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Inside This Issue
• Bob Hausman takes a look at the background, function, and assembly of Century’s version of the Israeli Galil rifle.
• Gun writing is a changing business, muses Kevin Michalowski in his “Editor's Shot” column.
• Rifles: Whitney • Shotguns: Verona – Union • Handguns: Wilson – Wurfflein
• Gunsmithing: Herr Frankenpistole: Part II
• NRA Update: Interstate Conceal Carry Bill Fails
• Tactical Gear: Precision Rifle Optics
• Performance Handloading: The Real Deal on Recoil
Recently, Associate Editor Andy Belmas told the world, after a day at the range, “These are the days I really love my job.”
Yes, gun writing does have its perks, but rest assured, it is still a job. And any more these days it is a job at the crossroads of two rapidly changing industries subject to the whims of political regulation, technological advances and consumer demands.
Quite frankly, sometimes it is tough to keep up. But that’s what we do. Sometimes we even do it without complaining.
In our ongoing effort to keep up with the demands of the consumer and the changes in the marketplace, we at Gun Digest the Magazine have been making large strides into digital publishing. Our website, wp.gundigest.com, is currently home to all manner of feature stories, classified ads, political information and gun owner forums that encourage the free exchange of ideas on too many topics for me to list here.
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Speaking of cool, word is getting out about the research element of the Gun Digest website. For a small fee, you can dig through every issue of the Gun Digest annual book going all the way back to 1945. Making this searchable database of information user-friendly was a monumental scanning and tagging process. But now, if you want to find every article Gun Digest ever published about the Lee-Enfield rifle, or about Colt pistols, or anything else you can think of, all you have to do is sign up and type your key words into the search box. It’s all there, right at your fingertips. The “research” tab is in the upper left, just below the Gun Digest logo. Click on it and take a look. You’ll be amazed at what you find.
And if you want books, we’ve got those, too. You may not know that I spent the first eight years of my career here at Krause Publications in the Book Division, developing, editing and even writing some of the company’s most popular titles. During most of that time I wondered aloud where avid shooters were going to find our books. Problem solved! You can now find them right on our website. And cooler than cool, you can buy the whole book or, in some cases, you can get digital downloads of just the portions you like.
It doesn’t matter if you are into gunsmithing, self-defense, historical military firearms or modern tactical weaponry, somewhere in our line of books we have something that will pique your interest.
Yep, Andy and I still get to the range on a regular basis, but it’s not all fun and games. We only go shooting to make this a better magazine for you, the readers. It’s a tough job, but these are the kinds of sacrifices we are willing to make to bring you all the information you desire, in any format you demand.
FOR OVER THIRTY YEARS I wore a sixgun as regularly as I did my trousers. Without it I did not feel fully dressed. It was a tool, and a mighty useful one at that. I still like to have a good gun in easy reach at all times.
During those years I tried out, on both stock and game, every make and caliber available – everything from the 36 Navy Colt, 44 caliber Dragoon, and Single Action Army Colt down through modern revolvers and semi-automatics. During that time I killed three elk, seven mule deer, one whitetail, three black bear, one record cougar, and one mountain goat with a sixgun, not to mention coyotes, bobcats, eagles, and a Mexican javelina.
Over the years the small game ran into the thousands, but the only record kept was on blue grouse when I killed from 41 to 43 of the big birds for three successive years with a sixgun. I remember killing 125 jack rabbits on the Pahsimeroi in three days when testing one of the first 357 S & W Magnums. In over twenty years of big-game guiding, I also trailed and finished with a sixgun many animals of all species that my parties had wounded.
Sixguns by Elmer Keith. Single Action Colt with elaborate engraving by R. J. Kornbrath.
On two occasions I had to stop mad cows I had roped. They wound me up and threw my bronc and came for me with sharp horns. On another occasion I had to get out of bed, saddle up a bronc, and go to the rescue of a local butcher who had tried to kill a big Durham ball with a Colt by planting the slugs in the forehead.
The beast had put the butcher up a tree and, as it was cold weather, he was fast freezing when the neighbor called. When I rode up close to the tree, the bull charged. A single 265 grain 45-cal. Ideal slug, backed by 40 grains of black powder, in the forehead from my old 5 1/2″ Single Action Colt did the trick. The bull stuck his nose in the ground and turned over on his back with all four legs stiff in the air, his tail stretched out toward my bronc, then he relaxed in death.
