniffing the ground. Moseying even, as if to show me how little he cared that I’d just shot at him with a fifty caliber rifle. Bloody show-off.

If that weren’t enough, I did it again with a nice doe two nights later, so a range session was in order the next morning. 100% “A” hits from standing unsupported. Two holes touching at 50 some yards, and a third right where I knew it went without using the binoculars—I’d pulled slightly low, but still a good shot. What the hell? I adjusted the lock for a slightly heavier pull, gritted my teeth, and kept climbing the tree.

The Tree is on a very steep slope between the farm fields and the Palouse River, and it’s a slog through brambles and fallen branches to get up there. Very good exercise that, and I feel much better now thank you, but one piece of advice; fighting through brush and thorns with very long hair is a problem.

More advice as if you’d asked for it; Doe urine is attractive to deer of both sexes. We humans tend to think of a urine smell as something to be avoided, but deer find it fascinating and it makes them relax– “Someone’s been peeing around here. Cool! I think I’ll stick around.” I once had two does trot in, calling to the non-existent doe that they’d smelled from downwind. They then stopped to hang around for a while and chew some cud. Urine is good stuff. I won’t tell you how to acquire doe urine. If you’re not interested it doesn’t matter, and if you’re interested enough you’ll figure out on your own.

Fifth day of season, fourth day out. The weather is too good this evening – no wind. No tree ride, but the chance of a close encounter is very good. Right on schedule, the huge covey of quail came chirping and fluttering in to roost just below my stand after sunset. As if on cue, a doe comes in through the brush with another full-sized doe and a smaller one following. Good enough. I’ll take the lead doe. Not gonna touch Mr. Trigger until the time is right. Full cock, ready to fire, taking aim. A quail explodes just under my target doe, causing her to leap reflexively, then settle down to a walk again. She’s more alert now. Damn. Why can’t this be easy? No. It is easy if I do everything right (that’s good advice there – marble sculpture is easy too, and eye surgery, so long as you do everything just right, see).

Blam!

“And…There!” I thought to myself. “Good let-off. That’s a hit.” No wind, so the smoke cloud lingers and I don’t see what happened with the deer. She’s just gone. But then I see all three deer just standing there off to my left, with stupid looks on their faces. These must be Republican deer– no ability to understand the situation and react appropriately for their own benefit. OK then, one of ’em’s going to expire right there, ’cause she’s been shot good, but I can’t just sit in the tree and do nothing, hoping. I’ve taken to reloading after a shot no matter what, so the rifle was charged as I lowered it on a cord and then climbed down. Prime the nipple. The three deer are still standing above me, very close at the top of the slope, as if caught in your headlights (Republicans alright) so I walk toward them. They just walk off, slowly, so I follow at a distance, waiting. One of the two larger does is hit, but which one is that? A little farther along the ridge now, and they’re all in view, all standing still, looking.

Now here is an ethical question for all hunters to ponder. You have one tag and three easy targets. One of them is hit for sure but you don’t know which one at the moment because in the smoke and confusion they shuffled and relocated. Light and legal hours are expiring fast. Do you, a) simply wait for the hit deer to expire, which risks having it run away first when you know you can’t track it worth squat in the coming darkness and the thick foliage, b) shoot the nicest looking deer and possibly let the currently injured deer get away, or, c) …..

It’s like phase two in the underpants gnomes’ plan (“…..”) yet the the only good choice I can think of is the technically non existent one. I’m not trying to be funny about it either. I have the gun up, ready to fire; eeny meeny my-nee moe…which one is my target doe…

“Use the Force” is as good a bit of advice as anything. It doesn’t really help but it might make you feel better. Actually that didn’t come to mind at all at the time. “Why doesn’t she go down?” came to mind. Gun up. Good backstop. They’re all standing broadside, like statues, presenting themselves as perfect targets, waiting for something to which they might react (Republicans for sure and for certain). I need a sign. Then two of them bound off, high-tailed, and one stays locked in place, head lower than normal alert status, maybe darker at the mouth. That’s her. Good backstop. Good angle. This one’s going right through the bioler room.

Blam!

Good sight picture, good let-off. She is double whacked, and hard. Still there is no wind and the big smoke cloud lingers. Again, no deer visible when the smoke clears. Just plowed Earth. I’m beginning to think muzzleloaders are a pain in the neck. Hope for some crosswind if you’re going to do this.

It’s getting dark – about 4:20 PM. That shot has kilt that doe plenty dead here at the top of the ridge on plowed ground, but she’s simply gone. The ridge falls off right here though, with brush and trees below. I am not happy as I don’t know which direction to start looking. In the undulating hills of the Palouse loess farmlands, you don’t have to go far to be over the horizon, and this spot is a prime example of that. My head’s on a swivel as I’m trying to decide where to go from here. Worry. Doubt. It probably would have looked comical for a couple seconds— one of several examples of why smokeless gunpowder is superior to black, but I soon find the two other does lingering in the bushes down the slope. OK. Search in that direction.

