BarryinIN

Great. I see you you got the P225. Nice guns. I'm not a DA auto fan, but even I like those. Nice size for carrying, yet big enough to shoot easy enough. In my fondness for single stack mid-size 9mms (they used to be compacts) I've tried most guns in it's class. If the particular Deuce and a Quarter (225) I had didn't have the heaviest DA pull I've ever felt on a Sig, I might still have it. Luck of the draw there, I guess.

Looks neat. I didn't see what the targets were. You say steel, but how big? It looks like 100 yards offhand... Rectangle, Lollipop, and "Dia." from the bench... Plus some bonus targets. Depending on what the target sizes were, that could be fair to miserable. The scores look like most people hit 50% or more, and just judging from the matches I've been at, the targets would need to be generous to get such good results across the board. I wonder if only the bonus targets are the only ones way out there. Usually at something like this, if the targets were set incrementally farther out (like 100, 200, 400, 500, and 600) you would see a drop off at some point. Meaning that if you took ten shots at each distance, the 100 yard target would have a lot of 8-10 hits, the 200 a lot of 7-9 hits, then at 400 it would drop to about 4-5 hits and stay down. But the scores look pretty even across the columns. That makes me think they do something like: Shoot offhand at 100, then the others are all shot at a farther distance (but all the same distance) like 200 yards except the bonus targets way out in the hills. The main difference in the 200 yarders being the shape. If I were to shoot in it, my biggest concern would be sights. I have an awful time with open sights and would have to use a peep. I would take a 4 MOA rifle with sights I could use pretty well before I'd take a 1 MOA rifle with sights I'd struggle with. Looking at what was used last year, however, I am surprised that most of the higher placing rifles used plain old notch and barleycorn sights. I would think the advantage would go to the 1903A3s because the sights would be best suited. I saw some did well, yet not on top. Of course, swap rifles among shooters and it might be different. 600 or 700 yards is a loooong way. I used to shoot Highpower, and if you didn't have a super good zero at 300, you were in big trouble when going to 600. The farthest I've shot in a match in the last couple of years is 300 yards in 3-gun, and you should hear the crying when we get to that stage.

Self healing rubbery/plasticy about 1/4 to 3/8 inch thick. Edit: Found 'em. The ones I have are these very targets, I think: http://www.newboldtargets.com/more-infor...-target-red.htm The price is not as bad as I remember, at $11.95. In the smaller sizes like mine, they came two to a package. I don't see anything about that price being for two now. Maybe they went to one per package and dropped the price a little. I wish I had a better picture. When you see my targets up close, the only indication of hits are these little black specks all over them. A closer look shows they are holes a little larger than pinholes. If you take hold with a hand on each side and bend the target like cracking a stick in half, the holes spread open and you can see they are bullet holes. The only sign of real damage are edge hits, where a teeny tiny piece gets taken out. That size is good for .22s I think because they are light enough to move when hit, but heavy enough that you don't have to wait for them to straighten out. I'll shoot one, then shoot the other, then come back to the first one and it's nearly still. A heavier caliber would throw this size around pretty good.

20, 60, some even number! Correcting momentarily. I always liked that as a trivia question, because people naturally assume the first reasonably successful gas auto shotgun came from Remington. Even if they know the H-S was earlier, they are surprised to hear Sears sold the gun first.

It was the Model 60, wasn't it?

Thanks. You know, I've seen the M11 called both, but didn't realize the reason. What was the J.C. Higgins semiauto called? I've known but am drawing a blank now. I know what I was thinking- I was thinking of your model 20 I was commenting on a day or so ago. Thinking it and typing it.

I don't have that particular type, but I have a pair of Newbold targets hanging up by the woods. I've been shooting at them for years now, using a suppressed .22 rifle. I leave them hanging all the time, year-round. They make it nice to get a couple of magazines' worth of offhand practice by just sliding the back door open. They have faded from red to pink, but I expect that from staying out all the time. I always thought the Newbolds were expensive, but I found these in the clearance box at a gun shop. Even if I had paid full price, I would have gotten my money's worth several times over. They have held up well, but they only see .22s. I would guess that the larger the caliber (and less rounded the bullet) the shorter their life would be. EDIT: Wow, that's a poor picture. Nice focus job.

