Tag: range

October 13, 2022 – ‘Tacticool’ Thursday

October 13, 2022 /

Have you ever heard the history of the metallurgy of the penny? I am not going to cover that specifically you can look it up but in 1982 the penny was changed from 95% copper to 5% zinc to 97.5% zinc and 2.5% copper. The entire purpose was that the cost of copper was worth more than a penny. I will join this to the rest of the topic later.

One of the things I typically do at the range is pick-up what is called range brass. This is brass that other people have left of the ground. Technically, we are all supposed to do our best to clean-up after ourselves. Some people do not. I usually take a look around and if there is something useable, I pick it up. I always pick-up more than I take and the rest goes into the recycling bin. More on this later too.

A word of warning, ultra cautious shooters warn that this is a potentially dangerous activity. We do not know the history of the brass and it could be ‘wild catted’ or out of specification in some manner. My take on it is that these are shooters that are just lazy. They shoot and then they leave. If you are not willing to pick up your brass, I highly doubt that you are going to reload, let alone wildcat. I suppose that you can tell I feel like the risk is very minimal.

Some people take this pursuit to a different level. They pick up and take all brass, whereas I only take brass for calibers that I own. They will clean and resell brass at places like gun shows. Sometimes, they do some sort of hobby reloading business and reload the brass. The fact of the matter is that the gun club does the exact same thing. They sort through the recycling bin by caliber and resell in the pro-shop at a good rate.

For rimfire cartridges and damaged casings, these can be sold for scrap. The going rate is $1.75/lb. It doesn’t take long for this to really add up to some real money. The gun club donates all of that money to youth shooting sports that use the facility for practice and events. The truth is anyone can do this too.

This was my haul last trip. There are almost 400 rounds of .223 Remington/5.56 NATO in there. I am seeing $5/lb for straight off the ground brass to $50/250 for cleaned and prepped brass. I guess what I am saying is that it is worth the effort to pick it up. Within the mix I have crushed cases, crushed necks and some really difficult primers to remove. So not every case is usable, but that is OK because I don’t have anything invested into them anyway.

The US military picks up range brass too. Some of that is sold back into the marketplace as ‘once fired’ brass. This is a lot of what you find if you are looking for anything that is not new. People buy it off of surplus sites and then count it, rebrand it, etc. A lot of it is also shredded and sold for scrap. But you can see how much more valuable the cartridge cases are based on the paragraph above.

I think is worth mentioning that not all cartridge cases are brass. They can also be made of steel or aluminum and now plastic has just been introduced into the market. None of those can be reloaded, so I just throw those into the recycle bin. All metals have a scrap price, so they are still worth money.

End Your Programming Routine: I am waiting for my replacement rods to come from Lyman. I have bent several of them messing with .223. I also broke one pin and bent the heck out of another on my Lee Universal depriming die. I am hoping that this is just me learning to feel how to do it, but if I can get powder and primers, I can make ammunition much cheaper than I can purchase it retail. But, since I don’t have a load worked up yet, I will just do the case prep waiting for the consumer market to catch up with inventory.

January 6, 2022 – ‘Taticool’ Thursday

January 6, 2022 /

I got out to the range last weekend for my months delayed trip.  I was so exited to go, I muffed some items and kind of wasted the trip as well as the ammunition, which was already skinny to begin with.  Let me explain.

I talked about my red dot sight I bought over a year ago.  I wanted to sight it in with my new barrel and then compare how the sight functions with different loads and barrels.  My going in premise is that loads and barrels will make a big difference and I wanted to see when setup for hunting how that might effect would be with a shorter barrel installed.

Sabot slugs (for rifled barrels) have always been expensive.  With purchasing limits in place as well as extremely limited availability, I was able to buy some at $4/round.  Fortunately, it is still hunting season in states where shotguns are required or I probably wouldn’t be able to get any at all.  I figured (or hoped) with the sight bore sighted, that I could do the job with 15 rounds.  That turned out not to be the case in my ill-fated trip.

The first thing I did wrong was make assumptions that were not true.  A classic scope typically uses something like 1 adjustment unit on the dial makes a 1/4″ change at 100 yards.  I didn’t read the manual before leaving for the range and it turns out with this sight, 1 click was a one inch adjustment.  So, I was over adjusting four times the amount that I was supposed to each time.  Needless to say, my first shots were all over the place.  

Since I bore sighted in the basement, I was going to try and redo it at the range to try and correct my wild inaccuracies.  Of course, I left my laser at home so I ended up holding the firearm on target and looking over it at the target while I squeezed the trigger to visually see where the slug was hitting on the berm and then making a guess from there.  

I did get it on paper but then (I didn’t know) I over adjusted and was off again.  Finally, with three shots left I was going to see how they group and not do any more adjusting.  I shot two and then the sight stopped working.  My speculation was that it was too cold as it was right at freezing or the batteries were dead.

By the time we got home, the sight was working again.  It was something to with the temperature, I think but I am not 100% sure.  I read the manual and I didn’t see any operating temperature restrictions.  Even so, I wouldn’t expect 33 degrees to be under the limit.  There are definitely some lessons here.

First of all, most of the time, this shotgun is going to have the 18 1/2″ barrel on it.  If you listen to the talking heads in the industry, a defensive shotgun is recommended to have a sight that is useful in low light.  That could be a red dot or it could be a glow in the dark or big loop.  The theory being that at close range, shotgun patterns should be aimed and not pointed like in bird hunting. 

My concern is really around the operating temperature.  It is rarely consistently this cold including hunting season, however I have proved there is something going on here.  I also don’t have a dialed in sight yet, so this thing is still nearly useless.  Yeah I can use the  ‘Kentucky Windage’ by holding it where I think it should be, but even that I am not confident yet.

End Your Programming Routine:  This was a perfect, know your equipment moment.  It is where the saying “Beware the man with one gun” comes from.  The person that has one firearm uses it consistently in all situations.  Had I done this test in the summer I probably would have never seen the problem.  In fact, I prefer to use the indoor range in the winter because I can turn on the heat.  I only was at the rifle range because I postponed for three months.  

It is also quite possible that had I not been dicking around with the adjustments and guessing why I wasn’t hitting paper that I would not have seen the problem either.   So the lesson is know your equipment.  Know it when you are setting up, know its operational limits and possible faults.  My plan is to work on this test again this month.