[ihatepickles]

Picked up a S&W 625JM and I'm going to try and keep things simple. Did an action job on it with the help of some springs and things are smooth at 7 lbs now. Bobbed the hammer and I'm running a Blade Tech rig with a Speed-E-Loader on a CR Speed belt. Nice setup for me.

Load development... has been a hassle due to lack of primers. I ended up finding 2000 Federal match primers to get me started. I'm running a 200 gr RN moly bullet at 170 PF with Clays. I also worked out a less accurate 130 PF load with Clays, I need to tweak this load a bit because I'm unhappy with giving up accuracy for softer recoil.

I shot a local outlaw match with this rig and got crushed by a SHO/WHO stage. Who knew my first outing with this rig would focus on my worst skill? Guess I should've know. Took 10 shots for 5 poppers of various size around a barricade in around 20 seconds. Ugh.

Same match, shot a surprise stage pretty well. I called a shot good that ended up being bad, don't really know why. The rest of the stage went well, including not engaging the surprise no-shoot on a drop turner. It was around 5 seconds for 5 shots including opening a door.

last stage of the match, seated start from concealment but I didn't have anything decent cover garment other than my shirt which slowed my draw way down. There were 5 poppers partially protected by no-shoots and 1 paper. I needed 8 shots due to missing the first two pieces of steel, I don't remember calling my shots at all... I bet that's why I missed. I was around 12 seconds on this stage.

It's the same ol' lesson, hits are faster than misses.

I might pick up a 627 for ICORE, haven't decided yet. In the meantime I'm going to build a SSD 1911 since my current 1911's are all bull barrel setups. I'm thinking Caspian frame and slide.

[ihatepickles]

I got to the range yesterday and worked paper for the entire time. I first zeroed a new front sight to my S&W 625 and then I got on with the 100% humidity and fairly moderate temps in the high 70's. The summer heat and humidity is going to be hard on me this year.

The batteries in my electronic muffs died after 5 minutes at the range so I got a slightly different experience that I've become accustomed to. I nearly decided to work some steel to see if using electronic muffs were affecting my discipline to not listen for hits on the steel. I stuck with my paper only plan and resolved to turn my muffs off the next time I shot steel instead.

I left my timer at home...

I'm trying to spend my precious practice ammo on shot calling and movement drills. It's good and bad I suppose but I often go into vaporlock when I'm working these drills. Since I'm working on shot calling, I'm making up any non-A hit I feel I've fired. The issue however, is mentally managing my revolver's ammo status. So a typical scenario for me is something like:

"Engage T1 and T2 from 15 yard line, Engage T3 and T4 from 10 yard line."

I need all kinds of practice with my revolver reloads as well and I like running stages like this. If I get my required hits my plan works out pretty well and I really only end up sweating the reload. If I take my makeup shot though, about a quarter of the time the wheels come off the bus and I end up with a loud click on a spent chamber. Nothing in the world of shooting sports is as loud as an impedent click. I've so far resisted the urge to count shots, I try and make my plan based on number of targets in the array and designate my reloads at a certain point in the COF. I usually have a plan B reload scheduled as well. I'm finding with sloppy revolver work I have to occasionally rely on plan C reloads, which is rediculous and a person might as well just count their shots at that point.

The plan A, plan B, plan C reloads came from my time shooting Production division and I thought it'd apply well to Revolver division given the limited capacity. It still applies I suppose, but due to many things outside of my control (high round cound stages, 3 targets in an array, etc...) the penalty for sloppiness is much greater. For example a makeup shot in Production rarely changed my reload schedule. Pretty much every makeup shot in Revolver blows the entire schedule out of the window. Managing the pre-stage jitters on a 12 round stage is hard for me, I need more confidence in my shooting.

On an up-note, I'm calling shots well. I occasionally still drop a shot into the ether though, and if I had any idea where to begin troubleshooting that I would. Calling an A and scoring D is confusing. However, I'm overall doing a pretty good job of calling the shot.

