BarryinIN

I just came in from my own little commemoration of the blessed event. I took a few 1911s out, with one round of ammo for each year of M1911 existence (that would be 100 rounds for any liberals reading). I started with my Colt WWI Repro and ended with a custom Springfield Operator having all the popular alterations of 2011. While it was easier to do, and more comfortable doing it, I didn't shoot the gee-whiz one any better than the one that duplicates how they were 100 years ago. Not many things age that well.

Happy Birthday 1911! I got an email this morning from a Sheriff/Gunsite instructor friend: Celebrating the 100th Anniversary of the Browning designed Colt 1911 today. What better place and method of celebration than at Gunsite with the 250 Centennial Class. Colt is here today (including General Keys) for a historical presentation first thing this morning. We finish with a presentation this afternoon and display from the NRA Museum on the Military Trials. That greenish glow some of you might see today is from my envy.

I've looked at the AIA website before, and like what I see. I currently have just one Lee-Enfield (a #4) but really like them. I'd like to have a few more to go with my one, in smaller (Jungle Carbine style) and larger (match/sniper) versions.

Thankfully, it looks like people here get it. I still think the majority of shooters do not. I've had people look at mine and make a comment such as "I only like guns I can hunt with". Most fall into this group. I don't know how and why they think it is supposed to be a battle rifle (although one could do some "battling" with one if they wanted). The rest of them see it as some sort of specialized piece, like a sheep rifle or Dangerous Game gun. These people look at it and say they like it OK but wouldn't tie up money in a gun they can't use for much. I don't understand this one either. If it actually follows the original Scout idea, it should be able to do just about anything one needs a rifle for. I usually hear that last one at the range. That's interesting because I always take six or eight rifles to the range so I shoot one while the others cool, and I keep rotating them. When I hear the comment about the Scout being specialized, I turn and look at whatever assortment I have with me and usually know I could replace them all with one Scout and not be hurt much by it. It's a lot more fun to have a rack full of different rifles than just one, but when I'm being honest with myself I know the Scout is a better general purpose tool for me than a Multi-tool or Crescent wrench.

I know the title, but have not read it. It was trying to think of the author's name, but it was a military publication wasn't it? It was probably not put out under one person's name, which is why I have not even a vague recollection of a name.

That's OK. I'm sorry for being a bit short about it. I guess I'm still a little touchy after hearing Stephen Ambrose might have plagiarized some of his work. That was a downer indeed.

I'd have to have a bit more than his 20-some acknowledgments and some works looking familiar to call him a plagiarist. Every major power was revamping their ammunition over that period and practically starting over from scratch, testing, experimenting, and generally playing around. A lot of people were doing similar things at similar times. I'm not saying he didn't "borrow" findings, as he could have swiped all of it for all I know. I just would need more to call anyone a plagiarist. FWIW, I'd almost say most U.S. "advancements" back then came from studying Mausers captured in the Spanish-American War than from any other single place. Yes, Castpics is a great resource (as is Casting Fellows). I probably refer to it at least once a week for something. I keep the old mould catalog reference page up in a window all the time. The link up to the main page follows. Even if one doesn't cast, the reloading info is still useful. www.castpics.net Tasty looking recipes you have there!

There is the Beretta 38 also. That second trigger could pose a problem for you. It's the go-fast trigger.

http://www.gunbroker.com/Auction/ViewItem.aspx?Item=221289872 http://www.gunbroker.com/Auction/ViewItem.aspx?Item=220919716

You're welcome. I saw it and thought everyone should have one. They also have Phil Sharpe's "Complete Guide to Handloading". It's from the late 30s, so not everything is up to date, but most of it is good info nonetheless. Anything from that group of Sharpe, Hatcher, and Whelen is a good read. http://www.castpics.net/subsite2/Gen...20-%201937.pdf They have another I'm not familiar with, called "Handloader's Manual" by Earl Naramore, who I am also unfamiliar with. It's from about the same time period. http://www.castpics.net/subsite2/Gen...20-%201943.pdf Could you expand on that? I was not aware.

