Managed to score a little time to hit the range yesterday. Had to choose between clinging to my religion or my guns, and due to several factors the guns won out.
While I enjoy going to the range with others, this outing required my complete concentration as I was testing out a new set of reloads in various weights / charges with the .45ACP. I loaded up some of the lead bullet samples from Mastercast and tested them out.
I had 185 grain SWC, 200 grain SWC and 225 grain RN all pushed by various levels of TiteGroup. I stuck with the low to mid levels of powder charges because I was going for something I could shoot accurately rather than something that tried to take my wrist off. I really need to learn to not be such a recoil junkie. Each weight got a low and a medium charge, 25 (or so) of each, so I could get a good feel for how they'd perform plus I could see if there were any problems with leading.
After packing up the range bag with the Gun Blog .45 and 160 rounds of ammo (I had 10 primers left over from another session so I just used them up on the 225 grain bullets), I jaunted down to Shoot Straight to try to get a lane next to the wall. The Para USA Power Extractor can literally chuck the brass into another dimension, so having a wall immediately to the right helps keep them in the same area code. I lucked out and managed to get a bulkhead lane.
I decided to start out on the 225 grains. Long story short, I didn't like them. Neither did the Para. All of my misfeeds and jams, vice one, came from the 225s. Surprisingly, the round nose at 1.25" OAL just didn't work that great. Twice I had complete lock ups that required a fair amount of banging to get the damned things out of the chamber. I've got a nice chunk of skin missing from my right palm courtesy of the target sight blades to prove it.
Beyond the feeding issues, the 225s weren't comfortable to shoot and thus, not very accurate even using plinking levels of powder. At 10 yards, I could never get a decent grouping going. Double taps took a comparatively long time to get back on target due to the increased recoil. Needless to say, the feeding issues coupled with this pattern didn't instill confidence in my ability to use that particular combination.
In this target, while I was able to get back within the circle on all the double taps, I never was able to get a really good group together on the slow fire. For some reason, these loads were also terribly smokey.
Next I decided to switch to the 185 grain Semi Wad Cutters. I wanted to try the 4.4 grain TiteGroup first, followed by the 4.7 grains, but a sudden case of butter fingers caused the box to hit the ground, effectively killing any chance of accurately determining which round was which. It didn't really matter since all the loads were pretty light. They were so light I kept thinking it wasn't going to cycle the action correctly, but that wasn't the case as I didn't have a single failure with any of the rounds.
The initial grouping was phenomenal, again at 10 yards. As you can see, there's not much left of the bullseye on the slow fire. Not only did I grip much tighter, I also ensured that the barrel was directly lined up with my arm, something I've been forgetting about recently. I'll definitely make a post about that later when I can have someone photograph my grasp.
Double taps were easy to control, although I need to practice more to get the timing of my sight picture and pulling the trigger more in line. I have a bad tendency to shoot low on the second shot, thus confirming Todd Jarrett's admonition to aim 3/4 high since if you miss, you're going to miss low.
Brass ejection from these tended to be drawn towards my eyes. I got pelted a lot in the safety glasses from these. Speaking of brass, there were three other people shooting .45ACP so Christmas came early for me as I left with nearly twice as much brass as I went in with.
My biggest problem with these rounds was that they were "poofie". Instead of a nice bang, they were more like a dull thud. Highly controllable, but just not satisfying. I have a feeling they weren't going 945fps which would put them under the power needed to be used for IPSC. I could push them a bit faster, so I think the next loads will be towards the max powder level instead, just to see.
Finally, I went through the 200 grain SWC. These were a good combination of oomph and accuracy. I was a little low at first until I started shooting higher and there didn't appear to be much of a difference between either powder load.
As you can see, I learned my lesson from aiming 3/4 high then promptly forgot it. At least towards the end I remembered and then had a good group. Double taps with these were easy (yeah, I see that flyer at the bottom. I got excited, sue me). I did have one failure to feed in this set, but a quick rack of the slide was all it took to fix it. The round fed the next time with no problem.
Gut instinct is to go with the 200 grains. It's easier to make power with them and they were perfectly controllable. Learning how to man handle the gun helps a lot with that too.
All in all, it was a good range outing. A few snafus with dropping the rounds and the lockups with the 225s aside, I felt good about my shooting. I have a LOT of practice to do, and I should be able to get the slow fire groupings even smaller given some time, but it's going to have to be a financial balance between shooting IPSC, IDPA, and hitting the range.
And my nephew wants me to take him to the range next week to introduce him to handguns! Wheeeee!