ANDLOADER. Ammunition Reloading Journal 50. Dan Wesson Razorback 10mm Auto. .35 Remington: Hodgdon CFE Pistol in the 9mm Parabellum

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1 Big-Bore Loads for Ruger s H 5-Shot Super Blackhawk! RIFLE S ANDLOADER Ammunition Reloading Journal 50 Dan Wesson Razorback 10mm Auto CELEBRATING Y EARS THANKS TO OUR READERS.35 Remington: Modern Loads for the Next 100 Years Hodgdon CFE Pistol in the 9mm Parabellum April 2016 No. 301 TESTED: Swift s New.375 Break-Away Solid! Display until 5/21/16 Printed in USA

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4 COLUMNS Personal Defense Reloader s Press - Dave Scovill 9mm Luger Bullets & Brass - Brian Pearce.270 Weatherby Magnum Cartridge Board - Gil Sengel Page Accurate LT-30 Propellant Profiles - R.H. VanDenburg, Jr. Ruger New Model Blackhawk.357 Magnum/9mm Convertibles From the Hip - Brian Pearce 40 Years with Handloader Mike s Shootin Shack - Mike Venturino DW Battlesight Pistol Pointers - Charles E. Petty Lyman Turbo Sonic 1200 Product Tests - John Haviland Rise, Fall and Rise of the Truncated Cone In Range - Terry Wieland FEATURES Dan Wesson Razorback 10mm Auto Loading New and Traditional Powders Stan Trzoniec Break-Away Solids Swift s New.375 Bullets John Barsness 38 Loading for Lugers Using CFE Pistol in the 9mm Parabellum Terry Wieland.35 Remington Update Modern Loads for a Centenarian Cartridge John Haviland 52 Ruger s Five-Shot Super Blackhawk:.454 Casull and.480 Ruger Over 150 Handloads Tested Brian Pearce Page Page On the cover... Dan Wesson s Razorback, photographed here at high speed to catch the gas combustion, is the newest version of the 10mm Auto. Photo by Stan Trzoniec. ISSN Volume 51 Number 2 Issue No. 301 April 2016 Publisher/President Don Polacek Publishing Consultant Mark Harris Editor in Chief Lee J. Hoots Editor Emeritus Dave Scovill Managing Editor Roberta Scovill Senior Art Director Gerald Hudson Production Director Becky Pinkley John Barsness John Haviland Brian Pearce Charles E. Petty Gil Sengel Ammunition Reloading Journal Contributing Editors Advertising Stan Trzoniec R.H. VanDenburg, Jr. Mike Venturino Ken Waters Terry Wieland Advertising Director - Tammy Rossi tammy@wolfepub.com Advertising Representative - Tom Bowman bowman.t@sbcglobal.net Advertising Representative - James Dietsch jamesdietsch@cox.net Advertising Information: Circulation Circulation Manager Kendra Newell circ@riflemag.com Subscription Information: Handloader (ISSN ) is published bi-monthly by Polacek Publishing Corporation, dba Wolfe Publishing Company (Don Polacek, Pres ident), 2180 Gulfstream, Ste. A, Prescott, Arizona Tele phone: (928) Periodical Postage paid at Prescott, Arizona, and additional mailing offices. Subscription prices: U.S. possessions single issue, $5.99; 6 issues, $22.97; 12 issues, $ Foreign and Canada single issue, $5.99; 6 issues $29.00; 12 issues, $ Please allow 8-10 weeks for first issue. Advertising rates furnished on request. All rights reserved. Change of address: Please give six weeks notice. Send both the old and new address, plus mailing label if possible, to Circulation Dept., Handloader Magazine, 2180 Gulfstream, Ste. A, Prescott, Arizona POST- MASTER: Send address changes to Handloader, 2180 Gulfstream, Ste. A, Prescott, Arizona Canadian returns: PM # Pitney Bowes, P.O. Box 25542, London, ON N6C 6B2. Wolfe Publishing Co Gulfstream, Ste. A Prescott, AZ Tel: (928) Fax: (928) Polacek Publishing Corporation 50 CELEBRATING Y EARS THANKS TO OUR READERS Publisher of Handloader is not responsible for mishaps of any nature that might occur from use of published loading data or from recommendations by any member of The Staff. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written permission from the publisher. Publisher assumes all North American Rights upon acceptance and payment for all manuscripts. Although all possible care is exercised, the publisher cannot accept responsibility for lost or mutilated manuscripts. 4 Handloader 301

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6 Personal Defense RELOADER S PRESS by Dave Scovill Over the last couple of years, I ve been following the development of factory personal defense loads from various manufacturers, including Speer, Federal, Winchester, Hornady and Remington, among others. Most have one thing in common: jacketed hollowpoint bullets. An exception to this trend is Buffalo Bore that features wadcutters in.38-,.44- and.45-caliber personal defense loads and the Hornady Critical Defense lineup that uses a patented Flex Tip plug inserted into the hollow-nose cavity of the bullet to encourage expansion. Sixty years ago, jacketed hollowpoints didn t exist, except for a few experimenters who swaged lead cores in a half-jacket, resulting in a variety of nose designs, including hollowpoints. The military, of course, has long been saddled with full-metal-jacket bullets. Then, about 15 years ago, Speer decided to get into the lucrative law enforcement ammunition business and discovered a problem, the Federal Hydra-Shok made most of the competition obsolete. As an example, former Wolfe staffer, the late Finn Aagaard, when working for the NRA, tested a variety of jacketed hollowpoint handgun bullets to find out if they did indeed perform as advertised. At the time, the industry was chasing the FBI requirements, 12 inches of penetration in ordnance gelatin, but Finn decided to use typical barriers in his tests, such as auto glass and clothing placed in front of wet phone books. Results were dismal. Hollowpoints closed up with barrier material, such as cotton jacket and shirt material, and acted like solids. The FBI s concern, at the time, was over-penetration where softpoints or solids might shoot through A cowboy of the 1880s was well armed with a Colt SAA.38 WCF. the assailant and hit bystanders, hence the 12-inch criterion. Why 12 inches, vice 10, 11 or 13, is anyone s guess. In the end, the Hydra-Shok was the only jacketed handgun bullet that performed as advertised, apparently owing the pedestal in the center of the hollow-nose cavity. In private Finn confided that the only way jacketed hollowpoints of the day had any chance of performing as advertised was if the would-be assailant was naked. The problem associated with the FBI performance criterion in gelatin is that it only applies if the bullet hits what it is aimed at and stops in the assailant. Unfortunately, a great number of shots fired by law enforcement types do not hit the intended target, so the risk to bystanders, which the hollowpoint is intended to minimize or at least reduce, is bogus. Folks might argue that gelatin tests are better than nothing, but it offers slim defense against a lawsuit filed by anyone hit by a stray bullet. More recently, tests by various handgun bullet manufacturers show they have followed the Speer example by placing barriers 6 Handloader 301

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8 in front of the gelatin blocks. Results that were obtained with an audience of writers several years ago showed the Speer Gold Dot design was on par with the Federal Hydra-Shok, and the Gold Dot is now offered in law enforcement and personal defense loads. Since then, every ammunition outfit has introduced personal defense loads in a variety of cartridges, from the.32s to the.45s, with the.40 S&Ws and.45 ACPs occupying the lion s share of the market. At the time of the Speer tests, I reminded engineers who designed the Gold Dot that none of the writers in attendance, with one possible exception, had ever been in a gunfight with a handgun, and most had not been in the military or law enforcement. As a result, Speer s achievement with the Gold Dot had little credibility coming from a bunch of gun writers, citing as an example, a writer who writes about hunting elk but has never hunted or killed an elk. The emperor has no clothes sort of fits in here somewhere. More importantly, as an editor at the time, I was not about to encourage writers to get involved in subjects with which they had no personal experience. Facts associated with Speer s tests was one thing, but extrapolating from performance in gelatin to flesh and bone was/ is a bit of a stretch. Since that time, another issue has come to mind. For years, some writers have advised readers to avoid using jacketed hollowpoints in handloads that are intended for personal defense. The argument being, some lawyer might accuse folks of using overly destructive bullets against an assailant, as opposed to shooting the would-be desperado with a more humane factory load. I suppose that claim comes under cruel and unusual punishment. That argument, if ever legitimate in the first place, has simply flown out the window in lieu of bullets now offered in factory loads and advertised for personal defense. Way back in 1904, as a result of the disastrous failure of the Handloader 301

9 Long Colt during the Philippine Insurrection ( ), the U.S. military commissioned tests to determine relative effectiveness of handgun cartridges of the day by shooting live animals (steers) in a slaughter house. The tests, conducted by Col. John T. Thompson and Col. Louis A. LaGarde, were simple enough; they kept shooting the animal broadside at very close range until it showed signs of trauma, at which point it was dispatched. The least effective cartridges that required the most shots were those of smaller, high-velocity calibers with relatively light 100- and 130-grain bullets in.30- to.38-caliber, respectively. The most effective calibers that required the least number of shots were.45 to.476 calibers with moderate to heavy bullets, including 219, 220 and 250 grains in the former, and 288 for the latter, fired at moderate velocities, ranging from 720 to 800 fps. As a result of those tests, it was declared that the minimal military handgun caliber would be.45. The fact that the militaries of the world were largely mounted on horses (a legitimate military target) at the time, no doubt played a roll in the decision to shoot larger animals in those tests, vice sheep or hogs. (Continued on page 64) Following the failure of the.38 Long Colt (1) in the Philippines during the 1890s, the U.S. military developed the experimental Colt (2), but temporarily adopted the Model Colt (3) until final selection of the.45 ACP in 1911 (4). Using the 180-grain Speer Gold Dot or Winchester Silvertip, the.38 WCF can be loaded to match the.40 S&W or 10mm. April-May

10 9mm luger BULLETS & BRASS by Brian Pearce Q : I am having a problem with a load in my Smith & Wesson 9C 9mm pistol that I am hoping you can help me solve. I have shot 1,000 or more rounds through this gun using Remington 115-grain FMJ factory loads without a problem. However, when I reloaded the cases with 115-grain FMJ bullets, I experienced random high pressures that ruptured cases at the base of the rim. I originally discovered that I was using Remington Magnum Pistol primers with 4.6 grains of Hercules Unique. After I found this error, I switched to Federal 100 Small Pistol primers, but the problem is continuing. I checked my handloads with a bullet comparator and found my reloads to be within a few thousands of factory Remington loads. I tested several bullets by pushing on the nose and found them to be as tight as the factory load. Maybe I am using too much crimp, as I was putting a ring on the bullets upon inspection after they were pulled from the cases. I checked them for diameter around the ring, but they were not bulged. I have forgotten where I got the bullets, but they were mail ordered in bulk from one of the large outfits. Next I purchased a set of Lee dies containing the Factory Crimp die, but the random high pressures still occur. I switched to 147-grain bullets, but the problem still exists. Now I am beginning to wonder if my Unique powder is the problem. It is around 25 years old, is in an 8-pound cardboard container and has been stored in a temperature- and humidity-controlled room. I have used it in other cartridges, including the.38 Special and.45 ACP, and it seems to work fine. Any insight GRACEY CASE TRIMMER An Integral Part of the Champion s Competitive Edge! $ plus shipping Trimmer comes complete with one cartridge holder. Trims, chamfers and deburrs in one operation. Registers on the shoulder of the resized case. Completely finishes many cases per hour. Case holders for most bottleneck cartridges. 50 cal. now convertible to standard cases. MATCH PREP Carriage Drive Tehachapi, CA (661) Alliant Unique is a popular and proven powder for handloading the 9mm Luger. you can offer would be greatly appreciated. I have been a reader of your publication for many years and find your magazine to be top-notch. I have collected every issue beginning with Number 1 that dates back to Thanks again. R.W., Mechanicsburg PA A: Your load is well below maximum pressures, as most labs list starting loads at around 5.5 grains with 6.3 to 6.5 grains as maximum. Your description of rupture cases at the base of the rim has me wondering if your cases are actually rupturing. Autoloading pistols, especially those with unsupported chambers, tend to rupture the case just forward of the solid head when loaded to excessive pressures. To be rupturing at the base of the rim is extremely unlikely. My suspicions are that your loads are light enough, combined with the older Unique powder, which became cleaner burning formula soon after Alliant purchased that company from Hercules back in the 1990s, that you are actually getting a dark powder residue on or around the rim or extractor slot area. This may be occurring due to using data that is too light, and cases may not be expanding 10 Handloader 301

11 enough to create a gas seal. This combination can blacken cases with burned powder residue in unusual places. I would suggest using a wire brush to clean the blackened area, then examine it under magnification to see if the case has actually ruptured. If cases are not actually rupturing, try increasing your powder charge to suggested starting loads of 5.5 grains. If cases are actually rupturing, I would like to see samples before commenting further. It would be easy to point to the powder, but since you are using it in other cartridges without issues, along with the fact that you have kept it under controlled storage conditions, it is unlikely the problem, unless it has become contaminated. My next suspicion is the bullets, but since you have tried other bullets with the same results, again they are probably not the culprit. Regarding the taper crimp and subsequent ring left on the bullet, a slight ring is somewhat normal, but I suggest crimping the case mouth to the same outside dimensions that factories use, which with the 9mm Luger is usually around.369 to.370 inch, depending on case manufacturer and tolerance variances. I hope this information helps, and keep me posted. Buffalo Bore.45 acp Q: That was a great article on Sixgun Handloading, Understanding Revolver Cartridge Pressures in the No. 299 December 2015 Handloader. My career was in instrumentation and controls, with 21 years in the space industry and 5 years in a metrology lab. Transducers are an integral part of the space program. They can be accurate and tell us a lot about pressures. It is somewhat surprising that the shooting industry has taken so long to convert to transducers, which as you point out is a much more accurate testing method. I also enjoyed your comments on Nutmeg Sports and their ivory stocks. I have two sets of their ivory on my guns, and I have been very well satisfied. Your articles are always informative. I would like your opinion on a.45 ACP load from Buffalo Bore, which is the 230-grain bullet at 950 fps. I called the owner and asked if this load would bother my Kim- Buffalo Bore +P.45 ACP loads are suitable for use in Kimber 1911 pistols. April-May

12 CRYO High Plains Reboring & Barrels, L.L.C. Offering Button and Cut-Rifled Barrels. Most calibers and twist rates Some AR-15 barrels available Contact: Norman Johnson Phone: th Avenue NW Turtle Lake, ND Brass: Hornady, Lapua, Norma, Nosler, Remington, Starline, and Winchester. Bullets: Barnes, Berger, Hornady, Lapua, Nosler, Sierra, Speer, and Swift. Chronographs and Shot Timers: Competitive Dynamics, Competition Electronics, Magnetospeed, and Shooting Chrony. Maintenance Products: Ballistol, Barnes, Birchwood-Casey, Bore Tech., Break Free, Dewey, Flitz, Forster, Hoppe s, Kroil, Lyman, MTM, Pro Shot, Remington, Rig, Shooters Choice, Sharp Shoot-R TM, Slip 2000, Tipton, and Wheeler Engineering. Gunstop Reloading Supplies, Inc Excelsior Blvd. Minnetonka, MN Mon.- Fri. 9am to 6pm, Sat. 9am to 4pm Central Time bers. He indicated the load was fine in any 1911 that is in good condition and that I could shoot any amount in my guns. I am skeptical. You might not want to give me an opinion on this, but would you shoot this in your guns in either small or large quantities? As far as I am concerned, the more you write about big-bore handguns, the better. L.B., via A: As indicated in my article, pressure testing is time consuming and expensive and explains why the industry has been slow to change from the old copper crusher system to transducers. And I am glad to hear that you - Top Notch Support - - Flat and Fair Shipping Rates - - Most Orders Ship Same Day - PMA TOOL Innovative Products for the Accurate Rifleman Reloading Equipment, Components, and Shooting Accessories for Discriminating Shooters See our Facebook Page for Specials! Reloading Manuals and Firearms Related Books: Barnes, Berger, Hornady, Lyman, Nosler, Sierra, Speer, and Swift reloading manuals. Ballistics Software. Books and DVDs related to firearms. Reloading Dies and Tools: C&H 4D Tool Co., Forster, Harrell Powder Measures, Hornady, K&M, Little Crow Gunworks, Lyman, RCBS, Redding, Satern Funnels, Sinclair and L.E. Wilson. Reloading Presses: Dillon, Forster, Harrell, Hornady, K&M, Lyman, RCBS and Redding. Shooting Accessories: 3M/Peltor, Caldwell, Dillon, Howard Leight, MTM and Protektor Bags. For Our Current Catalog: Call: or Fax: Download a copy at reloading@gunstop.com are happy with your Nutmeg Sports ivory stocks. Regarding the Buffalo Bore.45 ACP loads that push 230-grain (JHP or FMJ-FN) bullets 950 fps, these loads are +P rated and do not exceed 23,000 psi. Most quality firearms manufacturers rate their.45 ACP pistols for +P loads, as does Kimber. Without hesitation, I would (and have) fired these loads in several of my pet 1911s, including my Kimbers. If you are going to shoot this load in high quantities, however, I suggest changing the factory Kimber recoil spring, which is 16 pounds, for at least an pound version, or perhaps a 20- to 24-pound version, which is better, assuming the Buffalo Bore loads cycle with the heavier springs. Wilson Combat, Wolff Gunsprings, Brownells, etc., offer quality recoil springs for around $8. Regardless of the spring in your gun, it should be changed every 1,500 to 2,000 rounds as normal maintenance with any Model 1911 regardless of the load. If you are still concerned for your gun s longevity, you might consider installing a recoil buffer (or shock buffer) kit. There are several companies that offer them; they are inexpensive and easy to install. Henry Big Boy.45 Colt Q: Your article on Understanding Revolver Cartridge Pressures was long overdue, and as always very insightful. I have been reading gun magazines for decades and have never read anything that even comes close to providing such useful information. I do have a request and a question for you. I know that you only write about quality guns but have never seen you pen anything about the Henry Big Boy lever-action rifles. I recently acquired one chambered in.45 Colt and would love to see you review this gun. I am looking for handloading data. My everyday load consists of the Oregon Trail RNFP 250-grain bullet with 6.8 to 7.0 grains of Accurate No. 2 powder, which is a load I took from one of 12 Handloader 301