Thinking more on this... If people do know it is a sporting rifle, a lot of them think it is a specialized piece. That is the exact opposite of what it was meant to be. It is supposed to be a general purpose hunting rifle. It's the rifle you can pick up and head out the door with, and be able to take just about anything in North America. Although liking Jeff Cooper's general purpose rifle concept when I first read about it, I hated the Steyr Scout when it came out. I thought it looked awful and I knew I'd hate the scope. I was into other things and gave the General Purpose rifle concept little thought after that. Then a friend said I needed to at least shoulder one before hating it. This rifle is not his style, so I knew there must be something to it if he liked it. It took a while, but I did try one. It took a few snaps to the shoulder, but I came to like the scope, then the rest fell into place for me. I started looking into the General Purpose rifle concept again, and liked it. I made up a Mauser actioned rifle that was close and used it a while, then got my own Steyr Scout a couple of years ago. It might actually be a general purpose rifle. Like any other general purpose tool, it might not do everything well, but this one does most of them pretty well. It is at least as handy as any lever action carbine I've handled. Accuracy is not a question at all. The bolt is easily manipulated and I can shoot it pretty fast for a manually operated rifle. I shot it in an IPSC 3-gun match once and while I was never a threat to win, I was not last either. I had it at the range last year when a guy I knew shows up. He's a good guy. We used to work at the same place though we never worked in the same area or really knew each other there, but we have crossed paths at rifle and pistol matches over the last 15 years. He looks at my Steyr, says nice things and says he would like to have one, but he didn't need a rifle like that. Before he was done, he had shot a heavy barreled Savage model 12 .308, a Winchester 94 .30-30, and a stainless synthetic Remington 700 in .30-06. If he didn't need a Scout, he didn't need those rifles either. I can't think of a thing he could do with any or all of those three rifles he couldn't do with one Scout, and might do some of it better or easier. Steyr Scouts aren't cheap, but I am sure I had less money in mine than he had in his three rifles and two scopes. I've had other similar experiences. People say they can't use a Scout because of what they need a rifle for, yet the Scout sounds perfect to me. I am not sure what they think it's for.

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that the Scout Rifle might be one of the most misunderstood guns around. I'm not sure if most people know what it was supposed to be. When you read or hear "Scout rifle", what do you think of? I ask this because I get the impression a lot of people seem to think it's a military rifle. It's not. It can be used for fighting, but it was not the prime intent. Jeff Cooper came up with the criteria and name, and it was for a light, handy, general purpose, hunting rifle. A hunting rifle. Not a military rifle. Lightweight and handy. Taking just any rifle and adding a scope in a funny place won't do it. General purpose. It had to use a cartridge capable of taking most game the North American hunter would ever see, and that was popular enough to obtained almost anywhere ammunition can be found. Not a .22 or .223, not a .458 Win Mag, not an oddball cartridge that was used by one country's army 60 years ago. This more or less came together after he had hunted for a while with one of the little Remington model 600 carbines in .308 in the 1960s. He found this handy little rifle capable of doing 95% of everything he ever wanted a rifle to do. It might not do everything, but it would come real close. A general purpose hunting rifle. He refined this over years using factory and custom rifles. I have a Guns & Ammo magazine from the late 60s with an article he did on carbines that is now obviously a preview of where he was headed. He hosted a Scout Rifle Conference at Gunsite in 1983, inviting shooters, hunters, and rifle makers to has out the details in a rifleman's think tank. From this came the specs for a Scout rifle. So when someone sees a Steyr Scout and dismisses it because they only like hunting rifles, it shows me they missed the entire point. I have seen and heard this many times. I get the impression a lot of people think it was created as a military rifle first and foremost. I have seen posts on several forums where the Scout is dismissed as being unsuitable for "today's battlefield", with no mention of it for sporting use. They wonder why Col Cooper thought a rifle suited for WWI warfare would have succeeded today. Here is one of my "favorites": "(Jeff Cooper's) Scout Rifle was a great concept for warfare, right up until about 1913." I don't know where that comes from. It doesn't come from Jeff Cooper's writings, and believe me, he wrote about it a lot. He would discuss that the Scout was certainly usable for anti-personnel use and that he would rather take one to war than a "poodle shooter" but I never saw anything that gave me the idea his intent was the re-arm the world's armies with little bitty bolt actions. Maybe it's from the name. Cooper got the name "scout" from the old military definition of a scout, which was: "...a man trained in ground and cover, movement from cover to cover, marksmanship, map reading, observation, and reporting the results of his observation", which he noticed, for the most part, also defined a hunter's actions and skills. I think he found the definition fitting and had a nice ring to it. For all I know, it could be the color. The Steyr Scout started out having a green stock, and maybe some people think anything close to Olive Drab belongs in the army. I don't know. Just wondering aloud. When you guys see a Scout rifle, do you think "military"?

