Accuracy Expectations at 25 yards with cast bullets

[MT Gianni]

Dry firing is your friend.

There is the old adage that practice makes perfect and I disagree with it. Perfect practice makes perfect. Sometimes a good coach makes all the difference in the world.

[44man]

Rick is right, my friends and I all will out shoot a Ransom Rest all day, just with bags or from Creedmore.
Where I am a stickler is your practice, If the load does not shoot, you can shoot a billion rounds a week and not get any better. The first things come first, make your gun shoot one hole at 25 or 1/2" at 50 from a rest and then go off hand. I have never learned to steer a boolit.
If you get 4" or more at 25 from a rest, just what can you do off hand?
The best shooters only shoot the best loads FIRST.
Try shooting 200 meters or out to 500 meters with a 25 yard, 4" shooter.

[44man]

There is the old adage that practice makes perfect and I disagree with it. Perfect practice makes perfect. Sometimes a good coach makes all the difference in the world.

This is true but you left out how accurate the loads are. Every shot must count but if they do not go to the sights, you are digging a hole to China with a teaspoon.

[dtknowles]

Rick is right, my friends and I all will out shoot a Ransom Rest all day, just with bags or from Creedmore.
Where I am a stickler is your practice, If the load does not shoot, you can shoot a billion rounds a week and not get any better. The first things come first, make your gun shoot one hole at 25 or 1/2" at 50 from a rest and then go off hand. I have never learned to steer a boolit.
If you get 4" or more at 25 from a rest, just what can you do off hand?
The best shooters only shoot the best loads FIRST.
Try shooting 200 meters or out to 500 meters with a 25 yard, 4" shooter.

For most people waiting until they can get 1/2 inch groups at 50 yards before they shoot offhand will mean they never shoot offhand. Most people do not have a pistol or revolver that can do that so all the load development in the world won't fix it and if they did they might not have the bench rest skills to shoot that small a group.

You can learn to shoot offhand just fine with a gun that shoots 2 inch bench rest groups at 25 yards. Take that gun and shoot at a 6 inch bullseye at 25 yards and once you can keep them all in the black start worrying about keeping them more in the center.

Tim

[35 Whelen]

With out a machine rest, scope, or a keyboard, all of which combined serve to inordinately tighten groups, you can hope to average 2-3 inches at 25 yards.

You may do better, and the gun certainly should but that is not the average that you can expect. Sometimes, we here on the boards get a little too exuberant in our claims, remembering that one really good group, but ignoring the several other mediocre groups we shot before and after. 1 inch groups at 25 yards from a stock revolver not in a PROPERLY set up Ransom rest with iron sights is not a reasonable average to strive for.

^^^THIS^^^

Folks saying they consistently shoot 1" groups at 25 yds. and/or say they can hold a handgun more steady than a Ransom rest are misleading, at best, to the uninitiated handgun shooter.

i never shoot less then 50 yards and many groups are down to 1/2" there and out to 100 yards.

Statements such as the one above likewise are misleading because he doesn't bother to mention that his revolvers are scoped.

Learning to shoot a revolver is an art that requires constant practice. I am blessed to be able to shoot anytime I want, as much as I want and normally do. As such it shows when I go a few weeks without doing any meaningful shooting. Last year I shot my SA .44 Special almost daily with most of the shooting being at 50 yds. where I have a 7" x 11" steel plate mounted to a steel rod. There were a handful of occasions when I was able to keep all my shots in a 4" +/- circle at that range, but to make a blanket statement that "I shoot 4" groups offhand at 50 yds." would be misleading at best. Let's be real guys.

I'm almost finished with Elmer Keith's great book Sixguns. I personally think every aspiring handgun shooter should read it as it cuts through the BS that has flourished with the advent of internet forums.

35W

[44man]

My revolvers have red dots now for hunting but back in the day we shot 1/2" groups at fifty with open sights from Creedmore.
The S&W 29 and the Rugers would do it. Best the SRH and SBH Hunter.
I still say if your loads do not shoot, you will not get better.
No, I don't claim to shoot 4" at 50 offhand anymore. I am talking a rest only. Yet there is a day when you can hold so beat thisAttachment 119494 3/4" group at 100 off hand, .44 mag with a red dot. Then a guy questioned me so I took five shots down and shot them from my Vaquero at 50 from Creedmore and got this. Attachment 119495
Never tell me a 4" group at 25 will shoot better with practice.
The revolver IS an art but it is at the bench before you ever pull a trigger.
I stand by my saying that if the gun will not shoot you will never shoot either. I have dropped deer DRT at over 100 yards off hand with the Vaquero because I made it shoot.