On another occasion, a mean outlaw bronc I was riding stuck his foot in a badger hole and turned somersault over me. He knocked most of the wind from me and came up running, kicking me with his hooks because one spur had caught around the stirrup leather and held my boot in the stirrup during the roll. Three 45 colt slugs angling upwards from where I bounced along the frozen ground did the trick. The third one reached the spine and put his hind quarters down, and I simply planted the fourth in his brain – and had a long hike home packing heavy saddle. But for that Colt Single Action, I would have been dragged and kicked into doll rags.
On one trip out to Ovando, my sixgun kept my partner and me in meager food supply for six days while we traveled with a pack string of twenty-three horses. The grub horse had busted a yellow-jackets' nest and bucked off down the mountain and across a river. When we found her, there was no food left in the pack. We lived by that sixgun alone for those six days.
Far more often the sixgun was needed to kill a rattler, collect a mess of grouse or sage hens, or rabbit for the cow dogs' dinner. Whether I had to climb out of the blanket to kill a porcupine that was eating the pack outfit, or clean the pack rats out of some cabin wished to sleep in during a rainy night, or simply heave a slug in front of a band of running horses to burn them toward the corral, the old sixgun was always hear and handy. It was a tool of the trade.
On other occasion the old gun was packed for social purposes — when serving on sheriff's posses, hunting cow thieves, or to back our honor and judgment. I still remember seeing one cow thief squirm when I watched him and his three riders while my partner cut four of my steers from two cars of beef that he was preparing to load on the train. Those steers had my brand, badly blotched, and the wattle cut off their noses, but I would have known their hides in a tan yard; so I took them by force. Suffice to say, I would have been pushing up daisies over twenty years ago instead of writing this article now, had I not carried and known how to use a good, heavy sixgun.
Guns were usually carried in a shoulder holster or, more often, in an open-top, quick-draw belt holster that left both hammer and trigger fully exposed. The bottom of the belt holster was tied to the leg or to the chaps so that the gun would not fly up and hit the elbow when riding a pitching bronc. Holsters were just large enough to accommodate the gun, and the belts were more often than not a combination of money and cartridge belts of double-soft chap leather. We never did see any of those huge buscadero Hollywood corsets in use on the range, nor did any of the old gun fighters I knew in my younger days use such an outfit.
Helena, Mont., was settled in the late sixties, largely by Confederate Civil War veterans. I knew, lived, and hunted with several of these men, most of whom owned or carried a good sixgun, either an old cap and ball Colt or a more modern single action. Now they are all dead and gone, and the modern trend seems more to small-caliber target guns. Colt has even stopped manufacture of the best gun they ever built – the Single Action Army.
I witnessed three gun fights when a kid in Helena and was not much impressed by the results from the 38 Special. In one, one man proved the quicker on the draw and a couple of 38 Specials through the heart stopped his opponent even though the opponent did draw and fire two shots that hit the pavement short of his executioner. In another, a cop planted five 38 Specials in a gunman's chest, about center, yet that gunman emptied his break-top 32 at the cop. One bullet, I thought the first, hit the cop right over the heart but went through a notebook and lodged in the bottom of his blouse pocket. One more went through a kid's leg as he was peacefully engaged in eating noodles in his booth, and the rest came through the front window over my head and flattened against a building across the street.
The gunman then threw his gun at the cop, and it also went through the window and across the street. He died as he was carried up the hospital steps. Another time my friend Bill O'Connel, the night cop around the N.P. Depot, killed two holdup men who had stuck up a saloon, with one shot each from his 45 Colt Single Action. Their one return shot only went through a transom window over Bill's head as he entered the saloon.
The 22-caliber sixguns and semi-auto pistols are useful for just one thing – target practice and competition. They may also be used effectively on very small game with high-speed hollow points occasionally. The 32-20 and 38 Special factory loads are far better small-game loads as a whole, but both lack power for any serious social purposes, for shooting game of any size, or for use against mean stock.
I have killed three mule deer with the 32-20 low-velocity smokeless soft-point load, and the cartridge proved entirely inadequate. I have also killed a couple of muleys with a K-22 S & W at close range, working on the backs of their heads double action. I had walked out on the edge of a small cliff and a big buck and a doe appeared just under me at about six yards range. A quick shot, double action, to the back of each head put both of them down, but each got up on its feet almost instantly. Two more shots were taken at each, and then the gun was empty. Both were down and kicking, but I had hardly reloaded when both were up again.
