41 Mag Ruger

Hunter,

Thanks for the compliments on the shooting. It does get better than that, but I had a set of Tru Glo sights installed when I shot those which besides covering the whole dot up at that range, were doing some other weird stuff. Normally when I am on the groups will be simply a ragged hole for the most part. I swapped the sights back out with the Ruger target set I shoot on my GP's and my other RH and things are back to normal now. Well I say that, I haven't been out shooting in a couple of months so all bets are off on my part. My hunting pardner and I were shooting quite a bit when I shot those groups, and I generally try to get at least 20 or so rounds through a weekend, just to keep up the eye hand coordination. With other things taking precidence, I haven't shot anything of late, but hopefully that will change this weekend.

The crimp thing was found pretty much by total accident. I had a 4x scope mounted on my 44 RH, and had a load which for years shot the bull out at 100yds from a home made rest. I had a chance to head to WI for a handgun deer hunt, and was working up loads for the two of them. I was having a pretty hard time just keeping the 44 on paper at 50 while the 41 was simply drilling holes. During a cease fire, I happened to notice the differences in the crimps between the two. When they opend the range back up, I backed my 44's crimp die up a half turn and started easing it down until it matched the 41 loads. As they say the rest was history, my groups once again went into the ragged holes at both 50 and 100.  It was really bothering me as for years the 44 had shot so well and all of a sudden it was whack. But it did illustrate how much differenc it made even with a full case of 296 and a heavy bullet.

Bottom line is you might have to check as you shoot to be sure you have enough to keep the second and third rounds from jumping the crimp when you fire, but you definately don't need to squash it any more than necessary.

Somewhere floating around on the net is a free target which is divided up like a pie. I have seen it called a couple of things but for the most part it is a handgun training target. Each slice shows a different fault caused by the shooter. There is both left and right hand versions. It looks cheesy as all get out but trust me, it will help stretch the range out on your groups pretty quickly. I have it saved on file, and have given it out to several friends who were having issues with just keeping shots together and were burning through factory ammo trying to find something accurate that the handgun liked. Fact is the handgun shot most of it well it was the shooter having the issues. Not saying your having issues but it helps out quite a bit showing the little things, like squeezing the grip, or rolling wrist and such. If you use it start in close, and move it out and your will see how well it works.

Rodfac,

That's a beauty for sure. Brings back a lot of memories shared with a great friend who passed a few years back. We both had them and hauled them everywhere we went while in the country. Thought we were cowboy's I guess. LOL

The only issue I ever had with mine was that darn cylinder pin retaining screw kept backing off and would eventually fall out. No telling how many times I had to replace the spring or part of the screw assembly. Sometimes out in the field I would draw it out of my holster, and plop on the ground my cylinder would go, and the pin and screw would be in the bottom of the holster, if I was lucky. Finally found some lok-tite that actually held it together.

hunterspistol wrote:      41 Mag: That's some really good shooting there! Does illustrate that the crimp makes a difference. Hope mine will get close to that when I get into developing loads for it.  Right now, 40 yards is a long way off!  Thanks for the reply and the tip.

   Rodfac: Believe it or not, you just taught me the difference between a Blackhawk and a Flattop, nice pistol, thanks.