Monday, March 29, 2010

IOWA-SF 2379: "Shall Issue" Bill Passes House and Sentate!

Senate Bill 2379 passed both the House and the Senate today and is going on to the Governor who sources say will sign the bill.

What this means is that IA will be shall issue and recognize ALL State's permits for non-Iowa residents. Residents of Iowa must have an Iowa PTCW in order to carry. The permit will be valid of a period of five years and a re-qualification will be done as part of the renewal process.

If signed, the new law will go into effect Jan 1st, 2011.

Back to the drawing board.

With the local club's IDPA Season Opener behind me I can honestly say that I suck at reloading.

The fist course of fire (COF) titled "Speed Run" should have been renamed "The Jam-o-matic Gauntlet" or put more simply "Laugh @ JD". The 200gr plated semi-wadcutters that did so well on the bench choked the Baer quite badly, I switched to the "trusty" 100rd box of Winchester White Box kept in the gun case and all went well on the next 8 stages, they probably would have let me re-shoot "Speed Run" which took me a not so leaisurely 5_._ _ to complete to the average 20._ _ that everyone else on the squad ran, but it was however a FANTASTIC malfunction clearing drill and everyone said that I did a great job of getting the gun running and finishing the stage with what I had on me.

I think I need to load ammo for everyone in the club and have them shoot stage using my reloads, we can call it "Craps" or Russian Roulette"

Oh well, next month is the Classifer Match and I probably will go back to using my favored Remington UMC provided I can find any between here and then.

I will also be changing powders as I find the HS6 to leave too much unburnt powder, I'm thinking Titegroup or Clays, probably leaning toward Titegroup. I am just going to stick stick with 230gr FMJ, who would have thought that it runs best in the gun. DUH!

Monday, March 8, 2010

Reloading Update- Lee-2 / JD-1

Well the Lee is still kicking my butt, but I was able to load over 200+ cartridges the other day in less than 2 hours.

My press does not like flat point projectiles and I mangled more than a few cartridges, but other than that I seem to have most of the press problems worked out. I found that the indexer/flipper were not the correct length and that the press was not fully indexing. The flipper is screwed on to the idexer and can be adjusted my screwing/unscrewing the flipper, two full turns and it's indexing fully. The sad part is that I did manage to break another primer slider and stripped the threads on the carrier hole, but the press is still operating.

I loaded up a watered down batch of 230gr FMJ-RN to try out today to supplement my 200gr flat point and SWC loads.

I still need to snap some photos of my test targets, groups, and work area for kicks, but it's starting to become less frustrating and more fun now that I'm getting more than just broken parts in return for my efforts.

I'm still under $200 on the press, even with the replaced parts. I will replace the carrier and order up some more primer sliders (I have two spares left) so I can keep the press running should something else break but it seems that most of my troubles were from the primer trough cover being damaged, once I replaced that and resized the indexer/flipper the press ran much, much better...but still not perfect.

Remember that I bough the press used, I need to properly identify the dies being used and see if the powder die is also an expanding die as adjusting that will help with my seating issues with those 200gr flat points.


More to come later.