Ideal rate of twist (MLP firearms and shooting thread)

[HardCore Troubadour]

I guess my real question, more than anything, was how will it affect people like you, if passed as it is (or at least the Cliff Notes version given in the video).

That is more of what I am looking for....will you have things “grandfathered” in...or be asked to turn in for compensation? Etc?

 

[CB91710]

Now about those 'earthquaking" and booming all over FL a few days back....

My first thought was 'WTH did Robob do and is anything left of what got done to.... "

I saw a blurb on one of the news sites some time last week that the FAA has lifted the restrictions on testing of supersonic aircraft over land.
Could be the crew from Pax River "testing" some Super Hornets.

 

[CB91710]

I guess my real question, more than anything, was how will it affect people like you, if passed as it is (or at least the Cliff Notes version given in the video).

That is more of what I am looking for....will you have things “grandfathered” in...or be asked to turn in for compensation? Etc?

California's various AWBs have, so far, not required anything to be turned in or destroyed as the only option, with the possible exception of NFA items.
There has been a "grace period" which provides a registration window, but sales and transfers become prohibited on the day the law goes into effect.

However, since transfer is illegal, you can not leave your registered assault weapons to a resident of California... they have to be transferred to someone out of state, or turned over to the police.
The huge problem, particularly with the way the courts are with regard to domestic issues and parties involved in divorce frequently going ape-shit with false accusations....
If your spouse claims that you threatened them, they will be granted a TRO.
As the subject of a TRO, you must turn all of your weapons over to the local PD or an FFL for storage until the TRO is dismissed or made permanent.
You can not retrieve registered AWs from this status... the California DROS software does not allow for the transfer of any RAW except to an exempt person such as an FFL with an AW permit, or law enforcement agency.
Even police officers are not personally exempt. They may possess AW's only in the line of duty and the weapons remain property of the department.

So basically, within 40 to 70 years, there will be no lawfully possessed AWs in California other than those owned by LEA.
It's a war of attrition, but they also continue to move the goalposts, gradually expanding what is considered to be an AW.
The "Ghost Gun" law of 2016 effectively slammed the door on 80% builds of any kind.

They have been getting more and more bold, attempting to ban possession of "grandfathered" items such as large capacity magazines, but so far the courts have sided with the owners, and for a brief period, known as "freedom week", we were actually able to purchase and transfer LCMs until the Appellate court granted the state's request to suspend the lower court's decision pending en-banc hearing.

So the law stands that LCMs can not be transferred, loaned, manufactured, or imported, but the provision of the law that makes possession a crime is suspended.

Most of these laws that move to forfeiture run afoul of the 4A unless the state provides for fair compensation.

 

[HardCore Troubadour]

That answers some of the questions.....thanks!!

 

[Who]

Here's an odd link that Google just showed me:

Loading…

www.lowes.com

 

[Who]

Having fun with it...... actual chat I just had....

 

[Foo for Thought]

Having fun with it...... actual chat I just had....

View attachment 513047 View attachment 513048 View attachment 513049 View attachment 513050 View attachment 513051

 

[Who]

I rarely wish I had a Twitter or Instagram account with a bunch of followers... but this would be a good time to have a little fun if I did.

I'll bet Lowe's corporate would have a quick response!

 

[Roberteaux]

Having fun with it...... actual chat I just had....

View attachment 513047 View attachment 513048 View attachment 513049 View attachment 513050 View attachment 513051

Okay, now that was spacey!

The whole thing reminded me very much of conversations that Mindfrigg used to have with an online chat-bot called A.L.I.C.E.

"Also, I'm old and might not be able to walk down an endless aisle. Can somebody at the store help me?"



Honestly, I think you should go have a conversation with A.L.I.C.E. next... you seem to have a way with bots or something... plus, that whole exchange was too funny!

Alice Chat Bot

--R

 

[sonar1]

I just had a talk with Alice about what kind of sauce to use on canastas.

