One of the people in my squad, Steve, runs major matches in Montana and does range officer work for other major matches. He told stories of running Christian through stages.
Christian sees the stages differently than other people. He even sees them differently than other Grand Master shooters. When Steve runs Christian on a stage he doesn’t bother to follow him. He asks, “Where are you going to end up?” He then runs to the destination (as soon as it is safe to do so) and meets Christian in time to capture the last shot on the timer.
A specific example given was a stage where there were two targets visible between two barricades. Other Grand Masters would pause and fire the four shots, two per target, then continue on to the next targets. Christian ran by at full speed, “Bang, bang, bang, bang!” This resulted in four A-Zone hits.
As Steve pointed out, Christian is in a class of his own. Here are the results of the top ten people in the match from last weekend and from looking at the Match Points and Match Percentage you can clearly see this:
Place
Name
Class
Div
Match Pts
Match %
1
Sailer, Christian
G
O
1460.8107
100.0000 %
2
Michel, Max
G
CO
1310.4572
89.7075 %
3
Ramberg, Tim
G
PCC
1275.3206
87.3022 %
4
Williams, Justine
G
PCC
1243.8811
85.1501 %
5
Conaway, Brennan
G
O
1229.281
84.1506 %
6
Tan, Loke
G
O
1228.1294
84.0718 %
7
Liu, Eric
G
O
1214.7476
83.1557 %
8
Chang, Jun
G
O
1209.7619
82.8144 %
9
Coley, Shane
G
L
1209.0808
82.7678 %
10
Steiner, Eric
M
O
1202.3446
82.3067 %
Notice how the people below him are grouped fairly tightly. There is no one within 10% of Christian.
I had hoped to watch him shoot a stage or two but he was shooting on the exact opposite times I was at the match. Here is the video of most of the stages:
In another week or so I will have my private gun range and much better access to range conditions suitable for this type of practice: I’m going to be taking practice much more seriously:
Barb and I were in Lynden Washington this weekend doing some hiking in the area. On Saturday afternoon we visited Just Desserts, Lynden Dutch Bakery and gorged on sweet stuff. Just a couple doors away was Dave’s Sports Shop. I wanted to do a little browsing and with Barb reporting a sugar buzz we went in.
Much to my surprise they had primers for sale. Customers were limited to two hundred primers per household so making a hundred mile drive for them isn’t going be be all that worthwhile::
And the prices were higher than I wanted to pay. The last time I bought primers, 7/21/2017, I paid $3.00/100. These were $12.95/100:
I did a little bit of measurement and calculating. At an average of 3.46 grains per CCI Small Rifle Primer those 100 primers weigh 0.7208 Troy Ounces. So at $12.95/100 plus the 8.7% sales tax the the primers are priced at $19.53/Troy-Ounce.
The current price of silver is $27.91/Troy-Ounce, so they are priced at 70% of their weight in silver.
It’s been at least a couple months since I went to the range. Yesterday I remedied that. This was what my gun looked like when I pulled it out of the holster:
As I carry it every day, I knew it was going to be covered with lint.
It still functioned just fine but that was way too much holster time without being cleaned.
Wednesday afternoon Tim, TJay (mostly) and I began folding boxes for the targets. The boxes come as flat pieces of cardboard cut and formed in all the right places to be easily folded into a box. Here is what things looked yesterday morning:
That is perhaps half of the boxes. Kim, Jacob, and I folded more boxes this morning. Others folded still more boxes during the day.
This was the target production crew this afternoon:
This was the result by 5:00 PM:
I think there were three more crates of targets I added after this. With the addition of those additional crates there are over 830 targets with nearly 1600 pounds of explosives.
And this doesn’t count the nearly 700 targets already consumed yesterday and today. Boomershoot is, literally, a ton of fun.
The Boomershoot 2021 shirts, mugs, water bottle, drinking glass, etc. are now available for sale here.
Even if you can’t be there as a participant or even a spectator you can have a mug to remind you to prepare for next year and advertise to your friends who will want to join you next year when you partake in one of the greatest shooting adventures in the world.