I wouldn't take the other end of the deal, so yes I agree you did well! I use regular wheelweights for handgun, just letting the bullets air cool. In rifle, I water drop them to harden them, which brings them to just a hair under linotype hardness per my tester. I've shot the air cooled ones to almost 1500 fps and the water dropped ones to over 2,200 fps, though the water cooled ones are usually kept to 1800 or less. Works fine if they fit the gun's bore properly and a good lube is used. Fit is king. A lot of the casters who live and breathe this stuff will swear up and down that wheelweights are actually on the hard side and won't let the bullet obturate and seal the bore well enough. I might try softer if I were casting for one specific gun and could size them all exactly to match it, but I usually use each type of bullet in multiple guns.

I think this is one of the better general shooting books ever. General Julian S. Hatcher was in Army Ordnance forever, saw the development of most of the small arms between the Spanish-American and Korean War, machineguns of all types, and other arms up through light cannon. After retiring from the Army as a Major General, he became the NRA's Technical Editor. And all the while, he experimented. His "Hatcher's Notebook" contains notes and articles about a wide range of shooting subjects. What happens when you shoot a rifle straight up into the air? What was the real story behind the low-numbered 1903 Springfields blowing up? How do different bullet profiles change trajectory and wind deflection values? I have a copy that I refer to often. I never have read it straight through, but have read all of it a few times over. It goes in and out of print, and when out of print, they get expensive. I just found it online for free. Help yourself to all 636 pages. http://www.castpics.net/subsite2/GeneralReference/Hatchers%20Notebook.pdf

I don't have one, but expect I will. I have a GSG-5 (the .22 MP-5 lookalike) though I've never been able to figure out why since I'm not a real big MP5 fan. Anyway, I am impressed with the design of that GSG-5 and it shoots really well. Those who buy those to hose with are missing out. So when I saw their .22 1911, I expected it would be good. The first one I saw at the club impressed me and I knew I'd get one but just haven't got around to it. I had a Kimber .22 (yes it worked) and it was kinda handy even though I didn't use it that often. I always thought a conversion unit was the way to go there, but after getting that Kimber I really liked having the complete gun. It was handier to have a gun that was ready to go whenever I wanted instead of having to look for the conversion unit. It may seem silly to not want to tie up a gun with a conversion unit when I have plenty of 1911s, but it did seem easier. If I shot with someone else often or my kids were ready to start shooting, it would be much nicer to have a separate complete .22 than to fiddle around swapping uppers when they wanted it. I parted with it because I found something else I wanted more (as usual) and didn't use it enough to justify keeping it. But with the GSG 1911 .22 running something like $309 at the local shop, it's cheap enough I can justify it even if I didn't use it that often.

I got automatic emails from there two different times warning me. I have no idea why. Both times I asked why, and the mods could not find the reason and put me back on good boy status or whatever they do. Small nuisance I guess, but still a nuisance. I seldom go there anymore. I'm not sure why now come to think of it, but I don't think that was the reason unless it was subconsciously.

Yes he did. I believe one of the main differences between his method and that of Giles was that Clark converted 38 Super barrels and Giles used new barrels (from Kart maybe?).

I've just about got to where I'm shocked to not see an idiot mark anymore.

There you go. Pristine guns and neat tool boxes are the marks of pikers!

I think concerns of lead exposure from casting is sometimes...um...maybe no overblown, but not as bad as some other things we are more casual about, like handling fired brass and spent primers. Or shooting in some indoor ranges (some I've shot in still give me the willies to think about). Then again, I was probably overblowing casting dangers for a long time. I had most of the stuff to cast for quite a while but was afraid to because I "knew" it was hazardous. I thought lead "broke down" from the heat and gave off fumes, and I think that's a common belief. I know it's what everybody said. Then I realized the people I was hearing this from had never cast a bullet in their life. How did they know this? Had they researched this and decided it wasn't for them, or were they just passing on what they heard from everyone else? I checked, and found out lead doesn't start to give off fumes until it is heated to something like 1400 degrees (don't quote me on that number). Electric casting furnaces go up to about 850 degrees maximum, so they get just a little over halfway to the danger point. And that took care of my biggest concern. The fume issue was the big danger I worried about most, probably because it's the one everybody talks about. I think a lot of the noxious fumes I've heard people discuss ("But I can smell it!") is actually from the impurities in or on the lead. Smelting wheelweights can stink a place up quick from the paint on them. Once they are smelted and good and clean, I don't smell anything. Not that it's a good gauge, but if I ever did smell any, it was nothing compared to some indoor range sessions. Of course there are other ways of getting it in your system. A lot of small particles are generated in the casting process by breaking sprues and stuff, but you stay careful with that. I put a canvas drop cloth down on my casting table (that gets used for nothing else) and fold it up carefully when I'm done. I keep an electric fan behind me, to cool me off, to cool the moulds with, and just in case there is anything coming out of the lead pot maybe it will get blown away from me. I wash my hands thoroughly, don't eat or drink while casting, etc. I don't treat handling gun powder much differently and keep myself clean when handling it too. After thinking about it, I feel many of us have been avoiding casting while missing a bigger danger. I now worry more about handling empty brass or fired primers. I have nothing hard to base it on, but I think there is a lot of nasty stuff in fired brass, spent primers, and the residue that covers our guns when shooting. There is lead in primers, and it is ground really fine to start with and no doubt pulverized more in the firing process. I'm sure some lead gets spread all over the gun with every shot, and it's going to be fine particles. I know some of this staining is from graphite, but I'd think there has to be fine lead in there too. Not that graphite is OK either. Anything in fine form gives me ingestion concerns. If it's as bad as I suspect, there is probably a greater risk from that than casting. We pick up empty brass with bare hands and stain our fingers with it. We dump spent primer catchers, sending a small cloud of crud into the air. Tumbling cases in a tumbler with anything less than a fully closed lid leaves a coating around the tumbler base. We put dirty guns in IWB holsters or pants pockets. Cleaning guns exposes us to more of it. This stuff is really fine, and we have to be getting some of it on us if not IN us.