13 your articles. I would like to use the Henry for hunting and want to use heavier loads to help extend its effective range. I have looked for data but have not been able to turn up anything specific to the Henry. I also contacted the factory, but they were baffled by my question and offered absolutely no help. Will the action handle heavier loads safely? And can you suggest a load for hunting whitetail deer? The Henry Big Boy lever-action.45 Colt can handle heavier pressure handloads, but industry overall cartridge lengths cannot be exceeded. April-May 2016 Again, thanks for the many fine articles and for any information you might offer regarding my Henry rifle. J.T., Williamsburg KY A: I have had experience with the Henry Repeating Arms Big Boy rifle and will probably offer something of a review of it in my Mostly Long Guns column in Rifle magazine. The factory is completely unaware of what are suitable pressures for its rifles, so it is no surprise that your question regarding the.45 Colt was puzzling. Since Henry offers the same Big Boy rifle chambered for the.44 Magnum, which has a SAAMI maximum average pressure rating of 36,000 psi, it is reasonable to use.45 Colt data that runs around 30,000 to 32,000 psi. This would include credible data for the Ruger Blackhawk.45 Colt revolvers built on the large 44 Frame. The problem is that the Big Boy action only cycles cartridges that are within SAAMI overall cartridge length specifications of inches, and most Ruger data was developed with bullets that seat out of the case and are too long to function through your rifle. The second limiting factor is that the Big Boy.45 Colt features a one-in-38-inch twist rate, which generally fails to yield top accuracy with heavyweight bullets. For these reasons, I suggest staying with 240- to 260-grain bullet weights. I would suggest using the Hornady 250-grain XTP, which performs well on deersized game, but for best results place bullets in the soft tissue of the heart and lung area. Try 23.0 grains of Accurate No. 9 powder for 1,745 fps or 24.2 grains for 1,786 fps and cap with CCI 300 primers. Good luck hunting. 13

14 CARTRIDGE BOARD by Gil Sengel Weatherby rifles and cartridges are discussed whenever big game hunters gather. The company, begun by Roy E. Weatherby in 1945, is not, however, interested in the current hunting cartridge specialization fad. Excepting the newly introduced Weatherby Magnum, there is no new round every year. Weatherby s existing rounds are just fine, which brings us to the object of our attention, the.270 Weatherby Magnum. If anything, it is more than just fine. Roy Weatherby s hunting career began at an early age. When he became interested in large game, he found it puzzling that deer weren t killed quickly when the bullet seemed to be placed correctly. He became a proponent of high-velocity bullets and their resultant hydrostatic shock. Weatherby looked into this in detail. Such high-velocity bullets would disintegrate near major organs/arteries and would cause tearing and hemorrhage. The higher the velocity, the greater the damage. This is true, but as we shall see there were added factors. Weatherby s first venture into high velocity (after a couple of.22s) was with America s premier big game round of the time, the.270 WeatHerBy magnum E F Cartridge Dimensions A - Overall Length B - Case Length C - Length to Neck D - Length to Shoulder Winchester. The date was about Simply blowing out the.270 Winchester case did not give enough powder capacity. Weatherby then did something absolutely brilliant. He took the largest case made in the U.S. at the time (for sporting rifles), the.300 H&H Magnum, then re-formed it to make the largest capacity case possible that would fit in a length action. Neck length, however, was left long enough to positively hold bullets under recoil in the magazine. The caliber was.277 inch. Another feature of the new.270 Weatherby Magnum was its double-radius shoulder, since used on all Weatherby cartridges. It was E - Rim Diameter F - Head Diameter G - Shoulder Diameter H - Neck Diameter I - Shoulder Angle... 48º24 39 thought to have some effect on gas flow. Whether it does or not, the unique appearance gives Weatherby rounds a definite marketing plus. Due to the shoulder,.270 Weatherby Magnum cases could not be formed simply by running the parent case into a die. Fireforming was required. Since most of Weatherby s customers were hunters who did not handload, he was forced to also sell ammunition that was factory loaded in his gunshop. By 1953 sales had grown to the point that Norma of Sweden was contracted to produce Weatherby ammunition. Handloading data given to.270 Weatherby Magnum customers (and I assume the loads used in the gunshop-loaded factory ammunition) show DuPont IMR-4064 powder giving 100-grain bullets 3,835 fps. DuPont IMR-4350 was used to push 130-grain bullets 3,460 fps; for 150-grain slugs, it gave 3,245 fps. Factory.270 Winchester loads of the period showed a 100-grain bullet at 3,540 fps, a 130 grain at 3,120 fps and a 150 grain at 2,770 fps muzzle velocity. The.270 Weatherby Magnum did exactly 14 Handloader 301 D C B A NOTE: Exact dimensions may vary among manufacturers. I G H (Continued on page 67)

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16 accurate lt-30 PROPELLANT PROFILES by R.H. VanDenburg, Jr. year ago, in Handloader No. A 293, the then-new Accurate benchrest powder LT-32 was reviewed, along with its somewhat convoluted history. Since then Accurate Powders (owned by Western Powders), has introduced another benchrest powder, Accurate LT-30. While LT-32 was most highly promoted for 6mm PPC use, it gave quite impressive performance in several other small-capacity and/ or high expansion ratio cartridges. LT-30 is being promoted for use in the.30 Remington BR cartridge, along with the 6.5 Grendel and 7.62x39 Russian. The actual range of cartridges includes.17 Remington Fireball,.222 Remington, 6mm Redding delivers more selection in its die sets for 2016 highlighted by the new additions to their Premium Die sets, which feature Carbide Size Buttons and Micrometer Seating Stems. Additional calibers have been added to the Master Hunter Series and dies are now offered for the new 30 Nosler in all configurations from Standard to Competition Sets. Two new Piloted Case Chamfering tools add to concentricity of finished rounds and the unique, Turret Stacker system will allow for storage of up to three T-7 turret heads and 21 dies, all set and ready for work. For up-to-the-minute Redding information and helpful tech tips, visit our website at PPC,.308 Winchester and Load data is available at Like LT-32, LT-30 is manufactured in the Ontario, Canada, General Dynamics facility that makes most IMR powders, along with, in recent years, all Accurate extruded powders. LT-30 is an extruded, single-base powder with a bulk density of.870gm/cc. Granule dimensions are the same as LT-32, a diameter of.025 inch and a length of.031 inch. The color is very slightly lighter than LT-32 s medium-to-dark gray. Metering from a powder measure is excellent. When discussing this new powder with Keith Anderson, Western s chief ballistician, he suggested I might think of LT-30 as the same powder as LT-32 with a lighter chemical coating. This would explain the slightly faster burning rate. Regarding that, Anderson went on to relate LT-30 s burning rate to that of IMR-4198 not interchangeable but similar. In my tests, the comparison seemed fair but varying on each side of IMR- 4198, depending on cartridge and bullet weight. Testing LT-30 began with the.222 Remington. Published data on the Accurate website includes bullets from 35 to 55 grains. I selected weights of 40, 45 and 50 grains, preferring LT-32 for heavier weights. Typical cartridge overall length was inches, and accuracy was quite promising in an already accurate rifle. The Berger 50-grain load using 20.1 grains of LT-30 was very good, but the Nosler 45-grain SB load over 21.1 grains was even better. Interestingly, the published 50-grain load velocity with a Hornady V-MAX bullet was 3,111 fps. My actual load with the Berger bullet clocked 3,010 fps meaningless, perhaps, but interesting. On the other hand, published 45-grain data used a Barnes TSX, and the listed velocity was 3,297 fps. My actual speed with the Nosler SB was 3,222 fps but with an extremely small extreme spread and small groups. A borrowed SKS was used for the 7.62x39 tests. Light, 123-grain bullets are fun, and the one I used, a Hornady 125-grain SST, performed quite well. At over 2,300 fps, velocity was certainly acceptable, and groups were up to the gun, sights and shooter. The Sierra 150-grain SPT may be a better hunting bullet, but the cartridge, I suspect, is viewed more as a fun cartridge than a serious hunting cartridge. Performance with the 150-grain bullet, nevertheless, was very good. Accurate data includes 16 Handloader 301

17 a Barnes 108-grain MPG bullet. With such a low ballistic coefficient, this would be a very pleasant, short-range load, and LT-30 is likely to serve well. Unfortunately, I didn t get to try it. The 6.5 Grendel, a shortened, blown-out and necked-down version of the 7.62x39, is paired with Selected Loads Accurate LT-30 cartridge bullet charge velocity (grains) (grains) (fps).222 Remington , , , x , , Winchester , , , * , , * ,409 * cast bullets Notes: Remington primers were used in the.222 Remington loads. The rest used Federal 210GM primers. Be Alert Publisher cannot accept responsibility for errors in published load data. April-May 2016 LT-30 in Accurate data and seems to work well, especially with the lighter range of bullets. I wasted half a day looking for.30 BR load data for comparison to LT-30 data and found nothing. Years ago I knew a fellow handgun silhouette shooter who used the.30 BR in his Remington XP-100 Unlimited class pistol and seemed to do well with it but with heavier bullets than those listed in Accurate s data and, I m sure, a slower-burning powder. When it came to the.308 Winchester, LT-30 offered fine performance with bullet weights of 110 to 150 grains. I particularly found the Sierra 125-grain SPT and the Hornady 150-grain SST to be top performers with LT-30. LT-30 and the presented something of a mixed bag. Published data pushed 300- and 350- grain jacketed bullets, and even 300- and 400-grain lead bullets, to top velocities at 1895 Marlin pressure levels. If this is what a handloader is looking for, LT-30 is not likely to disappoint. If, on the other hand, cast bullets at black-powder velocities are preferred, you might have to look elsewhere. For example, the published maximum load with a 300-grain lead bullet is 50.5 grains for 2,035 fps from Accurate s test barrel. It is a good, if powerful, load. The starting load is given as 42.9 grains for 1,792 fps, another good load and one that approaches the old Winchester high-velocity offering. I cut the powder charge to 40.0 grains and got 1,559 fps and a widening extreme spread but with reasonable accuracy. A further reduction to 38.0 grains produced hangfires. For black-powder velocities with smokeless powder, there are better choices. This is not the fault of the powder but a case of the handloader, me, asking more of LT-30 than it was designed to do. LT-30 is a fine benchrest powder with a modest range of applicability. With so many powders on the market, it is good to find one that does not compromise its designed intent. 17

18 ruger new model BlaCkHaWk.357 magnum/9mm ConvertiBles FROM THE HIP by Brian Pearce In 1953 Bill Ruger introduced the.22 CAL. Single-Six singleaction revolver, which was followed by the.357 CAL. Blackhawk in 1955 and the Blackhawk.44 Magnum CAL. in late Sales were extremely strong, and it would be years before Ruger could catch up with the long list of back orders. Each revolver featured a different frame size and was tailored for intended cartridges. The.357 and.44 Blackhawks featured flattop frames with fully adjustable Micro rear sights, resulting in handsome, practical sixguns that were ideal for target and field use. The grip frame was aluminum alloy and marked XR3 and shared a similar profile with the Colt Single Action Army revolver. In 1959 the Super Blackhawk.44 Magnum appeared and featured a larger all-steel grip frame with a square back trigger guard. The cylinder frame was the same size as the Blackhawk.44 Magnum but constructed of harder steels. There was also a new adjustable rear sight, while the top of the frame featured integral sight ribs (for support) beside the rear sight channel. Although practical, this last feature was not attractive. In 1962/63 all Blackhawks (and select Single-Sixes) received the same frame change and the new rear sight. At the same time, the grip frame was changed to XR3-RED (indicated redesigned ); it looked similar but had a slightly different shape and feel. Some shooters were pleased with this change, but many much preferred the older grip frame, myself included. In 1972/73 Ruger announced New Model single-action revolvers Single-Six, Blackhawk and Super Blackhawk featuring a new transfer bar system that allowed them to be carried fully loaded with six cartridges without the risk of an accidental discharge. (Previous revolvers only featured a relatively weak first hammer notch style safety and were only suitable to carry with five cartridges and an empty chamber placed directly under the hammer to prevent discharging.) At this time the.357 Magnum frame, which was similar in size to the Colt SAA and New Frontier re- The New Model Blackhawk flattops (center and bottom) share the same profile as the original 1950 s-era Blackhawk.357 Magnum (top). volvers, was discontinued. To simplify matters for manufacturing, all centerfire single actions would be built on the.44 Magnum frame with exceptions including the Single-Six and Single-Seven s chambered in.32 H&R Magnum and.327 Federal that appeared The frame features a flat top with a fully adjustable Micro rear sight Handloader 301

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20 with the New Model transfer bar action. Another notable change was a new ejector alignment pawl that helped align chambers with the loading trough (a common complaint associated with previous New Model revolvers). Although this was exciting news, the real excitement began when Lipsey s, a large Ruger distributor, convinced Ruger to build an exclusive run of New Model Blackhawks based on the.357/50th-anniversary frame in.44 Special. It was the first time Ruger had offered a revolver in that caliber. The response was overwhelming, so Ruger soon offered it as a standard catalog item. Lipsey s then asked Ruger to use this same frame for a.45 Colt with an extra cylinder in.45 ACP. The above revolvers have been offered in blue and stainless steel and have appealed to sixgun connoisseurs. The Ruger New Model Blackhawk.357 Magnum features an extra cylinder chambered for 9mm Luger and is available in blue or stainless steel with or inch barrels. Production is limited. much later. This was unfortunate, as it resulted in a larger revolver than was necessary for the.357 Magnum cartridge and others. In 2005 Ruger celebrated the 50th anniversary of the Blackhawk revolver and brought back the flattop frame with a Micro rear sight and in.357 size but Table I Ruger New Model Blackhawk 9mm Luger Handloads overall loaded bullet powder charge length velocity (grains) (grains) (inches) (fps) 90 Sierra JHP Silhouette , , Barnes XPB AutoComp , , , Hornady XTP Power Pistol , , , Nosler JHP Longshot , , Hornady XTP Unique , , , Sierra JHP A , , , Hornady XTP A , ,087 Notes: All loads were fired from the Ruger s inch barrel. Starline cases and CCI 500 primers were used throughout. Bullet diameter:.355 inch; maximum overall loaded length: inches; maximum case length:.754 inch; and trim-to length:.749 inch. Be Alert Publisher cannot accept responsibility for errors in published load data. Table II Ruger New Model Blackhawk.357 Magnum Handloads overall loaded bullet powder charge length velocity (grains) (grains) (inches) (fps) 125 Hornady XTP H ,469 Longshot 8.7 1, , , ,368 A , , , ,357 A , , Sierra JHP AutoComp , , , Sierra JHP H , Speer DeepCurl Enforcer , Hornady XTP A , , ,347 A , , , , , Nosler JHP Longshot , , , ,290 A , Sierra JHC CFE Pistol , , , RCBS SWC w/gc , Lyman cast ,333 Notes: All loads were fired from a inch barreled Ruger. Starline cases and CCI 500 primers were used throughout. Bullet diameter:.357 inch; maximum overall loaded length: inches; maximum case length: inches; trim-to length: inches. Be Alert Publisher cannot accept responsibility for errors in published load data Handloader 301