Then I started shooting at the back of the neck, just to the rear of the skull. When the gun was again empty, both were dead, but I will never try that stunt again. Another time, I had put two 172-grain 30-06 slugs in a big mule buck and he went down. Not wanting to shoot him up any more, I borrowed Jim Robbin's Colt Woodsman and proceeded to empty the gun in him. I hit the deer between the eyes with the first shot and heard the tiny slug whine as it ricocheted away. As the buck ran past, I put the rest of the magazine in close behind the shoulder. The buck went a couple hundred yards and again lay down. I approached to within 30 yards as he lay in the sagebrush watching me. I bounced most of another magazine off his skull before one bullet went through the tiny nerve hole over the left eye and killed him. No more 22's for me on anything bigger than bullfrogs, squirrels, or cottontails.
Contrary to popular opinion, the 32-20, 38-40, and 44-40 factory soft-point low-velocity loads will expand very well on deer and, if bones are struck, turn wrong side out. Yet the bullets will not expand in pine wood, simply smearing off the soft point and leaving the jacket intact. I wore out completely one 32-20 barrel with both factory loads and handloads in game shooting. I have also shot a 38-40 and a 44-40 a great deal. All three cartridges are bottlenecked and the chambers are much too long for the body of the case. When fired, the cases expand nearly to the mouth, leaving only about half of the original neck and requiring considerable resizing to reload them. I used to use No. 80 powder and the 260-grain 40-82 Winchester bullet sized down to fit in the 38-40.
The combination was superbly accurate from a 5 1/2-inch Single Action Colt, and a real killer on anything, but constant resizing made for short case life and I finally gave it up. The 44-40 is by far the best of these three rifle cartridges, and it was old-timer Ashley Haines' favorite sixgun load, but the 44-40 does its best work from a long 7 1/2-inch barrel owing to being loaded with rifle powder. I never could get much penetration with factory 38-40 or 44-40 loads from a sixgun, and soon came to prefer longer, heavier bullets that would give better penetration on stock or big game when the necessity for such use arose.
A factory 38-40 load almost cost me my life while monkeying with a wounded bull elk. The bullet simply splattered on the elk's skull, and did not penetrate. Had the cylinder not been loaded alternately with heavy black powder loads, that bull would have ended my hunting. With both cartridges, the case body is large and the neck short for short bullets. The charge must be held down religiously to safe pressures or it will bulge the bolt cuts in the cylinder.
My Preferences
I much prefer the 44 Special and the 45 Colt cartridges for sixgun use. For the handloader, the 44 Special is by far the best of all sixgun cartridges for serious work, either target, defense, or game killing. The cylinder walls are thicker over the case body than in the 45, and the cartridge is superbly accurate.
The old black powder loads with 250-, 255-, and 260-grain government bullets and 40 grains of FFG black powder gave 900 feet in the 45 Colt and would surely penetrate. I planted a 250-grain Remington black powder load in the seat of a goat's pants and it penetrated through to the left shoulder, which it broke. On broadside shots on both elk and goats, it went clean through unless heavy shoulder bones were hit. The 38-40 and 44-40 factory loads stopped under the skin on the off side on lung shots on elk. With the heavy 260-grain 38-40 handload, penetration was excellent.
Another 45 Colt load that gave excellent accuracy and penetration was the Winchester 300-grain 45-90 lead bullet sized down to .454 inch and backed by 35 grain of FFG. It killed mule deer and wounded elk well and was very accurate. I once had a case head separate with this load, blowing the loading gate out of the gun and cutting through the side of my trigger finger. That case had been reloaded many times, however, and the load was safe enough in good cases.
The factory 45 Colt pointed bullet punched a rather small hole through game and would not expand unless it hit a heavy bone. With that bullet I shot a great many grouse with little damage to the meat. In search of the best sixgun bullet, I designed a blunt-nosed bullet (No. 454260) for Belding & Mull but found that it or the same design worked out for the 44 Special in 260- and 280-grain was not accurate at any great range, so we dropped them and designed another bullet for Lyman.
First in 44 Special, 250-grain solid and 235-grain hollow base or hollow point, then in 45 Colt 250-grain, later in 45 semi-auto rim 240-grain, and still later in 173-grain solid and 160-grain hollow base or hollow point 38 Special, these Keith bullets have proven ideal, for me at least, for all sixgun work in twenty years of continuous use. They cut full caliber holes in anything and penetrate almost as well as the old pointed 45 Colt black powder load in solid persuasion. In hollow-point design, they will expand at velocities of 1,000 feet or more, and at 1,200 feet are very destructive to all game and ruinous to small game.
The Keith 160-grain 38 Special hollow point, backed by 13.5 grains of 2400, from the Colt Single Action or Shooting Master, or the S & W Heavy Duty or Outdoorsman will simply blow a grouse to bits and wings. The legs and neck will fly off at all angles when the bird is centered. The Keith 235-grain 44 Special hollow point, backed by 18.5 grains of 2400, is even worse in its destruction of living tissue.
