DaisyCutter
Member
I've been reloading for my Super Blackhawk for a couple weeks now.
This has totally opened up a new world for me. When I was a teenager, I'd buy lots of ammo, shoot anything anywhere. I did that for years. I became a very proficient rifle shooter. I even built my own FAL. Then ammo prices started getting really expensive. In fact, most of my ammo was bought at half the price it costs today. I just kinda quit shooting. It wasn't that I couldn't afford it. I just didn't want to pay 50-cents a pop or more for ammo. I still loved my guns, but most I haven't shot in years, aside from my duty firearms and my .22s.
So a few months back my hunting buddy bequeathed upon me, his single stage press and .44 Mag dies.
A couple months later I bought the Super Blackhawk. I've wanted one for years.
Then I spend a couple weeks setting up my reloading bench and goodies. Basically I made a man nest in the spare bedroom.
This is my functional, yet meager set-up:
I've been shooting this big revolver, and I gotta say... it's amazing. Just totally thrilling. Firstly, it's the only firearm in a long time that's really challenged me. I was weaned on .22s and shotguns. Then I got old enough to buy my own firearms, and I went through a bunch of .30 cal rifles, defensive pistols, etc. Some worked well, others were poorly designed. But few really spoke to me, and back then I was always primarily concerned with the volume of firepower, which is why I didn't like the expense associated with large capacity magazines.
This Super Blackhawk really speaks to me. It's intense. It has a awe-inspiring potential for accuracy and power. The flip-side is that proficiency with the SBH doesn't come instantly for me. I really have to practice to the fundamentals of marksmanship. When I first shot it. I had no success getting good groups, mostly because I psyched myself out. I loosened up, and I started making decent pulls on the trigger, and my groups got better. I've been to the range 3 times now, and I can manage to cloverleaf 3 rounds dead center, and the rest are somewhere in teh lower-right quadrant of the 4-ring. Far from perfect, not even really that good, but I get better every time. I get a better glimpse of the SBH's potential each time I shoot it.
I hum a song, start applying trigger pressure, have the bang surprise you... and a 210gr JHP will split a hair at 1500 fps. IF I crank off rounds fast and determined, the groups open up a bit but still remain decent. It's when I get sloppy that she really spanks me. When I see a good sight picture and yank the trigger too much... the impacts go right down on the paper.
My biggest complaint is that after 24 or so rounds, the SBH gets pretty hot to the touch. Yeah, that's almost funny, I know. That's the worst complaint I've got.
I see the potential, with practice, to cloverleaf 6 rounds at 75 feet, legitimately. It'll make one ragged hole if I can work myself up to that level of consistency. That amazes me.
I've only bought one box of factory ammo, "Mag-tech". From that box I had 2 bad primers. I ran those rounds a few times, and they wouldn't pop. I was afriad it was my SBH that had a problem, initially. However, my reloads have worked perfectly. My reloads actually offer better performance than the factory ammo, and I'm still very green at reloading. There is something very therapeutic about hand finishing each cartridge. Sure, it takes me a couple hours to make 50 rounds, but for that time I'm in my own little happy place and everything is working perfectly. It's fairly simple to get a high level of consistency. I hit each finished round with my dial calipers and measure finished case diameter and overall length. Then I test fit them in the cylinder. They always go bang. I'm tending to get a lot of muzzle flash, LOL.
According to charted data, I'm popping a .429 diameter, 210gr JHP from my 7.5 inch barrel at about ~1550 fps. I'll have to get a chrony to know for sure. But, assuming the charts are close, that's amazing performance.
This is so addicting, and now that I have supplies, it's cheap to maintain. I'm just over 20-cents a pop. I get 50 big bangs for about $10.
I tried some one-handed video yesterday. My accuracy wasn't great, in fact it was pretty bad one-handed. The camera did manage to capture some of the muzzle flashes, which are just manly as hell. That was my whole purpose, just to capture some of my own babies leaving the nest.
Here's the vid: http://youtu.be/6tZaG8MrA1c
Yeah, fire, he-he....