Not sure we need to worry much about AI taking over

 

[Roberteaux]

@ehb

Well, Edro-- I told you I had some stuff to tell you... and sure enough, here it comes!

Now, there have been several times during which I've seen you speaking of me as a hand loader and have told the other members that I was a bit more "experimental" than you tended to be over the years... you were pretty happy with your "purple can" powder for your '06 (was that IMR 4350?) and you just kind of stuck with a lot of pet loads over the years.

I was flattered that you noticed that I really do like to monkey around with all this stuff quite a bit.

My results are often amusing. For instance, one time I got interested in seeing what I could do with H4895 with a reduced load. This "reduced load" thing is a thing that one has to be really, really careful with unless one has factory support and data, because a too-small charge of certain powders in certain chamber types may result in a phenomena known as "detonation"... where the powder doesn't burn at a high-speed-- but uniform-- rate and instead explodes like a bomb going off. It will blow the hell out of your firearm, and maybe take a few select chunks of the shooter along with it.

But then I learned that H4895 could be loaded down to only 60% of a "normal" minimum charge without fear of detonation.

Far out! I wanted to try it with my .270 Winchester. Might be more fun at the range without taking so much recoil, right? Might be good for training women how to shoot, while building them up to deal with the recoil produced by some of the higher-powered cartridge types out there...

But then I was diverted, because I wound up becoming keenly interested in .300 AAC Blackout all of a sudden. And because I learned that I could reform 5.56mm/.223 brass to .300 BLK, all of a sudden I was up to my ass teaching myself how to do it, running test loads through various firearms chambered for the cartridge type... supersonic loads, subsonic loads... and hey: what happens if I do this?

So that was all great fun, but it diverted me from screwing with the .270 Winchester reduced loads for almost eight months...

And the whole time, the idea of working up such loads was gnawing away at me in the back of my mind. At the very end of the whole thing with .300 BLK, I was so glad to no longer be developing that type of cartridge you wouldn't have believed it. I mean, it was a relief!

At last, I was finally free to screw with these reduced charges with .270 Win... and I promptly set about to doing just that.

But alas: the results were... disappointing, if not anticlimactic...

Turns out that .270 Winchester doesn't like being anything other than a souped-up hotrod of a cartridge. I found that while I could reduce recoil to the 12 ft.lb. neighborhood (which women like, since it's about the same as a .243 Winchester when it comes to recoiling mildly) the accuracy went completely to hell.

It simply *wants* to be a full-power kind of cartridge; it gets all pouty if you try and slow it down... the type is a stone speed demon, end of story.

I waited eight months to learn that!

***************
​

But anyway, so yeah: I do experiment a lot, especially with rifles.

Handguns, not so much. In fact, I even had-- and still have-- pet loads for pretty much all of my handgun types... but every so often I really *would* try something else just for the hell of it.

Still: this is something I have wished to say to you for a while-- but keep forgetting to go there:

In reality, the bulk of my experimentation has everything to do with having been forced to really scrounge for powder, especially... and not so much because I actually *wanted* to experiment with different Boom Dust...

Instead, it's because I'd been stuck with a powder shortage that forced me to try stuff I never worked with before!

For instance, there's a powder type out there called IMR 4064. Prior to 2012, I never touched this stuff, though years ago I realized that the manufacturer published load data for the stuff... and that said load data showed that the powder was good for use with both 5.56mm/.223 and .270 Win.

So, when I saw that this was ALL THEY HAD, I bought it. What I never expected was that I would learn to love the stuff... it's really excellent in both cartridge types. Of course, being an extruded powder it's a bit of a pain in the nuts for clogging drop tubes of dispensers and the like... but so long as you're not using it for mass loading of "service cartridges" and are instead loading each cartridge with extreme precision... well, it doesn't matter what it does in a dispenser because you're weighing each charge out individually to begin with.

I ended up buying Varget for the same reason: dual use. And now that I have a .300 Win Mag to also feed and care for, I am pleased to note that I can use Varget with that cartridge type as well. Wish I had more than just 8 pounds of it!

