Any Pocket Pistol Paper-Punchers Hereabouts?

[Scrounger]

Waksupi--

I DO NOT reload--or even shoot--the 25 ACP. The 25 ACP die set's sizer die gets used as a low-rent neck sizer for the 25-20. On another note, during our trip through Canada, horses were referred to as "Waksupi Herefords", and beef cattle as "Alberta Percherons"--in commemoration of your observations on Canadian table fare. You'll be famous in that province in short order--I guarantee it.

And sheep as 'Prarie Wives'?

[9.3X62AL]

I think the term used was "Sagebrush Concubines", not specific to an end user.

[waksupi]

Waksupi--

On another note, during our trip through Canada, horses were referred to as "Waksupi Herefords", and beef cattle as "Alberta Percherons"--in commemoration of your observations on Canadian table fare. You'll be famous in that province in short order--I guarantee it.

Al, I'm glad you enjoyed the horse beef. And you were to late. I was already infamous in Alberta! Good to have you all back!

[jethrow strait]

So Dty. Al. where did you acquire this notion that the 32 ACP is inherently more accurate than the 380ACP????? Is that the ' conventional wisdom', your experience or je ne se pas de qua? Bring me up to speed.

I've alway regard the 32ACP as a pure ********* for purely personal and idiosyncratic reasons. A relative gave me a 'bring-back' Walther PPK or somesuch back in the 1950's in my early teens(different times, doncha know
), which I despised in my youthful exuberance(lousy trigger, expensive amoo and inaccurate)and gave to my brother. Never have quite recovered from that.------jethrow

[9.3X62AL]

Jethro--

All that French from a guy so near the SOUTHERN border was quite a surprise.

I don't know if there's much "conventional wisdom" out there regarding the 32 ACP vs. 380 ACP accuracy-wise. Neither is a very good bad guy stopper, and they are conspiciously absent from Camp Perry in the "any centerfire" category. I've shot a lot of both calibers in a variety of pistols--Beretta, Walther, Colt, SIG-Sauer, H&K, and Mauser. Over all that, the 32 ACP shoots groups about 1/4 to 1/3 smaller than the 380's have. The 9 x 18 Makarov shoots as well as the 32 ACP. I'll use the 32 ACP and the 9Mak on small game, but the 380 is enough worse accuracy-wise to not make the cut for such uses. I currently don't have a 380 on board, but own two 32 ACP's. One 32 I really regret selling was a Beretta M-81, basically a 32 version of the M-84 with two-column magazine. It fit my hand a lot better than most pocket blowbacks do, and shot well. I have some ideas why the 32 ACP might be more accurate, but since they're only half-baked I won't serve them.

Jeff Cooper once said that if you chose to limit yourself to pocket blowbacks, the 22 LR might be the best choice to make. I agreed until I got hold of the Makarov--it would be a good service pistol with JHP's, methinks.

[StarMetal]

jethrow strait,

I don't think you know poop about pocket pistol calibers. The .32 acp is inherently accurate. Look at some of the 32 target revolvers that were made. Anyways Deputy Al and myself have amassed more knowledge with these small bores they you'd ever be able . 380 are sorta hard to reload being the bullets want to cock going into the case during seating. 32's don't have this problem, 25 auto have it though, also. I ran alot of penetration tests of various handgun caliblers, 32 acp being one. It out penetrates a 380. The CIA like the 32 acp over the 380 due to that and the way it, in their words, rattled around inside your ribcage. I have a stiff little load using Bullseye, and a cast bullet to boot, that surely would make your raise your eyebrows.

As far as the Walther you had that you critize, you must have had a lemon, as this is possible in all mechanical devices in the world. All the Walther products are benchmarks that others are judged by and the PP series certainly ranks above most of them. I have a 32 acp PP Wather that I bet will out shoot alot of your handguns.

Whenever someones owns, shoots, and reloads for some oddball smallbore piston calibers such as the 32acp, 30 Mauser, 30 Luger, 7.62x25 Tokarev and others...such has done Deputy Al and myself you are gifted with a vast knowledge of their usefulness superior characteristics.

Yeah you hit a nerve about one of my favorite little rounds, the 32 acp.

Joe

P.S. I see Charger, Swagerman, now myself getting alittle testy here on the forum...has winter blues and cabinfever set in early?

[Bullshop]

Jethrow
I use them little 32 autoes in a couple J frame Smiths and they can shoot perty good. BSM has two, a stainless 4" 32 mag and a much older 2.5 or 3" 32 long. The acp has enough rim that it works just fine in the revolvers. If you check auctions you can get O.F. range brass perty dog gone cheap.
BIC/BS

[fourarmed]

There is a lower limit of .32 caliber on the "any centerfire" category of NRA bullseye, because back in the '30s Charles Askins had Pachmayr Gun Works convert a High Standard .22 to .25 auto, and used it in winning the national pistol championship. Guess it depends on the gun as well as the ammo.