Below them is my target doe, dead as a hammer, belly up against some bushes at the bottom of a steep clearing. Relief. All is well. That first shot had gone in behind the diaphragm, busted the gut, busted the liver, penetrated the diaphragm on the far side, nicked one lung and busted a rib. Certainly lethal. A liver shot will bleed you out for sure, but too slowly to stop a deer before it gets some distance. The second shot went in right behind the left shoulder, wrecked both lungs and exited through the right scapula, busting ribs on both sides. A classic hit. She couldn’t have taken more than a bound before dropping a few yards from where she stood and then sliding down the incline. In hindsight, the second shot probably was not strictly necessary, but I had no way of knowing for sure at the time. A standing deer is still a target, I figure. From the first shot to finding the kill couldn’t have been more than four or five minutes.

I call several times on the radio for Son to bring the pickup. No answer. No answer on the cell phone either, but almost no coverage. Crap. Coyotes are numerous in this area and I don’t want to leave the kill. Texting works OK with a poor signal, but everyone’s at jazz band rehearsal I bet. Nothing for it. I tag the deer, then half drag, half carry it down the slopes and through the brush and thorns (did I mention that very long hair really sucks in this environment?) and run home with my gear. It’s down and across the river on a bridge and then up to the house (I said this was good exercise and I meant it) then a drive back to the bottom of the slope, panting like an over-worked sled dog, windows open to the 30ish degree air so I can cool off, back the tailgate against the slope and slide the carcass into the truck.

Cleaning (gutting) a deer in the dark is even more unpleasant than doing it in daylight, and that Maglite you hold in your mouth all the time so you can have both hands free– Na ga dah when it’s covered in blood and gore (I know – head mount – sure – you know everything). Son was home by then so he got flashlight duty. Hours after the first shot I had the cleaned carcass hung tidy in the garage, I was cleaned up, showered, and had a plate of really nice fried venison liver (the best in the world, and if you don’t believe it I don’t care) with home-grown mashed potatoes and leftover turkey gravy. That and a pint of homebrewed pumpkin ale, still pretty flat having been bottled only three days before, but still wonderful especially after not having eaten for ~12 hours.

It’s been a disconcerting and humbling season (knocked me off my high horse) but I’m happy with the outcome. The deer have to cooperate as I’ve said before, and this season was a good example.

Here’s where I get criticism, I suppose, for making what was technically a gut shot (plus I could have mistaken the deer for that second shot and had two dead deer with one tag). I could have simply omitted those details, had a fairly clean “true” story and elicited some praise, however I know from talking with more than a few hunters in private over my 50 some odd years that it can and does get uglier than that, and I figure you should know how it is in addition to knowing how it is ideally. I stand by my choices and actions. So there. Last year’s buck went down in its tracks due to a CNS hit, in turn due to the angle of the shot, but I was simply aiming for, and hit, the heart/lung cavity. That the ball grazed the spine on the way out was an unplanned bonus. One dead deer hung in my garage, was planned and that’s what I got each time. Primitive weapons and iron sights in low light are considered primitive for good reasons. A modern high velocity rifle round, say in the 6 mm to 30 cal range will cause far more trauma and therefore kill faster than the 50 caliber smoke pole, all else being equal, but even then a classic A zone hit with a modern system will often result in the deer running 40 yards or more before expiring. Expectations regarding the effects of gunshots have been taken completely away from reality by Hollywood types, and I dare say by gun writers and advertisers too. Killing is not a clean or tidy business. I don’t know; maybe next year I’ll try my luck at modern season. I’ve avoided modern season so far because I don’t like the extra company in the field, and because I can take a doe if I like. Some hunters go for neck shots, which will put them down quick and don’t risk destroying a picnic roast. That’s another option I guess.

Common Wisdom

Posted on December 22, 2011 by Lyle

When loading black powder guns, you must always seat the projectile hard against the powder charge, no matter what. Never, ever, ever leave an air space between powder and bullet, or it could create a pressure spike and blow your gun to smithereens.

When loading smokeless powder, never, ever seat the bullet too deep, even if there’s a huge air space in there (38 Spl comes to mind) or it could create a pressure spike and blow your gun to smithereens.

You should never, ever use smokeless powder in a black powder gun, because it could create a pressure spike and blow your gun to smithereens.

If you’re loading smokeless powder in a metal cartridge case designed for black powder, to be loaded into a gun designed for black powder cartridges, it is not only OK, it is recommended, and universally used both by hand loaders and ammunition manufacturers. Using black powder in a black powder metal cartridge is a relatively rare, esoteric art. So rare in fact that the loading manuals almost never mention doing it. It will dirty up your gun, so always use smokeless unless you just want to make some smoke and be a show-off.

Smokeless will blow my percussion revolver to smithereens! Unless I install a cartridge conversion cylinder, in which case it will be fine with thousands of 45 Colt smokeless loads.

So can I take from all that, assuming it’s all true, that I can safely use smokeless powder in my 1858 Remington percussion revolver, using the percussion cylinder, so long as I observe loading data for, say, the 44 Russian cartridge, and be SURE to leave a sizeable air gap between powder and ball? Or is something in the above paragraphs not true? Surely it’s either/or.

Not that I intend to try it, or that I even want to try it, mind you, but to make a point about Common Wisdom.

