End Of a Crazy Week

Check out the new U.S. Firearms (USFA) Zip .22 pistol and SBR...Okay, different, but cool-looking. USFA head honcho Doug Donnelly is a visionary, as well as an interestingly to hang out with, so I'm interested in seeing the final product. BTW, this goes along with what the cherubs an d seraphim are telling me that USFA is  moving away a bit from their superb single action pistols toward the amazingly lucrative black rifle market.

Shot the Turnbull 1911 .45 in a Wild Bunch match and was EXTREMELY happy. It is one heck of a 1911. I had a couple of problems that I'd call ammo related...I didn't have any of my 230-gr cowboy 1911 .45 ACPs loaded up, so I grabbed a couple of boxes of factory cowboy I had on hand. It wasn't until I got to the tach that I realized they were 200-gr round nose, which are actually WRETCHED bullets! The design has a slightly smaller round nose with a little "platform," for lack of a better word, around the base of the bullet the nose sits on. I have a pretty varied selection of 1911s, from stock to full-blown competition guns. NONE of my guns will feed this bullet design reliably. Not one. In fact, I had 500 of them a few years back I won at a match. I loaded up a bunch, then a bunch more with varying cartridge OALs, changed the crimp...no dice. I hauled out my Wilson Master Grade, which will feed empty cases, and it would not reliably feed the 200-grainers. I finally consigned the bullets left to the scrap lead bin. The Turnbull gun choked on a couple of the factory loads...then I borrowed some rounds from a friend and the gun ran like a top. Am very pleased with this gun. I'll probably shoot it off a bench in before the snow sets I and see what it's like at fixed distances.

I also ran a Winchester Model 12 12 gauge pump instead if a '97. Night and day. The Model 12 feels different from both the '97 and the Rem 870, the 2 pumps I have a lot of rounds through, but I could definitely get used to it.

My Wild Bunch rifle was another test run -- a Taylor Uberti converted from .44 Special to .44 Russian. Lever guns flatly don't like short cartridges, but Adirondack Jack, a SASS shooter and gunsmith, created a specially modified carrier to allow the link guns to use both his proprietary .45 Special in the .45s and .44 Russian in the .44s. As I am probably the only person on earth who has a large supply of both loaded .44 Russians and components (don't ask...it was another project that plain-ass didn't work), I got the kit installed in a '66 I'd had for a while. It's a cool gun. The Russians didn't recoil at all with the octagonal barrel and, as expected, it's as accurate as stink. One caveat...whe loading the stubby rounds through the loading gate, you have to make sure the last round is pushed in enough to seat it's rIm against the little spring-loaded thingie that allows the shorter cartridges to work in the lever guns.

And before you ask "why," the answer is "because." I like the .44 Russian cartridge, and in a levere gun my experience has been that In a larger caliber the short cartridges tend to be more reliable than their longer brethren.