***************
​

And the beat goes on...

The other day I hit my favorite reloading supply store on the coast, which is a place known as Southeast Reloading Supplies, in Port Orange...

And once again, I'm stuck accepting substitutes-- some of which I have never worked with before!

Case in point: I found myself looking at a sign that said that a powder known as IMR-8133 was an apt substitute for yet another powder type, Hodgdon's "Retumbo"...

I wasn't looking for Retumbo when I went in there. In fact, I was surprised when I found that Retumbo is good for use with .300WM, so long as what you're stuffing on top weighs over 190 grains. But before this, if you say "Retumbo" I'm thinking about things like .338 Lapua Mag or .50 BMG...

Cool beans... learned something new. So, I went to look for a canister of Retumbo... but they were out!

So then I went to find IMR-8133, and grabbed the last pound of it in stock.

I also wound up with a lot of RL-17, RL-22, and AA "Ram Magnum" powder. Never touched any of this stuff before... looks like I'm about to go down the rabbit hole once again!

Just as vexatious: I have finally developed the ability to figure elevation dope for my mil-dot scopes in my head, and can crunch the numbers accurately enough for my purposes without screwing with a ballistics calculator. I can do that from 0 - 1,000 yards... it's getting to where some of the information has actually turned into rote memory from having been crunched so many times already...

BUT! I could only do that with 168-grain and 208-grain BTHP projectiles.

Unfortunately, when I walked in the shop the other day, I found that he was OUT of my pet bullet weights... and so I was forced to buy up a bunch of 150, 178, and 195 grain bullets... 'cause that's all the brother had!

What all this means is that now I'm going to go through all sorts of testing... new powders, new bullet weights... new range dope to calculate, memorize, and absorb... with heapin' helpin's of confusion along the way, I'm sure.

'Twas ever thus...

You know what makes it even more pathetic? Despite my chagrin at being stuck with these bullet weights I wasn't interested in, right before I had the guy ring up my purchases, I spotted a box of 110 -grain BTHP's... and I got thinking about how with .300WM, you're looking at getting about 3600 - 3700 feet per second out of the snout of your rifle with such a light-for-caliber bullet...

I cursed at myself silently, watched as if disembodied to see my hand acting of its own accord and fetching those 110's off the shelf...

Thus compounding everything, I might add!

So, there I was: driving home with a bunch of strange new powder types and bullets in weights I never really played with-- and never previously had any intention of playing with. But hey: you do what you've got to do, right? Still, I was kind of griping about it. Lots of work ahead. Ladder loads and all the rest of it... during an ammo shortage!

But then I stopped and laughed at my own complaints. After all: if I was so miffed by all this stuff, then why did I actually compound things by also picking up a bunch of 110's as I did?

God, what a stupid hobby!

I love it!

--R

 

[Who]

I’d never heard of the ‘detonation’ thing before. Thanks!

 

[Roberteaux]

I’d never heard of the ‘detonation’ thing before. Thanks!

Te nada, bro.

I first learned of the phenomenon when all of a sudden the Alliant powder company put out a notice that everybody should discontinue the use of Blue Dot powder in conjunction with 125-grain bullets in .357 Rem Mag-- which really sucked because that particular combo was in fact a pet cartridge loading. Man, it was hell on wheels!

At the same time, Alliant also warned all shooters, hand loaders, and reloaders to refrain from the use of Blue Dot powder with .41 Rem Mag with any bullet weight! And as time oozed by, we finally learned that it's because Blue Dot had detonated a couple of times with those 125's in .357 Mag... and also with .41 Rem Mag in more than one bullet weight.

Here's the actual safety notice:

Blue Dot Powder Safety Notice

So that was sad. Man, I just *loved* Blue Dot with .357/125...

I've still even got about a half-pound of Blue Dot left in my powder cabinet. I see that I can use it with every bullet weight except 125 grains... but somehow, I just kinda don't even want to. Alas, but the magic is gone...