There are a few reasons I like messing around with guns. One is that I like mechanical objects and knowing how they work. I know a Wal-Mart digital watch will tell me the time, but I like an automatic (auto-wind or self-winding) watch because there is stuff going on in there. If it has a clear back case so I can see this stuff going on, all the better. So sometimes, I get interested in a gun that I would otherwise ignore and do it just because of how they work. The Savage Model 1907 "pocket pistol" is one of these. I generally don't have much interest in .380s or .32s, and really don't like those that are rather large in size. But these are different. Different in a few ways. If I were to ask: What production gun had the first double stack magazine? My guess is most people would think of the Browning HiPower (1935) was first or close to it. What about a .32 or .380 that fired from a locked breech instead of being blowback? The KelTec P32 and others that followed used a locking breech to get the gun smaller, so it gets the attention. There were others from long ago, but most were so obscure that few can name them. How about a pistol whose slide rails were reversed, so the slide ran inside the frame? The CZ75 is known for this and many are aware of that (1975). The Sig P210 was like that too (1947-48). Now name a handgun with no screws in it. OK, that takes some thinking. Believe it or not, you might be able to answer all of these questions by saying the Savage 1907. I'm not so sure that it was the first in any of these things, but when compared to the guns most people would think of when asked the above questions, it beat most of them...often by decades. Whenever who did what, the Savage 1907 did them all at once. It's unique combination of design features has always kept me at least a little bit curious about them for the mechanical aspect. And I think they look kinda cool, with an Art Deco or Art Nouveau styling. The Savage Model 1907 came out somewhere in the 1905 to 1907 area, depending on what source you read. They were chambered in .32 ACP at first, and later .380 ACP. It was a "pocket pistol" in its day, and is a little smaller than the Colt 1903 .32/.380 that was popular then, but is probably just a little wider (I don't have a Colt 1903 here to check). The Savage had a double stack magazine that held 10 rounds in .32, and nine in .380. It had an odd locking system based on a rotating barrel. The slide runs on rails cut inside the frame. There isn't a single screw in the gun. Not even holding the grip panels on. An Army Major named Elbert H. Searle designed the gun. Arthur Savage bought and produced it by his company. They would do this again with a .45 auto design. They submitted the .45 auto in the early Army pistol trials that resulted in the adoption of the Colt/Browning 1911. The Searle/Savage was the closest competitor to the Colt/Browning, and the only other gun really in the running. A lot of the mechanics of that gun are similar to the .32/.380 M1907. It seems like most Savage 1907s were made in .32 ACP, but they did make quite a few in .380 ACP. Savage often called these rounds the .32 ASP and .380 ASP- Automatic Savage Pistol- even though they were just the standard .32 and .380. A large order of guns were sold to France early in WWI, when they were screaming for pistols of any kind. I saw a lot of "French" Savages with documentation for sale when I was looking for mine. There are a couple of other variations. The Model 1915 had no external "hammer", and the Model 1917 had a reshaped grip backstrap. That grip change must have been done begrudgingly, because one of the big advertising claims of the 1907 and 1915 was how well the grip was designed and how well the gun pointed. I see the same picture over and over in advertising. It shows a hand holding a Savage pistol superimposed over a hand with outstretched finger. From what I've read in old advertising, Arthur Savage was never shy about any of his guns. If there was some feature in the design, no matter how large or small, real or imagined, it got pushed and pushed hard. The pistol features Savage advertising centered on were the locked breech, the 10-shot magazine and the grip shape that caused it to "Aim as easily as pointing your finger". The Savage advertising campaign featured Buffalo Bill Cody, Bat Masterson, and others claiming how nice the 1907 would have been to have in the good old days. I notice none said they would have traded their Colt Peacemakers for it. To Savage's credit, it probably did take some selling to get people to accept a semiauto pistol in 1907. Remember, this was four years before the 1911 was even adopted, and a year before the German Army adopted the Luger. Autos had to be a tough sell. One of the things Savage pushed was the locked breech, which the most popular "pocket autos" of the time- the Colts and FNs- did not have. They made all sorts of claims regarding it. The two that come up most are: -It sealed the barrel keeping unburned powder from falling into the action causing malfunctions. -It allowed more velocity and power "...the striking energy...is considerably higher and much more uniform..." than other pistols in the same caliber because the breech was locked. The method used to lock the bolt upon firing was unusual. The barrel was able to rotate, and did not move fore and aft. It had a lug on the bottom and one at the top, both at the breech end. The bottom lug fit into a rectangular cutout in the frame and just kept it tracking straight during in it's rotation in the frame. The top lug fit into a track milled into the slide. This track was angled for a short section, causing the barrel to rotate as the slide passed over it. But that's only half of it. Another design component that made this system work (they claimed) was that the barrel rotated in same direction as the rifling. You have to