21 The latest Lipsey s New Model Blackhawk.357 Magnum exclusive is likewise based on the above mentioned flattop frame but is fitted with an extra 9mm Luger cylinder. It is available in stainless or blue finish and with a or inch barrel, and production numbers are limited. Both blue (5 1 2) and stainless (4 5 8) revolvers were used here. Externally, these guns follow the same lines as the original 1955-era.357 CAL. Blackhawk. The grip frame is shaped close to the original s, but it is of all-steel construction, is narrower and features an internal lock, all of which add several ounces of weight. The red grips are wood laminate, which is one of my few criticisms of these sixguns. In short, the grips are homely and wood-to-metal fit is poor, but these are nice enough guns that they deserve high-figured walnut, sambar stag, giraffe bone or something special for a custom touch. Another criticism is the heavy trigger pulls, with the sample revolvers recording around pounds. However, quality after-market replacement springs are available from Wolff Gunsprings and Brownells, are inexpensive, easy to install and help reduce pull weights, or any competent revolver smith can overhaul them to achieve a light, crisp pull. Before testing these sixguns for accuracy, both were fired with 50 rounds of jacketed ammunition, with the barrels being cleaned every three shots, then coated with a light film of oil. After this barrel break-in procedure, both were tried with a variety of factory ammunition and handloads. In the past decade Ruger has substantially improved the quality of its sixgun barrels. Using the.357 Magnum cylinder, both revolvers were capable of 25-yard, five-shot groups that hovered around an inch with select loads with jacketed and cast bullets. For example, using Starline cases, CCI 500 primers, 14.9 grains of Accurate No. 9 powder with Nosler 158-grain JHP bullets for 1,348 fps (5 1 2-inch barrel), several groups measured be- tween.80 and 1.25 inches. Switching to 162-grain cast bullets from Lyman mould and pushed with 14.0 grains of Alliant 2400, velocity was 1,333 fps, and several groups measured between.75 to.90 inch. Switching to the 9mm Luger cylinders in both guns, accuracy was still impressive with select loads. A few cast bullet handloads were tried, but their accuracy performance was somewhat erratic. Jacketed bullets produced groups measuring between 1.5 and 2.0 inches that included bullets from Hornady and Sierra (see details in the accompanying table). It should be noted that velocities achieved with the 9mm revolver were very similar to those achieved with the same load fired from an autoloading pistol with a similar barrel length. Some shooters claim it is the longer overall length of the cylinder plus the barrel length measurement that produces the added velocities, whereas an autoloading pistol barrel includes the chamber as a part of that barrel measurement, which is certainly true. However, the revolver loses velocity due to the barrel/cylinder gap. Space will not allow a complete discussion of this subject, but lab-controlled tests indicate the unrestricted free-bore as the bullet passes through the sixgun s chamber throats is responsible for bumping velocities beyond expectations. Regardless, when converted to 9mm, these Merit Iris Apertures We recommend to all who are having trouble with vision of the sights to try the Merit Iris Shutter Disk - Elmer Keith, Sixguns by Keith meritcorporation.com Merit Corporation P.O. Box 9044 Schenectady, NY New Model Blackhawks were accurate and produced respectable velocities. Although I generally prefer allsteel guns, I would like to see a special lightweight version that features an aluminum grip frame to shave off several ounces, which is usually appreciated by those who carry sixguns for long hours. Regardless, the latest New Model Blackhawk.357/9mm convertible is a good shooting sixgun. April-May

22 40 years WitH Handloader MIKE S SHOOTIN SHACK by Mike Venturino In 1968 I went away to college at Marshall University (of We Are Marshall fame) in Huntington, West Virginia. A store there named Mack & Dave s had a fully stocked gun department the first I had ever seen. On the counter was Handloader. I bought a copy, loved it and have rarely missed an issue since. By the time this column is printed, I will have celebrated the 40th anniversary of my first article appearing in Handloader. That was around January As it so happened, I was about to leave my native West Virginia, after visiting for the holidays, and head back to my adopted Montana. The extra cash came in handy, because I managed to turn that 2,000-mile drive into over 5,000 miles by wandering about our nation a bit. That article was my sixth published. It was titled.44 Magnum Cast Bullet Alloys, wherein I did an extensive amount of machine rest testing with different bullet designs and alloy blends until able to get a inch Smith & Wesson Model 29 grouping five shots into around inches at 50 yards. Interestingly, that manuscript with photos was submitted to then-editor Neal Knox in the spring of I never heard a word from him, so in December of that year while on one of many road forays, I stopped in Prescott at Wolfe Publishing s office for a visit. Knox said it was accepted and would be printed soon. As I was to find out later in my writing career, soon is a relative term for editors. While at the office that day, Knox suggested that his assistant editor take me to lunch. That man was Rick Jamison, who went on to have an excellent gun-writing career himself. We have been friends ever since. That spring of 1974 was the last time I touched a typewriter for four years. Why stop writing after my first six were published? It s hard to say. I was young and single and buddied with a bunch of cowboys and dude wranglers who took very little seriously. A career in gun-writing seemed a dis Handloader 301

23 Mike, at age 25, is shooting a Smith & Wesson Model Magnum, gathering information for his first Handloader article. tant thought until I met Yvonne. We clicked together as if we had known each other for years. I confided in her about my implausible dream of having a career writing about guns. Instead of thinking me ridiculous, as did my own family and some of hers, too, she encouraged me. In fact, the very first month of our marriage in April 1978, I put her portable typewriter on our kitchen table and got started. Handloader printed an article in January 1979 titled Gas Checks Versus Plain Base. It was another.44 Magnum machine rest test affair. Lest I became a Johnny One Note, I figured it was time to leave the.44 Magnum bandwagon. My third Handloader article was a test of small rifle primers using Nearly 40 years later, here s Mike doing what he loves most: shooting vintage-type guns in antique or obsolete calibers. a Remington 40X-BR mounted with a 20x Lyman Lightweight Benchrest (LWBR) scope. The caliber was.222 Remington, and if I remember correctly, five, five-shot groups were fired. Again counting on memory, all loads had Sierra 52-grain HPBT bullets over the same charge of H-322 powder with the only variable being primers. I do remember for sure that the tightest group averages came with Remington Benchrest primers and CCI Small Rifle Magnum primers. In 1980 I wrote about my experiences in developing loads for a friend s Winchester Model It was my first experience with an obsolete cartridge. Little did I think then that working with antique and obsolete cartridges would become nearly a lifelong project. By that time I was on a roll, and my hand-scribbled, old notes indicate I wrote about 30 features for Handloader and numerous columns, product tests and propellant profiles. Then, depending on how you look at it, something good or bad happened in I was offered a contract to write exclusively for Guns & Ammo. The bad was I couldn t be in the pages of Handloader anymore. The good was that now I had a guaranteed monthly income. Why give up on Handloader if I loved it so much and had my foot solidly in the door? Consider it this way: When applying for a loan, say for a vehicle or house, is it smart to say that as a freelance writer I had no idea as to what my monthly income might be? To make a long story shorter, for 18 years I was contracted to one magazine or another. It got to be a pain in the posterior when the powers that be felt like they could dictate the subjects of my articles. (There was a brief hiatus in the late 1990s when I was dickering with those powers, that I wrote another half-dozen articles for this magazine. When the dickering was settled, I had to stop again.) In 2004, being essentially debt-free, I kissed contract writing goodbye. As the last days of my last contract rolled around, I called Dave Scovill and asked if he might be in the market for some articles from me seeing as how I was soon to be free. Dave replied, Let me talk to [then owner] Mark Harris. He quickly called back and said, How would you like a column and feature in each issue of Handloader and Rifle? I most certainly did like that! And here I have been for 11 years now with nary a complaint in that time. April-May

24 PISTOL POINTERS by Charles E. Petty Most folks who see the DW Battlesight for the first time don t get it. Both the front and rear sights have holes in them, and their purpose is not exactly intuitive. We are all familiar with the idea of hold-over, where the front sight is raised beyond its customary relation to the notch in the rear sight. The problem with that is there is no actual frame of reference, and it is learned purely by trial and error. Elmer Keith addressed that by having King Gun Sight Co. inlay a series of fine gold bars in the front sight that allowed him a repeatable hold-over. The major difficulty with holdover is that the front sight obscures some or all of the target. DW BattlesigHt 75 Yards Hold top of belly, just under heart. This is where those holes in the DW sight come into play. The hole in the front sight looks really small and measures inch (#42 drill), but when it is extended at As range increases, change your hold point on the target: 100 Yards Hold center of body, level with heart. 125 Yards Hold center of body, just under base of neck. arm s length, the shooter can see 20 inches of the target area at 100 yards. The rear sight has two rectangles cut out on either side of the 24 Handloader 301

25 The hole in the DW front sight allows the shooter to see more of the target. normal notch. This also improves target visibility and could also be used to establish a lead on a moving target. You may have heard of methods for range estimation with riflescope reticles based on an average size of the vital area of a game animal. The front sight aperture can serve a similar purpose, because an average man s body measures roughly 20 inches shoulder to shoulder, so you should see the whole body at 100 yards. A 25- yard range increase or decrease will yield a 5-inch change in view. All my shooting was done with a Remington 1911 R1 that Mr. Williams (DW) was kind enough to loan me. The sight is regulated for 230-grain ball ammunition, so a lighter, faster load will shoot to a different point of impact, but The rear window rear sight also gives a better view of the target and could be used for leading a moving target. shooting a target load with a 200- grain cast bullet did not show a significant change at 75 yards. This sight is not made for bullseye shooting anyhow. It is designed to let one hit a man-sized target at ranges far beyond what is normally considered to be handgun range. Obviously there is a learning curve with something like this, and the only cure is to shoot a bunch. It is not entirely intuitive, but the directions are well illustrated; once you look through the sights, everything makes sense. Front sights fit standard dovetails and are available in several widths and heights for $58. The 1911 rear fits the Novak cut (one for Glock is coming) for $100, or a set can be had for $140. There is also a front sight for AR-type rifles. For more information: contact DW Battlesight, PO Box 557, Mauriceville TX 77626; or online at: * * * overall length Scan the Internet forums and you ll see lots of questions about overall length, and from some it is obvious the writer has lost much sleep. This is supposed to be a pistol column, but overall length applies to both handguns and rifles. In one it matters; in the other, not so much. Every loading manual shows the overall length for the specific bullet, and most of the time that is governed by the magazine that accepts the cartridge. Obviously the company wants to be sure that its ammunition will fit the majority of available guns. When talking about some rifles, however, the distance the bullet has to travel before it engages the rifling can be a factor in accuracy. When precise accuracy is an issue for varmint or target rifles, there usually is a sweet spot that can only be found by trial-and-error testing. There are gauges, such as Hornady s Lock and Load, to help with this determination, but each rifle and bullet is a special case. With auto pistols the issue of headspace always comes up. They are not like centerfire rifles, where headspace can sometimes be a cause for concern. We are told that straight-walled pistol cases headspace on the case mouth, and that would be true if the pistol didn t have an extractor. In reality, the only time there is a chance for the case to headspace on the mouth is where there is a maximum case, minimum chamber length. That would be as rare as unicorns. In (Continued on page 66) April-May

26 Stan Trzoniec For a good many years, I have been shooting the 10mm Automatic cartridge and enjoy handloading the ammunition to go with it. While it may appear the cartridge is outdated, Dan Wesson, Glock, Kimber, Nighthawk, STI and Wilson Combat still chamber pistols for the 10mm Automatic. Dan Wesson Razorback 10mm Auto 26

27 Loading New and Traditional Powders For shooters who like the feel of a semiautomatic pistol but want to move up to a larger caliber without an increase in apparent recoil, consider these comparisons. If fond of the.45 ACP with a +P loading, a shooter will hardly notice the difference between the two. With a 185-grain bullet,.45 ACP factory loads deliver 534 foot-pounds (ftlbs) of energy at the muzzle (1,140 fps); the 10mm with a 180-grain metal case bullet gives about 529 ft-lbs at 1,150 fps. Then again, the 10mm can be handloaded to roughly 1,200 fps with a 180, and that is how it made its mark. The 10mm has a colorful his- tory. Around 1977 several enterprising fellows together started chambering a modified Browning pistol to accept modified.224 Weatherby belted rifle cases. At that time,.40-caliber bullets were not in big demand, so Remington 180-grain bullets made for the were used. Resultant velocities and even the case length were very close to today s 10mm cartridge. About six years later, Whit Collins began using.30 Remington cases, and with the help of Jeff Cooper, the Bren Ten pistol was developed and subsequently marketed by Dornaus & Dixon. With the support of Sweden s Norma Well-known propellants for the 10mm Auto were used, as well as some newcomers, like Hodgdon s CFE Pistol and Alliant s Power Pistol. Ammunition, the 10mm was on its way. Or was it? It appears that Dornaus & Dixon was not ready for the onslaught of orders. Based on the CZ75, some of the first Bren Tens were made in California, then complete pistols were eventually shipped in from overseas. In the heat of full production, a few things fell short; one was the magazines. Very few Bren Ten pistols made it to consumers. Years later Colt took up the cartridge with the introduction of the Delta Elite, a 27

28 Dan Wesson Razorback 10mm Auto modified Model 1911 in blue or stainless, and Colt s Double Eagle 10mm Auto was expected to land big contracts with law enforcement. According to its latest catalog, Colt still produces the Delta Elite in brushed stainless with an eight-round magazine. I tested a 2020 W. Quail Avenue - Dept. HL Phoenix, AZ Left, the beavertail safety features a memory bump. The sights (above center) are adjustable only for windage. Operator controls (right) include a target trigger, extended magazine release and large slide lock. few 10mm pistols, and eventually Springfield Armory introduced its version complete with a linkless locking system invented by German manufacturer Peters-Stahl, which was used in the Omega pistols. Additionally, the LAR (Larisch, Augat and Robinson) Grizzly was made in the U.S., Glock entered the fray, and Smith & Wesson offered its double-action Model 1006 and, of all things, a Model 610 revolver built on the large N-frame complete with a full barrel underlug. I had a copy of that gun at one time, but using it with either halfor full-moon clips was not exciting, as I was fully convinced the cartridge was for semiautomatic pistols only. (Incidentally, I shot a Smith & Wesson Model 1006 prototype [X-487] back then, shooting more than 12,000 rounds, and it perked along without any problems.) So where does the 10mm Auto fit today? At one time law enforcement was interested in the 10mm but obviously preferred the.41 Magnum as an alternative to the.357 Magnum. Back then, factory 10mm Automatic ammunition was available in spades, but today, Winchester and Remington only make one selection each, while Federal and Hornady double up on their selections. The introduction of the.40 Smith & Wesson took away the 10mm s thunder while using the same case only shortened.142 inch, from.992 to.850 inch. The.40 may be the popular choice for law enforcement, but for folks like me, who like the power and feel of the 10mm Auto, handloading is the way to go. The Dan Wesson RZ-10 Razorback in brushed stainless is the newest 10mm pistol and is patterned after the Model 1911 with a 5-inch match grade barrel, a machined Clark-style target rib and a fixed rear sight. The front sight is ramped, serrated and complements the rear assembly perfectly. The entire pistol is stainless, sans the cocobolo checkered stocks. Other features include an extended slide safety, slide release, beavertail safety with a memory groove and a skeletonized commander hammer. The trigger broke at pounds. Two magazines with bumper pads are included, and the magazine release has been extended outward for ease of use. The front strap is sandblasted while the back strap is checkered. Overall, the pistol is neat in appearance and checks in at 36 ounces without ammunition perfect for handling the 10mm Auto cartridge. Retail price is $1, ( Component brass is scarce. Starline has it listed, but production is seasonal. Winchester has it listed, but there is a slim chance of a back order, as one dealer told me. Norma, the earliest manufacturer of the 10mm cartridge, does not even list handgun brass these days. It appears right now a handloader must buy factory ammunition when it can be found and recycle the brass. For comparison testing, I still had Winchester s 175-grain Silvertip factory loads and Remington 28 Handloader 301