It would be all the same if I were suddenly told by Alliant that I should not use Alliant 2400 in conjunction with 255 grain lead semi wadcutters in .44 Magnum... 18 -20 grains of that stuff with that bullet, and man you've got something really special going right there...

It's a wimpier version of Elmer Keith's famous "prescription" of a 255 grain lead bullet atop 22 grains of 2400 powder... holy shit, I loaded 20 up like that once and fired 'em up... and went home thinking that Elmer Keith might have been a sucker for punishment or something. Man, that load was distinctly on the other side of the "hot" line when it came to recoil.

The strangest thing of all is to report to you that I just learned something-- and learned it only two days ago. I also found that I was wrong about that whole formula up there being some kind of "prescription" offered by Mr. K.

For years-- like, since 1983-- the "22 grains of 2400 under a 255 grain LSWC bullet" thing has been referred to as "the Keith Load". You say those words to anybody who's pretty freakish about the .44 Mag, they know what the formula is, usually.

But! Two days ago, I was talking about this Keith Load business with a buddy who is a fellow reloader, and he happened to have an old copy of Outdoor Life on hand that actually had an interview with Elmer Keith as part of its contents.

The big surprise was this: turns out that Elmer wasn't "prescribing" 22 grains of 2400, or even the 255 grain bullet. Instead, he was saying that while using a 255 grain LSWC, with 2400 powder, one shouldn't exceed 22 grains of the powder... that they should consider this to be the absolute maximum for use in an N-Frame S&W revolver.

He added that he doled out that advice at a very early point in the development of the cartridge type, at such a time as that the powder manufacturers hadn't even tested the round enough to publish load data!

He was mystified that people were running around saying that he, Elmer Keith, always used that particular loading. His own opinion was...

<drum roll>

...that the 255 grain bullet worked very well with 18 - 20 grains of 2400 powder... which is the load type that I go with while using that powder with that type of bullet!

I felt... I dunno. I felt vindicated, I guess...

Before the article ended, I also learned something else: that Elmer wasn't incredibly fond of the 255 grain LSWC to begin with. He mostly shot either 200's, 225's, or 240's and felt that you got into an area of diminishing returns once you started going with weights heavier than 240.

Wow. You learn something new every half century!

--R

 

[sonar1]

I’d never heard of the ‘detonation’ thing before. Thanks!

I’d heard of it in magnum handguns if downloading with Win 231.
Something about the primer flash going across the top of the powder in a half loaded shell and igniting the whole surface rather than burning through the load from the primer forward as designed.
Exceeds pressure ranges or something, blowing cylinders in half out through the top strap, injuring shooters, etc.

 

[scott1970]

NSD....new safe day. I ran up the road today to visit a Liberty Safe dealer and came back with one. I've read safes aren't readily available the same as guns, ammo, etc. Turns out I was in luck. I try to avoid Chinese made purchases when American made items are available, and Liberty fit the bill. Getting this sucker in the house was a royal pain, but I made it happen.

 

[Who]

Gonna have to replace that electronic pad with a dial unit.

You know.... in case of an EMP.

 

[CB91710]

I rarely wish I had a Twitter or Instagram account with a bunch of followers... but this would be a good time to have a little fun if I did.

I'll bet Lowe's corporate would have a quick response!

Does Lowe's have "marketplace" listings?
A few years ago, everyone went nutzo when the Sears web site listed a bunch of Winchesters just like the old days.
Ya... they were "marketplace" items and not available in stores or from Sears... back when Sears, and Best Buy, and Radio Shack, and nearly everyone else was trying to become the next Amazon by listing 3rd-party sales.

 

[Who]

Yes, that’s all this really is. Their so-called “Endless Aisle” is off site stuff in an effort to be everything to everybody.

Laptops, car stereos, toys, etc.

I had just never heard of it before today’s Google search for an AR trigger.

 

[ehb]

@ehb

Well, Edro-- I told you I had some stuff to tell you... and sure enough, here it comes!