[Scrounger]

There is a lower limit of .32 caliber on the "any centerfire" category of NRA bullseye, because back in the '30s Charles Askins had Pachmayr Gun Works convert a High Standard .22 to .25 auto, and used it in winning the national pistol championship. Guess it depends on the gun as well as the ammo.

Beg pardon, but that was ".22 Velo-Dog", a European caliber popular for bicycle guns a hundred years or so ago, not .25 Auto. I enjoyed Askin's book; he sure was no shrinking violet.

[StarMetal]

I saw a Ruger Mark I converted to 32 acp by Nowlin, one slick pistol. I thought about having that done for quite some time.

Joe

[9.3X62AL]

Joe continues to win friends and influence people apace. There's not a whole lot of people reloading the 32 ACP either now or in the past, and few of the pistols chambered for it were accuracy-oriented. By default rather than design, the 32 ACP can provide useful accuracy for small game and informal paper punching. The idea advanced above that the guns and their sight systems are the weak link in the chain of accuracy is quite correct in my view. I won't and don't claim any sort of expertise in this venue, just a little more time with the critters than a lot of folks who rightfully concentrated on more viable and flexible calibers and platforms like 38 Specials/357 Magnums in fine wheelguns and 45 ACPs fired in well-tuned 1911A1s. I'm a crank that pursues esoteric questions about how and why certain oddball mid-caliber handgun rounds got left behind, and in the pursuit I've found some utility for the chamberings and the handguns that house them.

The 32 ACP comes from a day when a lot more armed encounters were lawfully settled with fleeing felons--armed or not--by installing one or a series of rounds into the departing miscreant to at minimum identify the involved party. Not too many people get shot each day, even in the crummiest neighborhoods--so when the miscreant showed up at the hospital to get patched up his wounds gave at least circumstantial evidence of involvement with the incident prompting the fusillade in the first place. When the shooting of unarmed fleeing felons fell from legal favor circa 1960's, the cops and armed citizens were handed a new equation of contact with armed goblins that no 32 caliber sidearm is appropriate to address. There are still "scads" of these 32 ACP pistols in circulation (thank you, Frank Barnes), and many can provide cheap shooting entertainment if you're willing to recycle the empties produced by a range session with the little beasts.

[Bret4207]

I don't think it's cabin fever. Take a pill.

[StarMetal]

Is that what you do Tpr Bret?

Joe

[jethrow strait]

Thanks to all! As ole Will Rogers said, "We are all ignorant, just of different things." Some are just a little more loutish than others in expressing theirs.----- But, I'm sure, we are all doing our best.----jethrow

[StarMetal]

Hey Jethro...cool. I just think you may have gotten a bum Walther and/or didn't spend enough really dedicated time with it. They really are fine guns and as Deputy Al pointed out they lack good sights. You have to realize that they were intended for close up personal protection and not target shooting. That's a shame because they do have the inherent accuracy. I've told Al I'd love to see what my 32 acp PP would do with a longer barrel/slide and target sites.

Hey you know if you have a 32 mag Ruger single action (can kick myself in the butt for not buying one of those) that you can shoot 32 acps in it? The 32 acp as you notice has a slight rim and it it will support it in a cylinder. Kinda be like a long rifle and short situation for that niffty 32 revolver.

Joe

[Bret4207]

Yup, Zoloft. Keeps me from beating ignorant morons half to death on the side of the road. Check with your local Doc.

[jethrow strait]

Geeze Joe, you really are a .32 ACP freak(oops, forgot my Zoloft). Seems like sacrilege to me, putting one of them lil pills in my Ruger 32Mag SS. But, I have shot a lot of 32 S&W long in it with better results than with the 32 Mag itself. Just for laughs I'll give the ACP a try in it. Have a friend who has been trying to dump his wimpy .32ACP Kel-Tec, ever since he tried my macho Kel-Tec 3AT....sure he has shells to spare.---jethrow

[9.3X62AL]

I forget which loading manual listed it.....maybe an older Speer Manual--but I recall some text about a Browning "Grande Modele" in 380 ACP caliber with better sights and ergonomics that was more able to exploit accuracy. No time in hand with any such critter myself, though. The Ruger rimfire auto "punched out" to 32 ACP would be an intriguing example, but I suspect its cost might exceed that of a new CZ-550. If it were a little more affordable, I'm enough of a mid-caliber pistol crank to order one. In such ventures, the question "what the hell for?" doesn't often occur to me.