29 Bullets tested include (left to right): Sierra 150-grain JHP, Winchester 155 Silvertip, Hornady 170 HP, Speer 180 HP, Sierra 180 JHP and Hornady 200-grain FMJ/FP. 180-grain loads. Also on hand were a few boxes of the initial run of Norma s 200-grain full-jacketed, truncated-cone ammunition. Component bullets are available, though not in great quantities because of the.40 S&W s popularity. Nosler sells them in neat 250-count boxes. My stock includes bullets from Sierra, Winchester, Hornady and Speer in weights from 150 to 200 grains. For powders, a favorite has always been Accurate No. 7, which gives a good load density with excellent accuracy and velocities. Blue Dot is also a good partner for the 10mm Auto, and for something new, loads using Alliant Power Pistol and Hodgdon CFE Pistol have been included, as well as Accurate No. 9 for the heavier bullets. Winchester Large Pistol primers and cases from Norma (sent to me years ago when I first tested the 10mm Auto) were also used. A Redding Turret press was used to assemble the accompanying loads. Dies included RCBS, and a taper crimp was applied with a C-H die as a separate step. Since I was working with oncefired cases, after sizing for overall length, the condition of the case mouths was checked before moving on. The press was set up to both prime and bell the case mouths at the same time. The expander die was used to expand the case with a minute amount of flair, just enough, in fact, to allow the bullet to be set in the case mouth before seating. Over the years, I ve noticed that most die makers allow about.002 inch difference between the inner case and outside bullet diameters. Checking my RCBS sizing die revealed an outer diameter of.398 inch, which is just right for.40-caliber bullet selections. When loading any semiautomatic pistol cartridge, I ve found that belling (expanding) the case should be done with great care. While the main purpose of this case expansion is to allow the bullet to glide down into the case April-May

30 Dan Wesson Razorback 10mm Auto with a minimum of effort in the seating process, handloaders must also take into account that the case mouth has to be turned in again with a taper crimp die to finish the loading sequence. This helps allow proper feeding of the cartridge into the chamber while locking the bullet and case together to eliminate pressure consistency problems that might arise if the bullets in the magazine are HOCH CUSTOM BULLET MOULDS Tool room quality, nose-pour, most standard or custom designs made to order. Cylindrical (straight) or tapered. Rifle & pistol designs available. COLORADO SHOOTER S SUPPLY Shop Home N. Delaware Roswell, NM davefarmer@hochmoulds.com NOE Bullet Moulds is a premium manufacturer of bullet moulds and casting tools. Check Us Out, You Won t Be Disappointed! NOE Bullet Moulds LLC Use Code HL315 for 10% Discount Table I Dan Wesson Razorback 10mm Automatic Handloads overall loaded bullet powder charge length velocity group (grains) (grains) (inches) (fps) (inches) 150 Sierra HP Power Pistol , A , * Blue Dot , Winchester STHP CFE Pistol , A , ** Blue Dot , Hornady HP Power Pistol , ** A , Blue Dot , Speer HP CFE Pistol , A , ** Blue Dot , Sierra JHP A , A , Blue Dot , ** 200 Hornady FMJFP CFE Pistol , A , ** Blue Dot 9.4 1, * best load overall ** best load within each bullet weight Notes: A 5-inch barreled Dan Wesson Razorback handgun was used to test-fire all loads. Norma cases and Winchester WLP primers were used throughout. All five-shot groups were fired from a Ransom Rest at 25 yards. All velocities are the average of five shots measured on an Oehler Model 35P chronograph set 10 feet from the muzzle. Be Alert Publisher cannot accept responsibility for errors in published load data. pushed more deeply into the cases during shooting as a result of recoil. The whole scenario results in too much working of the brass and can lead to split case mouths not to mention excessive pressure. When it comes to charging the cases, I like to work with one powder at a time, recording the results, before using another powder. This works out well, as the differences in powder charges go back and forth from a half to a full grain over the entire run. The process is repeated with each powder/bullet combination. This speeds the process, allowing minute adjustments for a given powder. When I finish one load, I seat and taper crimp the bullet. Testing consisted of securing the Dan Wesson Razorback in a Ransom Rest with the appropriate insert and firing off five rounds of each load at 25 yards over an Oehler Model 35P chronograph. I had tested this cartridge in a Colt Delta Elite some 25 years ago, but this time around, I had access to brand-new powders. Some results were surprising. The first five-shot group out of the barrel measured an impressive.875 inch. The next group was the best of the day,.5 inch. Throughout the session, groups varied from powder to bullet used, from.5 inch to one that went 2 inches with Speer 180-grain bullets. Part of that could have been the drop in velocity, as the next two sets of groups loaded with Accurate No. 7 and Blue Dot did shrink to a more acceptable level with the added benefit of higher velocities. For the most part, the best velocities were Table II Factory Load Velocity Results factory actual velocity velocity group (fps) (fps) (inches) 175 Winchester 1,290 1, Silvertip 180 Remington Metal Case 200 Norma 1,200 1, Truncated Cone Notes: All five-shot groups were fired from a Ransom Rest at 25 yards. All velocities are the average of five shots measured on an Oehler Model 35P chronograph set 10 feet from the muzzle Handloader 301

31 Above, 12.5 grains of Accurate No. 7 proved very accurate with Sierra 150-grain hollowpoints. Right, 10.0 grains of Alliant s Power Pistol provided 1,365 fps. with Power Pistol, followed by Accurate No. 7, Blue Dot, Accurate No. 9 and CFE Pistol. When it came to groups, Power Pistol ranked first, followed by CFE Pistol (.079 inch), Accurate No. 7 (1.02 inches), Blue Dot (1.29 inches) and Accurate No. 9 (1.62 inches). If looking for a lower charge rate combined with higher velocity, try Power Pistol, as 10.0 grains over a 150-grain bullet produced 1,421 fps. Another choice might be the new CFE Pistol with only 9.2 grains delivering 1,343 fps at the muzzle. For heavier bullets, try 7.0 grains of CFE Pistol over a Hornady 200-grain FMJ/ Flat Point; figuring 7,000 grains to a pound, it should provide close to 1,000 reloads. Regarding the factory loads tested, the Winchester 175-grain Silvertips with a stated velocity of 1,290 fps recorded 1,233 fps on my chronograph. Remington loads that read 950 fps on the box s end flap gave the best in accuracy, grouping under an inch at 892 fps. Finally, the Norma offering with 200-grain bullets registered a paltry 1,043 fps with groups just over an inch. It might be worth mentioning that with the 10mm Auto, I have found that Accurate No. 7 powder proved to be the best in combining good to great accuracy with more than acceptable velocities. It meters well, and its load density is in balance with many bullets. Blue Dot has been a favorite in the 10mm simply because it is consistent. With heavier bullets, Accurate No. 9 is a good choice and, like its counterpart Accurate No. 7, is economical to use. Since this is the first time I ve loaded the cartridge with CFE Pistol or Power Pistol, more testing is needed. The Dan Wesson Razorback s performance was perfect, and all spent casings ejected smartly, sometimes so far to the right I had to go looking for that hardto-come-by brass. When it came to functioning, I would seat all my loads out to inches only, as some of the longer loads (1.260 inches) resulted in some difficulty when loading the magazine. The pistol is hefty enough to cover the stout recoil of the 10mm cartridge. The 10mm Auto is still a very worthwhile cartridge regardless of the limited number of pistols available and the rarity of brass. Claro and English Walnut Gun Stock Blanks Highly Figured and Plain Grain Cultivating Nature s Beauty! 9009 River Road, Chico, CA Tel: Fax: winelandwalnut@hotmail.com April-May

32 Break-Away Solids John Barsness Many hunters have never shot a nonexpanding bullet from a centerfire rifle, mostly because we ve grown so used to the reliability of what the British call softs over the past few decades. Some hunters even believe nonexpanding bullets won t work on big game, because they ve had deer run 100 yards after being shot with expanding bullets the hunters assumed didn t expand, because the entrance and exit holes looked to be about the same size. (This assumption causes some people to wonder how many hunters actually field-dress their own deer.) In reality, nonexpanding bullets can slay big game quite convincingly, though there s a vast difference between the performance of a small spitzer and a blunt bullet of much larger caliber. Before the development of smokeless powder, most hunters used solids made entirely of lead; today quite a few people who hunt with black powder cartridge rifles, traditional muzzleloaders, shotguns and revolvers still do. After smokeless powders appeared, jacketed solids were often used not only on rhinos and elephants but also numerous smaller animals, because early expanding bullets sometimes disintegrated. Even a few decades ago, many African hunters preferred solids on 1,500-pound animals such as eland and Cape buffalo, because really good expanding bullets were scarce or, in some calibers, nonexistent. During the transition from black powder to smokeless, much was learned about the terminal performance of nonexpanding bullets, whether actually solid (made entirely of the same metal) or a combination of different metals. Among the first discoveries was that pointed solids usually veered after entering an animal, and often tumbled, making a bigger hole the reason Theodore Roosevelt came to prefer 150-grain full-jacketed military ammunition to early 220-grain Swift s New.375 Bullets An unfired Swift Break-Away bullet. A sectioned bullet. A bullet recovered from dry newspaper Handloader 301

33 softpoints in his little Springfield for African plains game. Roundnosed solids sometimes veered too, and eventually many hunters came to prefer flatnosed solids, some with the flat almost a full caliber wide, because they not only penetrated straighter than roundnose bullets but also punched a bigger hole. This straight penetration and bigger hole have been attributed to a phenomenon called cavitation. The simplified definition of cavitation in my Webster s Unabridged Dictionary is the rapid formation and collapse of vapor pockets in regions of very low pressure or such a pocket formed in a flowing liquid. Another reference source suggests cavitation is comparable to boiling a liquid, though the energy comes from the rapid movement of an object through the liquid, rather than heat. Cavitation bubbles often result in structural damage. In nature, rapidly rising water pressure in trees causes enough cavitation to damage wood cells, and miniature cavitation explosions are used by a few extremely fast underwater predators, such as mantis shrimp, to help stun or even kill prey. Cavitation frequently damages machinery, especially pumps and underwater propellers, but can also be used in ultrasonic cleaning and clearing paths for bullets. All bullets cause some cavitation when they strike game animals, due to the high water content of muscles and internal organs, but flatnosed solids result in far more cavitation, as does an expanding bullet with a flat face rather than a round mushroom. The cavitation not only damages surrounding tissue but also creates a sort of protective pocket for the bullet during penetration. Sharper-pointed solids tend to deflect, because they don t produce enough cavitation to keep their sloping sides from contacting flesh. Since the density of muscles and organs varies, the bullet can be deflected. A wider-nosed bullet results in more cavitation, so the April-May 2016 The Test Tube on top shows the erratic, narrow wound channel from a monolithic, flat-tipped solid. On the bottom is the tube shot with a Swift Break-Away bullet, with a much larger, very straight hole. bullet doesn t encounter as much side-pressure from flesh or organs and penetrates straighter. (Interestingly, some tactical spitzer solids feature a blunt, conical tip much like the point on a center-punch. The tip creates sufficient cavitation for the long, pointy bullets to penetrate deeper and straighter through water, and their direction doesn t change even when entering water at an acute angle.) A number of solids with much flatter tips have appeared over the past few years. These all do more internal damage than roundnosed solids and penetrate straighter and deeper. The last is counterintuitive, because it would seem that wider, flatter noses would slow bullets down, reducing penetration, but bullets that deflect don t penetrate in the direction we want them to, and solids that tumble don t penetrate nearly as deeply as those staying point-on. This can cause serious problems on Cape and water buffalo, hippos, rhinos and elephants. Some hunters would leave buffalo off the list, arguing that today s deepest-penetrating, expanding bullets work at any shot angle, but many hunters still prefer solids for follow-up shots, whether a bull is coming or going. There s no mechanical problem in using hard-cast lead bullets Left, the test media consisted of a wax Test Tube in front of tightly stacked dry newspaper. Below, this is the corner of the box of newspapers where the monolithic solid exited, probably sideways, after deflecting at least 10 inches in 25 inches of travel. 33

34 Break-Away Solids with wide, flat noses in revolvers, single shots or double rifles, but despite the recent African resurgence in doubles, most hunters after dangerous game use boltaction repeaters, due to lower cost and more available shots. Unfortunately, solids with very wide, flat noses sometimes don t feed Swift 300-grain Break-Away Solids and A-Frames were tested from a customized Mark X Mauser.375 H&H. reliably from the magazines of bolt-action rifles. Much depends on the specific cartridge, the angle of the feed-ramp in the front of the action and the diameter of the chamber, so it s impossible to predict how an individual rifle/bullet combination will act. Bullet makers have devised var- ious solutions to the problem, the most common being flattening the tip of a typical roundnosed solid. My own experience with buffalo (Cape and water) is that flattipped, roundnosed solids aren t nearly as effective as expanding bullets, even from cartridges above.40 caliber. I ve seen buffalo almost ignore the impact of such solids, and the relatively small, flat tip doesn t prevent the bullets from sometimes veering off in unpredictable directions. Another solution is Woodleigh s Hydrostatically Stabilised cuppoint. The cup creates plenty of cavitation, which the Woodleigh website calls a pressure ring, but the cup is slightly smaller in diameter than the rest of the bullet, hopefully preventing the edges of the cup from hanging up somewhere during a cartridge s journey from magazine to chamber. It feeds in many rifles but not all, and in fact Woodleigh s website states: In line with good practise when using this type of bul-

35 let in magazine rifles we strongly recommend that all ammunition is cycled through the magazine to ensure that feeding is reliable prior to going on a hunt. The most recent solution is Swift s Break-Away Solid, combining a lead-core solid with a rounded plastic tip about twothirds the diameter of the bullet. In the days before clear ballistic gelatin, many hunters assumed a separate tip on expanding bullets wedged back into the bullet upon impact, enhancing expansion, but slow-motion photography of plastic-tipped bullets shows the tip quickly moving ahead of the expanding mushroom, then drifting off to the side due to cavitation from the bullet. (Tipped bullets expand easily not because of wedging but the big, hollow point under the tip.) Bill Hober, president and CEO of Swift, told me about the Break- Away s development during a detailed conversation. Hober not only wanted to prevent the magazine-feeding problem, but also desired a lead-cored solid rather than the brass or bronze solids offered by several other companies. Many older rifles have bores varying somewhat from nominal diameter, especially those made before World War II, something I ve encountered a number of times over the years. Lead-cored solids are slightly compressible, so they will squeeze down in a slightly undersized bore, but hard-alloy monolithic solids won t squeeze down and can damage the solder connecting the two barrels of a double rifle. Hober is a fan of classic doubles, so he wanted a bullet that wouldn t damage his own rifles or those of customers. Lead-cored bullets are shorter than copper-alloy monolithics of the same weight, leaving more room in the case for powder and resulting in more rotational stability when penetrating game. The round tip also increases ballistic coefficient over flatnosed solids, though at typical dangerous game ranges, the difference wouldn t be much. Hober said Swift did considerable testing of various solid bul- April-May 2016 Hand-Held Depriming Tool Deprime Clean Reload Fits cases with normal flash holes from.20 caliber to.460 Weatherby Magnum and No dies or shell holders needed Machined from aluminum Black anodized finish Now Selling Internationally! Harvey Deprimer 115 Airport Road Lebanon, OR

36 Pistol Bullets and Ammunition ZERO Zero Bullet Company, Inc. P.O. Box 1188 Cullman, AL Tel: Fax: Toll Free: lets in water-soaked newspaper and couldn t keep conventional solids in the stack. Instead they would tumble and veer off course, while the Break-Away Solid kept penetrating straight ahead. My test batch was 24, 300-grain.375s, along with 50, 300-grain A-Frames, so a load could be worked up for both softs and solids, the classic African combination. For a quarter-century, I ve owned a customized Mark X Mauser.375 H&H that shoots various 300-grain bullets to almost exactly the same point of impact. Both Swift bullets did the same, though I had to tweak the powder charge a little. In this particular.375, I ve mostly used IMR-4350 with 300-grain bullets, partly because accuracy has always been very good, but partly because filling the case with bulky extruded powder bypasses the need to crimp the case mouth. Instead, powder compression keeps bullets from being pounded back into the neck while in the magazine, even during repeated recoil. The Break-Away is a two-diameter design with a definite shoulder between the larger rear half of the bullet and the smaller front end. With a Starrett digital micrometer, the rear of the bullets measured.3755 inch in diameter, and the front end.3630 inch. This design results in similar pressures to A-Frames of the same weight, a big factor in getting both softs and solids to shoot to a similar point of impact. There weren t enough Break- Away Solids to do extensive load work-up, so I loaded single bullets with 76.0, 77.0 and 78.0 grains of IMR-4350, just below the 80.0 grains used with most 300-grain bullets. Before test-firing, I ran the three dummy rounds through the Mark X s magazine and chamber several times, and all fed perfectly. At 100 yards they formed a group of 1.02 inches, indicating any of the three charges would result in more than sufficient accuracy at typical solid-bullet ranges. However, the Break-Away loaded with 78.0 grains landed on the edge of a sub-inch, three-round group shot with the A-Frames and 78.0 grains of powder, and velocity was also within 25 fps of the A-Frame load. I ve often worked much harder to get softs and solids to shoot to the same place! Instead of repeating Swift s wet-newspaper test, I decided to combine wax Test Tubes with dry newspaper. The Test Tube was a fine product for home bullet-testing developed by Richard Mann, and it retained the wound channel of bullets far better than wet newspaper or ballistic gelatin. Production ceased during the Great Recession, but there s still a good supply in my basement. Stacks of dry paper simulate bone more closely than other kinds of bullet-test media, so Test Tubes were set up in front of cardboard boxes full of dry newspaper at 25 yards. Aside from the Break- Aways, I also tested two conventional 300-grain solids, a lead-core roundnose and a monolithic flattipped roundnose. The Test Tubes provided a look at the initial wound channel, and the dry newspaper a comparison of the depth and direction of deeper penetration. The results indicated that cavitation is only partly why wide, flatnosed solids penetrate straighter and deeper than roundnosed solids, because the Break-Away also 36 Handloader 301