In honor of this being John Moses Browning's birthday weekend, I wanted to write about what I think is his least appreciated design. I'll even go so far as to say it might be his biggest achievement. It is also the gun that brought about his split from Winchester and sent him across the ocean to FN, starting that productive relationship. Yes, it was pretty important in a few ways. That is the gun that is usually known as the Browning Auto-5 shotgun. Almost as soon as the first self-loading rifle was invented around 1890, people were trying to develop a semiauto shotgun. If a quick repeat shot was desirable in a rifle, it definitely would be desirable in a shotgun when the birds are flushing. Designing one that worked was a big challenge. The big problem was shells. The shells of the day were as inconsistent as you could imagine, and it got worse as smokeless powder joined black powder. Some people had doubts about the new smokeless, so black powder was loaded for years to come. The smokeless powders were refined along the way, with new powders coming out often. It might be common to find shells on a store shelf loaded with a different powder type in every box. The shells could be paper, brass, paper with a steel head, etc. Brass dented and otherwise got mishaped. Paper drew and held moisture, swelling them and cracking the metal heads. Wads varied. Unlike today when shotcups are carefully designed to protect the shot from chamber to muzzle, the old wads were hardly more than fillers. They could be made of almost any material from cardboard to cork to pressed sawdust or horsehair. Shot charge weights could be anything. The shell mouths might have been star crimped, but more likely rolled over an overshot wad, which was usually card but not necessarily. I have a reprint of an 1898 Winchester catalog handy right now, and they list six or eight lines of shells, with numerous variations within each line. I won't even try to count how many they had, and that's just one company. There were a lot of ammo companies at that time, as the big fish had not taken over all the little fish yet. With the various shells out there, how on earth could you make a shotgun whose action was powered by those shells? A lot of people tried. John Browning really wanted to get it done. What many people don't know is that John Browning was quite an accomplished shotgunner. In addition to wingshooting whenever he could, he was part of a live-bird trap team known as "The Four Bs" (John Browning, Matt Browning, G. L. Becker, and A. P. Bigelow) that did well in the live-bird trap events held in and around Utah. When he designed the pump action shotgun that became the Winchester 1893 then 1897, he was talking from experience when he said it's operation came naturally when swinging on a bird. But even for the master, it took a long time before the solution came. It came nearly ten years after he designed the pump gun and 20 years after his first automatic rifle experiments. In the time since the pump shotgun, he had done most of his Winchester designs. And he still had not solved the problem of how to make an auto shotgun. That auto shotgun had to be on his mind. Gas operation was pretty much out due to the wide variation in pressures the shells generated. It would have to be recoil-operated. The breechblock and barrel would recoil together briefly before they unlocked to allow the breechblock to continue rearward. But how to regulate it? The solution was so simple it's almost silly. He came up with what we call the friction ring, and he called a shock absorber. As the barrel came back, it was "braked" to a consistent speed by this ring. The ring was a bronze collar that slipped over the magazine tube. I was split so it could be squeezed down around the tube. It's forward end was beveled on the outside. The barrel also had a ring that slipped over the magazine tube, with a bevel on it's rear side but on the inside edge. The barrel ring's bevel would seat against the friction ring's bevel when the gun was assembled. When fired, the barrel came back and it's bevel squeezed the friction ring down around the magazine tube. The harder the barrel came back, the harder that friction ring grabbed the mag tube. It worked. It didn't depend on what the shell was made from, only how it recoiled. I doubt it worked with every single shell made then, but it surely covered to bulk of them. At the time, the magic device that made it work- the friction