Secrets and Keys to Snub accuracy?

[hogdoc357]

Just thought I would start a new topic.

Share with us any tips, techniques, secrets, or keys for being accurate with your Snub Nose Revolver.
Also, share with us how you have improved your accuracy.
And, with fixed sights, how do you adjust your impact points?

Byron

 

[kcshooter]

1. Find grips that fit your hand. Try a few. See what works best for you. Being able to fit the grip to your hand is one of the most beautiful things about revolvers, in my opinion.

2. Practice.

3. Practice.

4. Practice.

 

[Rail Driver]

1. Good fitting grips

2. Dry-fire practice

3. "rice bucket" exercises

4. "wrist roller" exercises

5. more dry-fire practice

6. live fire practice

7. etc...

 

[LemmyCaution]

1: Move closer.

 

[CountryUgly]

Shoot it....A Lot.....

 

[firesky101]

If you intend to bet your life on a gun, buying ammo in bulk is your friend (carry being the most common use for a snub). The more you shoot it the better you will get. People can give you advice till they are blue in the face on how to squeeze the gun and how to breathe, but trigger time is your best friend.

 

[BADUNAME37]

Shoot it and use it for the intended distances - taking into consideration the caliber and barrel length.

It is unrealistic to think that the average in-house shot in the average home would be over, say, 20 feet.

If intended distances are farther, get a gun with a longer barrel.

 

[Texan Scott]

A reasonable trigger job doesn't hurt... if it's DA/SA, you might consider having it rendered spurless DAO and having the trigger pull smoothed/lightened, and edges softened on the trigger itself and charge hole mouths (chamber mouths) at the same time. If you have a S&W, they offer all these services as package deals in their Peformance Center (last I looked).

And, then, as above,

grips, practice, practice, practice. Don't move closer. If you need that gun for other than paper punching, you'll want to try backing up first.

 

[zoom6zoom]

keys for being accurate with your Snub Nose Revolver.

The realization that you're not going to be taking fifty yard shots. If you're forced to deploy your snub, it'll likely be at bad-breath distance.

 

[jungle]

Barrel length has almost nothing to do with inherent accuracy.

Practical accuracy is another matter-sight radius, weight, trigger quality and ergonomics play a huge role in what the average shooter can squeeze out of any handgun.

Practice is important, but the average shooter will never be able to shoot an airweight snub nearly as well as a steel service size revolver or auto.

 

[earplug]

Shoot it often a little

Shoot it often, a little.
Don't shot it alot, now and then.

Dry fire and practice your draw.

Flinching due to recoil is common. It does no good to bang away for fifty rounds if your body is telling you it hurts.

Fifteen good rounds shot a couple of times a month will help more then a fustrated painful slog with a box of hot ammo.

 

[skt239]

Dry firing with a laser grip is a great method.

 

[bikemutt]

1: Move closer.

Good one. I make sure to spray my targets with Pam so I can wipe off the powder burns

 

[BCRider]

Use the sights and learn to shoot without a flinch. If you can shoot a 6 inch barrel gun and get 5'ish inch groups at 25 yards there's simply no reason why you can't get 7'ish inch groups with a snubby. And if your eye is keen enough and you carefully use the sights there's no reason why you can't match your 6 inch gun groups with that snubby.

Good fitting grips do much to ensure you can make the gun fit you well enough that you are able to pull the trigger with a nice neutral straight back pull. Compact grips that don't fit all the fingers lead to the gun not being supported in your hand as well. And that means it can kick a little in your grip when the trigger breaks. Much of handgun accuracy is being able to avoid any side or other loads in the grip which tend to kick the gun around as the resistance from the trigger drops to zero as the sear breaks. Good fitting grips can greatly aid in this.

The other thing is being more fussy about the sight picture. With the reduced sight baseline the proper and ideal alignment of the front blade in the rear notch becomes critical to achieving accuracy.

You adjust the POI to match the POA by selecting the ammo that the gun was designed to shoot. For MOST .38Spl and .357Mag revolvers the calibration ammo uses 158gn bullets. From that point adjust the amount of powder to move the POI up and down. Faster velocity prints lower than POA and slower prints higher.

You can load up rounds with 125gn bullets that hit to POA but due to the faster and slower stuff you'll find that if you are shooting .357Mag that by the time you power the 125's to hit at POA that you've got rounds which are rather .38Spl like in their power.

The other way is to file down the front sight. If you want the gun to only shoot 125gn .357Mag bullets from now on and have them hit at the POA you can load up a bunch of that ammo and then file down the front sight until the POA matches the POI. But the slower 158gn rounds will now print higher than your POA.

 

[JEB]

Shoot it often, a little.
Don't shot it alot, now and then.

/\ this! /\

shoot it very often, every day if you can. but dont shoot tons of rounds at a time, a box or less is plenty. clean it often. get intimate with it. keep doing this and you will be surprised how quickly you will become proficient with it.

 

[9mmepiphany]

The procedure I used and the one I recommend to clients....your primary focus should be on learning trigger control

1. Grips that allows the little finger some purchase. You can go to smaller grips later, but learning to control the trigger well is more important.
2. Have the trigger smoothed, action tuned, and the trigger beveled. The action doesn't have to be light, but it should be very smooth.
3. Only shoot it in DA. When starting out, the SA isn't anymore accurate and impedes your learning to manage the DA trigger stroke.
4. Don't stage the trigger, pull it all the way through withut stopping or slowing down
5. Start with 148gr mid-range wadcutters.

