Daughter Kim and her husband Jacob gave Barb and I Boomershoot Christmas presents!
Customized range officer vests:
From Daughter Xenia and her husband John gave me a rear shooting rest bag:
From Barb’s daughter Maddy I got an earmuff and hearing protection carry bag:
It’s protection for my ear protection.
Among other things Santa put 200 rounds of ammunition in Barb’s stocking (it’s a good thing it is a sturdy stocking!). She says, “It’s the good stuff!”
About a month ago daughter Kim sent me a video of someone successfully making colored smoke bombs using “oil crayon”. I couldn’t find the type of crayons I think they were using in the video but I did find some cheap bulk crayons on Amazon and ordered them:
We know that if we put several pounds of colored powder on top of an exploding target it will disperse the powder into the air and give some color to the explosion. But it would be nice if the explosive itself also resulted in colored smoke. I also ordered some colored corn starch powder from Amazon which I thought also might be worth a try:
Last Saturday, December 16th, we melted the crayons in an electric skillet.
Then added the ammonium nitrate.
Then we mixed in the other ingredients to make Boomerite.
We also made a batch of Boomerite with a cup of the colored corn starch powder mixed in.
We then took the targets out for testing. None of the targets resulted in any colored smoke.
I knew the additional ingredients would make detonation harder so I used 50 grain VMAX ammo in a .223 rifle with a 24 inch barrel to get the best velocity and expansion for a better chance of detonation. All the targets hit with these bullets, from 20 yards away, detonated. The velocity at the target was probably just over 3300 fps.
Hitting them with slower FMJ bullets, as fast as 3200 fps, just punched holes in the target. A slower expanding bullet once resulted in a small pop which destroyed the target.
Although we didn’t get any colored smoke we did manage to blast away quite a bit of the little berm we were shooting into. In the picture below the small mound of dirt the target is sitting on use to extend parallel to the target across where the crater is now.
The left is always trying to define the 2nd Amendment as about “hunting”.
Fine. No bag limit, no season.
Jim
December 10, 2017
Comment to When will this boil over?
[He’s not wrong.—Joe]
This month I reloaded some .45 ACP for the first time. I bought the dies and supplies years ago after I got the Para Ordinance Gun Blog 45 pistol. I ended up not shooting it very much and finally stored it as a “Safe Queen”. I still had all the equipment and supplies for the ammo so, mostly to clear out space, I decided to go ahead and assemble the ammo. I reloaded 500 rounds and ran a few rounds over the chronograph to verify the expected velocity and functionality.
I also reloaded 1699 rounds of .40 S&W this month. 1400 rounds were 180 grain Montana Gold JHP for practice at indoor ranges and 299 were 180 grain Black Bullets International bullets for USPSA matches. This finished off all the bullets I have in these types.
Year to date I have loaded 20,781 rounds.
This brings my lifetime reloaded ammunition totals to:
223: 2,424 rounds.
30.06: 756 rounds.
300 WIN: 1591 rounds.
40 S&W: 79,486 rounds.
45 ACP: 500 rounds.
9 mm: 21,641 rounds.
Total: 106,378 rounds.
I’m offering a discount on most Boomershoot events for Black Friday and Cyber Monday and decided to just make it the entire Thanksgiving weekend. Starting at Thanksgiving morning, November 23rd, at 12:00 AM Pacific Standard time until midnight Monday November 27th, there is a 20% discount on the High Intensity, Personal Fireball, and Long Range events.
The discount is only valid for entries which are placed during that time. Go to the Boomershoot Entry web site and use the code “BLACK FRIDAY” during the sign up process.
Here are some videos to give you a clue as to what you are getting a chance to participate in:
Sign up as soon as you can to get the best choice of the remaining shooting positions.
I was just in California, WHAT A SHIT HOLE. It’s a 110.
…
I still had two guns. And both of them were big. And I wasn’t comfortable at all. But I still had two guns.
And a rifle.
It’s California.
Clint Smith
Founder of Thunder Ranch
August 7, 2017
[I have nothing to add.—Joe]
On the right sidebar of this blog is this image:
A little over a week ago AmmoMan.com contacted me about placing an ad to get the word out about their new “two day shipping”. 97% of people are expected to get their ammo within two days but some may take three days. They gave me a code to order some ammo with and I made two different orders. I had one shipped to Idaho and the other shipped to my Bellevue Washington address. From looking at their map it appeared to me that the Idaho shipment could take three days.
It turned out that, according to FedEx, the Idaho shipment arrived 50 minutes before the Bellevue order and both were on day two after the order. Nice!