5.56 x 45 Wound

Posted on November 18, 2011 by Lyle

Very nasty. You’ve been warned. Lots of discussion from both medical and ballistics points of view, so I thought you’d be interested. It’s here on the Philippine Defense Forum. I found it as a link off of GunRightsMedia. Femur was not hit but was broken by shock wave, they say. M193 Ball at close range.

For comparison; a fifty caliber (.495″) soft lead ball at ~1000 to ~1500 fps on impact will not do anywhere near that much damage, and I can say that with some authority having necropsied four deer shot with same from various angles. The slower round pretty much digs a straight, caliber-sized hole through anything it touches (though I haven’t seen a 50 ball hit a femur. I have seen a 7 mm 168 gr match HP hit a femur, on the way out of a deer, having struck initially at ~2.5Kfps and passing through much of the animal, and that broke the heavy bone into several pieces). You learn a few things about terminal ballistics when hunting, so you don’t have to listen to much of the talk. The phrase; “Your pistol is the weapon you use to get back to your rifle” comes to mind, only the rifle should be putting lead on target at over 2Kfps according to these chaps.

Now clean up your lunch.

It Isn’t Complicated

Posted on November 4, 2011 by Lyle

It’s pretty common to get a response similar to; “I didn’t want to spend that much on an optic setup, since I only paid X for the rifle.”

A customer today said he has a WASR AK he keeps for defense, but can’t justify the price of a good optic. That’s a contradiction in terms, see– you’re going to count on this weapon, possibly, to save your life but anything more than 60 or 75 dollars for a sight that you can rely on is just too much? “I have another rifle that can put five rounds into a half minute or arc, so…[I don’t need a good optic on this one]” He said. So your 3 or 4 MOA Kalash doesn’t warrant an optic that will withstand a few knocks and hold zero, and has a battery life better measured in years than in hours? Why not? What is your life worth?

I don’t know if many people are aware of the number of thousand plus dollar scopes that are currently sitting on five hundred dollar rifles.

It’s not about matching the price of the sight to the price of the rifle. It’s about the setup you want, and you should want something on which you can rely. Reliable rifles with decent accuracy aren’t expensive, but good optics are. If your optic costs multiples of the price of the rifle, so be it. You have a good setup that didn’t have to include a super expensive rifle. Be happy.

I recently saw an article about some AR or other and the writer had one of the new Leupold Mk 8 variables on it. It seemed like just the thing I’ve wanted on my (700 dollar) Colt HBAR, so I looked it up. Four Thousand Dollars! Will I have to spend an additional 3,000+ dollars on a rifle only so I can justify a good optic? That sort of “reasoning” doesn’t make any sense to this shooter. It’s only a matter of coughing up the cash if you can (I do very much like the Trijicons too, and they’re not near 4K, but they don’t do all the same tricks). Choices choices, but the price I paid for my rifle won’t even be thought of during the process. I’ll only be thinking of what I can do with it once I have this rig setup nicely.

Disclaimer; …No– On second thought I don’t have to disclaim squat to anyone. I’m sick and damned tired of the notion that we have to qualify ourselves, or document any aspect of our lives or explain our behavior. If you can’t take my words at face value, or reject them purely on merits, that’s your own problem. Live with it. I’m not demanding anything of you, so stay out of my face and leave me the hell alone. Or else. This is the last discussion I will ever have with anyone on the matter of disclosure.

Ammo makes a difference

Posted on August 21, 2011 by Joe

I have had lots of experience with rifle ammunition being the cause of extreme inaccuracy. But I had not seen a huge difference in accuracy with handguns. Shooting offhand at handgun distances I just couldn’t see it making that much of a difference. For nearly all my purposes I just didn’t think it could matter when the human error was going to dominate (I thought) the results.

When loading rifle ammo for accuracy I measure each charge down to the 0.1 grain. I measure and trim the necks of the shell casing which are all of the same brand. I clean the primer pocket. I weight the cases. I use a special seating die that aligns the bullet precisely. I use match grade bullets. I sometimes weigh and sort all the bullets. All total, each round takes about two minutes of my time to assemble.

When reloading for pistol I shop around for the cheapest bullets I can find. I use whatever cases of whatever brand I happen to find on the range. I load 300 to 400 rounds per hour.

As I reported a couple weeks ago I discovered some cheap gun show pistol ammo was key-holing once the range exceeded about 30 feet. This was 180 grain .40 S&W BVAC remanufactured ammo.

The ammo will still work fine for USPSA short range practice on the indoor range which doesn’t allow lead bullets. But for an actual match or where the range exceeds 30 feet I needed something better. I had some 180 grain Montana Gold JHP bullets that I loaded up last weekend with 6.0 grains of VV N350 in mixed casings with Winchester primers. Yesterday I tested my loads. I also tested my carry ammo, 180 grain Winchester Ranger in .40 S&W, and some other cheap ammo I bought at Wal-Mart a year ago.

Here are the results from shooting offhand at 75’. Some of the outliers are my fault but you should still get the idea:

This is my target from two weeks ago with the BVAC ammo.

This is another tests of the BVAC ammo (8” group).

This is another test of the BVAC ammo. Ignore the 2.5 holes at the top center. They do not belong to the same group. That outlier at the top left was not my fault. I know when I pull the trigger wrong. This was not one of those times.

This is 180 grain Winchester Ranger ammo that I carry on a daily basis. The four holes at the bottom are probably my fault.