It's certain death on either elk or deer if placed in the lungs broadside at close range, but it will not penetrate quite as well as the 250-grain solid in bone or when meaty portions of an animal are struck. Bob Hagel killed eight treed cougar last winter with a 44 Special 4 1/2-inch barrel Single Action Colt using these loads. He said the hollow point was much the best for a chest or lung shot and the solid bullet best for shoulder shots to break the big cats down so that they would not fall out of the tree full of fight.
I have tried both the Super 38's and the 9 mm Lugers on game, also the 45 semi-auto, for many years and they are one and all far inferior in actual knockdown power to the heavy revolver loads. A friend emptied a Super 38 Colt into a cougar's chest at close range in a tree, but the big cat jumped out and ran a short distance. One heavy 44 Special or 357 Magnum or 45 Colt in the same place would have done the business. Metal-patched bullets from the semi-auto pistols are simply not as good stoppers as are the soft lead bullets of the revolver, but the 45 Colt semi-auto has more actual shock on game than either the Luger or the Super 38. I have shot enough game with all three to prove the point, to my own satisfaction at least. Read Part 3 →
This is the new 1950 S & W 45 Army revolver, the 1917 Army model brought up to date with shortened action, redesigned hammer, and new safety hammer block.
For a defense gun against man, the 1917 S & W semi-auto rim is a fine, fast gun, and one can carry a couple of the three-shot clips loaded with 45 auto ammo, preferably of the new Remington and Peters 185-grain wadcutter type, and have a very quick reload.
The late Frank Waterman carried a nickel-plated 7 1/2-inch Single Action Colt 45 all his life. His dad had given it to him new when Frank was a kid in Wyoming. Frank was past seventy when he died last year.
That old Peacemaker had killed all species of game in Wyoming, Montana, and Idaho except buffalo. When on a Wyoming elk hunt, a sportsman had downed a big bull elk and the guide borrowed Frank's 45 Colt to go back and pack out the elk as he did not want to bother with a rifle that day. They were working up a brushy creek bed to the kill, and the sportsman was some one hundred yards to the rear as usual, when the guide turned around a big willow bush and found the elk. A big grizzly was eating on the carcass.
The bear instantly rose to its full height, and the guide drew Frank's old Peacemaker. Aiming just under the chin of the big grizzly, he squeezed the trigger. The heavy 260-grain bullet backed by Frank's 40-grain black powder load went in under the chin and broke the grizzly's neck, and the bear went down like a sack of beans.
I once loaded some 44 Specials with the Keith 250-grain solid and 12 grains of No. 80 for Charley Stauffenberg. He carried a New Service Colt for that cartridge. One fall, when in need of his winter's meat, Charley ran onto a bull moose standing broadside. Holding his gun with both hands, he aimed for the heart and shot once. The bull lurched away but went only one hundred yards and lay down and was soon ready for the knife. The flat-point Keith bullet went through the middle of the heart and bled him out nicely.
Some nineteen years ago I loaded a large quantity of the very same load for James T. Maxwell, of Omaha, Neb., for use in Africa in a 6 1/2 inch S & W. Maxwell later reported that he had no trouble at all supplying twelve men with all the antelope meat they could eat by using that gun and load alone. He said it killed the small and medium antelope about as well as a rifle during a six-week period of African hunting in Kenya and Tanganyika. Recently I had another letter from the good doctor saying he had just tested some of these same loads after all these years and they still shot as well as ever.
With the advent of Hercules 2400 powder I dropped the use of No. 80 entirely, as 2400 proved a much better propellant, giving far less pressure than No. 80 and even higher velocity.
Throughout the West and North, many men – prospectors, surveyors, cowpunchers, trappers, and woods' loafers – who must make long trips into the back country, often by back pack only, and who cannot carry a rifle handily, need a good dependable heavy sixgun. The best guns for the purpose today are the Colt Single Action and the S & W 357 Magnum and 1926 44 Special target models.
The guns should have accurate target sights which suit individual preference as to width of blade or bead and general type, but the sights should be adjustable so that they may be correctly zeroed for any desired load. If the Colt Single Action is preferred, then it should be target sighted by King Gunsight Co., Pachmayr, or some other reliable gunsmith. The best rear sight is the S & W click adjustment target rear, with a suitable band or ramp front sight base and blade sight. The S & W target guns, both the Magnums and the 1926, come equipped with perfect sights, and front beads or blades to suit individual preference can be had to order.