An occasional problem I have had with mail ordered ammo is that it is packed poorly and the ammo box breaks and there is loose ammo rolling around in the box. That was not the case this time. This is the box in which I received three bricks of .22 ammo after I had removed the three bricks. It was packed tight with stiff paper:
The other shipment was the original 500 round case, with shipping labels attached, which Federal Ammo packages their American Eagle .223 Ammo in. There were no issues with either packaging.
There are “new shooters”, many of whom, long ago, had their fathers show them how to shoot a 22 or such, and then haven’t touched a gun for 20 years. Stuff like that, and then there are those who’ve never touched, much less fired, any kind of firearm. Last weekend I had the privilege of introducing one of the latter to the fine art of pistolcraft.
(Long, wordy, self-aggrandizing post, with something of a review of the Walther PK, 380 Auto pistol, and detours into cider-making and “gun psychology”, ensues. You have been warned)
It’s a relative term isn’t it?
The vast majority of times, a deer will run if it sees you. They’ll often ignore motor vehicles, but if you’re out walking, a deer will alert on your movements, and if recognizes you as human it will bolt. Anecdote abound, and situations vary widely, but a deer, as a rule, will avoid humans.
On the other hand, a healthy buck in the prime of its life is more than capable of killing you, and quickly, if it gets the hankerin’.
I always carry a sidearm when out and about. Elk and moose are common in my roaming area, and I hear that wolves are getting closer.
The unfortunate in the story was apparently unarmed. Whether that would have made any difference in this case is debatable, but having a heavy caliber pistol cannot but improve one’s odds. What an embarrassing way to die!
A while back I made up some .40 S&W loads with “Gold Dot® Short Barrel®” bullets (it appears they have been discontinued) and then did velocity and milk jug penetration tests. I was very pleased with them.
A couple days ago I received an email from Drew Rinella. Here is part of it:
I met you very briefly a couple/few years ago at a Boomer shoot, so it was cool to find your site while researching low velocity results for speer gold dots. I saw that people were giving you shit in the comments about your low velocity 40 s&w gold dot SB loadings. I want to let you know that my terminal performance testing results have so far been great with loading the standard 147 gr 9mm gold dot at a low velocity.
I like the properties of the 147 grain 9mm gold dot bullet but I have always been frustrated by the challenging recoil impulse and inconsistent accuracy with their factory loading at nearly 1000 fps muzzle velocity, so I’ve been experimenting with loading at lower velocities. Despite the fact that they do not yet market a SB version of this bullet, I received an email back from that factory recommending a minimum of 850 fps for consistent expansion.
4.3 grains of Silhouette gave me 885 fps from a Glock 17. This was the most accurate and softest shooting load I tested which gave me the min recommended velocity. With this velocity I get consistent penetration of 4 water filled milk jugs, with the bullet puncturing a small hole into and bouncing off of the 5th jug. Assuming a 1.8x ratio of water to ballistic gel this slightly exceeds the FBI standard of 12″ ballistic gel.
Test #1: 2 layers denim
Penetrated 4 full milk jugs; bullet fully intact with signs of stress on the petals Expansion 0.525″
Weight 147.5 grains
Test #2: 4 layers denim
Penetrated 4 full milk jugs; one petal ripped off and stayed in first milk jug; signs of stress on remaining petals Expansion 0.563″
Weight 143.8 grains
As soon as the kids can drink more milk I’ll be testing with more materials including quilted denim, metal, wood, wallboard, and glass. I hypothesize less expansion and deeper penetration through these barriers based on observations of online video testing of factory loadings with this bullet, which I don’t necessarily consider to be a bad thing.
Silhouette was one of the few powders my thrower was able to throw consistently at these low charge volumes, and gave me a small red fireball with some yellow sparks in low light shooting. CFE Pistol (my favorite powder for nearly everything else) wouldn’t throw consistently. Titegroup accuracy was very poor. AA#2 & 5 were consistent but wouldn’t give me the velocity I wanted without going into +P or +P+ territory.
Hornady XTP 147 grain at low velocity wouldn’t open up and looked like I could reload it and shoot it again. I definitely think Gold Dot is the way to go when downloading self defense rounds.
I figured there had to be other powders which would give the desired velocity so I went looking through all the sources on my book shelf. Here is a complete list of the powders for 9mm, 147 grain bullets, which yield velocities in the range of 850 feet per second.
