BassCliff
Professional
May the 4th be with you!
That's right ladies and gentlemen. It's Star Wars Day so what did I do? I went to an outdoor range in the woods and shot with some of the oldest technology available. But just as I was about to leave for the range the UPS truck pulled up and the driver left this at my front door.
You're looking at 1000 rounds of S&B 124 grain 9mm and 800 rounds of LAX ammo 200 grain .45ACP. Let me stash this in my office so I can hit the road. Less than an hour later I was here at the Bristol Shooting Ranges.
This is a very large facility with all kinds of ranges, archery, air rifle, black powder, muzzle loader, etc, 7-25-50-75-100-200 yard ranges spread out over a vast property. There seemed to be some odd rules for an outdoor range, but I didn't complain.
Only 5 rounds per magazine? No rapid fire? Not that I'm Machine Gun Kelly or anything but sometimes you want to practice a Bill Drill, ya know? Ah, no biggie. I paid my range fee and took the road back to the "Wilderness Range" where the black powder/muzzle loaders hang out. There's also a .22LR-only range back here.
The amenities are kind of rough back here but all the necessities are here. For a few bucks they'll even feed you lunch. Today's special was chili but I had brought snacks so I took a pass.
This is the muzzle loading range, 25 yards. To the left is the black powder range, 50 yards, and to the right is the .22LR-only range with different targets from 7 to 50 yards. We'll see that in a little bit.
You see some steel on the left side and some silhouettes and other targets along the back line at 25 yards.
These are the muzzle loader pistols that my buddy Bill brought today. The smaller ones shoot a .36 caliber ball and the larger (right) a .44 caliber ball.
I became well-versed in how to load these pistols. It's quite a process but it allows you to take your time, relax, visit, and not blast through 200 rounds in an hour. You spend more time shooting the breeze than you do actually shooting. Bill's friend Tom was also there shooting his muzzle loaders and between the three of us we probably went through 100 rounds in three hours. Bill had these really nice stands that made loading a lot more convenient.
Those plastic tubes were pre-loaded (by Bill) with the right amount of powder then the tubes were sealed with the ball itself. You'd take the ball out, pour in the powder, drop in the ball, then press it into the cylinder.
Then you would used bee's wax to seal the cylinders so that there would be much less danger of all the chambers firing at once from an errant spark.
This one is ready to take to the line. It's not considered fully "loaded" until you've put the percussion caps on the nipples at the back of the cylinder.
The brass colored yin-yang object you see holds the percussion caps and dispenses them one at a time so you can place them on the nipples. Then you can use a dowel to snug up the caps.
This is a fully loaded, ready to fire, muzzle loading revolver just like they used in the 1850s.
Wow, I thought those 10 yard and 15 yard targets were dinky. But I actually did pretty good at 25 yards today. These pistols are heavy with little recoil and very accurate.
I was actually ringing that steel from 25 yards, the 12" square yellow plate on the right side of that stand.
Bill's buddy Tom brought out a pistol as well as his Springfield muzzle loader rifle. He showed me his procedures, using this syringe device to measure the powder...
Then he'd ram this huge bullet down the barrel. That's about 460 grains.
Then you'd place the percussion cap on. This Springfield muzzle loader uses a four wing percussion cap.
Tom let me fire his rifle a couple of times and I was able to ring the steel. We didn't shoot it from 50 yards, just 25 yards. If we wanted to shoot farther Tom said he's have to load in more powder. As it is the bullet has an 800fps muzzle velocity. But that's a huge slug. It would really do some damage.
Hey, that's 20 pictures. I'll tell you about the rest of my day in the next post. We'll do a little .22 plinking then go up to the front range and work with our 9mm pistols. Even though I brought my AK we ran out of time today. Thanks for hanging out with me.
Thank you for your indulgence,
BassCliff
That's right ladies and gentlemen. It's Star Wars Day so what did I do? I went to an outdoor range in the woods and shot with some of the oldest technology available. But just as I was about to leave for the range the UPS truck pulled up and the driver left this at my front door.
You're looking at 1000 rounds of S&B 124 grain 9mm and 800 rounds of LAX ammo 200 grain .45ACP. Let me stash this in my office so I can hit the road. Less than an hour later I was here at the Bristol Shooting Ranges.
This is a very large facility with all kinds of ranges, archery, air rifle, black powder, muzzle loader, etc, 7-25-50-75-100-200 yard ranges spread out over a vast property. There seemed to be some odd rules for an outdoor range, but I didn't complain.
Only 5 rounds per magazine? No rapid fire? Not that I'm Machine Gun Kelly or anything but sometimes you want to practice a Bill Drill, ya know? Ah, no biggie. I paid my range fee and took the road back to the "Wilderness Range" where the black powder/muzzle loaders hang out. There's also a .22LR-only range back here.
The amenities are kind of rough back here but all the necessities are here. For a few bucks they'll even feed you lunch. Today's special was chili but I had brought snacks so I took a pass.
This is the muzzle loading range, 25 yards. To the left is the black powder range, 50 yards, and to the right is the .22LR-only range with different targets from 7 to 50 yards. We'll see that in a little bit.
You see some steel on the left side and some silhouettes and other targets along the back line at 25 yards.
These are the muzzle loader pistols that my buddy Bill brought today. The smaller ones shoot a .36 caliber ball and the larger (right) a .44 caliber ball.
I became well-versed in how to load these pistols. It's quite a process but it allows you to take your time, relax, visit, and not blast through 200 rounds in an hour. You spend more time shooting the breeze than you do actually shooting. Bill's friend Tom was also there shooting his muzzle loaders and between the three of us we probably went through 100 rounds in three hours. Bill had these really nice stands that made loading a lot more convenient.
Those plastic tubes were pre-loaded (by Bill) with the right amount of powder then the tubes were sealed with the ball itself. You'd take the ball out, pour in the powder, drop in the ball, then press it into the cylinder.
Then you would used bee's wax to seal the cylinders so that there would be much less danger of all the chambers firing at once from an errant spark.
This one is ready to take to the line. It's not considered fully "loaded" until you've put the percussion caps on the nipples at the back of the cylinder.
The brass colored yin-yang object you see holds the percussion caps and dispenses them one at a time so you can place them on the nipples. Then you can use a dowel to snug up the caps.
This is a fully loaded, ready to fire, muzzle loading revolver just like they used in the 1850s.
Wow, I thought those 10 yard and 15 yard targets were dinky. But I actually did pretty good at 25 yards today. These pistols are heavy with little recoil and very accurate.
I was actually ringing that steel from 25 yards, the 12" square yellow plate on the right side of that stand.
Bill's buddy Tom brought out a pistol as well as his Springfield muzzle loader rifle. He showed me his procedures, using this syringe device to measure the powder...
Then he'd ram this huge bullet down the barrel. That's about 460 grains.
Then you'd place the percussion cap on. This Springfield muzzle loader uses a four wing percussion cap.
Tom let me fire his rifle a couple of times and I was able to ring the steel. We didn't shoot it from 50 yards, just 25 yards. If we wanted to shoot farther Tom said he's have to load in more powder. As it is the bullet has an 800fps muzzle velocity. But that's a huge slug. It would really do some damage.
Hey, that's 20 pictures. I'll tell you about the rest of my day in the next post. We'll do a little .22 plinking then go up to the front range and work with our 9mm pistols. Even though I brought my AK we ran out of time today. Thanks for hanging out with me.
Thank you for your indulgence,
BassCliff
Some folks use sonic cleaners for the cylinder nipples and other parts. I guess it doesn't hurt anything as long as they are cleaned, dried, and reassembled with the proper lubricants, etc.