Now, there have been several times during which I've seen you speaking of me as a hand loader and have told the other members that I was a bit more "experimental" than you tended to be over the years... you were pretty happy with your "purple can" powder for your '06 (was that IMR 4350?) and you just kind of stuck with a lot of pet loads over the years.

I was flattered that you noticed that I really do like to monkey around with all this stuff quite a bit.

My results are often amusing. For instance, one time I got interested in seeing what I could do with H4895 with a reduced load. This "reduced load" thing is a thing that one has to be really, really careful with unless one has factory support and data, because a too-small charge of certain powders in certain chamber types may result in a phenomena known as "detonation"... where the powder doesn't burn at a high-speed-- but uniform-- rate and instead explodes like a bomb going off. It will blow the hell out of your firearm, and maybe take a few select chunks of the shooter along with it.

But then I learned that H4895 could be loaded down to only 60% of a "normal" minimum charge without fear of detonation.

Far out! I wanted to try it with my .270 Winchester. Might be more fun at the range without taking so much recoil, right? Might be good for training women how to shoot, while building them up to deal with the recoil produced by some of the higher-powered cartridge types out there...

But then I was diverted, because I wound up becoming keenly interested in .300 AAC Blackout all of a sudden. And because I learned that I could reform 5.56mm/.223 brass to .300 BLK, all of a sudden I was up to my ass teaching myself how to do it, running test loads through various firearms chambered for the cartridge type... supersonic loads, subsonic loads... and hey: what happens if I do this?

So that was all great fun, but it diverted me from screwing with the .270 Winchester reduced loads for almost eight months...

And the whole time, the idea of working up such loads was gnawing away at me in the back of my mind. At the very end of the whole thing with .300 BLK, I was so glad to no longer be developing that type of cartridge you wouldn't have believed it. I mean, it was a relief!

At last, I was finally free to screw with these reduced charges with .270 Win... and I promptly set about to doing just that.

But alas: the results were... disappointing, if not anticlimactic...

Turns out that .270 Winchester doesn't like being anything other than a souped-up hotrod of a cartridge. I found that while I could reduce recoil to the 12 ft.lb. neighborhood (which women like, since it's about the same as a .243 Winchester when it comes to recoiling mildly) the accuracy went completely to hell.

It simply *wants* to be a full-power kind of cartridge; it gets all pouty if you try and slow it down... the type is a stone speed demon, end of story.

I waited eight months to learn that!

***************
​

But anyway, so yeah: I do experiment a lot, especially with rifles.

Handguns, not so much. In fact, I even had-- and still have-- pet loads for pretty much all of my handgun types... but every so often I really *would* try something else just for the hell of it.

Still: this is something I have wished to say to you for a while-- but keep forgetting to go there:

In reality, the bulk of my experimentation has everything to do with having been forced to really scrounge for powder, especially... and not so much because I actually *wanted* to experiment with different Boom Dust...

Instead, it's because I'd been stuck with a powder shortage that forced me to try stuff I never worked with before!

For instance, there's a powder type out there called IMR 4064. Prior to 2012, I never touched this stuff, though years ago I realized that the manufacturer published load data for the stuff... and that said load data showed that the powder was good for use with both 5.56mm/.223 and .270 Win.

So, when I saw that this was ALL THEY HAD, I bought it. What I never expected was that I would learn to love the stuff... it's really excellent in both cartridge types. Of course, being an extruded powder it's a bit of a pain in the nuts for clogging drop tubes of dispensers and the like... but so long as you're not using it for mass loading of "service cartridges" and are instead loading each cartridge with extreme precision... well, it doesn't matter what it does in a dispenser because you're weighing each charge out individually to begin with.

I ended up buying Varget for the same reason: dual use. And now that I have a .300 Win Mag to also feed and care for, I am pleased to note that I can use Varget with that cartridge type as well. Wish I had more than just 8 pounds of it!

***************
​

And the beat goes on...

The other day I hit my favorite reloading supply store on the coast, which is a place known as Southeast Reloading Supplies, in Port Orange...