ring- could be made for a dime each. John Browning knew he had gold. Unlike other designs that were better ways of doing something, this was new. There had been no semiauto shotgun before. He tested it more than any design he tested before, building two models that were slightly different and shooting them in the field and in competitions around Ogden, Utah here he let other competitors try them. He took it to Winchester's T. G. Bennett in April of 1899. As the story usually goes, Browning asked for royalties instead of direct payment, Bennett refused, and Browning headed to Belgium. That is a good summary, but there was more to it than that. The usual practice for John Browning's new guns went like this: He would take his prototype(s) to meet with Bennett, and if he expressed interest in the design he would leave it at the Winchester factory. Winchester's engineers would look the design over, and their attorneys would file any required patents in Browning's name. This allowed Winchester to keep the gun out of sight while they considered it's merits, and saved Browning the trouble of messing with patent attorneys. This usually took a matter of weeks, perhaps a couple of months. Over a year later, the auto shotgun was still at Winchester, with little progress made toward them buying the design. There had been correspondence about finding existing patents covering small parts, but Browning had altered them accordingly. Still, the gun sat. Bennett and Winchester were conservative about changes. They were nervous of innovation, and probably had reservations about the shotgun's lack of an external hammer. So they dragged their feet for over two years. Browning had enough one day and suddenly decided to head to New Haven, CT. He wanted a decision on the gun. By now, he was working on a royalty basis with other gun companies. Knowing he had a winner with the auto shotgun, he asked the same from Winchester. Bennett flat refused, stating it was against company policy (no matter who you were). Browning went out to the drafting room where his two models were, picked them up, and left with the guns...the guns Winchester had patented in his name. And that was the end of Browning and Winchester. He contacted Remington, and told their president Marcellus Hartley he had something to show him and could he come over. Think about that for a second. Can you imagine being the head of a gun company, and John Browning calls you up asking for a meeting because he has something to show you? You bet you can come over, Mr Browning sir! He told him to come over that afternoon. Browning was met by some happy people at Remington, who told him to have a seat and the president would be right with him. An hour later, Browning was still waiting and getting irritated. Hartley's secretary came out and informed Browning he had a heart attack and died. I can imagine why. This was January 1902. Browning soon left for Belgium. FN had been making some of his automatic pistol designs and he would see if they were interested. They were, and would make the Auto-5 for the next 97 years. Remington would get to make the gun starting in 1905. They called it the Model 11 after 1911. Savage would make it as the Model 720 from 1930-1949. Remington made the M11 until their 11-48 came out in 1948 or 1949. The 11-48 was essentially a modified Model 11 with a streamlined receiver. It wasn't until their gas operated Model 58 came out in 1956 that Remington had a non-Browning-designed semiauto shotgun. The J.C. Higgins model 60 (made by High Standard) came out before that, but the Remington 58 was the first really successful semiauto shotgun since the Auto 5 began production in 1902. There were attempts, but none lasted long or sold very well. That's 54 years of the A-5 not only being king of the hill, but practically having the hill to itself. John Browning had been dead for nearly 30 years before there was a serious competitor, and the gun could have entered production before it did.. Part of that is due to the patent protections Winchester put on the gun they never made, but part of it was from everybody else still not able to design a good semiauto shotgun. The patents had expired before there was a challenger. Even with the improvements in shotgun shells over the decades, an auto shotgun was still a feat to make then. There are other lever action rifles, other machineguns, and the 1911 pistol had some competition. But the Auto-5 stood alone for a long time.