I'm still using my 170 PF load and finding that I'm getting some bullet movement within the case while firing. Bullets are inching forward in the case under recoil, the 6th round is .020" longer than before it was under recoil. I'm putting a reasonable crimp on the round, .452" + .020". Haven't played with this yet but I'm going to sort this out before I worry about a reduced PF load for ICORE. There's only so much time in the day to play with guns.

I placed an order for a 4500 count of Billy Bullets' 230gr .452" offering. Dealing with Rudy was a nice experience. I'm shocked when I hear about people doing business this way and if you want to know what I'm talking about, I suggest you call Billy Bullets and place an order. That's all the clues I'm going to give out, but it was a very positive transaction.

[ihatepickles]

I worked on dryfire last night after taping up the speaker holes on my timer so it wouldn't keep the whole house up at 11pm.

I felt my eyes were having a tough time getting great focus on the front blade during the whole session. More than once during the session I was focused on the target instead. Maybe it was the indoor lighting? Seemed like I spent most of my time reminding myself to use perfect front sight focus.

I worked on reduced 30 yard drills and 15 yard SHO/WHO. After 30 minutes I was struggling so I lowered the bar and did some basic drills. I spent 10 minutes working on natural point of aim and grip. I spent a few minutes with a bad grip and getting reset on the gun with a proper grip, simulating a crappy draw that needs to be fixed during the COF. I also think I need more work with my grip after a reload, I often end up much lower on the frame after a reload.

For reduced targets, I have some reduced size targets I bought from Chris Patty at CPWSA. These seem to be unavailable, I'm hoping I can find a new source as the 3 I have left are in sad shape. At 10 yards they look like 30 yard targets.

Regarding reloads, I'm currently doing strong hand reloads. Revolver goes into my weak hand with the cylinder open, weak thumb nails the ejection rod while the strong hand is collecting a new moonclip. I need some study material of hand position for these reloads, something still feels awkward and inconsistent.

[ihatepickles]

Went to the range tonight. Took 10 runs on the plate rack, had 6 clean runs which felt pretty feeble. My best run was around 4.5 seconds on 6 plates. I'm not dwelling as much on speed but rather accuracy. Those 4 runs with a plate left standing were humbling.

I ran a shorter strain screw tonight and didn't have any bad ignitions. The trigger is 6.25 lbs right now. I'd like to get that down a bit more, but for now it's acceptable. My longer strain screw keeps my trigger around 7.5 lbs. The Miculek spring is handy with the curved neck, but it seems like it changes the feel of the trigger pull. The weight of the trigger seems to build slightly until it finally breaks. My next experiment is to thin the mainspring as I don't think I can reliably shorten the strain screw anymore, there's hardly any curve left in the spring as it is.

So anyway, back to the range report. Not a great night really, I took 200 rounds and left with 100 rounds unfired. After the plates I did movement drills and focused on breaking an A zone shot at 10 yards while I moving into a box. I seemed to be dropping shots low during this session.

I've need to rebuild my grip, I mean the way I'm gripping the revo (although I'll mod the grip too, more on that later). What I have now isn't consistent. The revo doesn't feel as full in my hand as an auto does, but I don't want closed backstrap grips so I can stay close to the trigger and cylinder latch. My weak hand doesn't have a good pocket to fit into. It's there on a perfect grip/draw, but otherwise it slides off my strong hand under recoil. My weak hand is wrapping under the revo, this doesn't happen to me with an auto either. I think some pictures might help, I just need to find my tripod to make that happen.

There's a void along my palm crease while gripping the revo. I'm going to bust out the epoxy putty and make the grip ugly, but hopefully making it more solid in my hand. Glad the grips are $15 Hogues instead of some nice piece of wood I'd have talk myself into mangling.

[ihatepickles]

Took 10 runs on the plate rack, taking 2 plates at a time. This gave me a lot of live fire practice to focus on draw and grip. I don't care at this point that my draw is in the 2 second range for a 15 yard shot. Sure it could be better, but I'm putting my first shot where it needs to go and that sets the tone for the rest of the string. So anyway, my draw and grip. It's... flakey. I'm working on it. I did manage a couple of great 2 shot rips that made me smile. My best was sub-2 seconds and I was hero or zeroing it to get there. Sometimes it just feels good to let it rip.