[PAT303]

i never shoot less then 50 yards and many groups are down to 1/2" there and out to 100 yards.

Do you shoot SA?,if you do how do you cock the hammer,by reaching over with your thumb with your non grip hand?. Pat

[cbrick]

Do you shoot SA?,if you do how do you cock the hammer,by reaching over with your thumb with your non grip hand?. Pat

Considering Jim is primarily a Ruger man single action would be the order of the day yes. In my case the vast majority of my revolver competition was with FA's so again, yes single action.

Yes, always cock the hammer with your off hand. A huge part of revolver accuracy is grip, once you have placed the grip properly in your hand never change that grip by cocking with the same hand.

Rick

[PAT303]

Rick is right, my friends and I all will out shoot a Ransom Rest all day, just with bags or from Creedmore.
Where I am a stickler is your practice, If the load does not shoot, you can shoot a billion rounds a week and not get any better. The first things come first, make your gun shoot one hole at 25 or 1/2" at 50 from a rest and then go off hand. I have never learned to steer a boolit.
If you get 4" or more at 25 from a rest, just what can you do off hand?
The best shooters only shoot the best loads FIRST.
Try shooting 200 meters or out to 500 meters with a 25 yard, 4" shooter.

Can you give us some idea's as what is needed from the bench to get our guns to shoot?,one thing I've found with my 586 is it won't shoot anything unless it has a good amount of case tension with just a slight crimp. Pat

[44man]

Can you give us some idea's as what is needed from the bench to get our guns to shoot?,one thing I've found with my 586 is it won't shoot anything unless it has a good amount of case tension with just a slight crimp. Pat

This is true and why I use a harder lead, I water drop WW boolits so they withstand case tension.
I use Felix lube and there are a few others that work good like Satan's, MML and LBT soft blue. You must do a lube accuracy test, it will surprise you.
Fit to groove is important. Crimp should just be folded to the bottom of the crimp groove, never more.
Next is the hammer spring, I use the Wolfe 26# variable now. I used to watch my accuracy degrade when shooting IHMSA so I bought packs of 10 springs from Ruger and changed every year until I switched to Wolfe. Never lighten a hammer spring, primers need a certain impact. Ruger springs take a set.
Then the primer, I use the Fed 150 in the .44 and .45 Colt with 296, cuts groups by 2/3's. Larger cases like the .475 and up need the 155 for best accuracy. Shooting the S&W .45 ACP revolver showed the LP primer was too much so we tested SP brass and groups shrunk instantly. It carried over to the 1911 and that even shot better. You do not want boolit movement from the primer pressure. Even a slippery lube is no good.
I can't hold still resting a revolver like many do so I rest the end of the barrel on a bag and the butt on a firm bag. Rear bag tension needs to be the same as much as you can get it.
Case tension needs to be as even as you can get it, I can measure seating pressure and sort loads. New brass is the worst and tests have shown you will be all over the paper. Loose tension can hit 10" from a tighter case. I used my RCBS dies to make compression dies for BP and other stuff.
I had BR collar dies made for the .44, real pain to use but I found Hornady New Dimension dies worked as good. I would never buy Lee or Lyman dies. I will never use the LFCD either.
Many claim dead soft will shoot at below a certain velocity, don't buy into it. You need to keep the boolit as it was cast the entire trip so I tested many of those pipsqueak loads and found 28 to 30 BHN was needed with fast powders. The instant "thump" is too much for soft lead even with reduced overall pressures.
Keith boolits need to be hard to allow cylinder alignment so the shoulder does not get wiped at the cone. Soft Keith boolits slump all out of shape.
Don't tighten a cylinder so there is no play, even fitting a Belt Mountain pin too tight will ruin accuracy and could cause cone and rifling wear. A gun with no cylinder play at all MUST have perfect chamber alignment or you will destroy it. The throats, cone and rifling will wear oblong. Do not trust a line bored gun if fit tight. I have shot many of Jack Huntingtons guns and most have more cylinder play then factory.
Today, the most accurate revolvers are the BFR's.
I forgot grip, the sixgun should be held low and very firm so it raises your arms, NEVER, ever let it roll in your hand. The Bisley is sensitive, so is the S&W 29. No problem shooting a 1/2" group, set the gun down to change a target, pick it up and shoot another 1/2" group 10" from the first, see what the gun does between shots if you let it move a little. I only shot ONE good group with a Bisley, gun hit the road in a week. My hands do not fit them.