follow close here. They claimed that when the bullet entered the rifling, it held the barrel against unlocking. This is because when the rifling tries to rotate the bullet one direction, the bullet tries without success to turn the barrel in the opposite direction. Since the rifling turns the same direction the barrel does to unlock, the bullet is helping to hold the barrel from turning this way. So the bullet holds the barrel locked for a microsecond longer. Sounds good, but I have to wonder if it really did much. In a 1980s Gun Digest article, the author Donald Simmons ground the lug off a 1907 barrel and shot it. The velocity dropped, which he concluded meant the early unlocking of the barrel allowed powder gasses to escape. This supported Savage and Searle's claims to him. I don't know about that, but I do know that Searle used the same basic system in the Savage 45ACP pistol that competed against the Colt/Browning in the Army trials, and it seems to have worked. It almost had to. While you can get away without a locked breech in a .32, you might not in a .45 unless the slide is really heavy, and the slide doesn't look too heavy on the Savage .45. I know it accomplished something, but more on that soon. It also had a hammer that wasn't a hammer. The hammer isn't a hammer at all. It's a "cocking lever". The "hammer" doesn't touch the firing pin. The gun is striker fired, and the cocking lever/"hammer" is only a thumbpiece connected to the striker by a link so you can cock and decock it. If you can picture a bolt action rifle and it's firing pin, but with a hammer-like piece hooked onto the end by a link so you can cock and decock it, you have the general idea. The model 1915 deleted this "hammer", but it was back on the 1917. The slide is open at the rear, and it's breechblock is installed and removed in the this opening. This block looks like a bolt from a miniature bolt action rifle. Instead of one set of opposed lugs like most rifles, it has two sets. With the slide locked back, you squeeze the cocking piece and give the breechblock a quarter turn to the right and it will come out. It's quite a part, with a lot of machining. I bet some of today's .32 pistols cost less to make than it would to duplicate that bolt. The trigger and firing control mechanism is goofy too. Part of it is above the trigger, and part of it is back in the breechblock. The sear is above the trigger. It has an arm that reaches back along the side of the frame and contacts the sear trip, which releases the striker. It's an interesting ballet of motion to study, but as triggers go- it's a mess. You can probably trace it's path back in this picture: The result is one of the heaviest triggers I've ever felt. That includes pistols, revolvers, rifles, shotguns, single shot clunker shotguns with no name, machineguns, and submachineguns. The rest of the gun is so nicely made that this comes as a surprise. I thought maybe someone had assembled mine wrong and bent something in the past, but that doesn't appear to be the case. It's not rough or anything. In fact, it's quite crisp. You just have to pull and pull before it lets go. I'm not sure what was gained by doing it this way, but the barrel does sit extremely low. It's almost right on top of the hand. So if routing things out of the way to achieve that was the intent, they got it, but at a price. Here is a shot showing the internal slide rails. The breechface location should show how low the barrel sits. Notice also that the slide rails don't run straight across, but angle downward. I don't know what the point was there, but I'm sure there was one. I wonder if that could be done on other guns to give more rail surface in less space??? Shooting: After looking at them several times, I got a Savage 1907 of my own a couple of years ago. It's a .32 made in November of 1910. It is in great shape, and from looking at the breechface I wondered if it had gone it's 99 years (at that point) without being fired. It didn't make it to 100. I have only shot it a little. I can't say I dread shooting it, but it's not one I dream about shooting. First, that trigger is a handful. I shot it from the bench the first time, so mostly all I had to do was hold and squeeze. You squeeze a lot. And squeeze. And squeeze harder. Then you get a slight catch as it moved a little, and keep squeezing until it fires. The first thing I shot was some Winchester USA 71 grain FMJ. Not knowing where it shot, I tried it at 50 feet. Ten shots went into 4" at 50 feet and averaged 758 fps on the chronograph. Kinda slow, so it's a good thing that locking system keeps it from losing velocity, huh? Next, I shot some CorBon 60 grain JHP. It's a bit faster. Ten shots averaged 1030 fps, and went into 3-1/8". Not bad for what it is. The sights aren't the best, but are pretty good compared to most pocket pistols of the era. They reshaped the rear sight early in production, and that helps. I know one thing the locking system does: It makes it recoil hard. I never knew an all-steel, 20 ounce, .32 auto could kick so hard. No, it was by no means brutal, but it was certainly stiffer than I expected. From everything I've read about the Army's .45 pistol tests, the Savage recoiled harder than the Colt. I now believe it had to. It shoots well I guess, but it takes some concentration with that trigger. I have to really focus to shoot it well, so I don't think it's something I could do well with under pressure...which is exactly what it was meant for. Savage used to have an advertising slogan of "Ten Shots Quick", but with that trigger I couldn't squeeze them off that quick. While it still sounds strange to complain about the sharp recoil of a .32, I can tell it really slows me down. I still think it's a really interesting design, and far ahead of its time in some ways. I'm just not sure if all of them are for the better. It looks neat, though.