And once again, I'm stuck accepting substitutes-- some of which I have never worked with before!

Case in point: I found myself looking at a sign that said that a powder known as IMR-8133 was an apt substitute for yet another powder type, Hodgdon's "Retumbo"...

I wasn't looking for Retumbo when I went in there. In fact, I was surprised when I found that Retumbo is good for use with .300WM, so long as what you're stuffing on top weighs over 190 grains. But before this, if you say "Retumbo" I'm thinking about things like .338 Lapua Mag or .50 BMG...

Cool beans... learned something new. So, I went to look for a canister of Retumbo... but they were out!

So then I went to find IMR-8133, and grabbed the last pound of it in stock.

I also wound up with a lot of RL-17, RL-22, and AA "Ram Magnum" powder. Never touched any of this stuff before... looks like I'm about to go down the rabbit hole once again!

Just as vexatious: I have finally developed the ability to figure elevation dope for my mil-dot scopes in my head, and can crunch the numbers accurately enough for my purposes without screwing with a ballistics calculator. I can do that from 0 - 1,000 yards... it's getting to where some of the information has actually turned into rote memory from having been crunched so many times already...

BUT! I could only do that with 168-grain and 208-grain BTHP projectiles.

Unfortunately, when I walked in the shop the other day, I found that he was OUT of my pet bullet weights... and so I was forced to buy up a bunch of 150, 178, and 195 grain bullets... 'cause that's all the brother had!

What all this means is that now I'm going to go through all sorts of testing... new powders, new bullet weights... new range dope to calculate, memorize, and absorb... with heapin' helpin's of confusion along the way, I'm sure.

'Twas ever thus...

You know what makes it even more pathetic? Despite my chagrin at being stuck with these bullet weights I wasn't interested in, right before I had the guy ring up my purchases, I spotted a box of 110 -grain BTHP's... and I got thinking about how with .300WM, you're looking at getting about 3600 - 3700 feet per second out of the snout of your rifle with such a light-for-caliber bullet...

I cursed at myself silently, watched as if disembodied to see my hand acting of its own accord and fetching those 110's off the shelf...

Thus compounding everything, I might add!

So, there I was: driving home with a bunch of strange new powder types and bullets in weights I never really played with-- and never previously had any intention of playing with. But hey: you do what you've got to do, right? Still, I was kind of griping about it. Lots of work ahead. Ladder loads and all the rest of it... during an ammo shortage!

But then I stopped and laughed at my own complaints. After all: if I was so miffed by all this stuff, then why did I actually compound things by also picking up a bunch of 110's as I did?

God, what a stupid hobby!

I love it!

--R

A GREAT read, my friend. Enjoyed it!

I still find interesting grains vs. accuracy ∆ curves and the sweet spot for a barrel...

Cool stuff... change anything and it can go to shit by varying degrees... I use to buy the loose 100 end boxes off WW 115gr FMJ 9mm for close practicing. I shot it at a hunnert yds out of my old Colt 9mm AR-15, 16” barrel w/ red dot, and the 115s flew about like drunk hummingbirds...All over the target...Really all over... Talking 5 gal pickle bucket lid if I held really still. Shot 124s and it paint can’d. 147s and it would jelly lid. None was even close to match Grade ammo but each weight class was relatively consistent. Light ass 115 was pretty much ‘scare em real bad at a hunnert+ yards...maybe...’

Then there’s temperature... All kinds of cool little things that factor in... a true rabbit hole....that I try to stay clear of to some extent. My boy has the bug now.... An exec chef hooked on reloading. He listened and watched though. He stages the entire batch one stage at a time like me. Deprime All. Clean All. Measure/trim/prep All. Etc. Etc. Expect what you inspect, every step. I don’t worry about him dicking up... When home several weeks back, I let him get stuff out of my shop to get him started.... I had powder jugs and primers I forgot I had...

A hunnert of each of my calibers from him will keep me happy... Each trip home... or me up there...

edro

 

[ehb]

I call 4895 purple can... use it for my Garand loads.