I don't know what it is with state/local forums. There is more pawing at the ground than a herd of bulls.

More options/usefulness. In other words: Because they don't make .38 Long Colt snap caps!

G-man's Winchester M1911 Self Loader is what I've thought of as a perfect example of the corner he boxed other designers into. They didn't make that thing like they did because they wanted to.

In the book "John M Browning, American Gunmaker" they talk some about him and money. He never spent much, not because he was miserly, but because he didn't want much. Birthdays and Christmases were tough for the family because nobody knew what to get him. There is a lot of good stuff in that book. I had always assumed they stopped manufacturing to have more time to design, but there might be another reason. In the book, there is a story of an employee who got hurt, and could have been killed, because they were in such a hurry to complete a gun order. That didn;t sit well with John. The employee (Tom Emmett) was on a ladder working near the power shafts that ran along the ceiling. John had already commented that they maybe should shut the power down until he was through, but they really needed to keep the work going and he wouldn't be long. Sure enough, Emmett's vest or coat got caught in the power shaft, wound up, and it threw him around and around between the shaft and the ceiling for a while before they could get the power shut off. He was miraculously not seriously hurt, but John put a stop to all manufacturing soon after that. That may not be the reason, but they think it helped. He didn't like doing it anyway. Speaking of how much money he could have made, I always like the story of when he and Matt Browning demonstrated and sold the .30 cal machinegun. After the demos and some time to chew things over, the gov't sent for John to negotiate. The gov't wanted to do it as a package deal- They wanted the rights to the .30 cal MG, the BAR, and to continue the agreement on the 1911 pistol (this was 1917). The officer presenting the offer expected to just make an opening to what could be lengthy negotiations. He prefaced with: "The offer, we know, is only a fraction of what you would receive from royalties on orders already booked, and it may not be acceptable. In that event, negotiations would be necessary." He then made the offer, which is said to be $750,000. (Standard royalty agreements at the time would have got him over 12 million dollars.) According to Matt Browning, who was present, John didn't hesitate for a second. "Major, if that suits Uncle Sam, it's all right with me." After they left, Matt said something like "You know you could have gotten a lot more without argument, right?" John's reply: "Yes, and if we were 15 or 20 years younger, we would be over there in the mud!" It's interesting to me that he always seemed to negotiate that way for the military, while often squeezing the firearms companies on their designs.

My guess is because so many were sold in the last 20 years. Law of averages. I don't know what the rate was, but I know the shops around here sold more .40s than anything for a long stretch there. It's the same with other things. At my local shop, the top brands in sales were Glock, then Sig, then the rest. Now you can't hardly trade in a Glock or Sig there, because the case is full of them and they don't know what to do with them. It might only be a tiny percent of what they sold, but they are swimming in them. My second guess is that 9mm ammo is cheaper. That may be a part of it, but I'm not sure how big a part. While I've heard a lot of people talk about doing some trading to get a cheaper shooting 9mm, it costs money to save money in this case. I doubt many would do that except those who average high annual round counts, and they probably already have 9mms.

No I have not. I have seen it mentioned enthusiastically here and there, but never tried it. I tried Herco on a similar endorsement. I didn't hear of it used much in handguns (mostly for shotgun) but when I did, they were pretty emphatic it was a must-try. I like it so far, although I'm finding it takes quite a bit less than all the data says in order to reach velocity and pressures. I like VV powders too. They are just so expensive and sometimes harder to get. The most accurate loads I've ever come up with in 9mm used N330, which I don't think they even sell anymore. I got some for a reasonable price when a gun shop was quitting VV powders. I wish I had bought more.

I just looked for it. Can't find it. I can probably re-do it. I don't think the A-5 gets the recognition it deserves. It was quite an achievement at the time. I think enough of it that of the shotguns I could use, I chose to re-work a Rem M11 (same basic thing) into a home defense gun.

BTW, In my opinion, his most impressive design was the Auto 5 shotgun. The A5 is taken for granted now, but once people see the challenges he faced in making a semiauto shotgun work with the shells of the period, they are, or should be, impressed. If not, the fact it was decades before there was another successful semiauto shotgun should do it. Come to think of it, I think I have an article stored that I wrote on that. My favorite story telling how crafty JMB is: The way his arrangement with Winchester worked, Winchester's T. G. Bennett (who ran things there) would inform JMB they wanted a certain type of gun design and named off specs. He might say they wanted a lever action rifle that used a cartridge of such and such size, that weighed so much, and could be made in a takedown. Browning would go to work, then show up at Winchester in a few weeks with his brown paper-wrapped packages containing his shop prototypes. Bennett would look them over as Browning explained them. Someone from the legal department would come up and determine what patents needed filed. Bennett would make an offer for the designs and patents. Then Browning did what was really smart. He started opening the other paper-wrapped packages he brought. These were designs that showed how to get around the patents he knew would be filed and granted for the first gun. Bennett would be forced to buy these designs also, to protect the first design. Browning was smart enough to not only think of the best way to make a certain gun, but to also think of every other way to do it.

