One Person’s History of Failures

[Bass Ackward]

The amount of problems I have encountered in 40 some years shooting cast fall into one of five categories.

1. Laziness. And this covers everything from reloading short cuts, failing to document past results & repeating mistakes, to failing to shoot & learn for yourself. Once we become “satisfied”, all experimentation stops.
2. Shooting cheap. We all been there. Cheap defined in different ways based upon our reloading / shooting style / personality. It can also overlap with #1 making do with what we have on hand (lube, powder) as opposed to getting / doing what we need to.
3. Shooting “clean”. Whether that’s cleaning the gun after each outing to worrying about the cleanliness of the load. Or the dreaded fear of all leading as bad. This can overlap with #2 also if you have a clean phobia that governs your decision making process.
4. Trusting absolutes. Whether that’s the written word of experts / others, or possibly your own experience. (Think Elmer didn’t change his opinion as he aged / gained experience?) While patterns may be found or worked around, there are “no rules” & every gun / situation “can be” the same / different. This again can fall into #1 or #2 also. Success leads to satisfaction & that stops learning.
5. Getting into too many projects. Ol’timers always said, “beware the one gun man.” But sometimes, people have more fun solving (attempting ) problems than actual shooting. I think I fall into this category.

I tried to consolidate this over the last 10 years in my absence from posting. Coarse, I haven’t experienced every failure yet, or even remembering all that I have done, so I keep going.

 

[Rick]

Yep, I learned early on about keeping careful notes and it's probably one of the better things I've done. I've learned more from what didn't work than from what did. Too many projects at one time I've been guilty of since about the time I started reloading let alone casting. Probably what taught me in the beginning to write it down, write everything down. I would be re-doing over and over gain the same failed tests if it weren't for the notes.

 

[Brad]

I am glad to see it isn’t jut me......

I suck at record keeping. I don’t mean I am bad at it, I mean I truly suck at it.

Another one I have found is getting into a project so deep that shooting stops being fun. Once it becomes work it is no longer enjoyable and I lose interest. Try to keep doing other shooting to keep one project from taking over your life.

 

[Jeff H]

The amount of problems I have encountered in 40 some years shooting cast fall into one of five categories.

1. Laziness.....................
2. Shooting cheap....................
3. Shooting “clean”........................
4. Trusting absolutes...................
5. Getting into too many projects..................

I tried to consolidate this over the last 10 years in my absence from posting. Coarse, I haven’t experienced every failure yet, or even remembering all that I have done, so I keep going.

1. Laziness - Guilty, especially regarding records. Since I have consolidated my own "tooling," (see point 5) I have more time to write stuff down, AND I have less to keep track of, so it's not so overwhelming.

2. Shooting cheap - Guilty - but, in my defense, this is part of an ongoing, long-term experiment to see just how cheaply I can shoot acceptably/reasonably well.

3. Shooting "clean" - NOT Guilty, then Guilty, then NOT Guilty (see point 1). I used to fuss over even the carbon deposits on the faces of stainless cylinders a long time ago. I'm way past that for various reasons, not the least of which is that I discovered it really didn't matter. In some cases, like bores, I found it was a detriment to clean too often.

4. Trusting absolutes - Not Guilty, then Guilty, now NOT Guilty again. In my early shooting days, I found that much of which was written in magazines, or spoken at gun shows/stores, had little to no value to the apparently aberrant dogs of guns which always seemed to find me. Mine always responded (well) to some off the wall, half-baked method which was just silly or flat out taboo to the wizened ones. Hardly any of my guns EVER worked the way wiser men said they should. I eventually just shot alone because I couldn't get the "right" stuff to work, and most of what I did felt like "cheating" if I wasn't doing things "right" - but it worked. I still mostly shoot alone. Too much sage advice flying around out there for my backwards little brain to absorb.

5. Getting into too many projects - Oh, boy, Bass, you've hit that nail on the head right there. I'm mending my ways on that one and it's been a long, slow process. I realized I had a "problem" in the early eighties, but every time I turned around, some siren's song would waft over my ears and I'd take home another something I needed for just this or that situation - and it wouldn't take much to "fix it up." I've finally, in the past ten years, gotten a handle on this thing and have consolidated my own personal battery. I still get tempted and I still have one more revolver to replace, but I'm at a point where I still have only slightly more than I have time for, but I spend a LOT more time sorting out the details of what works and how with the few I've identified as being the most worthwhile for me to spend my time with.

As Brad mentioned about "projects making shooting not fun...." Yeah, that. I feel like I'm clear of that with having moved a lot of stuff and replacing a lot of it with LESS stuff that's not so much of a "project" just to get shooting. Time will tell. The road is bumpy and I'm hanging onto the sideboards of the "wagon" for dear life.

That's a good outline of what ails us, and I'll probably always be guilty of one or more of the five, but the way you boiled it down makes a lot of sense and rings a lot of bells with my own personal failures over the years.

 

[Will]

I am glad to see it isn’t jut me......

I suck at record keeping. I don’t mean I am bad at it, I mean I truly suck at it.

Another one I have found is getting into a project so deep that shooting stops being fun. Once it becomes work it is no longer enjoyable and I lose interest. Try to keep doing other shooting to keep one project from taking over your life.

I can completely agree with that last statement. I tend to get really wrapped up in a project and burn myself out.

Then 6 months later I get interested again and have to relearn half of what I knew before. The marlin 44 magnum and me have been down this road too many times. If my wife hadn’t bought it for me it would be someone else’s problem already.

 

[Brad]

Trusting absolutes also should include inappropriate extrapolation. But the BR guys neck turn. But the BPCR guys anneal after each load.

There may be reasons why a specific shooting discipline does certain things a certain way but that doesn’t mean it will make your gun shoot better.