This is 135 grain Winchester Ranger ammo.

This is 180 grain Federal FMJ AN from Wal-Mart.

This was my new handloads with 180 grain Montana Gold JHPs over 6.0 grains of VV N350 (5.25” group).

It looks like I have some new loads that work well in my gun and that are welcome at indoor ranges.

Key-holing

Posted on August 7, 2011 by Joe

I have known for a long time that often something strange happens out between 30 and 40 feet when shooting my STI Eagle 5.1 (chambered in .40 S&W). The groups get much larger. At about 20 feet I can almost keep it on ragged hole even when shooting unsupported. But at 40 feet it’s about 6” to 8” groups. At 75 feet they will just barely stay on an USPA target.

I went to the range today and finally figured it out. Below are three different bullet holes from a target at 75’ feet.

Some of the bullets are key-holing the target. This means the bullets are not stable in flight.

The same thing could be seen at 40’ but less frequently. On the 40’ target, which used a different type of paper you could actually see an imprint of the side of the bullet.

This was cheap “gun show ammo” in 180 grain FMJ but I’m pretty sure it happens with at least some of my hand loads too.

I then tried some Winchester Ranger in 135 grain HP. It was a 16 shot 2” group at 40’. I tried Winchester Ranger in 180 grain HP with the same result; a 2” group at 40’.

I have some 180 grain Montana Gold HPs that I should load up and see if they give me the better results. Fellow shooter Don W. told me a year or more ago that he did experiments with various bullets with his STI chambered in .40 S&W and the Montana Gold 180 grain HP gave him much better accuracy than the FMJs.

I think I will have a chance to do the tests next weekend.

More Shooting Last Week

Posted on June 13, 2011 by Lyle

Dan here at UltiMAK put a new trigger on his Mosin, and since the snow has been out of the hills long enough to let the ground firm up, we had to get out to a favorite spot and try it.

Dan hit an aerial clay with the Mosin on his fifth shot, so I had a go at the clays with an M1 30 Carbine. I did poorly – only three hits in about 40 rounds, whereas at time I’ve made 20% or better, which would have been 8 hits On the 500ish yard targets, using a Rem 700 .308, I did a bit better, after some confusion over yards and meters. My cold clean bore first shot was a near miss on a gallon jug. Second shot was a hit, and by the third shot I felt it was not a matter of whether, but where I could hit the target. The jugs don’t explode from the .308 fire at 500 yards like they do closer in, so I got to hit the same one twice.

Lessons learned were; 1. My Remington 700 trigger sucked as delivered, compared to Dan’s new Timney. 2. As a shooter/spotter team we suck at communication. This happened at Boomershoot too– spotter on one target, shooter on another, and after many words thrown this way and that. Very frustrating, and a waste of time and ammo. We made a pact to fix that. 3. My rangefinder is not adequate beyond 400 or 500 yards, depending on conditions, and that is not acceptable. I guess I know where my next 500 or so bucks are going. 4. See, I’m doing it right here– talking in yards, when I was in fact ranging in meters, because my scopes are BDC graduated in meters. That’s been a source of confusion in the past, as I was accustomed to ranging in yards. This time, I was ranging in meters, but still doing the corrections from yards to meters out of habit. That of course wasted more time and ammo. I seem to recall NASA (or was it JPL?) having a similar problem with a Mars probe that made an expensive crater instead of a soft landing. OK. Got it now. Reading in meters, BDCing in meters. No conversions. 5. I don’t know how you can dope the wind when you’re shooting across a very deep ravine. Surface clues aren’t necessarily applicable. Come to think of it, I’m a lousy wind doper anyway. Must fix that too.

I found out only recently that Timney uses the Remington trigger design, which means I could have adjusted my 700’s trigger a long time ago. I knew the Timneys were adjustable for weight, engagement, and overtravel. I’m ashamed to admit that I haven’t taken apart my Remington strictly for the purpose of understanding every aspect of its design, as I’ve done with my other guns. That means that only as of yesterday do I have a decent trigger after using this rifle, on occasion, for several years. Much better now. JEP (Joe’s Evil Plan) marches on. We have to get right back out there very soon.

A simple physics problem

Posted on January 16, 2011 by Joe

Given: Ry uses his AR-15 to shoot 1200 grams of Boomerite contained in a coffee creamer container. On top of the coffee creamer container is a 60 pound steel contraption for crushing charcoal briquettes and launching the dust into the air. Joe takes a video using his Windows Phone 7 phone and puts it up on YouTube*. In the video you can see the explosion occurred at 11.18 seconds into the video. The charcoal dispenser hits the ground at 14.48 seconds into the video. Afterward Ry measures the horizontal distance the charcoal dispenser traveled. It is 13 yards. Assume the acceleration of gravity on this planet at this location is 32.174 ft/sec².

Problem: Ignoring air resistance and assuming the initial acceleration was for all practical purposes instantaneous answer the following questions:

How high into the air did the charcoal dispenser go?
At the instant after the detonation what were the horizontal and vertical velocity vectors of the charcoal dispenser?
At the instant after the detonation what was the total velocity vector of the charcoal dispenser?
What was the USPSA power factor of the charcoal dispenser at launch?
If used at an USPSA match does the charcoal dispenser “make Major” for both pistol and rifle competition?