I spent the rest of the session working on reloads, moving reloads, moving shots. I'm considering switching to a weak hand reload. Not to sound completely idiotic, but sometimes I have trouble coordinating the strong hand reload and end up holding the cylinder parallel with the ground, not the best way to get a moon to drop into the chambers. With weak hand reloads, I find it's much easier to remember that basic little fact o' physics and it has the added benefit of (for whatever reason) giving me more peripheral reference. I don't get as tunnel visioned reloading weak hand, as I find sometimes happening with the strong hand reload, dunno why that is.

So back to the range, I had some good moving reloads. I only did advancing movements today, and had a 20 yard marker and the 12 yard marker. I timed my reloads while standing still, then hauling butt to get to the 12 yard mark, and then also while quick walking while reloading, and found the moving reload was a second quicker on 4 attempts.

My moving shots were done advancing from 20 yards to 12 yards. My very first run I had great hits, all A's and it felt smooth. I kept up the strong work and even had some good strings retreating while firing. I'm very happy with that mini-session, something about the heavy revo trigger and moving equals good shooting for me. Should give me some confidence on the next movement stage at a match.

Pretty good day at the range. Finished up the day with 2 strings at 12 yards, pushing as hard as I could. It was 2 paper targets 6 yards apart. I tore it up, at least by my standards. I had a 2.1 draw... with .26 split, .42 transition, and another .26 split for 3.04 seconds with 4 A's. Man that felt great, real progress I could track and smile about. I still lament my draw, but... I get my first hit in the A zone. I need more dryfire reps on the draw and I'm trying to keep positive rather than 'hating' my draw. I just need more reps to get there.

Today's theme was definitely hero or zero. It worked out in my favor.

[ihatepickles]

I forgot to update my log yesterday when I got home. I think I've found my ICORE load, couldn't get a handle on how fast they 230gr's were moving, too much direct sunlight for the chrony to function correctly. I need an IR skyscreen/box setup... The load feels soft and it shoots great 25 yard groups, offhand was 3" at that distance. I'll put it on the sandbags another day. It doesn't shoot to the same point of aim that the major PF load hits though, not sure how I'll resolve that in the end. Apparently my 625JM runs fast, as this load is 3.4gr of Clays, which my most forum accounts is very very soft. 3.9gr of Clays makes major for me though, which is again very low.

I didn't have a lot of practice ammo with me, so I did about 15 minutes of dryfire at the range and 15 minutes of live fire. I was a bit shocked how much different dryfire felt while at the range vs. home. Whatever I'm doing in dryfire at home it doesn't feel the same as dryfire at the range. Wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't felt it first hand. Someday soon I'll sort that out.

Live fire went pretty well but nothing stood out as super. Still, nothing was terrible either. In my mind I think this was just a baseline day for me. I had a good consistency with my draw, in 50 or so presentations today, I had a single terrible grip example. I think I still need more work with a grip and still haven't modded my grip for a better fit.

It was my 3rd day of livefire this week, the web of my strong hand is a bit bruised from recoil. Nothing terrible, but it's tender. I'm off to shoot an outlaw match today and that'll be my last livefire for 4 days.

[ihatepickles]

Shot the outlaw match, had 1 good stage, 1 'ok' stage, and 1 miserable stage.

The good stage I simply got all my hits, 9 shots on 7 paper and 2 steel, in 13-ish seconds with a reload. Could've gone faster, but glad I didn't, I'm not sure if my hits would've been there... my focus was wandering all day.

The terrible stage was stacking 3 shots on each paper target. There were 3 targets in 3 arrays. Well, like a moron I was counting shots and got confused. Never ever ever ever count shots. Maybe one day I'll learn. It was incredibly frustrating and I'm not sure I got my head back into the game. The first array had good hits, the second array was were I first paused to figure out what 3+3 was, the last part of the second array had bad hits. I somewhat pulled it together on the last array which was the furthest shot, around 18 yards.

