Speedloaders Public Service Announcement
- Thread starter Stophel
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mcb
Member
OK, mcb, time for you to add that little video of you in action. You posted it last year in at least one Thread. It still makes me smile just to think about it.
When I watch it, I have the urge to applaud.
Too kind, thank you.
I believe this is the video you are referring too. This is from dry fire practice a few years ago getting ready for a local USPSA match. The par time set on the timer was 3.6 seconds. The start signal happend 1-4 seconds after I press the start button. The reload from click to click is a few hundreds over a 2 second reload.
I like this video as it show me shooting a club level USPSA match with my S&W Model 10 fed by Safariland Comp III speed-loaders vs the same stages shot with my S&W 627 fed with moonclips. Some of the speed-loader reloads are nice and fast but notice how fast the moonclip reloads are and how there are less fumbles with moonclips compared to the speed-loader.
SwampWolf
Member
Well done, mcb. Makes me wonder how well (or not) my speed-loader of choice (the ubiquitous HKS) would have fared. Even more interesting would be to see a "speed strip" in action.
SwampWolf
Member
Anybody have any experience with speed loaders made by Pachmayr? They look to be nicely made but they're selling for twenty bucks at my lgs, twice the price of the loader I'm most familiar with, the aforementioned HKS. I'm always looking for a way to "up my game".
I was looking at them the other night. I do not have one. They appear to be essentially the same thing as the HKS, just made of nicer materials.
Being as I'm made of money (sure), and they're fairly inexpensive, I just ordered a few more (Midway... free shipping on $49 order). Got a couple of Comp III's to try. They're pretty big, so probably not something I'll carry every day.
N-Frames are too big for most officers’ hands and/or fingers. My long hands love the feel of N-Frames, but I cannot get enough finger on the trigger, for a proper DA pull. The so-called “h-grip,” a hold which enables enough finger on the trigger, directs recoil into the base joint of the thumb, which then causes recoil to hammer said thumb, and torque the wrist in a very-non-ergonomically-favorable way. This may be OK, for target wadcutters, but not for duty/service ammo. Cocking the hammer gets the trigger into a favorable position, but, well, cocking a DA revolver, for defensive shooting purposes, is generally frowned upon, if not totally forbidden, by most PDs’ rules.
I voluntarily carried revolvers, for big-city night-shift police duty, until 1997; N-Frames* in the Eighties, and GP100/K-Frames in the Nineties. (There were short periods during which I carried duty autos, the longest being a P220, 1991-1993. I made the big, final switch to duty autos in 1997.) In my personal case, I would rather have kept using speed-loaders, than transition to full-moon clips. A speed-loader can ride in a split-six type of carrier, on the duty belt, which means less protrusion than the type of case needed to carry and protect full-moon clips. As split-six type carrier made it SO much easier to hurry through doorways, gateways, and such, especially when in a hurry, in darkness.
In 1997, I made my final transition away from revolvers as primary police duty handguns, largely due to the available real estate on my belt, as the amount of gear we had to carry increased. I liked carrying two speed-loaders, and a six-round cartridge loop slide, which required quite a bit of room. Plus, there was an undercurrent of thought among thugs that officers who were carrying duty revolvers were “easy to take,” while officers carrying “cocked and locked” 1911 duty pistols were deadly serious. Well, my first handgun, in 1982 or 1983, had been a 1911, and I had owned 1911 pistols almost continuously, since then, so, the easy choice was to “elevate” my reliable Colt Government to duty status. (I had briefly carried a Stainless Colt Commander, as a duty pistol, in 1990, but though it had started out reliable, it later started malfunctioning about once every 400 rounds, so I relegated it from all defensive duties.)
*About 1990, I realized that the compromised hold I was using, to shoot N-Frames, with my K/L/GP100-length fingers, was wrecking my thumbs and wrists; therefore the down-sizing, first to a Colt Commander for a short time, then the P220, then the GP100 and K-Frames.
mcb
Member
I am not a LEO but I have put many 10,000 rds down range in competition as a revolver shooter mostly in N-frames. Personally I don't find that a N-frame is that much bigger than a K/L frame grip. I wear large or X-large glove depending on make.
With the grips remove here in my model 10 stacked on top of my model 29 with the recoil shields and bottom of the frame aligned. They look nearly identical to me. If you put calipers on them and measure the reach from the back strap at the web of your hand to the trigger (shortest possible distance between the back strap and the trigger) measures ~2.88 on my Model 29 and it only does down to 2.77 on my K-frame. A lot can be done with changing grips to slim things down for smaller hands.
The weight and size of the frame and cylinder has always been a bigger negative when comparing K/L/N frame more so than grip size.
Somewhere in my bin of revolver stuff I believe I have some old all metal Safarland split-six type of carriers for my 625 moonclips. Most of my moonclip carriers are tailored for competition not duty. I think if the full moonclip would have come along earlier and had LEO adopted them we would see more duty focused moonclip carriers. But the moonclip never made it in the LEO application before the semi-auto killed the revolver off as a duty weapon and thus the market never had the pressure to make duty specific moonclips carriers. Moonclips are not that difficult to protect and I have little doubt a duty capable carrier could be created if there had been demand.
contender
Member
Was taught that the loops were for topping off a partially loaded revolver. Today it would be called a tactical reload but back then it was called topping off.
SwampWolf
Member
That's how I was trained too before the agency I worked for transitioned to autos. Of course, during the same time period, at the end of each course of fire during training sessions or qualifications, we were taught to dump the expended brass into a bucket sitting conveniently next to our foot and to re-holster an empty revolver.
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