This is going to be long, but I've put a lot of thought into this. It's usually done while casting and there isn't a whole lot else to do. I think for me, money savings (if there is any) comes at least third on my list of reasons for casting. My first and second reasons run close together, with money savings falling far behind. My first two reasons are variety and self sufficiency. Reason One: Variety I cast to get what I can't get otherwise. I like/need some bullets that aren't very common. They wouldn't be easy to find if I wanted to buy them. In 9mm, I like a 140 SWC (Saeco 383) and sometimes a weird old wadcutter Lyman made before I was born (356472). I am starting to like a 185 grain WFN in .357. I shot some 113 grain wadcutters in .44 Spl yesterday. None of these are common, and I've never seen three of the four for sale anywhere. I don't want unusual bullets just because they are unusual. It's usually because they are what suits my purposes. Those 9mm designs were the first two 9mm cast bullets I got results from that were anything close to decent. I've since added another one or two in more conventional shapes (and more cavities thankfully) after I got casting for the 9mm better sorted out, but I still get the best results from those two bullet designs. I use the 140 SWC in IDPA and IPSC (good accuracy, nice clean holes in paper, and whacks the steel down OK). Plus, I find I often need cast bullets sized to non-standard diameters. In 9mm, I almost always size to .358" because most of my 9mm guns slug at .357 diameter (which I understand is more common than most realize). Try to find 9mm cast bullets in .358" diameter. I could settle for the usual .355-.356, but they would lead and/or keyhole so bad in some guns that they would be useless to me. Fit is everything. I also size most of my .44 bullets to .431 instead of the "standard" .429-.430. Most of my .30 caliber ones get sized to .310, though some get .309, and my worn-out Win 1895 needs them huge. I can find those choices in a few places, but it really narrows the choices. Besides odd designs and sizes, I have some calibers that are hard to find any cast bullets for. I have a Browning 71 .348 Winchester. There are few bullets available for it in any form, jacketed or cast, and the jacketed ones got scarce a couple of years ago because nobody is going to make .348 bullets when they can't make enough bullets in common calibers to meet demand. I can cast .348 bullets whenever I want. Which brings me to... Reason Two: Self Sufficiency. If I have lead, I can have bullets. I don't have to depend on someone else. Anything I can eliminate from that dependency, the better. I used to buy jacketed 9mm and .45 bullets from two different places. At least one of them was behind when I needed to order, so I often chose my source based on who had them in stock. Then it got worse until my choice was often based on which one had the shortest backorder. And this was before the 2008-2009 panic buying. I saw the writing on the wall, and started accumulating casting equipment. It was one of the only good speculative decisions I've made. I always thought one of the nice things about reloading was the flexibility. If I had, for example, Large Rifle primers, .30 caliber bullets and a medium powder like IMR 4895 on hand, I could reload my .308s, .30-06s, .300 Savage, .30-40 Krag, or maybe something else I might acquire. I might be on a Springfield kick and shoot nothing but .30-06 for months. Then I might read some Spanish-American War books and fiddle around with my Winchester 1895 in .30-40 Krag a while, or get wrapped up in the FAL. Vastly different rifles, but I can reload all of the cartridges with one box of bullets. Casting takes that a step farther. A box of wheelweights can become bullets for anything I want. I don't really enjoy the work of casting, and especially don't like the time it takes, but I can walk out there right now and have bullets ready to load before I could get an order from Midway/Midsouth/Graf's/etc. Even if I could buy cast bullets from a local supplier (the two I knew of are gone now), chances are good I couldn't get over there any sooner. And if they were out, I'm sunk. That flexibility of being able to make what I need when I need it is worth a lot to me. Maybe not to everyone, but it is to me. I try to keep at least 50 pounds of wheelweight ingots on hand, usually more, so I can turn them into whatever I want. Price/Cost/Time: About price: If I had started casting just to save money, I would have failed miserably. I keep buying up all those moulds I looked at over the years in catalogs and thought looked neat, or read about from Skeeter Skelton, Elmer Keith, and the like. So if I were to add up what I've spent and compared it to what I've saved, it wouldn't look very good. It doesn't have to be done that way, though. With the moulds I use most, I am making bullets a lot cheaper than I was buying them for. I use wheelweights for almost everything, air-cooling them for pistol; water-dropping for rifle. If a guy can find wheelweights for free or close, he can do better, but I have had to buy 99% of mine. I usually buy mine by the box full (USPS Medium flat rate boxes) at $40-$50 per box, shipped. There are 50-52 pounds in a box, and by the time I smelt them down to ingots I average 42 pounds of usable ingots from a box. That's not counting the handful or two of stick-on