37 Swift Break-Away Solids Test Results overall loaded muzzle bullet powder charge length velocity group (grains) (grains) (inches) (fps) (inches) 300 Swift A-Frame IMR , Swift Break-Away 76.0, 77.0, ,512 (78.0) 1.02 Notes: All handloads used Remington cases and CCI 250 primers. Be Alert Publisher cannot accept responsibility for errors in published load data. outperformed the other solids in the Test Tube and dry newspaper. The roundnosed solid resulted in such a small, wobbling channel that wouldn t photograph distinctly, and even the flat-tipped roundnose veered a little, which can be seen as a narrowing of the middle of the Test Tube channel. (The tube was sectioned deadstraight from the entrance to exit holes.) The lead-cored roundnose left the right side of the sack of newspaper within a foot of penetration. While the flat-tipped monolithic penetrated 25 inches of paper, it exited the cardboard box at the left, ground-level corner. Both bullets deflected at least 10 inches, and although I looked all around the area for the errant bullets, they were never found. The first Break-Away Solid penetrated dead-straight both through the Test Tube and 19 inches of newspaper. The edges of the frontend cavity expanded very slightly, creating a nearly full-caliber, flatnosed solid. Afterward I fired two more directly into a fresh stack of newspaper, without a Test Tube in front, and both penetrated two feet in a dead-straight line. They would penetrate much farther in wet newspaper or an animal. Bill Hober has field-tested the Break-Away himself in Africa, and at the 2015 Safari Club International convention, some were provided to Getting both the A-Frames and Break- Aways to shoot the same basic place was relatively easy, using a charge of 78.0 grains of IMR The three shots in the bullseye are A-Frames, and the other holes at the edge of the bullseye are from Break-Aways shot with increasing powder charges. African professional hunters and others who were going on safari. The field results were all positive, and Hober said Break-Aways will be available in a number of calibers from 9.3mm on up. Obviously they won t be cheap, but then premium bullets never are, and hunters heading to Africa for really big game aren t usually concerned about the price of a few solids. The Ultimate FREE BINDER! Build Your Own Reloading Manual Online Reloading Manual Over 300,000 loads now available Online! The only Reloading Manual that GROWS DAILY! More bullet/powder combinations than all other manuals on the market today. Powerful search engine by calibers, bullet weights, powders or a combo of all three. Exclusive articles by noted writers. Online shopping right on the website. April-May

38 Loading for Facing page, Hodgdon s new CFE Pistol is an ideal powder for the 9mm Luger, delivering consistent results with a wide variety of bullet types. Lugers Using CFE Pistol in the 9mm Parabellum Terry Wieland The German Luger is the most-studied semiautomatic pistol in history. It s among the most fascinating, both mechanically and historically, yet 108 years after being adopted by the Kaiser s army, it still guards some of its mysteries and is, in some ways, not completely understood Handloader 301

39 Although the Luger is the world s most widely used official military sidearm, adopted in whole or in part by some 20 different countries over its lifetime, the mysteries result from two world wars and some strange combinations of circumstances. Some are due to official reticence about military secrets, while others are the result of deliberate obfuscation after 1918, as Germany attempted to circumvent the Treaty of Versailles. Finally, there was the wholesale destruction of company and military records in Germany during the Second World War. The Luger is the most-collected firearm in the world, with dozens of books written about it. In some ways, it s the most valuable from a collecting viewpoint. An estimated 3.5 million guns were produced during its lifetime, by seven official manufacturers in Europe, and each and every one is a collector s item at some From top, a DWM carbine Luger, a DWM 1915 Artillery Luger and a DWM 1908 commercial model. level. This is a point made, over and over, by collectors, gun dealers and writers. This is also where Americans preoccupation with collector value comes in. Even a Luger owner who wants to shoot his prize can become obsessed with the idea of not harming its value in any way. One approach is to use only light loads, so as not to stress its delicate, century-old steel. Unfamiliarity with the pistol and its operation, combined with reluctance to use proper ammunition, has led to repeated accusations that the Luger is not reliable. Looking back over a half-century of magazine articles, a phrase that jumps out with monotonous regularity is notoriously unreliable, applied either to the pistol itself or its famous snail drum 32-round magazine issued between 1916 and Malfunctions can certainly be encountered with factory ammunition, which is made in a dizzying array of velocities and bullet weights, some suitable for Lugers and some not. However, if there are problems with factory ammunition, they are vastly multiplied when it comes to handloads. Before getting into detail about that, however, a little background is in order. The 9mm Luger cartridge the most popular and widespread handgun round in history is not without quirks and mysteries of its own. The Luger pistol was designed by an Austrian, Georg Luger, an employee of the great German munitions firm DWM (Deutsche Waffen- und Munitionsfabriken), based on an early semiautomatic design by Hugo Borchardt. The Luger design reached its near- April-May

40 Loading for Lugers final stages in 1900, at which point DWM began to market it to armies and governments around the world. Initially, it was chambered for the.30 Luger (7.65 Parabellum), a bottlenecked rimless cartridge. In this form, it was adopted by Switzerland, the first nation to use the Luger officially; Switzerland also used it the longest, not replacing it with the SIG until At the time, many designers were working on semiautomatic pistols, with the prospect of large army contracts dangling like sugar plums. Most employed a bottlenecked cartridge because it was believed this would give the best gas seal. This was all untrodden territory for pistol designers, as they tried blowback, gas-operated, delayed-blowback and (in the case of the Luger) toggle designs. The German army was interested in the Luger but felt it lacked stopping power and requested a more powerful cartridge. Georg Luger took his.30 Luger cartridge, necked it up to 9mm, and the result was the 9mm Parabellum (to use its proper name). It was, of course, anything but that simple. In those days, few cartridges headspaced on the mouth, and figuring how it would all work was a major effort. Not convinced that a The famous DWM (Deutsche Waffen- und Munitionsfabriken) trademark is in scroll on the Luger toggle. straight case could provide a sufficient seal, Luger designed the chamber with a slight (1/20th of a millimeter), sharp-edged shoulder, 5 millimeters from the mouth. When the case expanded in this stepped chamber, he reasoned, the shoulder would act as a gasket. This is why, when looking at a case ejected from a Luger, you find a shiny ring. In the end, this feature turned out to be unnecessary, but it was built into every 9mm Luger until production finally ceased in Presented to the GPK (Prussian weapons-testing commission), the new Luger underwent exhaustive tests over the course of several years. In 1906, the Imperial German Navy adopted it, and two years later, the German army followed suit. The pistol was designated Pistolen 08, or P.08, and has been known as such ever since. Military ammunition was loaded with a 124-grain (8.0-gram) bullet of a novel design. We now know it as the truncated cone. A member of the GPK, Oberleutnant Bullets tested: (1) Sierra 125-grain FMJ (shortened for snail drum), (2) Nosler 124-grain JHP, (3) Speer 124 TMJ-RN, (4) Hornady 125 HAP, (5) Speer 125 cast RN, (6) Berry s 124 Target HP and (7) Ideal truncated cone The old Ideal mould casts a truncated-cone bullet that is almost identical to the original DWM 278F military bullet, with the addition of a lube groove. Adolf Fischer is credited with designing this bullet, which turned out to be tremendously effective. In fact, it was too effective. At a rated 1,120 fps, this load functioned through the P.08 perfectly. The navy Luger had a 6-inch barrel, while the army model was 4 inches. Around 1909, work began on an even longer-barreled version, the lange (long) 08, or lp.08. It had an 8-inch barrel with a tangent sight adjustable to 800 metres and came with a detachable stock, intended for use by artillerymen. Ever since, it has been known as the artillery model. It was produced from 1913 to In 1916, a large-capacity drum magazine was introduced. Known as the snail drum because of its shape, it held 32 rounds. With its shoulder stock and drum magazine, the lp.08 was the forerunner of the submachine gun. From a loading point of view, the drum is particularly interesting because the phrase notoriously unreliable has been applied to it even more often than the pistol itself. This accusation is not supported by history. During the last two years of the Great War, as Germany developed its storm trooper tactics for breaking the stalemate in the trenches, the lp.08 and drum magazine played a significant role, providing devastating short-range firepower for storming trenches. By the time the drum maga Handloader 301

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42 Loading for Lugers Loads for the 9mm Luger Hodgdon lists 5.5 grains of CFE Pistol as the maximum load ONLY for the 124-grain Berry s HBRN-TP. Other maximums with that powder range from 4.8 grains with the Hornady 125-grain HAP to 5.1 grains with the Sierra 125-grain FMJ. However, in three different Lugers, working up to 5.5 grains with various bullets produced no adverse pressure signs. Velocities were within the desired range, and all three pistols functioned perfectly. These loads, however, should be considered maximum. Starting loads for your pistol should begin at the levels recommended by the powder maker, Hodgdon. It is worth noting that allowable Eu- Above, the ring from the Luger s unique stepped chamber is clearly visible on the top cartridge case. Right, SAAMI maximum allowable cartridge length is inches. The snail drum magazine from 1916 to 1918, as well as modern reproduction snail drums, require a slightly shorter (1.098 inches) cartridge. zine appeared, however, a major change had already been made to 9mm Luger ammunition. In 1915, the Germans accused the British of using dum-dum bullets (the catch-all term for any bullet that expanded on impact). The French responded by accusing the Germans of the same thing, with the Luger. The 9mm truncated cone was highly effective, with its forward edge and shoulder tending to bore a hole, like a paper punch, creating a wound that bled more freely. Although perfectly acceptable under the Hague Convention, the controversy over the truncated cone led to incidents of the French summarily executing any German prisoner found with such ammunition. Once this belief became widespread, German soldiers avoided the ammunition, leading the army to replace the truncated cone bullet, in 1916, with the now-familiar full-metal-jacket, rounded, semispitzer bullet. This was the ammunition in use when the first drum magazines appeared on the scene in Today, the SAAMI maximum length for 9mm Parabellum ammunition is inches. This will fit into any standard Luger magazine, but, oddly enough, not the drum. The maximum length for drum ammunition is inches, and this applies to both an original German (1917) drum and a new, Italian-made reproduction. Apparently, German military ammunition from the Great War was shorter than we are accustomed to today. For the handloader wanting ammunition for a snail drum, this Handloads with CFE Pistol Powder velocity maximum 1917 DWM 1915 DWM 1906 Carbine bullet charge 4-inch barrel 8-inch barrel 11-inch barrel (grains) (grains) (fps) (fps) (fps) 125 Sierra FMJ 5.5 1,103 1,277 1, Nosler JHP 5.5 1,079 1,258 1, Speer TMJ-RN 5.5 1,142 1,290 ** 125 Hornady HAP 5.5 1,115 1,274 1, Speer cast roundnose 5.5 1,134 1,265 1, Berry s Target HP 5.5 1,100 1,254 ** 125 Ideal Truncated Cone* 5.5 1,201 1,348 ** Factory Loads: 124 FederalAmerican Eagle FMJ 1,041 1,208 1, Nosler JHP 1,048 1,190 1,247 * The Ideal bullet duplicates form and weight of the pre-1916 German military bullet. ** The 11-inch barreled Luger carbine was not available for test-firing with all loads. Be Alert Publisher cannot accept responsibility for errors in published load data. ropean pressures for the 9mm Parabellum are higher than in the U.S. Also, the Luger s stepped chamber may (!) reduce chamber pressures slightly, delivering different performance than published data. All this adds up to a greater need to start low and work up, watching everything from muzzle velocity to the cycling of the action Handloader 301

43 creates a slight difficulty. First, bullets that duplicate, as closely as possible, the 1916 German bullet must be located. The closest I ve found is the Speer 124-grain TMJ. Its elongated semispitzer nose allows it to clear the forward lip of the magazine without running into it the biggest problem with getting the snail drum to feed. The second consideration is seating depth. I seated those bullets to an overall cartridge length of inches and found they would load and feed from the snail drum just fine. As with most things to do with guns, there is a certain amount of familiarization required with the drum before it can be used effectively. There is a handbook called Instructions for the Long Pistol 08 with Insertable Drum Magazine, which explains the drum, the use of its loading tool, and how it marries with the pistol and shoulder stock. It s a translation of a 1917 German instruction manual and, for a few bucks, well worth getting. For pistols with standard magazines, ammunition within the SAAMI length limit will work. There are, however, other considerations in getting a Luger to achieve its undoubted reliability. First, the pistol needs to be clean and well lubricated. Second, the ammunition needs to meet the intended ballistic standards. This is a 124-grain bullet at 1,120 fps (rated). As the accompanying table shows, barrel length plays a part in this, but note the word rated. In a 4-inch barrel, you may get 1,050 fps, but it will still function fine. The point is, the pistol requires a certain minimum power to operate the toggle breechblock, eject the empty cartridge, cock the striker and pick up and seat a new cartridge. The entire Luger barrel assembly ( upper unit ) moves to the rear on firing. This releases the toggle, after which the breechblock continues back alone. Obviously a 6-inch barrel is heavier than a 4, and an 8 heavier than a 6. Military ammunition was pow- Rifle Tang Peep Sight Adjustable for Windage and Elevation Fits Most Lever-Action Rifles Blued Steel Finish Made in the U.S.A th Ave. NE, Suite C Spicer, MN Tel: (320) info@littlecrowgunworks.com The Original WFT Single caliber trimmer (3/8 shaft) available for.17 through.338 calibers. $69.95 The WFT2 Interchangeable caliber trimmer (1/2 shaft) available for.17 through.45 calibers. Housing Assembly - $69.95 Chambers sold separately - $24.95 The Big Boy WFT 50 BMG model also available We currently manufacture more than 150 different calibers WFT provides accurate and consistent results, GUARANTEED! After a dozen cases you should be an expert! Custom, odd, obsolete and specialty cartridge cases Wildcat cartridge development Manufacturing OVER 450 calibers Correct headstamped wildcat brass P.O. Box 445, Hollywood, MD (301) Get Trim......with the World s Finest Trimmer The WFT is designed for trimming bottle-neck cartridges powered by your hand held drill. Starting at $69.95 Visit our website to order and view video demonstrations, instructions and additional products. April-May

44 erful enough to operate any of the three. Note: Before 1914, Luger produced a variety of carbine pistols with even longer barrels and produced some ammunition marked for carbines only, but this never had a military application. Don t worry about century-old steel. Lugers were made of the best steel available and manufactured to superb standards. You are not subjecting it to +P or +P+ loads, only to loads for which it was designed, and which are required for it to function properly. This sensitivity about pressures is a result of an erroneous belief which, as with many Luger myths, has gained credence from constant repetition. During the Second World War, some 9mm Parabellum ammunition was marked for machine pistols only, and the www. Rim Rock Bullets.net Premium Cast Lead Bullets Cowboy Standard Gas-Check GR. RNFP/500 $ GR. RNFP/500 $ GR. TC /500 $ GR. RNFP/500 $ GR. RNFP/500 $ GR. RNFP/500 $ GR. RNFP/500 $ LC 160 GR. RNFP/500 $ LC 200 GR. RNFP/500 $ GR. RNFP/100 $ Keith125 GR. SWC /500 $ GR. RN /500 $ mm 115 GR. RN /500 $ mm 125 GR. RN /500 $ GR. DEWC/500 $ GR. SWC /500 $ GR. RNFP /500 $ ACP 200 GR. SWC /500 $ ACP 230 GR. RN /500 $ LC 255 GR. SWC /500 $ GR. SWC-HP/100 $ GR. LBT-WFN/100 $ GR. SWC /100 $ GR. SWC-HP /100 $ GR. SWC /100 $ GR. LBT-WFN/100 $ LC 260 GR. SWC-HP/100 $ LC 325 GR. LBT-LWN/100 $ GR. LBT-LWN/100 $ GR. LBT-WFN/100 $61.00 Prices subject to change without notice. This is a good cross reference of the bullets we offer. We have about 144 sets of molds with new molds coming. Sixteen employees working 10 hr. a day shifts 4 days a week with 9 casters, 6 auto lubers and 12 star lubers gas checking every day. We have bullets made with five different alloys that we order 40,000-60,000 lbs at a time a mixed per our set alloys. Now in our new state-of-the-art 12,000 square foot facility! Our Online Catalog Has Over 100 Different Bullets! Everything is in stock Specialty Sizing Available Brinell Hardness from 4-22 Rim Rock Bullets Minesinger Trail Polson, MT (406) Mon-Thurs, 8:00-5:00 p.m. MST sales@rimrockbullets.net conclusion was that it was higher pressure, higher velocity and unsuitable for Lugers. In fact, according to Dr. Geoffrey Sturgess, a world Luger authority, there is no difference in pressure, only in the cartridge case itself. By 1943, with brass in short supply, the Germans began experimenting with steel cases. Since these did not function well in the Luger s stepped chamber, such ammunition was restricted to the Schmeisser and similar guns, while brass-cased ammunition was reserved for pistols. The final consideration is the magazine. Luger magazines have a very stiff spring. This is required to get each round into position to feed properly. For most of us, getting the eighth round into the magazine is difficult, and one of the purposes of the Luger takedown tool is to assist in this. If the spring weakens, cartridges won t feed properly. Original magazines may have weak springs for a number of reasons. If a magazine is loaded and left that way for years, it weakens the spring, and you have no idea where the magazine has been for the last century. Alternatively, some bright light may have dealt with the difficult loading by clipping a loop or two off the spring to make it more user friendly, thereby impairing its function. The easy answer is to buy a couple of new, reproduction Luger magazines, as made by Mec-Gar. They work beautifully, and that way there is no risking an original collectible magazine that alone is worth several hundred dollars. Keep in mind that the Luger was exhaustively tested, not only by Germany, but by Switzerland, the Netherlands, and more than a dozen other countries; it worked, and worked well, in the unbelievable conditions of the Western Front from 1914 to There is nothing inherently unreliable about it. Give it a little oil, feed it proper ammunition from a sound magazine, and it purrs like a Mercedes Handloader 301

