Over the last few years I have developed a bumb right wing -- wore-out shoulder joint. Can't hold a pistol out with the right arm anymore. But I used to be a fair shot left-handed and am ready to go back to that, but the left thumb has a bunch of arthritis or something and isn't as cheerful about cocking hammers as it used to be. So I recall that I have this old piece of junk auto thing stuffed back in the corner somewhere. Back corner, bottom of a pile, and there it was.
Loaded up a variety of loads yesterday, took her out to the old gravel pit for a little function testing.
Several of my loads didn't work so good, but as luck would have it... the 190 grain Lee they call a "semi-wadcutter" but that has a somewhat rounded nose to it... when seated down to a cartridge length of 1.19"... well that works rather well. Function = 100%.
Here's what we had to work with: Bullets ready to be seated (using George Nonte's "Nonte shuffle" of course) And coming out of the press... I didn't put up a target to try any groups (I just wanted to see if this thing even worked at all).
But I kept aiming at this tin can about 20 yards away and when I finished up the can was 35 or 40 yards away and looked like this:
5 grains of Green Dot shot quite a lot low; 5.5 was a little low; and 6 grains seemed pretty close to on. I think the thing is going to work and I can shoot a pistol again, just had to convert to a "lefty"
![Sad :(](./images/smilies/icon_sad.gif)
![Very Happy :D](./images/smilies/icon_biggrin.gif)
But I gotta' say... I shot up 60 rounds standing at the tailgate of the pickup. There was a pile of cases about 6 feet away and kinda' back a ways. There was a smaller pile about 8 or 9 feet away but a bit forward. And somewhere out there are still 6 cases I couldn't find. Is that about the normal rate of attrition I have to accept to shoot one of these things? About a 10% case loss? (Us old revolver shooters are not used to coming back home with less cases than we started with, so this is a little shocking to the kid).