Be sure to use consistent units during the calculations and give the results in English units.

Solution:

The total time in the air is 3.3 seconds. One half of the time is spent going up and the other half is spent going down. The equation of motion for an object dropped in a gravitational field is:

d = 1/2 a t²

Where d is the distance traveled in feet, a is the acceleration of the gravitational field, and t is the time in seconds.

The maximum height can be expressed as:

d = (32.174/2 ft/sec²) (3.3 sec/2)²
d = (16.087 ft/sec²)(1.65 sec)²
d = (16.087 ft/sec²)(2.7225 sec²)
d = 43.8 ft
The equation of motion for an object traveling at a constant speed is:

d = v t

Where d is the distance traveled, v is the velocity, and t is the time.

This can be used to give us the initial horizontal velocity component.

Since the total time in the air was 3.3 seconds and the horizontal distance traveled was 13 yards the velocity can be solved for in the following equation:

13 yards = (v)(3.3 sec)
v = (13 yards)/(3.3 sec)
v = 3.94 yards/sec

or expressed in the more common feet per second:

v = (3 ft/yard)(3.94 yards/sec)
v = 11.8 ft/sec

The vertical component at launch is the same as the final vertical velocity at the moment of impact. The equation of velocity with respect to time is:

v = a t

Where v is the final velocity, a is acceleration, and t is the time.

Hence the initial vertical velocity is:

v = (32.174 ft/sec²)(3.3/2 sec)
v = (32.174 ft/sec²)(1.65 sec)
v = 53.1 ft/sec
The total velocity is the square root of the sum of the squares of the horizontal and vertical velocities. Hence the total velocity at the instant after detonation was:

v = SQRT((11.8 ft/sec)² + (53.1 ft/sec)²)
v = 54.4 ft/sec
IPSC Power Factor is expressed by the following equations

PF = (m v)/1000

Where m is the mass of the bullet in grains and v is the velocity of the bullet in ft/sec.

There are 7000 grains in one pound. Hence the mass of the “bullet” is (7000)(60) or 420,000 grains.

Hence the IPSC Power Factor is:

PF = (420,000)(54.4)/1000
PF = 22,848
The minimum USPSA power factor required to make major with a pistol is 165. For rifle it is 320. Since 22,848 is greater than both 165 and 320 the answer is “Yes”.

* The YouTube video:

Instant Incapacitation

Posted on November 29, 2010 by Lyle

Apparently it’s not possible to tell a hunting story in under 1,000 words. Something about the laws of rhetorical physics. You’ve been warned.

I choose Late Muzzleloader season in Eastern Washington because it allows the harvest of almost any deer – three point minimum or antlerless. We see few bucks around here, and since I hunt for the table I don’t care about old, tough bucks with big racks. They’re chewy and don’t taste as good. All that and there are very few other hunters out this late. It’s win win.

Late Muzzleloader lasts one week, so I’ve been out twice a day since last Wednesday. The below zero temp Wednesday morning was hard to take, but it was beautiful and I remember sitting up in the tree thinking, “This is definitely worth it even if I don’t get a deer. Wow!”

The tree I sit in is on a steep slope, with deer tracks crisscrossing all below and behind me, with a few tracks in front along the top of the ridge overlooking the Palouse River. I’ve seen at least six deer by Sunday (or two deer three times) but no clear shots. Mostly I’ve seen them on the run or behind tens of yards of thick brush as I walk to the stand, or after legal hours. One of them got stuck in a snow drift. We usually think of deer as graceful and poised at all times, but this fellow was flailing all over the place, feet in the air even, trying to get away from me. I was a little bit embarrassed for him. By the time I’d stumbled out of the brush to get a clear shot though, he was gone. That’s how it went for several days. Several shots I could’ve taken, but no.

Sunday evening I was going to stay in and rest up, by my son convinced me go out again. Good thing. I see no deer on the way up to the tree. That’s good. Infiltration without detection means I have a better chance of sniping one unawares.

I’d been up there for no more than half an hour, mostly looking around behind me where most of the tracks were, trying to spot a deer before it got to me. Therefore I failed to spot the nice three pointer walking casually along the ridge above, silent as a ghost in the powder snow, until he was right in front of me and already walking away.

It’s a sharp quartering away shot, 20 yards or less at eye level. Good backstop with several miles of empty farm fields behind. The time for the ideal shot was spent with my back turned. Hurry with getting the mitten open so the trigger finger is exposed. Silently cock the sidelock. He’s oblivious. He’s going to be out of view in a few seconds. I have to duck so I can sight under some hanging pine boughs. Aim for the heart. That means hitting behind the rib cage at this angle. Since I’m bending way down to see under the boughs, my glasses frame is in the way of the rifle sights. Crap. Have to dismount and push the glasses farther on. Take aim again. Time’s up.

Crack! I hadn’t thought to worry about the powder charge that had been in the barrel for several days. After that morning in below zero temperature, the barrel had frosted over when I came inside, and it had been snowing every time after, such that I’d take the barrel out of the stock to dry things out each day. No problem. 120 grains of FFG under a patched soft lead 50 caliber ball with a #11 percussion cap. Perfect ignition. This newfangled percussion system you kids have been using just might catch on.