weights I always find, that I set aside for my BP Trapdoor bullets. This 42 pounds equals 294,000 grains of lead alloy. That works out to a little under 1,300 .45 ACP GI-profile round nose bullets (they weigh around 228 grains from my H&G #34 mould) or around 2,350 9mm 125 grain bullets. Extrapolating that out, if I paid a full $50 for the box of wheelweights (I usually don't), that makes the .45 bullets $38.46 per thousand, and the 9mms $21.28 per thousand. I never know how much lube I use, so will estimate two sticks per thousand (might be way off). At $1.35/stick from White Label Lubes, that's another $2.70 each thousand. So round up and call it: $41/thousand for .45 230 grain $25/thousand for 9mm 125 grain That's if I pay my highest price for the wheelweights. If I got them for closer to $40, it's a good chunk less. And obviously if I were a good scrounger like some guys who get a 5-gal bucket once a month in exchange for a six-pack, I'd do much better. I don't know of a local source of cast bullets anymore, so I took a look online. It was a quick look, but the least I see is: $96/thousand for .45 230 $53/thousand for 9mm 125 So about half or less for DIY. It naturally adds up. The last time I got wheelweights, the price was good so I got all he had- four boxes. Being the last he had, it was the dregs and had a lot of zinc weights in two of the boxes. But was still a good deal even though I got less useful alloy from it than usual. I got four boxes, and paid $150. Even with what the zinc junk taken out, those boxes gave me 154 pounds of usable alloy, or, a little over a million grains. If I cast it all into 9mm 125 grain bullets, I'd have over 8,600. It would make nearly 4,700 45 230 grainers. That works out to: $31.91/thousand for the 45s $17.44/thousand for the 9mm (plus lube for both) That's about 1/3 the commercial cast price. On the other hand... You have to cover equipment costs. That "savings" is ate up in a hurry if you buy good equipment to start with and keep adding to it. I learned quickly that better gear makes a boring task go a lot better and easier, so I do recommend it. If you saved even $60/thousand by casting your own, it will take 6,000 .45 bullets before you offset that nice $350 furnace. A nice four-cavity Saeco mould will take 2,000 bullets to offset. Of course, one doesn't have to buy extra nice stuff like that. I find having things a little easier makes a difference to me on how much casting I'm going to do on a given day, so I throw the money around more than I probably should. Most casters are incredibly cheap from what I've seen, and use stuff I would have replaced years ago. But the fact they wouldn't do it if there wasn't a nickel to be squeezed shows you can save money at it. It's just that I'm not a very good example of how to do it. On the other other hand... There is my point/problem about not being able to find the bullets I need just anywhere. Besides limited bullet design choices, there is the size. Commercial casters might give a choice of two diameters in a given bullet style, if at all, and that won't do it most times. If I didn't cast my own, and had to buy my bullets from a custom caster, those prices I used above go out the window. I could get what I wanted sometimes or maybe most times, but it would cost me. One great source is Montana Bullet Works. http://montanabulletworks.com/home.html I used to buy from him before I started casting, and have bought some since. He offers a BUNCH of bullet designs in most calibers you can think of. He also has options in the alloys you want, or if you want them heat treated. Best of all, he offers sizing diameter choices (Fit is everything). He makes beautiful bullets- every single one of them could be on the cover of Handloader magazine. But this doesn't come cheap. They are often nearly twice what they cost from the "for the masses" type places. Others, like Bullshop, Beartooth Bullets, and Western, offer various styles, sizes, and alloys, but not as much. They are often cheaper than MT Bullet Works, but not always. So if you need something special, even a little, it's going to cost you. If you cast your own and need a larger size bullet, you often can simply buy another sizing die. A new sizing die still costs less than a couple hundred bullets from some of these places. Even if you want a different bullet design than what's commonly available, buying another mould can pay for itself fairly quick in comparison. On the OTHER other hand... Don't ever factor in your time if you want to justify casting. I knew it was going to be time consuming before I started, but was still surprised by how much. Luckily for me, I often have the time. I'm a stay-home dad, and in the summer I spend a lot of time on the deck watching our kids and the neighbors' kids. This was OK for a while, because I could putter around in the garage and still see or at least hear what was going on. Then we got the white trash Amazon above-ground pool, and I felt like I needed to be closer and more ready to act if needed. There aren't many little productive jobs I can do out there, however. I guess some people would sit and read or simply get slack on watching them, but I couldn't do either one. The best way I found to utilize this time is to set up my casting stuff and crank out bullets as I sit there. If I was in any other situation, I couldn't imagine devoting the time to it.