Utah's legislature opens Monday like many others, but unlike others, some are going to try to name an official "state gun"- the 1911- in honor or JMB and the 1911's 100th birth year. They tried last year but it didn't go anywhere. A search will pull up a lot of newspaper commentaries from 2010 about how ridiculous it is. That was probably in my thoughts as I made the comment above.

I've been using Herco some, and sometimes I think it's better and sometimes not.

Today is John Moses Browning's birthday. Or maybe Sunday is. He was born on either January 21st or 23rd, depending on the source, in 1855. If I have to tell you about him and what he did, you aren't worth telling.

I just read that two guns introduced at the SHOT Show were nixed by the BATFE: The Taurus Raging Judge (28 gauge revolver) and their Trail Judge (.410 Mare's Laig type). Connection? Maybe that is the whole story?

At the SHOT Show this week, the BATFE held a townhall meeting, where they announced a letter was coming out Jan 24 covering future importations of certain shotguns. I don't know how much is based on fact and how much on gossip, but there were references to magazine capacity that has some expecting the Russian Saiga shotguns to be doomed. There is some coverage at a PA law firm's sight. Here: http://blog.princelaw.com/2011/1/20/atf-...gun-importation And here: http://blog.princelaw.com/2011/1/21/new-information-on-atf-s-ruling-that-will-be-issued-on-monday I almost didn't say anything and I don't want to set off a panic, especially since it might be nothing at all. But... If you have been itching for a Saiga shotgun and run across one this weekend, you might wish you heard this now rather than Monday. Something is going to happen. I doubt they are announcing a relaxation on restrictions.

Xtell is right about Titegroup smoking with cast, I bought 8 lbs of it right before switching to mostly cast in the 9mm. Had I known how smoky it would be, I would have done more comparing before ordering so much. To be fair though, several other powders smoke a lot more with cast than jacketed. My old pal Winchester 231 is one of the worst. People will say it's not the powder, but rather the bullet lube burning off. I agree it's from the lube, but it's more prevalent with some powders than others so I'm convinced powder does have an effect on the lube.

Cool.

It does sound pretty neat. Bud's Gun Shop had it on their web "catalog" a couple of weeks ago as a placeholder, but it gave no info, like if it would be full-size or scaled down like the Sig Mosquito. (BTW, Bud's price was $364, which isn't too bad) http://www.budsgunshop.com/catalog/product_info.php/products_id/72002 Reports from SHOT say it's the same size as the centerfires. I assume that means the 9mm/.40 size and not the .45 like mine (although it's only slightly larger). I am glad it has the safety lever because mine has one. I had the choice but went with it because after using 1911s and HiPowers, my thumb wandered around looking for a place to sit when I handled the one without it. I bet some will complain though, because their centerfire doesn't have the thumb safety. Edit: Oh yeah, it is supposedly a joint venture between S&W and Umarex (Walther). This has caused some to wonder if the slide will be of zinc or whatever material the Walther P-22s use, which has had some problems. I still want one, but I would like to know the answer to that before getting one.

I want one, but they just cost so much. I was at a Harbor Freight store recently (getting an $89 generator, which ought to be good for running one electric toothbrush) and they had a couple of ultrasonic cleaners for stupid cheap- like $50 or less. I didn't know what the solution cost, and was afraid of buying something that needed an equal amount spent on solution, which would make it not nearly as cheap. Still, if the biggest one had been just a little bigger, I might have jumped on it. If nothing else, it might be OK to see if it was something one would use much and know if they would want to invest in a decent one.