For loads, I believe the 357's & W Magnum and 45 Colt to be the best in factory loads, and the 44-40 is not so far behind, some shooters preferring it to the others. If the shooter is also a handloader, or wishes to purchase heavy handloads from Moody's Custom Loads, Helena, Mont., or another custom loader, the best caliber is the 44 Special. The factory 44 Special makes a fine grouse and small-game load and is also an ideal target load.
The Keith 250-grain solid bullet or the 235-grain hollow base or hollow point can be loaded with 18.5 grains of Hercules 2400 and bullets sized to .001 inch larger than groove diameter and cast 1 part tin to 16 parts lead for solids, and 1 to 20 for hollow points, and you have the most powerful handgun loads in existence.
The factory 357 Magnum is very good but it is not nearly as good a killer as the above-mentioned 44 Special hand-loads. Col. Doug Wesson killed elk, antelope, moose, and grizzly with the 357 Magnum, but the fact remains that the heavy Keith 44 Special loads are a lot more powerful. The factory 38 Special can also be used in the Magnum as a grouse or small-game load; wadcutters in full charge are particularly good small-game loads.
If you want to reload for the Magnum, use 13.5 grains of 2400 behind the Keith 173-grain solid bullet or the 160-grain Keith hollow point in 38 Special cases. For the longer Magnum case, use 14 grains of 2400 with the 160-grain hollow point or 13.5 grains with the 173-grain Keith solid and barely crimp the case over the front band of the bullet.
The fact remains, however, that the 38 Special case, with Keith bullet and 13.5 grains of 2400, is a more accurate load at any range, even to 600 yards, than is the factory 357 Magnum or the Keith bullet from the Magnum case when the case is crimped over the forward band. Bullets should be of same temper as above for the 44 Special and should be sized to not over .001 inch above groove diameter.
In the 45 Colt, the standard factory smokeless load is a good one though at only about 800 feet velocity. It is accurate and will penetrate well. The old Remington 40-grain black powder load was much more powerful, and handloads can be made up with the Keith 250-grain Ideal bullet and 18 to 20 grains of Hercules 2400, always keeping bullets sized to not over .001 inch above groove diameter and crimping in the beveled crimp groove. In the 45 Colt, we have much thinner cylinder walls than in the 44 Special and for that reason the 44 Special has a much greater margin of safety.
The bullet, being the same weight as for the 45, also has more sectional density and will penetrate better, so for the handloader the 44 Special is absolutely tops. The factory 44 Special 146-grain bullet is loaded to only 750 feet velocity, and both the 357 Magnum and the 45 Colt, as well as the 44-40, beat it badly for killing power in factory loads. But carefully handloaded, the 44 Special comes to life.
For all social purposes, when a gun is needed in self defense against man targets, the 357 Magnum is the smallest cartridge I would consider. The heavy Keith hand-loads described above are, however, much better stoppers, and a man hit anywhere between the top of the skull and the pelvic bone with one of them in 44 Special or 45 Colt will not shoot back.
Automatics are totally dependent on perfect ammunition for certain functioning and are, for that reason, a second choice for a defense gun. If a jam or a misfire occurs, then two hands are needed to clear the jam and get the gun in action again. For that reason, they are never as reliable as a good cylinder gun when one's life is at stake.
Wiping the bore between shots. Proper break-in of a barrel is done by wiping between every shot for the first 10 shots and every five shots up to 50 rounds. Also, allowing the barrel to cool completely between shots is important while breaking in and achieving cold-shot zeros.
Quality, proper break-in and care are important factors for squeezing performance from your precision rifle.
While there is no single most important part of a precision rifle, the barrel is probably as close as it comes. Nothing physically touches the bullet the most in the shortest amount of time than the barrel. Picking out the best barrel that the marksman can afford and proper break-in and care is the heart of an accurate rifle. The barrel consists of a tube with rifling and a crown on the dangerous end. The other side next to the receiver is the chamber. It is cut into the fat end of the barrel and must be precise so that when the barrel is torqued onto the receiver it will headspace correctly.
With the barrel being such an important part of the rifle, there is usually a big difference between a factory barrel and a custom barrel. All barrels start out a piece of round steel blank that is cut to rough length, stress relieved and drilled. Usually they can be had in stainless steel or chrome moly. Chrome moly can be polished and blued or painted with one of the oven-roasted paints from Brownells. Stainless is one of the better materials for durability in the weather and it makes a fine tactical barrel, but I prefer chrome moly steel with a bead blasted matte blue finish. The stainless can be painted with the heat paints also if tactics dictate.