Here is the image used:
Don’t you just have to have a picture of Brandon realizing he was too close?
The last day for entry is April 23rd, this is six weeks away. But the Precision Rifle Clinic and Field Fire registration closes at midnight on March 31st. That is just two and a half weeks from now!
After having so many restrictions for the last year it’s time to get out and makes some noise with the rest of us!
I recently purchased a Lyman Cyclone Case Dryer from Midway USA. I’m very pleased with it. I have been using a dehumidifier and homemade draining and drying rack for years. But it was frequently a bottleneck in my process. It was noisy and made the room hot. Lyman dryer will hold up to 1000 .223 cases and far more pistol cases and have them dry in less than three hours. Typically it’s about one to two hours but with a bunch of .50 BMG brass I sort of stumbled across* it took closer to three hours.
It also takes up far less space in my armory.
* I might buy a .50 BMG someday and then I’ll have the brass to reload for it, right?
Has anyone done business with The Brass Exchange recently? That is where I used to get used brass for reloading .40 S&W and 30.06.
On September 28th, 2020 I ordered 1000 pieces of .40 S&W brass and received a confirmation of order email. My credit card was charged the same day.
As this was in the middle of the massive buying frenzy I didn’t expect it to arrive for a few weeks. But the weeks went by and I didn’t receive the order nor did I receive a tracking number.
I tried to contact them to find out the status of my order. The email bounced:
Your message did not reach some or all of the intended recipients.
Subject: Missing order. Sent: 12/21/2020 7:22 PM
The following recipient(s) cannot be reached:
‘thebrassexchange@gmail.com.’ on 12/21/2020 7:22 PM Server error: ‘550 <thebrassexchange@gmail.com.> invalid address ‘thebrassexchange@gmail.com.”
Phone calls were not answered.
I contacted my bank about the failure to receive the product I had paid for. They investigated for a month then told me:
Dispute Number: 19289113
Date Posted: 9/28/2020
Merchant Name: THE BRASS EXCHANGE
Amount of Transaction: 107.10
Status: Credit is Permanent
We are pleased to let you know that the temporary credit we posted to your account for 107.10 on 12/24/2020 is now permanent.
Your dispute is now closed.
The Brass Exchange web site is still up and they claim they have product in stock. But I’m not willing to risk an order, and suggest others don’t either, unless there is reason to believe they are shipping the products ordered.
Went to Boomershoot … with my son. He shot my .223 with my ballistic tip prairie dog loads while I shot a .243 also with ballistic tip bullets. What an amazing time. The .223 was killing the 375 yard targets while the .243 was in the thick of it at 600 to 700 yards. The next year, it was my son and me along with three of my brothers. The year after that, we added my son’s wife and my wife. What a fantastic family experience. It is really difficult to put into words the exhilaration that comes with successfully hitting those targets but is it ever fun!
700 yards is so far that you can bring your eyes up from your scope, see the detonation, and let out a holler of joy before the sound reaches you.
When you are shooting a paper target you don’t fully appreciate the time of flight involved. A spotter with a good spotting scope and watching the trace has a clue. But most people don’t have that experience either. And still the whole, pull the trigger, lift up your head, then see the column of dust and smoke erupt from the ground and then wait nearly two seconds to hear and feel the explosion is something quite different and remarkable.
Time of flight for a 700 yard target with a .308 Winchester shooting a 168 grain bullet is about 1.1 seconds. The sound arrives back at the shooter after another 1.93 seconds. From trigger pull to sound is a full three seconds.
Another thing which must be experienced is the thump to your chest. You feel the explosions as much or more than you hear it. Windows rattle and buildings shake miles away.
That’s for the one and two pound targets 375 to 700 yards away. I’ll let you imagine, if you can, what the 35 pound charge used to lift 30 gallons of gasoline into the air is like from 30 yards away:
For comparison a fairly typical .300 Winchester Magnum load would be a 190 grain bullet with a muzzle velocity of 2900 fps for a Power Factor of 551. Or compare it to a .308 Winchester with a 168 grain bullet at 2650 fps with a PF of 445.