Powder weight is in grains. Expected velocities are in feet per second. Some of the data is quite old and you should verify it with your own loading manuals or online to make sure the data is current and I have not made a catastrophic typo.
| Powder | C.O.L. | Minimum Load | Velocity | Maximum Load | Velocity |
| HS-6 | 1.100 | 4.3 | 773 | 5.0 | 885 |
| Universal | 1.100 | 3.0 | 803 | 3.3 | 869 |
| Titegroup | 1.100 | 3.2 | 855 | 3.6 | 929 |
| SR 4756 | 1.100 | 3.2 | 800 | 3.8 | 950 |
| WSF | 1.100 | 3.3 | 800 | 4.2 | 950 |
| AA #5 | 1.100 | 3.8 | 800 | 4.6 | 950 |
| Solo 1500 | 1.100 | 3.8 | 800 | 4.6 | 950 |
| HS-6 | 1.100 | 4.4 | 850 | 5.1 | 975 |
| Blue Dot | 1.100 | 4.2 | 800 | 5.5 | 1000 |
| HS-7 | 1.100 | 4.4 | 800 | 5.6 | 950 |
| AA #7 | 1.100 | 5.1 | 800 | 6.6 | 1000 |
| Power Pistol | 1.130 | 4.5 | 872 | 5.0 | 975 |
| 3N37 | 1.130 | 4.4 | 886 | 4.9 | 969 |
| AA #7 | 1.130 | 6.1 | 867 | 6.8 | 961 |
| SR 4756 | 1.130 | 4.2 | 841 | 4.6 | 957 |
| HS-6 | 1.130 | 5.0 | 845 | 5.6 | 956 |
| Unique | 1.130 | 3.8 | 852 | 4.3 | 954 |
| HS-7 | 1.130 | 6.1 | 866 | 6.8 | 953 |
| WSF | 1.130 | 3.6 | 840 | 4.1 | 931 |
| AA #5 | 1.130 | 4.5 | 821 | 5.1 | 931 |
I was out of town (and out of the country most of the time) for almost three weeks last month. That drastically reduced my reloading opportunities. I still managed to load 1015 rounds of .40 S&W. It was all Montana Gold JHPs over 3.9 grains of Bullseye. These are for new shooters at indoor ranges. They are accurate bullets with a minimum powder charge.
This brings my lifetime reloaded ammunition totals to:
223: 2,424 rounds.
30.06: 756 rounds.
300 WIN: 1591 rounds.
40 S&W: 77,787 rounds.
9 mm: 21,641 rounds.
Total: 104,199 rounds.
Year to date I have loaded 18,582 rounds. I’m still on course to reload about 20,000 rounds this year for a lifetime total of over 105,000 rounds.
A new long range record has been set by an American.
Using a .408 Tejas ( modified .408 Chey Tac), he nailed a 40″ (1.016 meter) target at 5000 yards (4572 meters), for about .8 MOA.
h/t to Paul K
That which one of my favorite YouTubers says is his “most valuable” firearm is one of my favorite (carbines?) also, and his has one of my favorite creations on it. OK, he doesn’t mention his M1-B optic mount, and doesn’t have an optic on it for the video, but we’ll take what we get.
He had his AK worked over at Rifle Dynamics, which is one of our distributors. They seem to know what they’re doing, and that is something worthwhile.
There was no such thing as cowboy ammo in the 19th Century, but now in the 21st we have a new metal cartridge called the “Cowboy 45 Special”.
Continue reading
I saw a cool vid over at Bayou Renaissance Man., on this particular page. This: a transparent suppressor and a high-speed camera.
Interesting stuff.
In September I only loaded .40 S&W. It was 1875 rounds of Black Bullets for USPSA matches, 93 rounds of Acme Bullet Company’s 180 grain “Lipstick Bullets” (I’m probably going to replace The Blue Bullets with these for steel matches), and 95 rounds of Montana Gold bullets over 3.0 grains of Clays for some “powder puff” loads for new shooters. This is a total of 2063 rounds this month.
I had a revision of some numbers on 300 Win Mag ammo. A few years ago I made some ammo for a friend and didn’t count the rounds. I put them in zip lock bags and gave them to him. In my log I just entered estimates of 300 and 100 rounds for the two different reloading sessions.
Then… earlier this month I was visiting him and found out he still hadn’t shot them. I counted them and found I had reloaded a total of 299 rounds. Whoops. That changes things a little bit. I corrected my log file so that shows up in the numbers below.
The corrected and updated lifetime reloaded ammunition totals are:
223: 2,424 rounds.
30.06: 756 rounds.
300 WIN: 1591 rounds.
40 S&W: 76,772 rounds.
9 mm: 21,641 rounds.
