Garrison Joe

Specifically examine this recent post: http://sassnet.com/wildbunch/forum/index.php?topic=1810.0 You should find that the rule books are now very close together on the penalties for unfired and fired rounds left in long guns between the Cowboy side and the WB side.

Yep, BD got it right on the head. If you ever have shaved lead while seating, you have pretty well destroyed a rifle bullet. It will still fire, but it won't hit what you want. Plus, the slight step is easier to crimp completely back down than the taper that most expanders put in the mouth. Good luck, GJ

Sounds about like the normal path that one wants to follow while working up cast boolit loads. I too like a neck sizer die, especially if I have just one rifle to load for that cartridge. And a Lyman M die to get minimal belling for case to allow easy seating. I find more accuracy faster when I have a selection of cast boolits to choose from. There is rarely exactly one and only one bullet that shoots well in a particular cartridge, but each gun may have it's own pet. Just was out Sunday shooting my 6.5 Swede. Best so far has been some Reloader 7 and a 150 grain bore riding Lyman bullet. Both 5-shot groups fired with the best load printed 1 1/4 inch at 90 yards. Good for only being the third loading session for that cartridge, but I've got 3 designs I can choose from and a raft of powders. Velocity seems, like most 6.5 Swedes, to want to be about 1500-1600 FPS. Good luck, GJ

Buying because you planned it and tried it and really needed it, is a WHOLE lot better than buying because the seller HAS to get rid of it. None of a seller's reasons matter - if you are looking for using it for YOUR purposes. Sorry, that's just the way of Cowboy competition shooting. Fortunately, there is usually a way for a gun that just doesn't work for you can be converted to something (e.g., another gun) that does work fine. Good luck, GJ

To speak about safety directly, WB rules don't care if your long guns have a safety, don't have one, or the safety is pinned in Fire position. Just no external mods. And, yeah, that 94 is a clunky gun that will occasionally jam up when running it fast. regardless of what smithing is done to it. It runs fine with rifle length chamberings, not with pistol cartridges at the speed we need. Good luck, GJ

Welcome to "the Party with a 1911 in your Hands"! Hope you continue to have a blast!

No requirement for ANY pouches. Come shoot! Put your mags on the table if you want to. Put 'em in a pocket! Put 'em in your back jeans pocket. Just come shoot! If some club wants to be difficult about this while you are getting your gear together, let us know which one so we can give them a rough time about running shooters off! Seriously, though, don't sweat the small stuff. Come out and have fun! Good luck, GJ

Never seen a major match right on a big holiday. They avoid 'em, it seems. Club matches - 4th of July, Labor day usually means a weak turnout. Family comes first for most folks. Good luck, GJ

No, not everyone over there said to do that! I DID NOT recommend doing that! I recommended cutting the dimple deeper or even putting a stronger spring in the tube. give-me-a-break! ;D

It's the hostage taker that hides behind that is hard for me, though.

(sheepishly) which is why I never use a Barney Fife.

Common malfunction clearance on a 1911 often means you jack out a live round (or even knock a round off the top of a mag as you pull it or insert it into receiver). The Barney Fife magazine (from Mayberry fame) gives you a quicker way to shoot one more round than to pull a full mag, shoot the top round, drop the mag and cycle the slide and engage the slide stop. If you never have malfunctions or loading mistakes, you never need one. ;D

Some amount of bragging and implied running down of other matches could be read into that advert. Hopefully it's in good fun. "Big Boy Britches" - well, I believe our costuming rules already keep out the shorts and speedos. :o I believe in the big tent theory. There is room for all kinds of WB matches. As long as the WB rules are followed, spotters stay awake, shooters enjoy it and it runs smoothly, I'll shoot what is out on the bays. It's nice to have a heads up that targets may be set to emphasize accuracy over speed, but I like shooting both kinds. I've found I do better at the accuracy matches recently, but I love Bordertown's WB "side" match, too, and it's all speed. I'm still trying to learn how to set my "expected shooting cadence" clock to properly match the targets. The more variety, the more chances to tune my clock.

So, you make your self your own darn check weight! Stop by a junk yard, pick up a chunk of heavy steel that you can cut down to ABOUT 40 ounces. Perhaps a heavy angle iron or even a short length of i-beam. Just using a bath scale, lop off pieces until you get between 2.5 and 4 pounds. When you go to a big match with a calibrated scale, have them weight your check weight. Write the weight on a label on the chunk. Then, if you get a cheap kitchen scale to do your own weighing, start by weighing your chunk and calibrate scale to read out that weight, and to read 0 when the scale is empty. You will be almost perfectly calibrated to weigh a 1911 then.

Swap out extended safety with standard one. Save a fraction of an ounce. ;D Grind positioning button off the grip safety. Save another fraction of an ounce. ::)

Tight holster will continue to be tight until you adjust it. Lubes are a "coverup" of the problem. Wet holster down well, stick oiled pistol in a good freezer bag, shove it down deep into holster and place in a warm place to reshape the holster to your gun. Couple of days, custom fit to your piece, and you won't be having to lube the leather. Good luck, GJ

Try this link for all ten stages. Let me know if you can't see them. https://plus.google.com/photos/102143975088562546523/albums/6123705287851739905?banner=pwa&authkey=CKeq8_r1mPqlugE

My suggestion for what I thought was a weak point of the match (the arrays of targets to be shot once each with rifle and once or multiple times each with pistol). Spotting that "array" of targets for fast shooters in an accurate manner is almost impossible for the folks we draw to matches. There were several 0,1,and 3 finger displays by spotters at WR for some of our faster shooters. Do away with having to spot those kind of shooter's choice of order target sets, and go to only knockdowns. Shooter can go as fast as they dare, all the spotters do is count the standing targets at the end. The ultimate shooting gallery. Yes, more knockdowns means resetting and higher target costs. But, if we want the game to be getting better as shooters get better, then we have to upgrade our target concepts, too. Good luck, GJ Oh, BTW, I really like 6 stages per day, and would like to return to that. Different strokes for different folks, I guess. And do the side matches and warmup stages on the day before match, perhaps? We didn't turn out many folks for side matches in the afternoon after the 5 main stages this time!