The semi-auto action of the Garand would help a little but I couldn’t see myself shooting that except under duress.
I made a few minor technical corrections. Other than that this is word for word from an email I received from Brian K. about his first visit to Boomershoot:
“Go ahead, shoot a few rounds!”
A kind offer from the Boomershoot attendee I was spotting for.
His spotter had to cancel last minute, so I had the novel pleasure of walking this gentleman in at 700 yards.
Now he was spotting for me!
“I should start at the 375 yard targets,” I attempted to wimp out.
“I’m already sighted in at 700 yards. Just go for those” he insisted.
Remembering everything Appleseed taught me, I fired my first round at a 7″ explosive target almost a half mile away.
Miss. But less than 10 feet off, so not terrible.
Miss. Miss. Miss. Am I going to hit *anything*?
Miss. Miss. Hit!
700 yards is so far that you can bring your eyes up from your scope, see the detonation, and let out a holler of joy before the sound reaches you.
I scored a few more hits at 700, including a single first round hit.
I learned two things at my first Boomershoot:
I am capable of far more accuracy that I know
I need to practice far more than I do
Thankfully Boomershoot is just three months away and there is still space on the Sunday firing line so you can discover how well you fare vs small explosive pizza boxes at half a mile.
This was a very slow year. I basically stopped shooting in late December because of a work project that was really, really cool. I worked pretty much night and day, including weekends, (except for a week of vacation for our anniversary) until sometime in March. It resulted in a patent application (still pending). Then with the COVID concerns I only went to like two or three matches and not many more trips to the indoor range for practice. Hence, my ammo needs were very modest last year. Then there was the whole primer shortage thing…
I already had a fair amount .40 S&W so I spent a lot of time reloading and brass prepping for rifle ammo.
As you can see in the table below I reloaded 657 rounds of .223 last year and another 88 rounds this month. A good portion of that was using up random types of bullets that had been purchased for load testing and found lacking. They are still good for teaching new shooters at 25 yards or Boomershoot High Intensity type events. It does include a new load for a 55 grain match grade bullet that turned out well.
The 98 rounds of 30-06 were for a Garand someone was receiving as a Christmas present. I wasn’t the gift giver or receiver but since ammo in general and Garand compatible ammo in particular were next to impossible to find I purchased a few clips to add to the ammo I reloaded. I used some 168 grain Sierra Match Kings, Federal Match primers, and Varget powder (Garand load data here) which was all at least 20 years old.
The Garand went to someone who had never owned a gun! But she had expressed a strong liking for the gun saying how much she liked the way it looked and she had apparently shot one before. So… her significant other consulted with me as to what a Garand was (!) and we conspired to find and purchase one for a Christmas gift.
[Update: I’ve been informed that while in high school she drilled with a Garand in Junior ROTC.]
So now she has nearly 100 rounds of ammo for her “new” gun and if the loads work well, and she returns the brass, I could make another 150 rounds or so from components on hand.
Hitting exactly 4,000 rounds of .40 S&W in 2020 was entirely a coincidence. These were all 200 grain Black Bullet International loads. I continued this month with mostly the same load but used up some random 180 grain bullets I found laying around. I have about another 20 primers and a couple of pounds of CFE Pistol powder left. I’ll probably not load much .40 S&W for a while. Of course I’ll need primers but also I have more .40 S&W stacked up than I imagine I will use this year.
This brings my total for the year to only 4,755 rounds. This is the first time since 2014 that I didn’t reload more than 10,000 rounds.
This brings my lifetime total of rounds reloaded to 149,484. I really expected to break 150K last year but it was a special year. But this year, almost for certain, I’ll break 150K.
To the best of my knowledge Boomershoot is the last publicly accessible “dynamite shoot” in the country and perhaps the world. For 40 years there were one or two each year in Gateway Colorado. June 8, 2019 was their last one. Cancellation details are here.