The rifling can be hammer forged into the barrel or button rifled. The hammer forge produced rifling is made by hammering a mandrel that is shaped with ridges through the drilled bore forging the lands and groves. Button rifling has gained popularity for rifling by many manufacturers and is superior to hammer forging. The button is attached to a long mandrel that is pulled or pushed through the bore slowly and rotationally to cut the desired rifling. This is superior because the stress from the hammer forging can cause warping as the barrel heats up.
We all know the effects of a barrel heating up and affecting point of impact (POI). One way to neutralize this is cryogenically treating the barrel. Some manufacturers like Krieger treat all their barrels and some offer it as an option. It is something that can be considered when super tuning a rifle or changing barrels. Basically this process involves cooling the barrel over a period of time to -300 C and then slowly raising it back to room temperature. This treatment minimizes warping because of barrel heating and also eliminates seasonal temperature change effects.
Before the chamber is cut, the barrel is then put in a lathe to cut the contour. It then has to be threaded and fitted to the action and the chamber reamed out. The chamber is formed by first drilling and then slowly bringing it up to size with several reamers. The first a rough out, semi finish, and finish reamer are followed by a high polish.
The custom barrel is a whole different animal. After the bore is drilled a precision reamer is pushed through smoothing surfaces and increasing consistency all the way along the bore. The rifling is pushed out with a carbide button and then the barrel is heated again and held at 1200 degrees to relieve any stress from rifling. Some barrels are “cut” when referring to rifling, which means one groove was cut at a time. The barrel is then cut, cleaned, and lapped for final cleaning.
The chamber must be precisely cut to center alignment with the bore. This is critical so the bullet will properly enter the throat and cut into the rifling as it starts its journey. Many manufacturers produce short cut barrels that have the caliber chamber cut with only some finish reaming necessary to install it with correct headspace.
They are usually also threaded to a specific receiver. Many gunsmiths like to start with a contoured blank so that the chamber, threads, and barrel shoulder can be cut with the same setup for more consistency. I have used both with good results.
The rate of twist in the barrel should be decided on when planning the caliber of the finished rifle. The rate of twist is how many inches the bullet travels to make one revolution. For instance, a 1-in-10 twist tells me that the bullet has to travel 10 inches down the barrel to make one revolution. For the Winchester Featherweight action I recently re-barreled, I went with a 1-in-10 twist.
The 30-caliber blanks commonly come in 1-in-10 and 1-in-12 – matching the rifling twist to the bullet you are going to use will improve the bullet flight. I went with the 1 in 10 because I was going to mostly use 168-grain Sierra HPBT Bullets. I have been shooting Sierra Match King Bullets since I reloaded my first round of 308. They haven’t given me a reason to switch to anything else.
The barrel is finished off with a proper crown. There are many different styles of crowns, but the most important feature is the cut along the end of the bore side of the barrel. It needs to be cut perfectly perpendicular to the axis of the bore. This allows gas to escape evenly around the bullet keeping its first milliseconds of flight on line. Damage to the crown is a destroyer to accuracy and the different styles help protect this edge. The standard barrel is the rounded off type used on hunting barrels. I like a target crown with an 11-degree bevel from the bore out to the edge. There are several versions of the target crown, and they work nicely on heavier barrels.
I am in the breaking in mode of the Winchester I re-barreled. Proper break-in is important to start the rifle off and get the most wear out of the barrel. I started with a Shilen barrel from Brownells in a number five contour. I chucked it up in the lathe and cut the face, the stub, threaded and chambered it all from the same set up in the machine. I like threading my own so I can get a custom fit to the threads of the action I am working with. This helps to make a very important fit, the barrel/action union. These two surfaces must perfectly and evenly touch all around upon tightening, lining up the action with the barrel axis.
All this work deserves proper attention by breaking in and cleaning the barrel correctly. All new barrels and guns should be broken in properly using this method or one close to it. One of the biggest things to remember is to let the barrel cool in between shots. The chamber and barrel are subject to enormous pressures and temperatures upon ignition. The temperatures will rise to 6500 degrees. Proper cooling in between shots is also necessary to keep tabs on the POI from a cold shot. Most precision riflemen are more interested where the first shot is going to hit. I always have cleaning gear with me at the bench. First, or cold, shot accuracy can only be achieved by taking every shot the way the rifle is stored. This is a very important factor for the SWAT rifleman.
In between each shot for the first 5 to 10, some folks recommend five, I go 10, the bore should be swabbed out with a powder solvent, then a copper solvent, brushed, and dry patched. I use the ammonia smelling solvents for the copper removal; they seem to work a bit faster. I really like the Barnes CR-10 copper solvent. For a powder solvent I have used Hoppes #9, Shooters Choice, and Kroil. They all work great and Kroil is a good cleaner and lubricant.