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46 John Haviland The.35 Remington provides no great shakes in performance. Numerous hunters have considered it obsolete. Yet, for over a century,.35 Remington rifles have been used to successfully hunt big game, and it would be a shame for the cartridge to perish. Thankfully, quite a few of today s powders work well in the.35 Remington s relatively small case to increase velocity. Hornady s aerodynamic FTX bullet also helps enhance the.35 s performance. With these components, handloaders can expand the.35 Remington s versatility and keep semiautomatic, pump and lever-action rifles shooting not obsolete. Modern Loads for a Centenarian Cartridge The selection of.35-caliber hunting bullets is rather limited. Hornady and Sierra make roundnose bullets, and Hawk makes round-tip and flatpoint 200-grain bullets. A very few pointed bullets are available, such as the Hornady 200-grain Spire Point, but these pointed bullets are hazardous to load in most tubular magazines. Speer offers 180- and 220-grain flatpoint bullets. Bullets heavier than the Speer 220 grain are unsuitable, because they occupy too much room in the.35 Remington s small case, causing velocity to suffer. A few years ago, Hornady developed its Flex Tip (FTX) bullets for lever-action cartridges. FTX 200-grain bullets for the.35 Remington are an improvement over blunt-shaped bullets due to retained velocity and decreased bullet drop. Its flexible polymer tip allows for safe loading in tubular magazines. That pointed tip enables forming a sleek ogive that gives the bullet a ballistic coefficient nearly twice that of a regular roundnose bullet of the same weight and results in about 3 inches less drop at 150 yards and 8 This Marlin 336C.35 Remington is of fairly recent manufacture..35 inches at 200 yards, compared to a roundnose of the same weight. The FTX also holds onto about 60 percent of its original energy at 200 yards, compared to a roundnose bullet s 40 percent. The FTX has a longer bearing surface than other 200-grain bullets with a blunt nose. The longer surface contacting the rifling can increase pressures. Hornady, though, lists the same loads for its 200-grain FTX and roundnose bullets. The Hodgdon 2015 Annual Manual lists a maximum of 45.0 grains of LEVERevolution powder for Hornady 200-grain roundnose bullets but only 41.4 grains of the same powder with 200-grain FTX bullets. Maximum charges for other powders used with FTX bullets are 46 Handloader 301

47 Remington UPDATE 1.0 to 3.5 grains lower than those suggested for roundnose bullets. As a result, the Hodgdon manual lists velocities for the FTX about 100 to 140 fps slower than for roundnose bullets. The Hornady Handbook of Cartridge Reloading 9th Edition lists an overall cartridge length of inches for 200-grain FTX bullets loaded in the.35 Remington. That cartridge length positions the case mouth right at the very front of the bullet s cannelure. Seating an FTX bullet to that depth slightly compresses a maximum charge of LEVERevolution powder. For a bit of breathing room, I seat FTX bullets for a cartridge length of inches, the.35 Remington s maximum cartridge length. A Marlin 336C lever action was used to shoot the cartridges listed in the accompanying load table. All bullets listed were crimped, as six cartridges crowded into the Marlin s magazine and recoil from firing a round could push a bullet without a crimp into the case. An excessive amount of crimp, though, will bulge the slender shoulder of a.35 Remington case. To roll crimp cases the proper amount, I ran a Hornady factory load into my RCBS seating die then turned in the die until its crimp shoulder was in tight contact with the case mouth. The.35 Remington case does not contain a whole lot of room for a bullet and propellant, so powders with a mid-relative burning rate work best. For years, April-May

48 .35 Remington UPDATE TAC and LEVERevolution powders boost the velocity of 200-grain bullets fired in the.35 Remington. Four bullets were fired in a Marlin 336C.35 Remington with several new powders (left to right): Speer 180-grain FNSP, Hornady 200-grain FTX, Sierra Pro-Hunter 200-grain roundnose and Speer 220-grain FNSP. H-4895, IMR-3031 and IMR-4064 have been standard powders for handloading the.35 Remington. They are still good choices. From my Marlin 336C, H-4895 produced good accuracy paired with Speer 180-grain bullets. H-4895 also attained the fastest velocities shooting Speer 220-grain bullets from the Marlin s 20-inch barrel. Extreme velocity spread for three shots was 14 and 49 fps. One group measured over 3 inches, and the other group under an inch at 100 yards. IMR-4064 turned in one of the fastest velocities with Sierra Pro-Hunter bullets. Its low, 45 fps extreme spread helped it shoot a 1.29-inch group. IMR-3031 shot Sierra bullets adequately, but its 79 fps extreme velocity spread caused bullets to string vertically. If a load turned in an extreme spread of 50 fps or more, holes from a three-shot group had a noticeable vertical span to them on the target at 100 yards. Varget provided even velocities with Speer 180- and 220-grain bullets and Sierra 200-grain bullets. Groups were acceptable, and of the five powders used, Varget shot the tightest group with Speer 220-grain bullets. Velocity was also right up there, but for some reason, Hornady FTX bullets had quite a bit of velocity spread and vertical stringing when fired with Varget. Benchmark and IMR-8208 XBR can be lumped together as okay powders for the.35 Remington. IMR-8208 XBR provided even velocities and did shoot Speer 180-grain bullets under an inch. I happened to scroll through the Metallic Load Guide Edition 5.0 on the Ramshot Reloading Powders website ( and noticed TAC and X-Terminator powders were listed with Sierra 200-grain bullets for the.35 Remington. I am happy I did. TAC fired Sierra bullets at the highest velocity of the seven powders loaded. Six, three-shot groups were also acceptably accurate, fired during several sessions at the bench. X-Terminator was close behind in producing high velocity. Sierra bullets and X-Terminator almost always shoot groups of an inch or less. The Marlin shot a.47-inch group with the pair early last fall before deer season. The rifle shot a 1.09-inch group during a nasty wind-blown winter day. Sierra bullets and X-Terminator are the load I keep in the rifle during deer season, though I never did see a buck bigger than a yearling spike. LEVERevolution is all about speed. It shot Speer 180-grain bullets faster than the seven other powders tested and FTX bullets a good 100 fps faster than three other powders. It did lag behind IMR-4064, TAC and X-Terminator shooting Sierra 200-grain bullets. LEVERevolution turned in good accuracy too, with the FTX bullets grouping in.62 inch. Other days the FTX and LEVERevolution pair shot about 1.5-inch groups. Speaking of velocity, the Marlin s 20-inch barrel shot some loads faster than velocities listed in reloading manuals using Remington cases: The Hodgdon 2015 Annual Manual lists velocities for the.35 Remington from a 24- inch barrel, stating a velocity of 2,147 fps for the Speer 180-grain bullet with 43.0 grains of BL-C(2) powder. Ten feet in front of the Marlin s muzzle, the Speer bullet A crimp is required for.35 Remington cartridges that will be used in a tubular magazine. RCBS dies were used for the accompanying handloads Handloader 301

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50 Left, Hornady 200-grain FTX bullets shot this.79-inch group paired with IMR-8208 XBR powder. Above, quite often Speer 220-grain bullets shot well under an inch at 100 yards with a variety of powders. clocked 2,140 fps with a grain less of the powder. The Hodgdon manual states 2,302 fps for the Speer 180-grain bullet with 45.0 grains of LEVERevolution. The Marlin shot the same bullet 2,272 fps with a grain less powder. The manual suggested a velocity of 2,116 fps for 200-grain FTX bullets with 41.4 grains of LEVERevolution. Shooting 0.4 grain less LEVERevolution, the Marlin shot FTX bullets 2,176 fps. Hodgdon also listed a velocity of 1,998 fps with Speer 220-grain bullets paired with 38.0 grains of Varget. The Marlin shot the Speer bullet 2,019 fps with the same powder charge. The Sierra Infinity Reloading Manual recorded velocities from a Marlin 336 with a 20-inch barrel, listing 2,050 fps with Sierra 200-grain bullets loaded with 39.1 grains of IMR My rifle shot the Sierra bullets 2,123 fps with 38.5 grains of IMR More than one handloader has complained that the.35 Remington s slight shoulder and steep case body taper make the cartridge a bother to reload. The.35 s low maximum average pressure of 33,500 psi also allegedly produces incomplete case expansion. The slight shoulder and low pressure supposedly cause primers to back out of factory-loaded cartridges. Remington.35 Remington factory loads with 150-grain bullets did shrink at the shoulder about.003 inch after firing. That meant the cases had expanded to fill the chamber, but the Marlin had a tight enough bolt lockup that primers had not backed out of the pockets. The.35 Remington does have a slim shoulder, but its angle is steeper than a s. It has always correctly positioned cases Deer are the main game for hunters carrying.35 Remington rifles Handloader 301

51 Table I.35 Remington Factory Loads 3-shot stated actual 100-yard bullet velocity velocity group (grains) (fps) (fps) (inches) 200 Hornady LEVERevolution FTX 2,225 2, Remington Express Core-Lokt PSP 2,300 2, Remington Express Core-Lokt SP 2,080 2, Table II.35 Remington Handloads overall 3-shot loaded 100-yard bullet powder charge length velocity group (grains) (grains) (inches) (fps) (inches) 180 Speer FNSP BL-C(2) , H , H , LEVERevolution , Varget , X-Terminator , IMR-8208 XBR , Benchmark , Hornady FTX LEVERevolution , H , IMR-8208 XBR , Varget , Sierra Pro-Hunter roundnose Benchmark , LEVERevolution , IMR , IMR , TAC , Varget , X-Terminator , Speer FNSP Benchmark , H , IMR , Varget , IMR-8208 XBR , Notes: Remington cases and Winchester Large Rifle primers were used with all loads. Velocities were recorded 10 feet in front of the muzzle of the 20-inch barrel of a Marlin 336C rifle with a Leupold FX II 4x33mm scope. Temperatures varied from 20 to 30 degrees Fahrenheit. Be Alert Publisher cannot accept responsibility for errors in published load data. in the chamber. My RCBS sizing die is set to full-length size cases and set the shoulders of fired cases back.002 inch. That amount of sizing allows cases to freely chamber in the rifle. Cases that have been fired numerous times may become work-hardened, and sizing may fail to set the shoulder back. In that event, cases require annealing. Cases don t stretch all that much either. I ve loaded and shot one batch of Federal cases 10 times. Only one case has split at the web. Every third firing, maybe a few out of a batch slightly exceed the inch maximum case length, but I trim.35 Remington cases every time after they are sized. This is done not for safety s April-May 2016 sake but to apply the same amount of case mouth crimp on the bullets. It does not take much excessive crimping force to buckle a.35 Remington case. Nobody I have met who s shot a.35 Remington considered it a long-range deer cartridge or appropriate for larger game like elk. It is what it is an old cartridge loaded to mild pressure. But its thumb-size bullets have been killing deer just fine for 110 years, and it would be a shame for the.35 to disappear from the hardwood ridges and river bottom willow thickets. Many recently developed powders help handloaders advance its ballistics to keep old rifles shooting for years to come. 51

52 Brian Pearce In the 61 years since the Ruger Blackhawk revolver first appeared in 1955, it has undergone many evolutionary changes. The latest is the New Model Super Blackhawk (Bisley) for the.454 Casull and.480 Ruger with five-shot cylinders. It offers power and accuracy in a field gun that is capable of taking the world s largest game. The history of this Blackhawk version started back in the 1990s when Ruger engineers took note of the work performed by custom revolver smiths, such as John Linebaugh, Hamilton Bowen, Jim Stroh, David Clements, John Gallagher and many others, who were converting New Model Blackhawk Bisley models with five-shot cylinders and chambering them for powerful big-bore cartridges, such as the.475 and.500 Linebaughs. These revolvers were best quality and feature linebored chambers, premium grade barrels, minimum tolerances, custom sights and were often fitted with a barrel band that also served to support the ejector rod housing when subjected to the associated heavy recoil. The list of options was long, and finish work was often exquisite. Ruger s Five-Shot Super Blackhawk:.454 Casull and.480 Ruger Ruger s New Model Super Blackhawk revolvers are constructed of stainless steel and feature five-shot cylinders Handloader 301

53 Over 150 Handloads Tested! Both the.454 Casull (left) and.480 Ruger (right) require a heavy roll crimp. In the late 1990s, Ruger discussed its five-shot Blackhawk engineering project at length with me. I suggested Ruger duplicate many of the features of the above custom revolvers but offer it at approximately half the price. Calibers could include the.45 Colt,.454 Casull,.480 Ruger (which was almost ready for announcement in the Super Redhawk) and.475 and.500 Linebaughs. Unfortunately Ruger temporarily put the project on the shelf, as interest in big-bore sixguns was at a pinnacle. In 2015 Ruger distributor Lipsey s convinced the manufacturer to produce the New Model Super Blackhawk (Bisley model).454 Casull and.480 Ruger to be distributed exclusively through Lipsey s ( seys.com). Although this new revolver may not have all the same features as the above custom guns, it is well made and accurate, with an MSRP of $969. Engineering changes were necessary to house these big-bore cartridges and to safely handle the pressures and recoil associated with each. The five-shot, unfluted cylinder has a standard outside diameter of inches, is constructed of proprietary steels and is void of engraving. Bolt notches are located between the chambers, which results in the chamber walls being full strength. Chambers are countersunk, which is not to increase strength, but rather it supports the loading gate and prevents it from dislodging, and becoming inoperable, during recoil. The newly shaped base pin head is drilled and contains a setscrew. When tightened, it extends into a small hole located on the bottom of the barrel, pre- venting the base pin from jumping during heavy recoil, similar to the system used by Freedom Arms. The ejector rod and housing are around one inch longer than other Blackhawk revolvers, which allows fired cases to be easily cleared from the chambers. Typical of other New Model single actions, trigger pull of both revolvers was a bit heavy at 52 ounces, but the triggers can be polished and smoothed and new after-market springs installed to give a light, crisp pull. The grip fit is poor and is something Ruger needs to address, and I would rather see a natural wood rather than the red laminate currently used. With the longer and heavier ejector rod housing, Ruger should consider installing a barrel stud for better support and to prevent the ejector housing screw from being sheared, which can happen when using full-house.44 Magnum and heavy.45 Colt loads in Ruger revolvers. The addition of a barrel band, a blue steel version and barrel length options would make sense. Other than those few suggestions, the revolvers leave little room for criticism, as they otherwise exhibit good fit, finish, timing and overall quality. The.454 Casull was developed by Dick Casull during the 1950s, but it wasn t until 1983 that it was offered in a production revolver, the Freedom Arms Model 83. It remained proprietary until 1997 when it became a standard SAAMI cartridge, with multiple manufacturers now offering guns and ammunition. It has an industry maximum average pressure (MAP) of 65,000 psi, but most factory loads are held to around 7 to 10 percent below that figure. Factory loads are capable of pushing a 260-grain JSP bullet over 1,800 fps or a 300-grain bullet 1,600-plus fps. In spite of its name, the.454 utilizes bullets that are.452 inch but can produce good results with bullets measuring.451 and.4515 inch. Several factory loads were tried as reference ammunition (see accompanying table). Accuracy was generally good, with most loads producing groups that April-May

