Used Pre-Enhanced Delta Elite range report

[Black Snowman]

First of all, much thanks to Sean for putting up the 10mm Technical Notes website and saving me a lot of time tinkering and anguish.

It already had a somewhat battered Shock-Buff installed but before I even took the girly out to the range I made a few changes. I replaced the recoil spring with a 20# with it's corisponding firing pin spring and the mainspring with a 25#, all from Wolff. I repaced the plastic guide rod with a stock replacement blued one from CDNN. Previous owner had already installed the adjustable aluminum trigger from Casull Arms.

Here's a pic with the extra 9 round CMC Shooting Star magazine it came with plus 2 more I got from CDNN. The factory 8 round Colt magazine is in the gun.

I'm extremely pleased with how the Delta Elite shot. Here's 10 rounds slow fire at 7 yards.

These were near max hand loads with Accurate #7, new Starline brass, Winchester Large Pistol primers, and 135 gr Nosler JHP bullets. I had a lighter load of powder for the inital 40 rounds It liked to throw the brass foreward. With the full power loads the brass came back at a nice 30* angle or so.

Recoil and report supprised me at first. I had to shoot a string rapid fire to get over a sudden flinch I developed. My full power loads didn't seem any differant than the reduced ones. If anything it was easier to get the gun back on target.

A full power 135 grain load was my inital goal for tuning the gun and the current configuration really runs the loads nicely so I think I'll refrain from making any further changes unless it starts to show signs of discontent.

Next time I'm out I'd like to get some chronograph data on the handloads. I'm also going to compare the Accurate #7 I used with the #107 powder from GI Brass which hasn't quite arrived yet. The #107 is supposed to be esentially identical to the #7 except that it's MUCH less expensive.

I'll try to gather the volumetric density of both powders, differances in average velocity, metering, and flash then give a report in the Reloading forum.

To sum up

Edited for clarity and grammer.

 

[agtman]

Great report. Thanks!

 

[Sean Smith]

I'm far from an expert on reloading 10mm, but you will be hard pressed to beat Accurate #7 for most uses short of truly nuclear handloads. It was formulated to match the old-fashoned hot 10mm factory ballistics at safe pressures, and was advertised as the first off-the-shelf powder that could do so. Furthermore, it is the most, well, "accurate" stuff I've seen for non-wimpy 10mm loads.

I'd be REAL leery of trying some off-brand copy of it in its place.

 

[Black Snowman]

That's why I want to extensively test it to see if it is any good and share the results. Of course, it will only be a single lot test. I figured whatever the results I can share and save folks some money, either by getting a less expensive alternative, or by warning them to avoid a poor imposter.

The test comparison loads will all be made on the single stage press, hand weighted with new brass to keep variables to an absolute minimum. I will do the metering tests just with my Lee Auto-Disk thrower and weighting the powder and use that to find the VMD.