There’s always a moment of uncertainty for me, especially with black powder because you’re peering through a smoke cloud trying to see what happened to the target.

I’ve heard of “anchoring” the animal in its tracks, but was beginning to think the phenomenon a myth. My son and I have killed around 9 deer and this has never happened, even with both lungs, and the heart, obliterated they always run some distance. This time the ball must have upset the central nervous system because the fellow went straight down. Zap! And he only twitched for a short while.

Some sense of reverence comes upon me when I approach the animal. It’s happened every time. They are very beautiful, strong, sleek, and delicious with new potatoes, turkey gravy, fresh fruit and red wine.

The ball had gone in at the back of the ribcage on the right side and exited through the base of the neck under the spine on the left. ~21.5 inches of penetration, and though you could fit your thumb in the entry wound, I couldn’t get but the tip of my little finger through the skin at the exit wound. The ball had just barely pooped out of the skin. Though it’s what we would call a short range prospect, I’m beginning to trust the 50 caliber patched ball load.

It was a good day. I’m happy, and the freezer will soon be full.

I’m still puzzled. That pure lead ball leaves the muzzle at around 1920 fps according to my CED chronograph, or a little more ’cause that’s averaged at 15 feet. Last year I shot a deer at 85 yards and the ball penetrated 25 inches with almost no deformation. We here concluded that the velocity at impact had been subsonic due to the very poor BC, hence a lower pressure at impact, hence the pristine ball (I recovered it from just under the skin and thought it was probably good enough to load again). This shot Sunday was at no more than 20 yards, maybe more like 15, yet I see no sign of ball deformation so far (I’ll check it out more closely upon butchering in a few days). You’d think with all the talk about bullet integrity, hard alloys and such, that a pure lead ball at that velocity would obliterate, giving shallow penetration. So what gives?

Ammo test

Posted on November 21, 2010 by Joe

About a month ago I received an email from Steven Otterbacher at BulkAmmo.com:

Hi Joe,
I really appreciate your posting about our opening a few weeks ago (https://blog.joehuffman.org/2010/08/30/bulk-ammo/) ; things are going well and I appreciate your help!

I have an idea I wanted to run past you:

We just started carrying Fiocchi ammo and are trying to get the word out about it. If we shipped you a box, would you be willing to give it a fair try and post a review about it?

As long as you link back to the category page on our website (i.e. http://www.bulkammo.com/handgun/bulk-.40-s-w-ammo – maybe with anchor-text like “Bulk 40 cal ammo” or “bulk 40 S&W ammo”), not the product page, we are 100% fine with a positive or negative review – whatever is truthful based on your experience – we just want you to give it a chance!
If you are interested, which product/caliber do you prefer:

•         http://www.bulkammo.com/bulk-9mm-ammo-9mm158fmjsubfiocchi-50
•         http://www.bulkammo.com/bulk-223-ammo-223rem40hvmaxfiocchi-50
•         http://www.bulkammo.com/bulk-40-s-w-ammo-40sw180jhpxtpfiocchi-50

If you are interested, just confirm you are on board, let me know which caliber you prefer, and then give me your shipping information (and confirm that you meet are terms of sale – i.e. you are over 21, are legally able to own this ammo, etc, etc) and I will get this ammo shipped out to you ASAP!

If this goes well, we might even be able to do a few more as time goes on!

I appreciate your time and look forward to hearing from you soon!

Thanks,
Steven

I accepted his offer and asked for the .40 S&W 180 grain ammo. I was on vacation at the time and there were various things like blowing up pumpkins that kept me from getting to the ammo testing until today. I don’t have a good place to do this type of testing in the Seattle area and had to wait until I could get out to the Boomershoot site.

Since I was going to have everything set up for group and velocity testing I decided to test some other ammo at the same time.

The ammo I actually received was not the JHPs but FMJ. I didn’t realize that until I got out on the range with all the JHPs I was ready to compare to. I did the comparisons anyway.

Rounds fired: 10
Gun: STI Eagle 5.1 with a KKM Precision barrel.
Temperature: 30 F
Elevation: 3000 feet
Chronograph: CED Millennium
Distance to Chronograph: 11’ to first screen
Distance between screens: 2’
Distance to target: 25’
Bullet mass: 180 grains (except the Remington Golden Sabers which were 165 grains)

Here is my setup and the ammo used:

The bag of lentils was torn by the muzzle blast on the first shot and I switched to a roll of paper towels to replace the leather sandbag I had left at home.

The handloads were assembled in 1998 for bowling pin shoots. I used Winchester cases with Rainer Restrike JHP bullets over 6.4 grains of VV N350 powder.

The following table describes the velocity performance at 12’ from the muzzle. If you want velocity at the muzzle add about 4.5 fps to the numbers below.

Manufacture	Product	Mean	High	Low	SDev	ES
BVAC	BV40-2N	962	981	948	9	32
Fiocchi	40SWD	1009	1038	975	15	53
Remington	Golden Saber	1120	1138	1093	15	45
Winchester	Ranger SXT RA40T	988	1016	961	18	54
Speer	Gold Dot	1044	1057	1030	8	27
Black Hills	JHP	1050	1075	1033	11	42
Handloads	Rainer Restrike JHP	1001	1033	941	24	91

Feeding was perfect with all ammo types.