I will give the bore about 10 lashes with the proper sized solvent soaked brush to get out stubborn copper. I have found in my general cleaning, there is more copper fouling left in the bore than most shooters perceive. This copper will continue to build up and affect the break in. Running bullets down a nice clean barrel will continue polishing and lapping the bore, even if the barrel is on a high dollar custom rifle. After the first 5 to 10 shots the barrel should be swabbed out every five shots up to 50 rounds. As you can see this will not all occur in one session.
While there is no single most important part of a precision rifle, the barrel is probably as close as it comes. Nothing physically touches the bullet the most in the shortest amount of time than the barrel.
Proper cleaning is the next stage to barrel life and performance. As mentioned earlier, I have seen copper that is very stubborn and the barrel should be closely inspected until every speck is gone. I have cured other riflemen’s accuracy problems in the shop with an extreme cleaning job. This copper will continue to build up over time and ruin accuracy. I remove the bolt and push the cleaning rod through the breech end being careful not to nick the edges of the throat. I use a slotted tip jag to wet the bore and a pointed bronze jag type to push the gunk out after brushing. This is a little excessive but with stubborn copper sometimes it helps to let it soak. The pointed jag doesn’t leave enough solvent behind to soak because it is designed to push gunk out.
I start out with a powder solvent as before then soak the barrel with one of the copper solvents. I let it sit for several minutes and clean up and oil the bolt. I don’t take the bolt apart every cleaning but will inspect it for brass residue and chips that might work down into the firing pin hole and cause problems.
Then I work the proper sized brass brush up and down the barrel from the breech end 10 to 15 strokes followed by another wet patch. If there is stubborn copper fouling I will work the brush longer. A dry patch pushes the gunk out the muzzle end. I look down the barrel with a light to see if I can detect any copper in the rifling. At the end of the barrel usually I can see the copper in the grooves, so I continue until I can see no more fouling. Sometimes I will leave the bore soaking while I eat dinner and come back out and finish. The copper will soften eventually and come out. I continue the soak and brush until it is all gone. If I don’t do a good job of removing the copper I will notice my groups getting bigger and a return to the cleaning bench fixes it right up.
The barrel is an important part of the rifle and performs at its peak when properly fitted to the fine tuned action. Proper break-in and routine care will keep this most important artery clear of accuracy robbing deposits and fouling. Whether the rifle is for a SWAT precision rifleman, competition shooter, or the hunting rifle that will be handed down to successors, proper care will guarantee the most life out of the barrel.
Last year's U.S. Supreme Court ruling on the Second Amendment did not, contrary to what you may have heard at the time, resolve very much.
Unanswered are questions about carrying firearms in public, gun sales on government property, firearm registration, guns in government housing, handgun restrictions that aren't exactly the same as the District of Columbia's, zoning and gun stores, and so on. And so far, at least, lower courts have been overwhelmingly hostile to gun owners' rights.
The latest example is a decision late Thursday by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit, which said that a criminal defendant may not be allowed to present a Second Amendment defense to a federal jury in Utah. It came after the appeals court granted an extraordinary emergency appeal, called a writ of mandamus, from the Justice Department after the district judge agreed to allow those jury instructions.
The defendant, Rick Engstrum, has an earlier misdemeanor domestic violence conviction and has been charged with possessing a firearm in violation of a federal law that applies to anyone “who has been convicted in any court of a misdemeanor crime of domestic violence.” He has pleaded not guilty.
(The prosecution arose when Engstrum broke up with his girlfriend, who subsequently told police that he had a gun in his bedroom. Engstrum voluntarily showed police the gun, which he inherited from his father; there's no evidence he has ever used the firearm, let alone threatened anyone with it.)
Engstrum, reasonably, wanted to argue to the jury that the Second Amendment renders that law invalid, at least when applied to people who show no risk of future violence. (Remember, this is a Utah jury, which raises the odds that jurors are familiar with the right to keep and bear arms, and may even have heard of the concept of jury nullification.)
The Justice Department rejected this idea out of hand. By a 2-1 margin, a Tenth Circuit panel agreed, concluded that the Second Amendment didn't apply, and prohibited those jury instructions. “If the case proceeds to trial, the district court is directed not to instruct the jury on this Second Amendment defense, including not giving the proposed jury instruction,” they wrote. Read more
It was pouring rain just after 1 p.m. Monday, July 20, when a man burst into a Honduran grocery store on NW 36th Street in Miami. A shirt was wrapped around his face as he gripped a black semiautomatic handgun. Twenty-year-old Charles Bell shoved the pistol into the face of a manager behind the counter. Then he demanded the contents of the cash register and cartons of cigarettes in a plastic bag.