Here goes with my half-baked ideas I balked at earlier. The 32 ACP along with the 38 Auto were Browning's earlier series of self-loading pistol rounds that included a semi-rim design element. The rimless idea came along a few years later, in 1905 with the first 45 ACP ideation and the 380 in 1908. The later 38 Super used the same exterior case dimensions as the older 38 Auto, complete with the semi-rim.

Conventional wisdom has held that the rimless case design/headspace on case mouth regimen is more intrinsically accurate than the semi-rim/headspace on cartridge rim regimen. When 38 Supers were being accurized and developed for IPSC-type competition some years back, much was said about setting headspace on the case mouth rather than the rim of the 38 Super casings being used for these gun games. In the midst of the accuracy mods being made to these guns, the 38 Super was found to be a right accurate round--and the headspacing change was given the nod as the reason for the dramatic accuracy upgrade. I don't know if other mods were factored out of the equation to arrive at that determination, but there it was there--Headspace Is The Reason. That said, Buckshot has a box-stock 38 Super service pistol that drives tacks--so I think the rep for inaccuracy that the 38 Super held is a weak argument.

Whatever. I started playing around with the now-departed Beretta and the still-present Walther PP about this time, thinking about the headspace question from the 38 Super--case mouth, or rim edge? The chambers of both barrels had the abrupt chamber step where the case mouth meets the throat, so there was a potential for setting headspace like a 45 ACP--if the cases were long enough to reach.

They weren't. Even at max length (.680"), cases seated firmly on the rim before getting to the leade edge. What I did notice during this process was the extreme range of case length variance in W-W and R-P cases, both between and within brands in once-fired cases from factory loads. Same story with new brass purchased as components--lengths ranged from .667" to .678".

I tried a test--trimming cases to .675" and rejecting any that didn't "clean up" at that length. It took about 130 cases to get 50 R-P and 50 W-W cases that were all .675" long. I still had about 275 cases of mixed make sitting around, so I loaded the 100 trimmed cases with Rem 71 grain FMJ's to about 800 FPS with WW-231, and 50 more of each brand from the untrimmed pile. This made 25 rounds for each pistol from each of four lots of ammo. Details aside, the trimmed case ammo decisively shot better groups than did the random-case-length ammo in both pistols--on the order of 25%-30% smaller groups. The effect occurred with cast boolits later, using #313249.

The 380 ACP cases showed the same sort of length anomalies, and were treated to the same regimen a few years later. Accuracy improved somewhat, but not to the degree that the 32 ACP ammo showed. The 380 started out worse with factory loads, didn't improve as dramatically, and couldn't catch the 32 ACP. I even used the most accurate of three 380's to give the 32 a real race--the SIG-Sauer P-230--and still no cigar. A very fine pistol, but it couldn't quite keep up.

Why this is the case in my experience is conjectural. I'm satisfied that the 32 ACP shoots better than the 380 ACP overall, and that the 32 ACP shoots well enough for small game and rats to 35-40 yards. My goal was to justify using the 380 over the 32 for these hunting venues, but the opposite of my intentions was the result. I admit that my prejudices favored the 380, and even with that substantial bias the 32 won out.

[jethrow strait]

You guys are beating my newfound .380ACP passion to a pulp-----first I was pummeled by Starman's purple prose and now, even worse, the newfound object of my affection is being dissected by the retired, and seemingly every day brighter, Deputy Al's laboratory exegesis. But, greatness comes only with perseverence!

I may be just tilting at windmills like Don Quixote, but so be it. Sancho, my .380, por favor!!!!------------jethrow

[9.3X62AL]

The last time I contracted an exegesis, it took three weeks of Bancomycin treatment to get rid of it. Nasty stuff.

Not trying to cool your fondness for the 380 here, just trying to add my bit to the discourse and maybe suggest some tweaks that might help get you where you want to be.

I don't necessarily believe the 380 is an absolute loser. Not at all. I didn't do extensive shooting with cast boolits in the caliber, and if there's an accurate load out there for the caliber, it will be had with quality boolits that fit closely and are tailored to the pistol's quirks and dimensions. A truncated cone or round flat nose that fed well--fit the grooves closely--made of relatively hard metal--and lubed with softer stuff--might yield better results than I got with the caliber. Vary the pressures/velocities a bit, try some powders other than "the usual suspects" (Bullseye, WW-231, AA-2). Unique, Red Dot, Green Dot, maybe even Herco might get ya to the Promised Land. I didn't try any of the medium-speed fuels except Unique, so there's a LOT of country I didn't cover on the 380 ACP trip.