54 Five-Shot Super Blackhawk Specifications: Ruger New Model Super Blackhawk.454 Casull and.480 Ruger Material: stainless steel Barrel length: inches Weight:.454 Casull, 50.4 ounces;.480 Ruger, 49.2 ounces Rear sight: fully adjustable Front sight: ramp Barrel twist:.454, 1:24 inches;.480, 1:18 inches Capacity: 5 Average trigger pull: 52 ounces Distributor: Lipsey s MSRP: $969 Table I The New Model Super Blackhawk revolver features a new base-pin head design with a setscrew to help lock it in place when subjected to heavy recoil. hovered between 1.0 to 1.5 inches at 25 yards. The best groups obtained using factory loads came from Hornady s 300-grain XTP/ MAG, which produced three, fiveshot groups that measured between.70 to.90 inch center to center. Average velocity was 1,597 fps. There are a few items to be aware of before choosing handloading components for the.454 Casull. As indicated, the.454 develops considerable pressure, up to 65,000 psi with full house loads, and there are many jacketed bullets that cannot handle this level of pressure. For example bullets with comparatively thin jackets and a soft lead core that are designed for standard.45 Colt pressures and velocities can behave erratically (core and jacket separation) when subjected to high pressures. More commonly they can produce excess, dangerous pressures due to bullet obturation, which can push the jacket with abnormal forces outwardly against the throat and bore. For these reasons, it is suggested to use.45 Colt jacketed bullets for midrange velocities that generally don t exceed 1,300 to.454 Casull Factory Load Performance load velocity group comments (grains) (fps) (inch) 250 Winchester Medium Velocity JHP 1, Buffalo Bore JFN 1, second most accurate 300 Cor-Bon JSP 1, Hornady XTP/MAG 1, most accurate load tried 300 Winchester JFN 1, Buffalo Bore LFN 1, Buffalo Bore LWN-GC 1,388 Notes: Loads were fired from a inch barreled Ruger Super Blackhawk Bisley. The ejector rod is long and easily clears cases from the chambers. 1,400 fps, which are similar velocities and pressures as produced by the.44 Magnum. Examples include the Sierra 240-grain JHC, Hornady 250-grain XTP-HP, Speer 250-grain Gold Dot HP and Nosler 250-grain JHP. Regarding midrange loads that generate between 1,200 and 1,400 fps, using the above bullets, several powders produced notable performance. Examples include Accurate No. 2 and No. 7, Vihtavuori N350, Alliant 2400, Power Pistol, Hodgdon Longshot and Ramshot True Blue. Accuracy was generally good with all loads listed in the accompanying table. The front sight is ramp style, and the rear sight is fully adjustable for windage and elevation. Table II.480 Ruger Factory Load Performance load velocity group comments (grains) (fps) (inch) 275 Buffalo Bore Barnes XPB 1, Hornady XTP-MAG 1, most accurate load 370 Buffalo Bore LFN (Mid-Range) accurate and lower recoil 370 Buffalo Bore LFN 1, Buffalo Bore WFN 1,181 Notes: Loads were fired from a inch barreled Ruger Super Blackhawk Bisley Handloader 301

55 Above, cast and jacketed bullets were used to develop handloads for the.480 Ruger, including (left to right): Hornady 325-grain XTP-MAG, Speer 325-grain Gold Dot SP, Oregon Trail 355-grain True Shot WN-FP and LBT 400-grain cast LFN-FP-PB. Right, several powders were used to develop.454 Casull and.480 Ruger handload data. For full-house loads, many excellent bullets that feature a thick jacket with a hardened alloyed core are designed specifically to handle.454 Casull pressures and velocities. Examples include the Hornady 240- and 300-grain XTP/ MAGs, Swift 300-grain A-Frame and Speer 300-grain Gold Dot HP (now DeepCurl). Proven powders include Alliant 2400, Power Pro 300-MP, Accurate No. 9 and Hodgdon H-110. Cast bullets loaded to maximum pressures and velocities are usually best if cast with a Brinell hardness number (BHN) of 18 to 22. Plain-base bullets can work very well, but their design must include a generous amount of bullet lube, and they should be cast of correct alloys to prevent leading. When pushed to maximum velocities and pressures, gas checks generally prevent excess barrel leading. The.454 Casull features a comparatively slow one-in-24-inch twist rate, which generally stabilizes bullets weighing between 240 and 335 grains. Heavier bullets can also work well, such as the Oregon Trail 360-grain True Shot WNFP, but the best accuracy is generally obtained when velocity is pushed to at least 1,350 to 1,400 fps. A heavy crimp is necessary to prevent bullets from jump- April-May

56 Five-Shot Super Blackhawk Table III New Model Super Blackhawk Bisley.454 Casull Handloads overall loaded bullet powder charge length velocity (grains) (grains) (inches) (fps) 240 Sierra JHC A , , , ,172 VV-N , , , , Cutting Edge Raptor HP A , , , , , Hornady XTP/MAG A , , , ,760 H , , Speer Gold Dot HP , , , Nosler JHP Longshot , , , ,278 A , , , , Hornady XTP-HP True Blue , , ,401 Power Pistol , , ,193 A , , ,133 (Continued right) ing crimp and walking out the chamber mouth when subjected to recoil. The crimp also aids with obtaining correct powder ignition, especially when using heavy charges of slow-burning ball (spherical) powders. All accompanying.454 handloads were crimped using an RCBS neckdown style roll crimp die, which was applied as a separate step after bullets were seated to their correct depth. Beginning in 1986, all.454 Casull cases began featuring a small rifle primer pocket, while previous cases featured a large primer pocket. The accompanying loads were developed with Starline cases featuring a small primer pocket and primed with Remington BR primers. Do not use any of the Table III The revolvers feature five-shot cylinders with countersuck chambers. Cylinder diameter is the same as six-shot Super Blackhawk revolvers: inches. New Model Super Blackhawk.454 Casull Handloads (Continued from left) overall loaded bullet powder charge length velocity (grains) (grains) (inches) (fps) 250 Hornady XTP-HP A , Barnes XPB Enforcer , Speer Gold Dot Power Pro 300-MP , , , Hornady XTP/MAG A , , , , , , , , , Swift A-Frame H , , , , , Sierra JSP VV-N , , , , LBT cast LFN PB Unique , , , , ,257 Longshot , , , , Cast Performance H ,194 WLN-GC , , Oregon Trail WNFP A ,400 H ,388 Notes: Starline cases and Remington BR primers were used throughout. Bullet diameter:.451,.4515 and.452 inch; maximum case length: inches; trim-to length: inches. Be Alert Publisher cannot accept responsibility for errors in published load data Handloader 301

57 Both revolvers (.454 Casull and.480 Ruger) proved accurate, with select loads grouping about one inch at 25 yards. accompanying data with older cases that feature a large primer pocket. CCI 450 or Federal 205 primers can be substituted for the Remington The.480 Ruger was formally announced in 2000/2001 as a joint development between Ruger and Hornady Manufacturing and was initially offered in the Super Redhawk. I always felt that it was offered in the wrong revolver, as the Super Redhawk is excessively large and heavy. When chambered in the Ruger Blackhawk Bisley, however, it is much handier to carry, and the excellent design of the Bisley grip frame handles recoil with significantly greater comfort. The.480 Ruger case is basically a.475 Linebaugh cut down from to inches. Both utilize.475-inch jacketed bullets, while cast bullets are generally sized to.476 inch. Hornady factory loads advertise a 325-grain XTP/MAG bullet at 1,350 fps, with companies such as Speer and Buffalo Bore offering a variety of cast and jacketed bullet loads at varying velocities. With SAAMI maximum average pressure established at 48,000 psi, the.480 operates at notably less pressure than the.454 Casull. Nonetheless, it offers a larger caliber that still delivers a heavy blow to large game in spite of generating less energy (which is not a particularly good method to measure the effectiveness of big-bore sixgun cartridges) while offering less recoil and muzzle report. This is a really good cartridge that is often underestimated and overlooked. April-May 2016 The new Ruger proved accurate, with most factory loads producing 1.0- to 1.5-inch groups. It should be noted that the.480 Ruger produces slower recoil than the.454 Casull, making it much easier to shoot well for long sessions. The best groups obtained with factory ammunition came from the Hornady 325-grain XTP/ MAG (1,311 fps), which consistently grouped five shots around an inch at 25 yards. Several powders more or less duplicated the velocities obtained with the Hornady 325-grain factory load, including Hodgdon Lil Gun, H-110, Ramshot Enforcer and Accurate No. 9. The accuracy differences among these powders was minimal, but 23.5 grains of No. 9 produced the single tightest group of all handloads tried. Moving on to the Speer 400-grain Gold Dot SP (DeepCurl) bullet, Accurate No. 9 and Hodgdon H-110 produced top performance, with the latter reaching almost 1,100 fps. Cast bullets are also excellent choices when handloading the.480 Ruger. Two were selected for testing, the Oregon Trail 355-grain True Shot WN FP-GC and my own LBT 400-grain cast LFN plain-base design. The Oregon Trail 355-grain bullet reached 1,400 fps using Alliant Power Pro 300-MP and Hodgdon Lil Gun powders and is an excellent choice for hunting big game. Mid-velocity range loads were also developed that are potent but offer considerably reduced recoil and muzzle report, and these loads often displayed low extreme spreads and outstanding accuracy. Examples include 15.0 grains of Accurate No. 7 for 1,022 fps, 12.0 grains of Hodgdon Longshot for 1,052 fps or 14.5 grains for 1,212 fps. For even lighter loads, try 9.0 grains of Accurate No. 2 for 956 fps, 8.5 grains of Hodgdon Titegroup for 942 fps or 10.0 grains of Alliant Power Pistol for 909 fps. Although these last three loads are light by comparison, they still deliver a substantial blow that should not be underestimated. The LBT 400-grain FP-PB bullet 57

58 Five-Shot Super Blackhawk reached nearly 1,200 fps using 22.5 grains of Hodgdon H-110 and is a top choice for hunting heavy game. This bullet likewise performed well at lower velocities with 10.0 grains of Longshot reaching 948 fps, which grouped under one inch. All loads in the accompanying tables are below industry MAP guidelines of 48,000 psi. It should be noted that some of the 355- and 400-grain bullet loads grouped above point of aim, even when the rear sight was adjusted all the way down. To remedy this issue, Ruger should consider installing a taller front sight to allow correct point of impact with all bullet weights and loads. The New Model Ruger Super Blackhawk.454 Casull and.480 Ruger performed well with a variety of loads and offered flawless function. Like most other Ruger products, these revolvers offer unusual reliability and will make outstanding field guns. Table IV New Model Super Blackhawk Bisley.480 Ruger Handloads overall loaded bullet powder charge length velocity (grains) (grains) (inches) (fps) 325 Hornady XTP/MAG , , , ,203 Lil Gun* , , , , , ,341 Enforcer , , , , ,291 H-110* , , , , ,303 A , , , , Speer Gold Dot SP Lil Gun* , , , ,379 Unique , , ,133 A , , , , Speer Gold Dot SP H-110* , , ,087 (Continued right) New Model Super Blackhawk Bisley.480 Ruger Handloads Table IV (Continued from left) overall loaded bullet powder charge length velocity (grains) (grains) (inches) (fps) 400 Speer Gold Dot SP A , , , Oregon Trail True Unique Shot WN FP-GC ,011 Power Pro 300-MP , ,421 Lil Gun* , ,394 Power Pistol ,085 Long Shot , , , ,212 W A , , , ,196 Titegroup , ,096 A , , LBT cast LFN H-110* ,124 FP-PB ,186 Longshot , ,095 * The six loads marked with an asterisk used CCI 350 primers. All others used CCI 300 primers. Notes: All loads were fired from the Ruger Super Blackhawk Bisley s inch barrel. Hornady cases were used throughout. Bullet diameter:.475 inch for jacketed bullets and.476 inch for cast bullets; maximum case length: inches; trim-to length: inches. Be Alert Publisher cannot accept responsibility for errors in published load data Handloader 301

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60 ROCKDock Reloading Bench Docking Mount System Checkmaker Gas Check Forming Dies Patmarlins Patmarlins.com Premium Hard-Cast Lubed and Sized Bullets * * * NEW * * * Gas Check Bullets Tel: Spotless cartridge cases may not be necessary, but they are a sign of attention to detail in handloading quality cartridges. For decades tumblers and vibrating case cleaners have done a good job of cleaning cases. In the last few years, though, ultrasonic cleaners have taken case cleaning to a nearly immaculate level. Ultrasonic cleaners work by creating high frequency vibrations that produce tiny air bubbles in the cleaning solution. The air bubbles collapse on the surface of submerged cases to intensely scrub and loosen dirt, powder fouling and sizing lubricant. After cases are cleaned, they must be rinsed Whispers are developments of SSK Industries. Custom barrels for Contenders, Encores, bolt guns and semi-autos as well as complete guns and the cans to keep them quiet are available. SSK chambers over 400 calibers. Wild wildcat ideas welcomed. SSK Industries 590 Woodvue Lane Wintersville, OH Tel: lyman turbo sonic 1200 PRODUCT TESTS by John Haviland Two ounces of Lyman Turbo Sonic Case Cleaning Solution added to a tank of water in the Lyman Turbo Sonic 1200 Ultrasonic Cleaner cleaned Remington cases inside and out after 16 minutes. and dried before moving on to the next loading step. I ve been using Lyman s new Turbo Sonic 1200 Ultrasonic Cleaner with several solutions to clean cases. The 1200 has a newly designed touch-screen operating panel with timer settings of 90, 180, 280, 380 and 480 seconds. Its 6.5x5.4x2.6-inch tank holds 1.27 quarts of cleaning solution to clean up to Remington or cases in a lift-out basket. Cases crowded in the cleaner absorb too much ultrasonic energy, lengthening cleaning time. Lyman suggests no more than two layers of cases in the basket and to keep as much space as possible between cases. After mixing the cleaning solution, the cleaner should be run for three minutes to remove the gases present in the solution and assist the cleaning solution in breaking the bond between the cases and fouling. I used several cleaning solutions mixed with water in the 1200 to clean Remington cases with stubborn powder fouling ironed on their necks, and 60 Handloader 301

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62 cases. A few squirts of liquid dish soap in a tank full of water failed to clean the cases much after running the 1200 for 16 minutes. After running the 1200 for 8 minutes with a mixture of half vinegar and half water, fouling on some of the necks and in the primer pockets had dissolved. After 16 minutes, most of the case necks and primer pockets were clean, and the interior of the cases were clean. The cases were squeaky clean. Two tablespoons of powdered citric acid added to a tank of water fairly well cleaned cases after 8 minutes, but primer pockets were still dirty. Another 8 minutes failed to clean the primer pockets. A half-ounce of Lyman Turbo Sonic Case Cleaning Solution is recommended to be added to 20 ounces of water for light cleaning, or one ounce of the solution for heavy cleaning. I added 2 ounces to a tank of water. After 8 minutes, the necks of most of the cases were clean, but primer pockets were still dirty. Another 8 minutes cleaned most of the primer pockets, and the cases were clean inside and out. MSRP is $ Visit online at: Handloader 301

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64 THUMLER S TUMBLER BRASS MASTER ULTRA VIBE CASE CLEANERS Made of durable steel construction - heavy polyethylene bowl - heavyduty, sealed ballbearing motors - thermally protected - fast, quiet operation to gallon capacity - industrial and rotary models available. Send for our free brochure! TRU-SQUARE METAL PRODUCTS, INC. P.O. Box 585, Auburn, Washington TEL (253) or Toll Free 1-(800) FAX (253) Manufacturers of quality case cleaners, deburring and tumbling equipment since 1959 Reloader s Press (Continued from page 9) That declaration was followed almost immediately by testing and development of the experimental Model Colt, which was followed by temporary adoption of the Colt New Service (250-grain flat-tipped, conical lead bullet at 725 fps) and finally, formal adoption of the Colt ACP (230-grain roundnose lead slug at 810 fps). Ironically, it wasn t that long ago that the U.S. joined with NATO to adopt the 9mm, one of the two most dismal failures in the Thompson/LaGarde 1904 studies, that wouldn t, or couldn t, drop a steer with 10 shots point blank. One hundred and nine years after the Thompson/LaGarde studies on live animals, the military and law enforcement appear to have returned to their old ways, mostly because of the ultimate nemesis recoil and weight of guns and ammunition. For quite some time, the.38 Special was considered the best law enforcement tool, which morphed into the to better deal with heavily armed bank robbers and automobiles. Then came the.38 Super, followed by the.357 Magnum, which was the darling of the law enforcement crowd until the trend back to the.45 ACP began to emerge among special operations teams, both military and civilian. Next up in civilian circles was the 10mm, and ultimately, the 10mm Lite, aka.40 S&W. The latter, of course, is an exact duplicate of the.38 WCF, aka.38-40, that first appeared in 1876 and pushed a 180-grain bullet 900 fps from a revolver and 1,300 fps from a rifle. Interestingly, it could be said that in 2016, a man with a.40 S&W semiautomatic pistol is little or no better off than a cowboy in the 1880s who carried a Colt sixshot.38 WCF revolver along with a Winchester rifle stuffed with 16 rounds in a tubular magazine. Of course, a Winchester is a bit difficult to conceal under a coat, but for home defense, where folks are 64 Handloader 301