[DougGuy]

alexanderkidd, may I ask some questions about your revolvers? You say you are shooting a Vaquero and a Blackhawk, what are the calibers of each and the barrel lengths? Are they both .357s and you are shooting .38 Special loads in the .357 cylinders?

What about the trigger return springs and the hammer springs, have you changed or modified those in any way or are both guns stock from the factory?

4" @25yds from a rest is pretty much saying that there is a LOT of room for improvement. There are several areas that may need to be addressed, some with the gun, some with the loads, and some with the shooter.

As far as the shooter goes, Rick has it right in that the SA revolver is very sensitive to grip and the shooter's hands, and Jim shoots Creedmoor so he knows full well what it takes for him to do his best, both these guys are coming from the over-the-mountain side of been there, done that, and they give expert advice. Along with what they have to say about the grip, I have found this bit of wisdom to be valuable because it works well.

When you dry fire a SA revolver, you get to see how the long hammer throw (lock time) upsets the sights when it comes crashing down onto the firing pin and the frame. About this time the overtravel in the trigger takes up and the trigger finger tends to jerk the sights to the left and down for a right handed shooter. The art in shooting a SA, is learning to incorporate the actions of the trigger and hammer into your grip so that you minimize the movement in the sights when the hammer falls. This is where dry firing is indeed your friend because it's an important tool at this stage of learning the SA. If you stand with your SA unloaded and pick a spot on a target in your home or your garage or wherever you choose to do this unloaded exercise, what do the sights do when the hammer falls? Do they jump like crazy? If they do, right there is 3" of your 4" group in a nutshell.

The Ruger trigger return springs are pretty stiff, and they cause the shooter to exert quite a bit of effort to fire the gun, and with the overtravel once the sear breaks, can jerk the sights pretty good. You can take the grips off and remove one leg of the trigger return spring and simply let it hang loose, put the grips back on and dry fire it, see if it got any easier to hold the sights still when the hammer falls. Some shooters swap in a Wolff 30oz trigger return spring at this point because it not only makes the trigger easier to pull, it greatly lessens the amount of disturbance to the sights when the hammer falls. The bottom line, you need to be able to dry fire this gun and hold the sights motionless to shoot the SA revolver properly. Not until you can do this, will you shoot good groups with ANY single action revolver regardless of caliber, make, or barrel length. After you learn to do this, with your own guns, this dry fire exercise is no longer needed, as hopefully you have by now discovered how to hold the grip of your own gun, and memorized the hold, the feeling of the perfect trigger pull, the feeling of letting the sear break without jerking the trigger afterwards fully rearward and taking up the overtravel. It's something that you just imprint in your brain and it stays with you.

The other things you can look at are with the gun itself. What are the diameter of the boolits you are shooting? Can you push them through the cylinder throats from the front easily? In a perfect world, the boolit would be .001" to .002" greater than groove diameter, and the cylinder throats would be .0005" to .001" greater than boolit diameter so that the boolit is presented to the barrel without being sized down by tight cylinder throats. This is quite common in Ruger SA revolvers to have cylinder throats smaller than you really want them. They will usually shoot factory ammo fine, but shooting cast generally requires their diameters to be addressed and at the very least, checked for size, in many cases they will need to be reamed slightly larger to shoot cast boolits well. If you are shooting .38 Special loads in a .357 cylinder, now you have an area of freebore in front of the cartridge case before the chamfer leading into the throats, which can allow the boolits to be misaligned with the throat and once this happens they get pretty distorted as they pass through the cylinder throats so even though it works, it's not the best arrangement for accuracy by any means. You may be better off working up .357 loads that will chamber the loaded round with the driving band of the boolit seated in the rear of the cylinder throats.

Then there is the forcing cone, which by all accounts is hit or miss from the factory, some are fairly smooth, some are too short and very rough with scratches and tool marks quite visible. The best you can do with that is have a smith recut the forcing cone to 11° and smooth it out. Works great for cast boolits, and works -exceptionally- well with cast boolits that are smooth sided and don't have a driving band ala Keith style SWC designs.