This has totally opened up a new world for me. When I was a teenager, I'd buy lots of ammo, shoot anything anywhere. I did that for years. I became a very proficient rifle shooter. I even built my own FAL. Then ammo prices started getting really expensive. In fact, most of my ammo was bought at half the price it costs today. I just kinda quit shooting. It wasn't that I couldn't afford it. I just didn't want to pay 50-cents a pop or more for ammo. I still loved my guns, but most I haven't shot in years, aside from my duty firearms and my .22s.
So a few months back my hunting buddy bequeathed upon me, his single stage press and .44 Mag dies.
A couple months later I bought the Super Blackhawk. I've wanted one for years.
Then I spend a couple weeks setting up my reloading bench and goodies. Basically I made a man nest in the spare bedroom.
This is my functional, yet meager set-up:
I've been shooting this big revolver, and I gotta say... it's amazing. Just totally thrilling. Firstly, it's the only firearm in a long time that's really challenged me. I was weaned on .22s and shotguns. Then I got old enough to buy my own firearms, and I went through a bunch of .30 cal rifles, defensive pistols, etc. Some worked well, others were poorly designed. But few really spoke to me, and back then I was always primarily concerned with the volume of firepower, which is why I didn't like the expense associated with large capacity magazines.
This Super Blackhawk really speaks to me. It's intense. It has a awe-inspiring potential for accuracy and power. The flip-side is that proficiency with the SBH doesn't come instantly for me. I really have to practice to the fundamentals of marksmanship. When I first shot it. I had no success getting good groups, mostly because I psyched myself out. I loosened up, and I started making decent pulls on the trigger, and my groups got better. I've been to the range 3 times now, and I can manage to cloverleaf 3 rounds dead center, and the rest are somewhere in teh lower-right quadrant of the 4-ring. Far from perfect, not even really that good, but I get better every time. I get a better glimpse of the SBH's potential each time I shoot it.
I hum a song, start applying trigger pressure, have the bang surprise you... and a 210gr JHP will split a hair at 1500 fps. IF I crank off rounds fast and determined, the groups open up a bit but still remain decent. It's when I get sloppy that she really spanks me. When I see a good sight picture and yank the trigger too much... the impacts go right down on the paper.
My biggest complaint is that after 24 or so rounds, the SBH gets pretty hot to the touch. Yeah, that's almost funny, I know. That's the worst complaint I've got.
I see the potential, with practice, to cloverleaf 6 rounds at 75 feet, legitimately. It'll make one ragged hole if I can work myself up to that level of consistency. That amazes me.
I've only bought one box of factory ammo, "Mag-tech". From that box I had 2 bad primers. I ran those rounds a few times, and they wouldn't pop. I was afriad it was my SBH that had a problem, initially. However, my reloads have worked perfectly. My reloads actually offer better performance than the factory ammo, and I'm still very green at reloading. There is something very therapeutic about hand finishing each cartridge. Sure, it takes me a couple hours to make 50 rounds, but for that time I'm in my own little happy place and everything is working perfectly. It's fairly simple to get a high level of consistency. I hit each finished round with my dial calipers and measure finished case diameter and overall length. Then I test fit them in the cylinder. They always go bang. I'm tending to get a lot of muzzle flash, LOL.
According to charted data, I'm popping a .429 diameter, 210gr JHP from my 7.5 inch barrel at about ~1550 fps. I'll have to get a chrony to know for sure. But, assuming the charts are close, that's amazing performance.
This is so addicting, and now that I have supplies, it's cheap to maintain. I'm just over 20-cents a pop. I get 50 big bangs for about $10.
I tried some one-handed video yesterday. My accuracy wasn't great, in fact it was pretty bad one-handed. The camera did manage to capture some of the muzzle flashes, which are just manly as hell. That was my whole purpose, just to capture some of my own babies leaving the nest.
Here's the vid: http://youtu.be/6tZaG8MrA1c
Yeah, fire, he-he....