Total: 103,184 rounds.
Year to date I have loaded 17,567 rounds. I’m still on course to reload about 20,000 rounds this year for a lifetime total of over 105,000 rounds.
Ry and I went to the Holmes Harbor Rod & Gun Club (Whidbey Island) steel match last Saturday. The weather was great and the ferry ride was pretty and pleasant:
As usual the stages were interesting:
Ry had problems with his open class pistol. The red-dot optic kept turning off when he was shooting. Hitting small targets rapidly with no sights is challenging. His score is not representative of his true ability. Rimfire rifle went better for him but he did have problems with one magazine on the first stage he shot.
I thought I generally did well. Things felt good with few misses and fairly consistent times. There were just three people in my divisions. I came in second in Centerfire Pistol Iron sights with a total time for five stages of 77.00 seconds. That is an average of 0.77 seconds per shot. With Rimfire Pistol Iron sights I got first with a total time for the five stages of 63.70 seconds. This is an average of 0.637 seconds per shot.
I did not shoot in the August match as I was helping Barb’s son, Max, move.
In July the same guy, Todd Epps, who won in September beat me in the Centerfire Iron Sights division. I had a total time of 76.83 seconds in this division. And, again, I won the Rimfire Iron sights division with a total time of 55.11 seconds.
In June I won the Centerfire Iron sight division with a total time of 79.03 seconds. I also won the Rimfire Iron sights division with a total time of 66.25 seconds.
I’ve mentioned Black Bullet International before (and here, here, here, here, and here) and that I use them for outdoor USPSA matches. They give excellent accuracy, consistent velocity, and are a good price. I have reloaded 7563 rounds of ammunition using these bullets and have about another 875 on hand.
Earlier this month I ran into this:
One of these is not like the others. Instead of the 180 grain 0.40” diameter bullet it is a 124.9 grain 0.359” bullet. Of course, there is no danger of reloading it in a .40 S&W casing and causing a problem. But if it had been a 200 grain bullet while reloading for 180 or a 180 grain while reloading 165 grain bullets there would have been a serious concern.
I thought it was funny and set it aside.
This afternoon I opened a new box of Black Bullets which had been shipped many months after the last batch of bullets from them. I decided to weigh them to make sure they were essentially the same weight as the previous batch (important for making Power Factor for USPSA matches). I weighed 19 bullets and they were essentially the same as the previous batch:
When I weighed the 20th bullet I was shocked. It was 177.5 grains. This is over three grains below the mean of the other 19. This is significant enough to endanger “making major” at a match. Hmm…
I weighed another 10 and found a 178.5. Hmm…
I measured their diameter and length compared to typical bullets. The diameter was the same but the length was 0.005 less:
All the typical bullets were within 0.001” in length of one another. Then there were the two out of thirty which were 0.005” shorter.
Hmm…
Then I compared the stats of the Black Bullets to what I find typical of Montana Gold bullets:
Remember when Barb and I toured the Montana Gold factory Norm told us they keep the weight of their bullets to about +/- 0.3 grains? Yup, that matches my measurements of their bullets.
Now, I did once find a partial jacket in one of the Montana Gold boxes, but I have reloaded nearly 40,000 of their bullets. That is over five times as many as the Black Bullets.
I have to conclude that the Black Bullets International company is not as quality conscious as the Montana Gold Bullets company with 180 grain .40 caliber bullets.
Last Sunday I shot a USPSA match at Marysville Rifle Club (Marysville, Washington).
In the match I did good, but not great. I got a score of 64.97% of the Limited Class, Grandmaster winner.
I had kind of a rough time the day before and was sort of stiff and sore. I did well on the first few stages then faded in the afternoon. But with the classifier, the third stage of the day, I did pretty well coming in at third place in Limited out of 22 shooters behind one Grandmaster and one Master class shooter. My score of 67 on Lightning And Thunder gave me a solid B-class 74.4444 percentage (75% is A-class). I have the video but it’s three different, rather boring, strings of fire and I doubt anyone really is interested in watching it.
This brings my cumulative USPSA classification up to 63.7697%. I’m approaching my highest ever of 68.5272%
I’m a bit suspect of this particular classifier. It is a fixed time stage and I think it is probably too easy. I suspect that a large number of GMs and perhaps even some Master class shooters clean it with a perfect score of 90. This means that lower class shooters are not really compared to the very best GMs but, instead, are compared to something like the lowest level GM and highest Master class shooters.
Still, I played by the rules and legitimately got the points even if the system is probably warping the indicator of my actual ability.