Accuracy information can be derived from the picture below (click to enbiggen enough to see the bullet holes and the ammo names on the targets). The target on the top right is the BVAC. I didn’t label that target in the field because I couldn’t remember the name of the ammo. It was a bulk buy and I had transferred it from the original boxes (of 500 each) into ammo cans.

The accuracy was acceptable for everything except my handloads and perhaps the BVAC remanufactured FMJs. The Black Hills and the Fiocchi ammo did the best.

I was aiming at the bottom edge of the black to get the maximum contrast with the sights as that sliver of “white” disappeared into the black. The order in which the targets were shot is as in the table above.

For self-defense ammo I don’t really care much if the group size is one inch or three inches at 25 feet. Nearly all self-defense shootings are at ranges less than that and the nearly all ammo is going to have enough accuracy to hit the target. The shooter is going to be the dominate factor.

What is important is the velocity of the bullet, the expansion diameter, and depth of penetration. The penetration depth is also affected by the covering of the target. Shirts, jackets, windshield glass, etc. all make a difference. I didn’t have the time or enough ammo to do a full scale test of everything but I planned to do an expansion test with water.

I put a concrete paving stone in the bottom of a old diaper container that was laying around in the garage and put five gallons of water on top of it. This gave me about 15 inches of water to shoot into. I put the paving stone in the bottom to make sure the bullet wouldn’t punch a hole in the bottom if the water wasn’t deep enough.

As I prepared to fire into the container I tried to remember what had happened when Myth Busters did similar tests. I remembered that the 9mm FMJ had surprising depth of penetration and that the water splash was impressive. I keep thinking there was something more I should remember… what was it?

I anticipated getting severely splashed with water but that wasn’t the thing I should have worried about. I fired from about four feet above the container and only my hand and the gun got a little wet. After firing I was pretty sure I just relearned with Myth Busters had learned. The outward pressure of the water is quite strong. The pictures below tell the story:

Yes. The container was blown completely in two and split down the side. The bullet fully penetrated the water and impacted the paving stone.

The bullet jacket completely separated from the core. Here are the bullet pictures (click to see higher resolution versions):

If you know your bullets the jacket in the first picture will tell you which bullet it was. If you can’t guess I’ll put the answer in the comments by EOD on Monday.

Understand your Terms

Posted on September 22, 2010 by Lyle

I see this usage pretty often;

“Maintains less than 1 1/2 minute of angle accuracy at 100 yards/meters – Guaranteed !”

What I want to know is; how does the rifle know the distances to your targets when there are no electronics involved?

If the inherent angular dispersion is 1.5 MOA at 100 yards, the underlying assumption would be that the inherent angular dispersion will somehow be different at some other distance, else they wouldn’t specify a distance. Sure; the wind comes more into play farther out, but that’s a separate issue, no? Or am I missing something? Maybe for the sake of clarity they should say “…as tested at 100 yards.” I at least would have more respect for them then, but maybe I don’t know squat.

Gunnies be Patient

Posted on June 25, 2010 by Lyle

I’ve seen it before and let it go, but today I ran into several variations of, “Once you get the sights adjusted, this gun is very accurate” in different places on gun forums and product reviews.

Serious shooters should know the problem with that assertion, but not all shooters know it. These were shooters making the assertion after all.

Accuracy and sight adjustment (or zero) are not the same thing.

(Joe uses the term “sight angle” or “indicated sight angle” which makes more sense when you think about, which of course he has)

Accuracy is the ability of the firearm system (the gun itself, the ammo and the sighting system) to place shots consistently. The sights could be “off” considerably (bullets impacting far from the point of aim) and that gun is just as accurate as if it were putting your bullets exactly at the point of aim.

The difference is in sight adjustment, but that in itself has nothing to do with accuracy. Accuracy = consistency.

It has been said that “Sometimes the first duty of intelligent men is the restatement of the obvious.” — George Orwell (Thank You, Walter Williams, for pointing that out)

You intelligent men have your assignment, then. Carry on.

Episode one of Top Shot

Posted on June 9, 2010 by Joe

I watched the first episode of Top Shot last night. Barb watched about 10 minutes and then got bored and went off to do something else.

I liked it far better than I expected to. I don’t care for reality shows. When I first heard about Survivor back in late 1999 I was about to become unemployed as my contract with Microsoft expired. I thought it might be something I could do well at and I got an application and looked into the show concept further. It was completely different than I expected and I was repulsed. I expected something about working together and making conditions better for everyone on the island. I envisioned the winner being the person who did the most to improve the small “society”. I contemplated the skills and innovation I could bring to the situation. What would I bring with me and what sort of things could be accomplished with the materials on hand. It wasn’t going to be anything like that. It was going to be about getting rid of other people not working together with people. What sort of life lesson is this? It’s total crap.

That said it did cross my mind that Top Shot might be something I could participate in–for about 500 mS. I’m not a “Top Shot”. I do okay in the local matches but I’m just a “B” class shooter. I shoot at a level of about 65% (my current USPSA classification is 65.94% with a high of 68.53%) of the worlds best shooters. I could not imagine that would be good enough and didn’t pursue it.