State 3 - per Dan's OP. Round with an indented primer, powder charged and bullet seated. In my book, that is a live round. I have fired at least twenty of those in matches quite successfully over the last year. I have a nasty habit of cycling the lever on 73's before I've gotten to the break point on the trigger. I get a light indent on primer. I load it next stage and it fires fine. For safety purposes, your state 3 HAS to be considered a live round. I can see lots more states for the ammunition than just 3. For example, what state is: round that has no primer but has powder and bullet? round that has a good primer, bullet seated but no powder? and a few more. I understand you want to get to the point of dividing the ammunition into two conditions, "live" and "otherwise". So that you can better understand the rules. Happy Jack's proposal or even mine, to use the common definition, will work, as long as the ammo can be inspected from five feet away and determined to be "live" or "nope, that's not a live round" Because it is the safety of the shooter or posse members that is the basis for establishing MOST of the rules in the WB (or Cowboy) handbooks.

I would NOT include the powder as being a necessary item to make a live round. A primer and bullet are enough for all of our rule-making purposes, and are MUCH easier to check on the firing line than having to disassemble a round to check if the loader put any powder in it or not. I checked all 17 places in the WB shooter's handbook where "live ammunition" is called out, and that is a lot of citations without a definition. It is assumed that the "common man's" definition of live ammo will be well understood. Until someone decides that it is important to include in the definition list, use the common definition and you will get good results. I did the thought-exercise of replacing "round containing a bullet" for all the places where "live ammunition" occurred - it worked for all the rules in WB shooter's handbook. "Live round" is what is used about 5 times in the Cowboy Shooter's Handbook. A "live round" is not defined there either. The common-sense definition of live round has served them pretty well for about 20 years or so. Bottom line - don't look for a definition for "live ammunition" to be added to the WB Shooter's Handbook anytime soon. Good luck, GJ

Nice shooting, Sam! And Silvertip! Good luck, GJ

All Mod 12s were cut with the "new" 2.75 chambers, not the 2 9/16ths common to 97s. Lengthening forcing cone would be an easy and effective improvement, since you probably will shoot those modern plastic wads. Back boring requires removal of barrel thickness. You would want a good gunsmith to do that work anyway, and first thing he'd better do is measure carefully to see if it can be done with the barrel you have. It would eliminate any future addition of choke tubes, almost certainly. I've never heard of anyone back-boring for Cowboy/WB shooting, as it is most often done to improve patterning as much as reduce perceived recoil. good luck, GJ

Well, most of the rectangle blocks should be decision blocks (diamonds). The No answer out of those blocks should flow out to a "Not Safe to Move" state (rectangle) block. The final "Safe to Move" is a state block, so it is already shown properly as a rectangle. Because that is what you are determining - is the gun safe to move with, or is it not safe. Once even one of the conditions fails to be safe, the flow goes to the Not Safe to Move result, and the decision process stops. However, when you use terms that the rule book does not use (like "no loaded round in chamber"), you will probably confuse folks, and take the chance of getting a slightly different meaning put into your chart (it may disagree with the rule book). It may be shorter to use that term, but that is not the wording from the rule book. Rule book usually says: "empty chamber or expended round (in chamber)" Good luck, GJ

Well, no. You have the right ideas in mind and the requirements, but you don't have the general concepts of how to draw a decision chart, nor have you remembered that a toggle link rifle has a round on the carrier almost all the time. So, requiring there be no round on the carrier for safe movement on a fired round in the chamber is not right. Don't think the rules care about a round on carrier if you are in "fired round in chamber and action closed" state. If you look at the Miss Flow Chart shown in the Cowboy's Shooters Handbook, you will see how to combine several decisions, branch (split) the flow depending upon what the decision is (like - chamber loaded or chamber with empty case in it or chamber empty - that would be a three way split of logic). It is actually simpler to understand the situation just with the rules than with what you have for a chart right now. There is considerable promise in making up a good simple decision chart, so I would encourage you to try again.... perhaps starting with the really important decision diamond being the if action is open or closed. Then, based on the first decision, you may not even need to question if there is a round on carrier. Good luck, GJ PS. Here's a good tutorial on how decision flow charts are made up. http://www.edrawsoft.com/How-to-draw-flowchart.php GJ

Sounds like tons of fun! A lead slug (even with GC) at about 1500 FPS is more appropriate to much of what WB is trying accomplish with bolt-action rifles, whether in a stage like yours, or in a stand-alone BAMM (rifle only) match. Maximum-Speed-onto-fairly-generous-target-at-short-distances (yep, for these rifles, 75 to 150 yards is a short distance). Snap Shots, in other words. To get that 1500 FPS, you surely can use a variety of powders, but some of the best are faster powders than 4064, ranging from Unique, to 2400, to 5744 (about 18-20 grains, perhaps), to 4198 (fastest to slowest). Trail Boss? Maybe, but you won't find the folks who are shooting cast boolits regularly using TB by the truckload. A good mil rifle with open sights ought to be able to shoot 2 to 2.5 MOA. And, given a good bore, that is usually a good target for a quality cast boolit load. Good luck, GJ