Finally, if there is any "thread choke" where the barrel screws into the frame, this will squeeze down the diameter of the boolits you are shooting and they will not seal in the bore, no matter how much you practice or how much load development you do, if this choke is not addressed and fixed, you will always have poor groups. Luckily on the smaller caliber Rugers, this is less of a problem because the barrel walls are much thicker than the .44 and .45 caliber barrels, and you may have no thread choke at all.

Once you have mastered the dry fire exercise and have checked the gun for correctness in cylinder throats and other dimensions, it's time to start working up loads that are accurate, in YOUR guns. Aside from the advice given here, mastering a SA revolver is not just one thing, it is a combination of things that either work together for the good, or work together to fight you if even one component of the combination is wrong, because it throws off the rest of it. It's not that hard to do, you just have to do it.

[PAT303]

44man,what style of boolit?,RN,Truncated cone,Keith?. Pat

[ErnieBishop]

Interesting thread.
Giving me a better idea how guys set up at the bench.

[Thumbcocker]

When dry firing be sure to hold the sights on target after the hammer fall. Follow through will cut group size. I would welcome a coach but never had one. Read a lot and tried stuff. Still plenty of room for improvement in my shooting.

[opos]

I'm an older (much older) guy that has shot for some 60 years...I used to be capable of some pretty nice groups with about anything I shot and did a whole lot of practice ...but now...with aging and somewhat weak eyes and all the other fun that goes with a man in his mid 70's...what would be acceptable "back then" is only a dream now...but I still enjoy shooting and just do the best I can...4" freehand for me at 25 yards is a decent group on a decent day..I don't shoot off bags or a rest..never really have as I know the gun and the ammo will outshoot me.

Interesting bit of "reality"...I used to shoot at a local indoor range where some folks that are in one branch of Federal Law Enforcement used to shoot on a regular basis...I watched 7, 10, and 15 yard shooting that was not a group..it was a "pattern"...shooting .40 semi's...I was amazed and asked the range officer about the seeming lack of ability and accuracy on the part of the shooters and he replied that they qualify at 7 and 10 yards and a "man target" with most of the shots in center mass is "good enough"...Just surprised me...I can shoot my CZ in 9mm and in .40 closer today with all my difficulties than what I was seeing.

[ole 5 hole group]

Well, just got back into town and saw this thread is still going strong. I'm going to pay more attention to your advice Rick, since your competitive shooting pedigree reads a whole lot better than mine.

I've seen a couple Ransoms set-up on a wood bench that looked pretty solid but the operator/s couldn't get it to settle in for some reason but for those that I've seen set-up right in a solid bench with a knowledgeable operator - well, getting a 1911 to repeat 10-shot groups of 1.150 to 1.325 at 50 yards is just a sight to see - just once in a lifetime for most of us. My hats off to anyone who can match or better it off a rest and a bow to the man that can put all the 1911 parts together to accomplish such a feat.

I do have a 1911 that possesses the ability to shoot groups like that - but I currently don't possess the ability to shoot that well off a rest but I can come real close to the 1911's ability from 50-foot and 25 yards rested - and yes, I know, close only counts when talking about 155mm air-bursts or atomic bombs.

Getting grip panels for a revolver might be the problem with some ransoms as well - I'm not sure how they have progressed over the years.

No doubt some can shoot groups with a revolver at 50 and 100 yards with or without optics better than most hunters can with their most reliable rifle fitted with fine optics but for the general handgun shooting public - that's one tall order to fill.

I've done some long-range shooting and I was satisfied with my groups out to 200 yards, even though they weren't usually sub-MOA groups, but when that sub-MOA did come along, it was a real treat and I normally left that target hang out there all day long for all to see and wonder about??? Now out to 500 yards - not sure whether to classify them as large groups or blow patterns. Once I got everything figured out - I could raise hell with a big target but there usually weren't too many touching bullet strikes unless I shot at that target for a hour or two.

Enjoy your time on the line, as it comes to a close way too soon for some.

[cbrick]

My competitive shooting days are over. Age, 30 years with diabetes and cataracts has seen to that.