Then I found out Caleb was accepted. What? I’m on par with Caleb! Oh well, it was at a bad time with our current project (Windows Phone Seven) at Microsoft and I had an obligation to complete that work anyway.

I really should have listened to what Caleb said last night on Gun Nuts Radio about it before making the following comments but I have other commitments for tonight and don’t have the time.

After seeing the first episode I again thought I could have had a chance. Mike Seeklander and his spotter’s performance was pathetic. Yes, as Tam pointed out the 100 yard shot Seeklander failed on is not as straightforward as one might think. But assuming the problem was not with the shooter being incompetent then either the spotter and shooter could have solved the problem had they been thinking. Here is how.

One of the shots was on paper. Use the same point of aim and try it again. If it lands on paper in close to the same place then you know offset in both X and Y from point of aim. Use that offset to put the bullet on target. If it doesn’t then the one on paper was random and you need to find the offset. The spotter should have found a nearby spot of bare ground where the bullet strike could be easily seen and directed the shooter there to find the offsets. If no such bare ground was available then systematically try offset in increments of 1/2 the paper width/height. Get a bullet on paper and confirm the offsets! They may have tried that and it was edited before airing but I was extremely annoyed that I didn’t see it happening. I felt the other team members should have put both the spotter and shooter on the chopping block. They both failed.

This episode also confirmed my hypothesis that if someone brags about how good a shooter they are it is near certain proof they are crap. All the great shooters I have personally met are extremely modest or at least silent about how great they think they are.

If you take nothing more from this post remember this. You can do a quick and dirty zero of your gun with one shot. Aim at something and shoot. Then stabilize the gun while aiming at the same place. With the gun still pointed at the same exact spot adjust the sights until the sights point at the place where the bullet hit.

By the numbers–Take two

Posted on May 6, 2010 by Joe

If you have been following along in the comments at Say Uncle you will know that my assumptions about the cartridge used in my simulation here were off a bit. I assumed a 300 grain bullet with a BC of 0.785 and a MV of 2750 fps. According to Mu the correct bullet is a 250 grain leaving the muzzle at 3070 fps with (according to SteveA) a BC of 0.587. This changes things some.

The sight angle for no hold-over is 127.8 MOA instead of 122 MOA.

The time of flight is 5.2 S instead of 4.9 S.

The velocity of the bullet at the target is about 924 fps instead of 1043 fps. This results in PF of 231 instead of 313.

The number three shot groups required to get one that was less than or equal to 1 MOA is, on the average, 4.3 instead of 4.9 (initally my program showed 83 but now it shows 4.9, I suspect some sort a caching error in Modern Ballistics). But those numbers are identical given the margins of error used in the assumptions that generated them.

Both Modern Ballistics data files for the simulations are here.

2707 yard shot in Afghanistan by the numbers

Posted on May 5, 2010 by Joe

I think I first saw it at Ry’s place. But others have mentioned it too. People at work have been asking about it too. It’s time I made a blog post about it.

According to the news reports a British sniper made three consecutive shots which were measured, via GPS, to be at a range 8120 feet. This is about 2707 yards which is the number I used with Modern Ballistics. I have uploaded the data file here if you want to tweak a few numbers and see what happens for yourself.

I used a high end 300 grain bullet with a BC of 0.785, a muzzle velocity of 2750 ft/sec, a muzzle velocity standard deviation of 10 fps and the inherent accuracy of the cartridge, gun, and shooter was 0.25 MOA. I assumed zero wind at 10,000 feet above sea level, and a temperature of 59 F. All are a bit on the optimistic, but plausible, side of “excellent” conditions.

The first thing that struck me about the situation was that with a 32-power, mil-dot reticle, scope the target was quite visible (the rectangle target is 18″ x 24″):

Even a 16-power scope gives a usable sight picture:

The sight angle to not require hold-over is 122 MOA. For best results a no hold-over shot is required.

Long range Leopold scopes give 70 MOA of adjustment so a shim of 52 MOA would be required for a no hold-over shot. This is not likely.

Some Nightforce scopes have 110 MOA of adjustment which would require a shim of 12 MOA. This would result in the closest range the rifle could be zeroed at under standard conditions to be about 460 yards. This seems plausible.

The articles claim a three second time to target but I come up with 4.9 seconds. My guess is whoever did the calculation assumed the bullet did not lose any velocity on it’s way to the target. Working backward we come up with about 2700 fps for a muzzle velocity.

The velocity of the bullet at the target is about 1043 fps. With a 300 grain bullet this corresponds to an IPSC “Power Factor” of 313. A 124 grain 9mm bullet at the muzzle is in the neighborhood of a PF of 135 so the sniper still had a lot of “stopping power” at this range.

On the average you would have to shoot 83 (the correct number is 4.9, apparently something hadn’t been updated properly in my simulation when I pulled the 83 off) three-shot groups to get one which was less than or equal to 1 MOA (about 30 inches). Only about 30% of the shots will hit a 18″ x 24″ target (1000 shot simulation):

My conclusion is there was some luck involved but it is plausible the event took place essentially as reported.

Update: I have rerun some of the simulations with what is believed to be the cartridge used by the British.

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