Next he began herding customers to the back of the small market.
But when he returned to the counter to collect his loot, a short, well-built 24-year-old manager named Valentin Fiallos pointed a .38 and squeezed the trigger. As Bell scampered from the store, he turned and shot back several times. Fiallos, shielding himself, squeezed off several more rounds.
The would-be robber missed every time, but the manager's aim was true. Bell burst out of the store and ran several steps before flopping onto the wet asphalt. A bullet to the chest killed him.
Cops termed it “justifiable homicide.” The ruling is backed up by former Gov. Jeb Bush‘s 2005 “Stand Your Ground” law, which offers wide-ranging legal protection to violent-crime victims who open fire on their aggressors before trying to make peace.
All over South Florida, besieged employees are shooting back. A few blood-soaked examples:
• On August 12, 2007, a 54-year-old Pembroke Pines Super Stop clerk pulled a handgun on a shotgun-wielding pair of robbers, killing one.
• A month later, a clerk at OG's Corner Urban Wear in Oakland Park shot and whacked a 17-year-old robber.
• Two months after that, the manager of a Naranja grocery store killed a 14-year-old ski-masked robber strapped with what turned out to be a BB gun.
• In August last year, a Miami Gardens videogame store manager was murdered in a shootout after he nailed one of three armed robbers. Read more
Last week, United States and Mexican government officials signed an agreement concerning cross-border drug crimes, an agreement with implications for gun dealers along the U.S.-Mexican border.
“The letter of intent recommends a joint strategic plan in weapons and ammunition trafficking investigations,” San Antonio Express-News reported. “The letter was signed during the last day of a convention for Border Security Task Force (BEST) teams, which are led by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.”
“This will leverage the investigative capabilities of both governments and launch a more unified effort in investigating weapons smuggling cases,” Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said.
As part of that agreement, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives announced it would send an untold number of agents to South Texas. According to KRGV Television, “[T]he new agents will arrive in the next four months. These agents will be inspecting about 1,000 licensed gun dealers. Federal officials want to make sure gun dealers are keeping the required paperwork so guns recovered from crimes and raids in Mexico and along the border can be traced.”
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The message could not be more clear. A citizen exercising his or her Constitutionally guaranteed right is a scary threat. And even if they don't have bad intent, they're just not competent enough to have guns. Why, at another event in Arizona, someone dropped a gun, Dr. Nancy tells us, the implication being none of us can be trusted.
Chris Matthews ratchets up the hand-wringing to…I don't want to call it “hardball” because it's more like throwing rocks:
I don't question motive…It's the worst thing you can do in journalism is try to figure out motive. There's no way to determine it.
What did he just do throughout this “interview” with gun owner William Kostric?
We see what's going on, right? A supposed “watchdog” press demanding to know why a citizen dares exercise his rights…? With the implication that We the People can't be trusted to be either moral or competent…?
And the further implication that the only ones who can be trusted work for the government…?
Gilman Boynton, 76, said that despite his repeated efforts to get an explanation, he has not been informed of the reason why ATF officials conducted the raid. He said the seizure has left him feeling like his second amendment rights have been violated.
“I've got three questions I want answered,” Boynton said. “Why were we targeted? What were they looking for? And who were they after?”
Federal officials said this week they were acting on “credible intelligence” and that their investigation revealed the agents acted appropriately when they seized the weapons.
The raid took place in the early morning hours on May 15, when agents awoke Boynton, his son Paul Gilman Boynton, 51, and daughter-in-law Lynne Boynton, 50, and proceeded to search the entire home.
They left one weapon, a Beretta that was locked in a safe, and have since returned two others – guns made before 1898, which federal law considers antiques, not firearms.
Gilman Boynton said ATF officials were cordial when the returned the two guns but that he was told he won't be able to reclaim his other weapons.
Lynne and Paul Boynton declined comment for this article.
James McNally, spokesman for the ATF Boston Field Division, said Wednesday that agents followed protocol throughout the case and clarified that the guns would not be returned because the investigation found that living arrangements led to violations of U.S. codes.
“ATF followed the information they received and made a determination that the best course of action was to seize the guns,” McNally said. “After reviewing the facts of the case, there were no charges filed and will be no charges unless there is a significant change in the case, but the guns will not be returned.”
By having the guns in the home at the same time as Boynton's son, ATF officials said the family was in violation of code 18 USC 622(d) which restricts certain groups from owning guns or living in home where guns are accessible. Read more
Looking to go armed, but are stuck in the weeds as to what to arm yourself with? Here are 20 excellent concealed carry gun options that will keep you on the defensive.