We’ve had a surprising number people sign up this month. There was nothing since at least early April. Then starting on January 3rd.through today there were 11 different positions reserved or people added to existing positions,
There are still 28 positions left and if the weather cooperates I can make space for a couple more. If you are thinking you might need an opportunity to hone your long range rifle skills this is the place and time. The earthshaking, echoing, thunder of a Boomershoot target is most pleasurable feedback I know of for connecting your bullet with a target.
* There is a very sad story to go with this. It’s not really appropriate Internet material but I’d be glad to share if you ask me about it face-to-face sometime.
In my legal opinion the Rare Breed Triggers FRT is a perfectly legal, semi-automatic, drop-in trigger. And my opinion is further supported by the opinions of whom I believe to be two of the most significant subject matter experts in the industry.
Long ago and far away (20+ years and 300+ miles) I was just starting to reload rifle rounds. I probably wasn’t using the proper lubrication and I got a 30-06 case stuck in this die:
I concluded it was impossible to get the case out and I went to the local gun shop to see if they had a replacement die I could purchase. The owner of the store, a wise and knowledgeable man, suggested I order a case extraction tool rather than purchase a new die. I did so, but it took far longer for the tool to arrive than I had patience for and I got another die anyway. A neck resizing only die.
When the tool did arrive I was looked at the situation and realized I needed to drill out the primer pocket (drill provided with the tool), tap the resultant hole (tap provided), use a cup like piece of metal with a hole in the “bottom” through which a bolt was screwed into the base of the shell casing, then tighten the bolt to pull the case out of the die. That should work! Except for one problem. The depriming pin and expander ball were inside the case and blocking the drilling and tapping operations. I was unable to remove them from the case up through the top. In fact you can see the broken top of the spindle (is that the correct word for this?) in the picture above from my attempts to unscrew it from the die. I didn’t really need the full length resizing die at the time and left the stuck case in the die.
20+ years later I started to reload 30-06 again and I needed to do full length resizing with some used brass I had purchased a year or so ago. I got out the full length resizing die and discovered the stuck case. Crap. As I shuffled through my die supplies I stumbled across the case removal tool and reevaluated the situation. I really needed to figure out how to get the depriming pin and expander ball out of the case. After way too long I realized something.
In the picture you will see four different knurled sections to the die. The top two are associated with the spindle. I removed these, squirted some case lube into the top of the die, turned the second one upside down so that it didn’t thread itself back into the die main body and tightened it up. It was a hard pull but the expander ball came back up through the case which had been stuck for 20+ years.
I drilled and tapped base of the case and successfully extracted the case with the case extraction tool I had purchased so many years ago. See the case on the left below compared to the normal case in the center:
I expressed my joy and cleverness to Barb, reassembled the die, adjusted it, lubed up a bunch of cases and started resizing them. On about the fourth case I stupidly picked up an lubed case sitting on the bench and got it stuck.
This time it only took about 10 minutes, instead of 20+ years, to get the case out. See the case on the right above.
What I found most interesting was that the stuck cases had necks which were stretched a full 0.150 inches. Previously stuck cases on the left and right compared to a normal case in the center:
1 day $245/day 2 days $240/day 3 days $235/day 4 days $230/day 5 days $225/day 6 days $220/day 7 days $215/day 8 days $210/day 9 days $205/day 10+ days $200/day
Prices go up $25 per day in 2021, but you can save up to $75 per day. With this deal you’re training even cheaper than 2020!
2021 Classes will be posted on the website very soon
We know ammo is going to be an ongoing problem so we will start allowing 22LR for a portion of our mainline classes. We will have .22LR ammo available, .22LR conversion kits, .22LR semi-autos, plus we’re working on an ammo deal to be able to provide 9mm at a reasonable price.
The fine print: Offer ends at end of day Monday, November 30, 2020, and is not valid for “Red Dawn” classes. Training day funds are valid for tuition only and do not include additional equipment or rentals. To use your sale funds for a class, please call the office to register. For more information about all of our classes, visit InSightsTraining.com . To register, go to the website, call us at 425.827.2552 or email us at: info@insightstraining.com. Stay safe and we’ll see you in class!