Believe him about the recoil. I don't have a .44 Marlin, but do have a Ruger 77/44 (.44 Mag bolt action) and the heavier stuff will shove me around. Even if you've shot one loaded with the usual 240 grain ammo, don't base everything on that, because you can really feel the difference going to a little heavier bullet. I shoot a lot of cast bullets in mine that weigh 277 grains, and when they get to around 1600-1650 fps they start to thump you. I have a mould from SSK that is supposed to make a 310 TC bullet, but that weight was figured with linotype. Using heavier wheelweight alloy, they average 338 grains. Get those to about 1400 fps, and you feel it. My Marlin 45-70 has less recoil using 300 grain factory ammo (around 1800 fps) but it's a heavier rifle. My 77/44 is 5.25 lbs, so it's like a .22 shooting .44 Magnums. My Marlin .41 Mag weighs almost two lbs more than the 77/44 and is a pussycat in comparison. Of course I don't have to shoot the heavies. I have some .44 bullets as light as 120 grains. One of my favorites is a 135 grain bullet from an ancient Ideal mould with enough Titegroup to go just under 1000 fps. It's like shooting a .22, but makes a bigger hole. And that is the neat thing about .44 Mag rifles: The range of bullets and loads they will shoot. I've shot everything from round balls to those heavy SSKs in mine. You can load a wide range in a lot of guns, but the .44 allows an awful big spread. I wonder what diameter his cast bullets are? The Marlins I've had tend to like cast bullets on the big side. But they were Micro-Groove, and the Cowboy is not, so I wonder what it's bore dimensions are. My Ruger likes big bullets too (.431-.432).

I missed that. This guy's first effort was a bit complicated, requiring him to cut out cardboard pieces and tape them in place, etc. He made a simplified version that was basically two IPSC targets sandwiching a balloon between then, bowed so their edges met so they could be taped together. It did the same thing and could be thrown together in seconds on the range.

Yes, working with realistic targets can be an eye opener. Shooting at the center of a flat piece of paper or cardboard is one thing, but when you think about it, you might not shoot center in real life. Like shooting at game, you are aiming where you want to bullet to end up, which is usuallly deep inside and not visible to you. If an attacker is leaning forward like when charging at you, you will have to aim higher than usual to angle it in. And if he is turned to the side much like when shooting one-handed or running, you have to hold off to one side also. With some angles, you could easily be holding almost in the shoulder to get an upper chest hit. A guy I know made some 3-D humanish targets and had balloons in the center. A string supported the target and ran through an opening and was tied to that balloon. If you broke the balloon, the target then slipped down off the string onto the ground. As it hung there, it swung so the angle to the balloon changed constantly. Even though we knew more or less where the balloon was, it was still a job hitting it. And that motion is nothing like a person running around shooting at you. This is one reason why I'm not all that surprised when people empty their guns and get one or two hits.