 

[FMF Doc]

I have not seen anyone mention the quarter trick, so I'll pass it a long. It was what we did before the lasers came around. Balance a quarter on the top strap of the gun, as close to the front sight as possible. Then, dry fire without the quarter falling off. If it does fall off, you'll know immediately which way you are artificially manipulating the weapon to make if fall off. When you can run through all the chambers, dry fining them without loosing the quarter, start live fire. Start out light and close and move up in distance first, and then power. A light .38 that hits is always better than a full-house .357 that misses. Here is a really good link. Infact, if you like snubbies, I have found no better site for information on weapons, ammo, carry and other tactics. Half the articles are written by Suarez, and he is one of the best teaching snubbie tactics these days. Good luck.

Combat Shooting the Askins Way

Practice drills for the Snubbie

Making the J-Frame work

 

[rcmodel]

The secret?

Front Sight, breathe, trigger control, Front Sight.

Did I mention the Front Sight?

Do all the above and any snubnose revolver can be deadly at 100 yards.

rc

 

[.44 Associate]

"The other thing is being more fussy about the sight picture. With the reduced sight baseline the proper and ideal alignment of the front blade in the rear notch becomes critical to achieving accuracy."

I believe this to be the most important factor. All other things being equal, a snub is no more or less accurate than anything else. It's just a lot harder to prove, because the short sight radius magnifies sighting errors. If you want to hit with a snub at anything beyond a few yards, sight picture has to be essentially perfect every time.

 

[243winxb]

Smith & Wesson Accuracy 3" Barrels

An accuracy standard is a good place to start.

 

[Old Fuff]

remodel is absolutely right. A good marksman with a mid-frame (S&W K-frame, Colt D-frame, Ruger SP-101) can shoot the center out of a B-27 silhouette target out to 100 yards at least.

Also because the rear and front sights are so close together sight alignment is of critical importance, and you need to pull the trigger carefully so that you don't mess up the alignment. Focus your eye on the front sight and don't worry if the target blurs. Just aim at the center of the fuzzy blur.

Buy an all-steel revolver. Weight is your friend.

It is best to start with a revolver with a longer barrel, chambered in .22 LR. Learn marksmanship first, and then graduate to a snubby. If you can find a S&W model 18 (K-22 Combat Masterpiece, .22 Long Rifle, 4” barrel, adjustable sights) jump on it. It likely won’t be cheap, but in the long run it will pay for itself in ammunition savings.

 

[CraigC]

1. Find grips that fit your hand. Try a few. See what works best for you. Being able to fit the grip to your hand is one of the most beautiful things about revolvers, in my opinion.

2. Practice.

3. Practice.

4. Practice.

What he said!

Don't sell yourself short and settle for crappy accuracy because it's "just a snub". There is no reason why you shouldn't be able to hit a paint can at 50yds. Snubs can be very accurate with lots of practice, concentration and focusing on that all-important front sight.

 

[kcshooter]

I agree, don't buy into the "10 yards or less" stuff.

I don't know if I'm deadly at 100yds, but I'll get you with at least 4 out of 5 at 50.

 

[Brian Williams]

Believe it or not but followthru. When you pull the trigger work on keeping the sights aligned all the way until you can not hold it because the recoil moves the gun.
Just like a flintlock when you pull the trigger, you have to wait and hold the gun still until the gun fires, not just the flash in the pan. A snub does not have a long dwell time like a flintlock but you must hold the sight alignment until the gun goes off.
Practice live fire as much as you can stand and dry-fire more than you think.
Shoot with both hands, either hand, both eyes, either eye, standing, sitting, moving, laying down, close targets, far targets and in between, big and small targets.

 

[gym]

I started with a revolver, a Detective Special, when I got my carry in NYC in 1972-3. It was a natural for me, as I always shot my uncles 38's at his home range. The grip is different, left hand lower, more of a cuping/support movement. I was extremlly accurate with snub nose guns, and had one on my carry for over 20 yrs in NY. I also later went to a walther which was easy to shoot after firing a revolver with a short barrell all those years. I think it made recoil less important and less noticible. If you can fire a 38 or 357 accuratlly at 25 yards, an auto seemed to be a lot easier at least for me.
When going the other way around, "starting with auto pistols" I noticed it was more difficult for others to get the hang of it quicklly. If you don't support it right it will be all over the target, if you can get your left hand under and behind the grip, it is much easier than taking a high grip like an auto, it's just an inch or so difference, slide the thumb bone part of your hand under the opposite one instead of along side it. Especially with the factory small j frame size grips. That way you have both hands supporting the rearward movement of the firearm. instead of one hand taking the majority. It will be like putting the gun in a vice. With practice you will be able to cock the gun with your trigger finger without dropping the hammer, this makes for very accurate shots when necessory, again avoid cocking the gun and shooting single action, it is a bad habit to get into unless you are shooting a single action firearm. A good trigger job, as suggested is a good investmant. I shot hand loads from my uncle for my carry loads, he shot competitivelly and I still have some from 25 years ago.They were a copper jacketed hollowpoint, I don't remember how many grains but they were extremlly accurate. I still feel that it had more power than my 9 mm. I had a model 60 for the longest time of all.