65 more likely to encounter an armed assailant, the 140-year old Winchester.38 WCF, and slightly older.44 WCF and.45 Colt, work equally well with or without jacketed hollowpoints. Apparently, rather than chase their own tail around in circles for over 100 years, and spending a whole bunch of the public s money for the latest whiz-bang handgun, law enforcement and military types would be better off studying the roundabout history of cartridge development and, for whatever it might be worth, why the military chose the.45 ACP in the first place. We can also concede that the reason for the adoption of lesser handgun calibers over the years is that, for the most part, law enforcement types cannot shoot well with handguns that generate much more recoil than the standard.38 Special, especially when the adversary is shooting back. None of the above is intended to discredit personal defense loads presently offered by several manufacturers. Given individual circumstances, they might or might not work as advertised, but the reason for their existence, the FBI criterion, is based on the assumption that 12 inches of penetration in ordnance gelatin is representative of how it might perform in flesh and bone. Call it an educated guess, if that. Either way, regardless of bullet design, nothing works if you miss. For handloaders, it is easy enough to duplicate most personal defense loads by using the same bullet used in factory loads. Load up 1,000 rounds or so, then practice until you can hit a 5- to 6-inch target at 7 or 8 yards in the dark, at least as dark as the hallway of your home in the middle of the night. In the meantime, it is a lot more fun, and informative, to use those loads on small game or hogs, the latter of which will take up to 10 or 12 shots from a.380, 9mm or.38 Super before going down, sort of like a drugged-up Moro warrior in the Philippine jungle, circa April-May 2016 Master Distributor of LEE PRECISION Reloading Equipment What s the Titan Reloading advantage? WE RELOAD! OEHLER 35P IS BACK! Oehler is making a special, limited run of the Model 35 Proof Chronograph. Call or go online for more information. Phone: oehler-research.com Hayley s Custom Ammunition Specializing in the: Weird Wacky & Wonderful P.O. Box North River Seymour, TX Tel: Grand Ave. Hartford,WI Tel: P.O. Box 9135 Austin, TX RESEARCH, INC. 65

66 Sheep RiveR hunting CampS Traditional Fair Chase Alaskan Game Hunts! Brown Bear Black Bear Moose Ed Stevenson 1819 S. Henry Aaron Dr. Wasilla, AK Anneal Cartridge Cases the Easy Way! Enterprise Services, LLC (479) Satisfaction Guaranteed! From $98 BRASSTECH RESIZER True full-length resizing. Removes bulge from pistol brass. Cannot distort base of rifle brass. Superior leverage for easier use. Uses standard resizing dies. For more info go to AASA, Inc. Tel: (256) Deford Mill Rd. Hampton Cove, AL measuring pieces of new brass, they almost always turn out to be shorter than the minimum or the trim-to length measurement shown in loading manuals. The simplest way to determine overall length is to just compare your round with a factory load with the same bullet type. Measuring to three or four decimal places is way too much trouble and has no beneficial value, and a field-stripped barrel is a great gauge. Maybe you ve heard of the plunk test, which is the sound heard when a round drops into the chamber as it should. There is also a good case to make for sticking to the length shown in your favorite loading manual. That is surely the length at which the load was pressure tested, and differences will affect pressure. Seating a bullet more deeply raises pressure, and sometimes it doesn t take much to go from safe to ka-boom. Seating the bullet out farther usually lowers pressure, but some handloaders take that as a license to throw in a bit more powder, which is also a bad idea. * * * spent Primers Have you ever been inspecting finished handloads and found what appears to be a spent primer? This can be an issue with progressive tools when running them fast, and you either don t hear the dead primer fall or fail to notice that the incoming primer hasn t moved. What can happen is that the decapping pin actually gets stuck in the primer anvil and it can t fall out, or it could either be drawn back into the primer pocket on the up-stroke or pushed back in when you think you re seating a primer. This became a problem when I began loading a lot of 9mms on the new RCBS Pro Chucker 7 and found several rounds with dented primers. A call to RCBS explained the cause and produced the company s Pow r Punch decap rod that is spring-loaded to forcefully eject the primer. Problem solved Handloader 301 Patent Pending Pistol Pointers (Continued from page 25)

67 Cartridge Board (Continued from page 14) what it was intended to do, adding at least 300 fps to.270 Winchester figures. This was made possible not only by the larger capacity case but also by a roughly 3 4 inch freebore area in the throat and the appearance of IMR-4350 powder in This powder was the slowest burning then available and fit perfectly with.270 caliber, 130- and 150-grain bullets. Increased velocities meant that rifles sighted 3 inches high at 100 yards allowed a dead-on hold out to over 300 yards. Weatherby didn t have much money to advertise this, but riflefolk found out. One source was the entertainment industry located in southern California, as was Weatherby s shop. In the late 1940s, the area was composed mostly of folks who had served in World War II and enjoyed outdoor activities. Two of these were hunting and skeet shooting. Hollywood types took guided hunts using Weatherby rifles, and guides insisted on getting hunters close 200 yards or less if possible. Taking a shot where the bullet had to penetrate little more than hide to get to the vitals, bullets opened quickly, destroying organs and killing almost instantly. The.270 Weatherby Magnum gained a wonderful reputation. Unfortunately, when other shots required the slug to penetrate meat and bone at close range to get to where it belonged, it often broke up due to the high-impact velocity. Wounded animals escaped. Yet when hunters used the.270 Weatherby Magnum at extended ranges they got results at 300 to 400 yards equal to the.270 Winchester at 250 yards, because velocity had dropped off. Gun writers often played-up the first situation but not the second. This was 60 years ago, however, before the advent of trick bullets. Today Weatherby still offers for the.270 Weatherby Magnum a 100-grain varmint bullet starting out at 3,760 fps from a 26- inch barrel the proper length for any Weatherby cartridge. When sighted at 200 yards, it has less drop at 500 yards than the.220 Swift and hits three times harder when it gets there. Weatherby, Nosler and Federal all list 130-grain trick bullets at speeds up to 3,450 fps. All carry over 2,000 foot-pounds (ft-lbs) of energy to 300 yards, and the Weatherby loading of a Barnes TSX yields over 1,900 ft-lbs at 400 yards. Weatherby also offers a conventional pointed, expanding slug for those who understand its advantages and disadvantages. The same three companies offer 140-grain loads using various trick bullets. This is puzzling as they offer little, if anything, over the 130-grain numbers. In 150 grains, Weatherby sells both a conventional softpoint and Nosler Partition at 3,245 fps muz- RGB BULLET CO. Quality Hard-Cast Bullets BHN 5-22 Large Selection of Pistol & Rifle Bullets PO Box 130 Littlerock, CA Gas Checked & Plain Base Match Grade Cast Bullets Everything from 7mm to.500 S&W, BHN Real Keith Bullets -.357,.41,.44 & , 465 & 500 Gr. in.500 S&W,.460 S&W Gr. Only $ NW 100 St. St. John, KS Tel: Website: zle velocity. It hits hard with 3,507 ft-lbs of energy at the muzzle and 1,981 ft-lbs out at 400 yards. Nosler also loads its ammunition with the 150-grain Partition, a hard bullet to beat in any cartridge. Simply put, the.270 Weatherby Magnum is perhaps our least understood big game round. One could argue it s ideal for all hunting west of the Mississippi, outperforming all smaller-caliber rounds while giving up nothing to the short 7mms. Of course, there are better cartridges for the big bears and perhaps moose under some circumstances. The.270 Weatherby Magnum delivers significantly more energy than factory loads, however, and heaven knows big piles of moose have been reduced to possession by the old 06. Roy Weatherby s first cartridge has turned out just fine. Encore & Contender/G2 Parts Tools Upgrades Trigger Jobs & More Mike Bellm s TCs Tel: Since We supply all of CorBon s cast bullets! Introducing the GRX Recoil Lug for the Ruger 10/22! The GRX solves the chronic accuracy problem with the 10/22 platform by focusing the recoil area to a lug similar to a centerfire rifle. Eliminates fliers and improves accuracy 15% to 20% Simply installed by replacing the barrel retainer, fitting and bedding the lug into the stock (instructions included) Little Crow Gunworks, LLC th Ave. NE, Suite C Spicer, MN Tel: (320) April-May

68 Q uinetics C ORPORATION Made in the U.S.A. Quinetics ULTIMATE BULLET PULLER with NEW TWIST Chuck Assembly! Phone/Fax: VICKERMAN Inline Window Seating Die For Extremely Accurate Seating 100% Guarantee Dayton Machine Shop, LLC P.O. Box 25 Dayton, WA vickermandies.com In Range (Continued from page 70) heal. In 1908, the German army adopted the Luger Pistole 08, chambered for the 9mm Luger, and the 124-grain truncated-cone bullet became standard issue. DWM was both a military contractor and civilian gun-and-ammunition maker. The truncated-cone bullet was designated 278F, but ammunition was also available with the same bullet in hollowpoint form (278H) and roundnose (278G). The packaging was all pretty much alike, both for civilian export and German domestic military use. When war broke out in Europe in August 1914, the Germans immediately invaded Belgium, where they were met by the British Expeditionary Force as well as the French and Belgian armies. The Germans committed documented atrocities in Belgium (although not as many as British propaganda claimed) and shot civilians suspected of being franc-tireurs. These activities made headlines around the world. Germany s public-relations problem only got worse. In April 1915, it employed poison gas on the Western Front for the first time, causing horror around the world. Then, a few weeks later, a U-boat sank the passenger liner Lusitania. Among the 1,197 Lusitania victims were 128 Americans. As world opinion hardened, the last thing Germany needed was an accusation of using expanding bullets. The charge was directed specifically at the Luger s truncated-cone ammunition, which was having its desired (but perfectly legal) effect. Possibly, intelligence officers had seen some prewar 278H ammunition, or possibly the accusation was genuine. Either way, it s a mystery that will probably never be solved. Germany might have simply denied it and ridden out the storm, except that word began to spread of the French summarily executing any German soldier found in possession of the ammunition. This made German soldiers un Handloader 301

69 ber at least, not that I can find. Granted, the terminology could be different, and a few hollowpoints were offered using the basic TC design. Today, the truncated cone is a standard for many semiautomatic calibers, Bullets for handloading the 9mm Luger: not least the 9mm The Ideal (1) is an almost exact Luger. Federal loads a 147-grain copy of the original DWM military 278F TC (which it calls a flat point ) truncated cone. Hornady s hollowpoint that functions perfectly and truncated-cone design (2) approximates the original (3) at 124 grains. Speer s shoots superbly in both a Luger TMJ (4) and equivalent cast bullets are and P-38. Hornady makes an excellent typical of modern 9mm 124-grain bullets 125-grain hollowpoint more semispitzer than roundnose. truncated cone that loads into the closest thing available to 1914 military the 1960s, not a single ammunition maker or bullet manufacturer offered ammunition, and it is a fine self-defense round. Such are the a truncated cone in any cali- ironies of history. derstandably reluctant to use it. Facing a serious morale problem, the army withdrew the truncatedcone ammunition and replaced it with the 9mm Luger we know today, a 124-grain FMJ with a distinctly rounded, almost semispitzer, point. In army parlance, the old ammunition was truncated, while the new was an ogival bullet. After the war, the Versailles Treaty placed serious restrictions on German production of ammunition, outlawing both 9mm pistols and ammunition. However, DWM (among others) still had international contracts to fill, and given the economic state of Germany in the 1920s, was anxious to fill them. The Dutch armed forces used Lugers, and, as a neutral nation, had been supplied by DWM throughout the war. To get around the Versailles restrictions after 1918, DWM produced 9mm Luger pistols in a semifinished state, then shipped them to Vickers in England for finishing and forwarding on to the Dutch. Vickers Sons and Maxim was then part of the international DWM corporate web, sharing some board members with DWM. Luger-using countries that could not buy ammunition from Germany turned to companies like Eley and Kynoch in England and FN in Belgium. The Netherlands, Turkey and Bulgaria all obtained 9mm Parabellum from these sources, and it was loaded with, ironically, 124- grain truncated-cone bullets! So much for objections under the Hague Convention. Gradually, however, the truncated cone faded from sight as the new ogival ammunition was adopted by many countries for both pistols and the new machine-pistols (submachine guns) that were then coming into use. In the United States, truncatedcone bullets were unknown, except for Ideal s cast bullet (mould number ). It closely copied the jacketed German original, except for adding a lube groove. By PURE LEAD With 1% Tin, 40 lbs., $64.00 Delivered Linotype, Pure Lead, WW alloy, Lyman #2, Tin 16/1-20/1-30/1, other alloys available. 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70 IN RANGE by Terry Wieland In the 1980s, two new pistol cartridges were introduced. The 10mm Auto and the later.40 S&W were loaded with a new bullet called the truncated cone. At least, it was new to most shooters, touted as delivering terminal ballistics superior to a standard full-metal-jacket roundnose, yet feeding just as well and requiring no expansion to deliver its punch. The truncated cone was exactly what its name suggests, having a shoulder about halfway up the length of the bullet and sloping sides that ended in a flat nose. Soon, bullet manufacturers were offering truncated-cone designs in 9mm,.45 and other popular semiautomatic pistol calibers. Rather than an innovation, however, this was a long-overdue renaissance of a German design that had already proven its effectiveness in the toughest conditions: in the trenches of Flanders in the Great War. So effective was it, in fact, that it was withdrawn from the German service after barely a year of fighting. How, one might ask, can a military bullet be too effective? Well, it all began with the German army s request in 1902 for Georg Luger to increase the caliber of his rise, fall and rise of the truncated Cone (1) A standard modern military 9mm Luger is next to a (2) modern truncated cone (Federal 147-grain Flatnose) and a (3).40 S&W truncated-cone load. pistol, to deliver greater stopping power. Luger complied by necking up the standard.30 Luger bottleneck cartridge to a straight, 9mm case. This was not as simple as it sounds, and overall development took two years. During that time, Luger worked with the GPK (Prussian weapons-proving commission), and especially Oberleutnant Adolf Fischer, the commission s handgun specialist. While Luger perfected the cartridge, Fischer is credited with coming up with the 124-grain (8.0-gram) truncated-cone bullet. Expanding bullets for military use were prohibited under the 1899 Hague Convention, and every country was looking for a design that was effective but without contravening the rules. The British at the time were notorious for the Dum-Dum bullet, named for Dum-Dum Arsenal in India, and it s a term that has been continually misused ever since. It has come to mean any bullet intended to expand violently on impact, inflicting a horrendous wound. Originally, however, it referred to FMJ military bullets that were altered in some way, usually by filing off the nose to expose the lead core. The Hague Convention dealt with weapons for conventional, declared wars; it did not apply to colonial policing actions, such as the Americans in the Philippines or the British in India. Battling Pathans in the Khyber Pass, the British were free to use anything they wanted. Although Germany had colonies, and fought some savage wars there, Luger wanted an acceptable military cartridge that would not only be adopted by the German army, but could also be sold to other armies around the world. Various tests showed that the truncated cone was more effective than a conventional roundnosed or spitzer bullet. Instead of threading a wound channel that would close up readily, the sharp edges of the nose and shoulder worked like a paper punch (or the later semiwadcutter). It literally bored its way in, severing blood vessels that bled freely and were slower to (Continued on page 68) 70 Handloader 301

71 ONE OF A KIND! For 50 years HANDLOADER has been the only journal in the world devoted to the art of handloading. It is directed to those who reload centerfire and shotshell ammunition and cast bullets. We know who you are. You are one of us. Be with us for the next 50 years and take advantage of these great subscription rates and don t miss a single issue! Published Bi-Monthly One-Year Subscription (6 issues) $22.97 Two-Year Subscription (12 issues) $ CELEBRATING Y EARS THANKS TO OUR READERS To order or for more information call toll free: or go online: wolfepublishing.com Wolfe Publishing Company 2180 Gulfstream, Suite A Prescott AZ 86301

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