When we were building the current range about 35 years ago, before we poured the concrete slab we dug a four foot deep hole and set in a 3 foot dia. seamless 1/4" thick pipe scavenged from a pipeline project, filled in around it with concrete and poured the cement slab around it. We filled the pipe with sand to absorb any possible vibrations and welded a 1/2" steel plate to the top, to this plate we bolted the Ransom rest. Solid is an understatement. The club bought the Ransom rest and inserts for most of the common Silhouette handguns thinking this would be the ticket for load development. Many club members including me tried for months to equal the groups we were getting from Creedmoor or bench shooting and couldn't do it. The pipe & mount system is still there but the Ransom Rest hasn't been used since. It was a great idea that didn't pan out.

All that being said we weren't shooting 1911's at 25 feet, this was all for big bore long range silhouette and the guns that reflect that. What a 1911 at short range would do in the rest I couldn't say. Lot's of folks seem to swear by them for that so I guess it works for that, for us it didn't.

My only scoped shooting was from the bench doing load development. The majority of my competition shooting was open sight revolver in Creedmoor from 50 to 200 meters (218 yards). I fondly remember the days I could look downrange and actually see the targets, the good ole days.

Rick

[ErnieBishop]

That is why I use optics and field rest or prone.
My eyes are not what they used to be.
And I do not hunt or field sheet from the standing offhand position.

[41mag]

I will fully admit that my loads and revolvers are better than I am, and well they should be.

I have shot handguns most of my short 50yrs but for a while, even though never being competitive, I was shooting 3-500 rounds a week from between one and three revolvers, depending on what ammo I managed to get loaded up.

That said I fully agree with 44man that if your load ain't cutting it all the practice in the world isn't going to help you improve. What good does it do for every third or fifth round to land 3" out from where your holding? Was it you or the load?

When I get REAL serious about my loads I set up form the bench and as mentioned I rest my frame on the rest, not the barrel, nor the butt of the grip. Only thing touching anything solid is just ahead of the cylinder. I also dissected an old pair of leather work boots to use to cover up the owl ear bag on my rest. Otherwise in about a dozen shots it will be toast.

I can say that in most outings my revolvers are capable of this sort of accuracy, standing with a two hand hold at 25yds,
http://castboolits.gunloads.com/show...tin&highlight=
8.75" Raging Bull in 454, Lee 452-300RF@1550fps,



Those were shot during some testing I was doing right after I started to pour my own. They will still pretty easily shoot like that, but I am the weak link. At that time I was shooting that revolver nearly weekly putting 50 or so rounds through it, or until I would get tired. Some days I could go longer some not so long, but I know when it is me and not the loads that are having an issue.

The same can be said with my 357, 41, 44 and 45 Colt. They will all shoot great groups with tailored loads, both cast and jacketed, and it took a while to get them worked up to that point. However once there it is real easy to shoot average groups while piddling around but when, as my bud calls it, I really bear down to the nitty gritty and get serious, things will fall into one big ragged hole.

I have to say that in my initial load work up for that 454 that 44man and several others gave me great advice in both my casting and my load development. I have the background in loading and shooting to put things together properly and when working with something new I am not bashful about asking questions. But simply asking the questions and knowing what to do with the answers once you get them is what makes it happen.

Since I hunt with my revolvers I feel I owe it to not only the game but to myself to hit the woods with everything being the best I can make it. With my 41 I have made shots out to just past 100yds on feral hogs that simply blew a few other hunters away. It wasn't a hail mary shot or a wonder if I can do this, they were practiced and multiple hundreds of rounds were put down range well before I ever sent one after a critter. One thing I have learned with hunting using my revolvers is, when you think you have to hold in the air over hair, your usually shooting beyond your abilities.

[44man]

44man,what style of boolit?,RN,Truncated cone,Keith?. Pat

Never a Keith, can't pull a cylinder. WLN, WFN or RNFP. truncated cone is great.
My .44 has an 11* cone so my boolit was made to try to match 11* at the ogive. I shot a 1-5/16" group of 3 at 200 yards during a drop test. Shot Creedmore.
Now that I have larger guns with a LOT of recoil, things still hold true and a Keith from any is a waste of lead.
Rick is exactly right and both of us suffer from age now. We both shot open sights to 200 meters. I shot my revolvers to 500 meters (547 yards) and hit steel.
I am failing more and more with age, I am near 77 now.
Many of my revolvers will shoot the same off hand as they do from bags because the right hold is used. Nothing works better for me as good as a Hog Leg, no other grip lets me move my hand on the grip for distance changes.