Range Report(ish)
As you can see from TD’s post here, he and I went and burned up some ammo down at the range on Saturday. I was shooting for kicks and to try to get the hang of the .38 I just bought a few weeks ago.
The Winchester ammo worked fine in the revolver, but in the semi-auto, there were some scary moments. I’ve had range ammo at RangeUSA stovepipe on me before, but the Winchester white box never gave me any issues before. I think I’ve had one jam, and that was with the range ammo, and when I stopped using it, my gun started working fine.
I was merrily plugging away, simply shooting - aiming for spots, but not really caring about accuracy. Having fun, basically. I shot nine rounds from one magazine, pulled the trigger, and got nothin’ but that ominous “click” - but the magazine wasn’t back in “hey, you’re empty” position, so this was cause for concern.
I ran my finger over the top of the slide, and noticed that my chamber indicator wasn’t sticking up. I tried the trigger again. Nothing.
I took the magazine out, and tried to cock the slide backwards, thinking that maybe the empty shell just didn’t eject completely.
Well, apparently it had, but the next round just got stuck. Like, STUCK. I don’t know how to describe it.
I went out to get a range employee, because if my gun explodes, well, call me picky, but I’d rather someone else’s fingers get mangled.
After quite a bit of effort, he managed to rack the slide, and one of the most mangled, dented bullets I’ve ever seen came tumbling out of the gun handle and onto the bench. He picked it up and held it for me to see, and the bullet head was actually slanted. It looked like someone was just pressing the bullets together with the casings, and had ignored that one that was just a tad harder to press than the others. You know when you’re rolling up posters, and you have to try to roll them smaller if you want to insert them into a tube? Or else they get all dented and crinkled at the sides? This bullet head was the oversized poster inserted into a too-small tube.
Scary.
As far as an actual report goes, it wasn’t a great day for me, shooting wise. I figured out the aiming on the snubby, and also pinpointed exactly what it was that was causing me to be “off” when my rounds hit the target (I need to dry-fire a LOT to get my pointer in better shape so that I can use my finger pad rather than the middle joint to pull the damned trigger - it’s a nice trigger, but you have to have a lot more strength in your hands than I have to pull it off). Interesting tidbit: the lower I aimed with the XD, the more accurate I was. Usually it’s the opposite.
300 rounds later (200 with the XD, 100 with the snubby), and I was ready to call it a day. I was so ready to leave that when I was finishing up the 9mm, I could feel myself anticipating the shots because I wanted them to come out faster than they were, if that makes sense. As a result, my aim sucked, and my target looks like someone was trying to do a connect-the-dots of a shooting star that was traveling up and to the right (my messy shots when I anticipate always go down and to the left).
I did have fun, though, and that’s pretty much why I went, so mission accomplished.
I’m so not buying Winchester white box ammo any more, though. And I’m going to go ahead and buy a couple of new magazines for the XD - the springs are shitty, and I don’t feel like getting them repaired. I have a feeling it would be just as cost-effective to buy new ones, especially in this town.
March 24th, 2008 at 8:08 am
Go ahead and get a couple mags - you should have at least 4 mags for any gun you shoot or carry regularly - but springs are an easy fix / upgrade.
Wolff makes upgraded springs: http://www.gunsprings.com. Their +10% springs will help increase feeding reliability and last a lot longer than OEM springs. They’re easy as pie to replace too.
Just push in the little round button in the middle of the basepad of your mag and slowly slide the baseplate forward. It’s going to try and jump out like a peanut can gag, so don’t let it.
Once the spring is out, observe the orientation, put the new one in the same way and re-assemble.
You’ll want to periodically break down and clean your mags anyway. No lube though, that’ll pick up dirt and grit and cause feeding issues.
Joe
March 24th, 2008 at 8:44 am
Remember, a snubbie’s job doesn’t include much more than “across the room”.
A smallish room at that.
March 24th, 2008 at 9:30 am
I’ve shot literally thousands of rounds of WWB in my Glock 34. I had one round somewhat similar that refused to chamber–A chunk of the case was folded under. I’ll still shoot WWB. Anything bad enough to cause a dangerous problem is unlikely to chamber, and you should really examine your ammo before you load mags. (Since I loaded the mangled round, I obviously don’t reliably follow my own advice…)
March 24th, 2008 at 10:39 am
Use the crease, not the pad, for shooting your double action snubby.
Seriously.
March 24th, 2008 at 1:35 pm
The only hangup I’ve had in my XD so far was a funky round out of a Remington 100-round value pack from Wal-Mart. It did the exact same thing: hung the gun up, requiring a good deal of force to rack the slide back. Unfortunately, the round popped forward of the firing line on the range, so I didn’t get to see exactly what was wrong with it, but that’s been the one and only issue out of a thousand rounds or so thus far.
Mags aren’t at all expensive. MidwayUSA puts them on sale for $17.99 about every other month. Still, mag springs are pretty cheap, too. You can get a three-pack from Wolff for the price of a single magazine here, and you won’t have to worry about weak springs for a while afterward.