Firearms

We decided to take the 9mm pistols to the range today. We brought a hundred rounds of 9×19 ammo. I brought my Glock 26 subcompact and Damsel brought her S&W 908s. The latter being a little workhorse with a single-stack 8 round magazine. This nice little gun has been one of our most reliable guns but seldom sees much praise when we post about shooting.

Image: Damsels 908s after clean-up. Click to enlarge.

We actually have two of these, a ‘his’ (in black) and ‘hers’ – this one – the ‘s’ after 908 indicates ‘silver’ finish. As I said before, these guns have been pretty reliable. We have had them for several years, shoot them regularly, and have only replaced the slide springs and spring guides in them after one of the two was showing some wear.

We also took two shotguns today – the 12 gauge Remington 870 Security Shotgun and Damsel’s 20 gauge shotgun. As usual we took 25 rounds for each gun. You can read more about shooting them here.

We took our .38 and .357 shooters to the range today. We scored some .38 special “wad cutters” reloaded ammo last week and wanted to send a box of those downrange. The wad cutters, also known by the rather descriptive term “The Devil’s Suppository,” make a nice distinct hole in paper targets. A while back, Damsel posted an image in “I shot Mickey Mouse,” where you can see the clean holes in the target.

Image: wad cutters – click to enlarge.

We were able to see the holes appear in the target quite well, even though we had taped it to some scrap cardboard an eighth of an inch thick, or so. I would have bought another fifty rounds of wad cutters at the range today, but, unfortunately, they were all sold out. We still have 150 rounds of wad cutters which we will use with discretion.

Speaking of scoring ammo, we found some UMC .357 magnum at our Big 5 store for $31/box of 50. I got a couple of boxes. Expensive, but you never know when the well is going to dry up – again.

When the shooting range where we have a membership refurbished the range, they replaced the conventional heavy target holders with a flimsy coat-hanger and Boston clip kluge. Last Sunday, our regular day to shoot, I forgot to bring the lightweight cardboard backing for the silhouette targets. As a result, I got a heavier duty cardboard target backing at the range.

When Damsel was shooting with her 20 gauge, I noticed that the target was ‘dancing’ less as a result. In the video, compare a lightweight target backing with the heavier one from this time. It makes me think that we need a heavier backing still to help stabilize the target.

It’s too bad that we have to compensate for the cheapness in the target holders, but we have little choice since this range is both convenient and (relatively) inexpensive. We plan to continue experimenting with this.

We traveled light today for target practice. We had another activity scheduled, so we chose not to bring a lot of stuff to the range. We brought only one handgun, the S&W 686 .357 magnum revolver. We also brought two shotguns, Damsel’s 20 gauge and our security 12 gauge – both Remington 870s.

We shot 100 rounds of .38 specials through the 686. At one point, it failed to fire one of the rounds. When Damsel put the failed round back in the cylinder, it detonated properly. The other 99 rounds fired without incident, however, so we’re not quite ready to replace the firing pins just yet. We did replace the pins in both 686s about two years ago.

In the video, that’s me enlarging the already gaping hole in the silhouette target taped to a cardboard backing. We found that the cardboard helps to stabilize the target when mounted on the flimsy coat hanger/Boston clip target-hanging kluge they have at our range.

On the ammo front, we were pleased to find that one of the re-load bins was chock full of .38 special wadcutter rounds. I bought 200 rounds for future target shooting.