 

[fiver]

you forgot number 6.....doing it wrong. [or the THAT process]
this is the one I fall into.
you not supposed to do that, I never heard of anyone doing that, why would you do that.
we all use, why are you using that.

 

[CZ93X62]

I see I am in good company. I'll just plead "Guilty" to all of the above and lean upon the mercy of the Court.

 

[waco]

I would have to say I've been guilty of all of thee above at one point or another. #5 for sure.

 

[Maven]

First. welcome back, Bass! Let me add to the "absolutes," trusting internet experts rather than using well documented data found in various [re]loading manuals. As for shooting "cheap," I think many of us did this when milsurp powders were plentiful and inexpensive: Some were excellent, others "good enough" even though you needed 2x as much to get say 1,750fps (with CB's, naturally) than something like H/IMR 4198.

 

[Ian]

Heck of a list, Bass, looks like I'm in the same club.

Trusting absolutes also should include inappropriate extrapolation.

In addition to all five tried and true failure modes Bass listed, this is the one that trips me up the most. "That (insert component or technique) worked just fine in all my other rifles, why won't it work in this one?"

Another frustrating failure mode is what Fiver alluded to, sometimes called "Conventional Wisdom", or worse, "Popular Wisdom", which is a subset of group think being limited by the lowest common denominator. It took me a long time to shake the entire CBA, 50 years of Lyman editorial staff, and writings of Ken Mollohan to realize that Linotype alloy is no good for making cast bullets unless you want to adhere to the limitations that all of those preach. Lesson learned, try stuff and see.

I think Fiver wrote the book on low-tech/low buck solutions, proving it ain't how you do it, but the way you do it that matters, as long as you do the necessary things to make the gun happy.....and again don't extrapolate inappropriately to try and find those things!

In the end, it really is more about the journey for me than the destination. Not that I intend it that way, but it must be or I would stick to one thing at a time until finished.

 

[Brad]

Look at the current thread on the JM 625. S&W made a revolver with a grip that ONE man likes and that fits HIS hand.
I am pretty sure my hand is far different in size and grip strength than Jerry so why the hell do I think his grip design would work best for me?

 

[Bass Ackward]

The real killer for cast bullet shooting? The definition of accuracy. Success & recommendations will be defined by obtaining it. Target accuracy? Or hunting? What kind of hunting accuracy? The kill zone for a deer is larger than a fox. What range is that standard achieved? I tend to define it two ways. The “standard”. ( rifles MOA, handguns [opensights as I don’t use scopes on a handgun] 8 MOA) & along with my guns definition using jacketed. If my gun throws the 1st clean jacketed shot or won’t do any better with 200 grain jacketed & I wanna shoot a 200 grain cast, then ... So things I “advocate” hinge on my definitions of ... “accuracy”.

 

[358156 hp]

I just get in too big of a hurry sometimes. I know I can get these results, so why aren't I getting them? Then I change things, often two things at a time. Sometimes that takes me even farther from my goals. I can get frustrated and impatient way too quickly at times. We live in the era of instant gratification, to which I say...

mea culpa

 

[Brad]

Accuracy needs to be determined by need.
I don’t plan to shoot groups at 100 with my 9mm so I don’t fret over 6” at 25 yards. It does what I need it to do.

What amazes me is how we realize years later that we saw something and missed it. I shot lefer acrion sillywet for a few years. Didn’t do as well on turkeys or rams as I would have liked. I realize now that I had vertical due to powder position problems. I bet some Dacron would have improved my score.

 

[Bass Ackward]

Accuracy needs to be determined by need.
I don’t plan to shoot groups at 100 with my 9mm so I don’t fret over 6” at 25 yards. It does what I need it to do.

What amazes me is how we realize years later that we saw something and missed it. I shot lefer acrion sillywet for a few years. Didn’t do as well on turkeys or rams as I would have liked. I realize now that I had vertical due to powder position problems. I bet some Dacron would have improved my score.

How you define accuracy, regardless of logic that you use to support it, is OK. I had a Redhawk once that could have used your definition. See I would categorize “my” powder position problems under #2 shooting cheap. Best filler is powder. Or being bassackwards, I would use a magnum primer to stop that. Can’t win fair? Cheat.

 

[Rick]

Accuracy is very much a relative thing. What is something that one person is proud of would send someone else running back to the drawing board to try and figure out what went wrong. Your shooting ability, what your target is, what gun your shooting, at what distance you will be shooting that load, weather, what your willing to settle with. All manor of things determine what is good accuracy for you.

I never ran out to a target with calipers to measure a group. My accuracy standard for me was what I call silhouette accurate for each action type I was shooting. By that I mean consistent 5 shot groups on targets good enough to reliably take down that target from a solid rest, usually from Creedmoor position. Not as easy as it sounds really given that one of the 200 meter shoot-off targets is the half size chicken, about the size of a pack of cigarettes. The only time I ever achieved that consistently with a revolver was scoped from the bench. I most always consider about half of any group size I shoot as being me.

 

[Brad]

I wasn’t educated enough at the time to understand what I was seeing. Looking back, yes, a different powder would have made more sense. Reloder 7 instead of 2400. And using a mag primer? Come on, it was 2400. Or so I would have said back then.......

 

[Brad]

Notice that what we remember best is what we learn here?

 

[Spindrift]

Words of wisdom! Regarding #2 (shooting cheap), I have specialized in a technique that I call «spending dollars to save cents». For instance, my reloading room is full of various canisters of rust prevention agents I bought, thinking I wouldn’t ever have to buy X-lox again. If I add up the costs of my useless experimental ingredients, I could have bought alox/x-lox for several lifetimes.