The 'ok' stage was 3 arrays, reloads between the arrays. I'm 99% sure a popper was malfunctioning, I'm sure I got 3 hits on the popper with .45 170PF loads... but it's a outlaw redneck rules match and you can't really arb' anything. Oh well, wish I had a better idea of how well I could shoot that stage.

Had a few humorous discussions with the locals about how they had trouble seeing their bullets holes on the paper. I tried to let them know it was a bad habit, but I'm sure it fell on deaf ears. I really have to get on the new shift so I can hit some matches with a rulebook and some revolver shooters to observe.

The revolver ran great, I've fired about 1500 rounds since I picked it up and about 1000 of those have been with the 6.25 lbs trigger. No misfires. I'll consider this my baseline and grab a new spring to start thinning for an even lighter action, hopefully.

[ihatepickles]

I shot the Indiana Section this weekend and my performance was below average. I didn't want this to read like my excuse sheet, but I do want to document how badly I boned the prematch stuff. I shot poorly because I didn't do the work.

I didn't get my prematch chores squared away far enough in advance. I went out to the range to watch the Friday shooters for a while and scope the stages. Came away with a few good plans for breaking down the complicated stages. I forgot to register before leaving the range... one more thing to do Saturday morning.

Went home, had dinner with Dad since he was in town (I never miss dinner with Dad, the match be damned if needed) and headed home. Clipped my ammo, thankfully it was already inspected for primers and case gauging. Chamber checked every moon. Then I did a quick inspection of the revolver at midnight before the match and found the ejector rod had backed out. Crap. So around 2am I was satisfied I had a good working revolver and put everything away.

Got 20 minutes down the road and I'd forgotten the primers I was trading Hopalong so I had to turn back. I got to the range at 8:40am, registered, and got to the shooters meeting at 8:55am. At this point I'm not even holstered up. Gotta love the crack of noon start.

Well, I roll up to the first stage, shake hands with Hop and Bill, holster up, and did the walkthrough. I was about 4 shooters deep on the pain in the butt hardcover stage. I was frazzled. I was worked up. I had my head up my ass. Shot 5 Mikes. I don't mean this to sound so mercenary, but I really (REALLY) should've checked all my Mike targets. There's a good chance they pasted the front targets before I had a chance to see the Mikes, which would've gotten me a reshoot. I screwed up the stage bad due to nerves and wandering focus so I earned my score. I put the nail in the coffin by not using my rules knowledge to help me.

The rest of the match went decently for my skill level. I had one more poor stage and the rest I feel OK about. The shooting was tough, tons of reloads with arrays that usually didn't break easy for a revolver guy. It was a good match design, can't complain one bit about the challenges. My scores were always within 5 points of the stage winner, sometimes I had better scores than the stage winner. That's my silver lining. On the 8 stages I did decently on, I got a lot of points - usually right on par with the stage winner. My times were quite a bit slower.

Looking back onto my times, my reloads were the main culprit. Second problem was bad hits, but I was able to call the shots bad (for the most part) and take my makeups. It took a lot longer than the speedier guys. Oh well, I don't feel bad about that for now. My movement was OK when I was running all-out. Big big note for followup: work on moving reloads. I dropped my moons at least 3 times (not) hitting my moving reload.

So, for this match: Get some rest you moron. Reloads, reloads, reloads. Moving reloads, ad nasseum. Vision, I have the eyes to call my shots but I'm not using the info to influence my first shots.

That match was fun, even in defeat.

[ihatepickles]

A quick note before I forget, I looked through my range bag for the post-match tally. I fired 314 rounds at this match and the minimum roundcount was 268. So, I fired 46 extra shots.

That sure does sound like a lot, averaging out to around 4 1/2 extra shots per stage. My recollection of the match is that I began taking a lot more make up shots as the day wore on, I think fatigue was catching up to me at that point. The Revo sure does put a pounding on a shooter.