The firearm thread

**jono035** · 14th October 2009, 11:09

Originally Posted by Indiana_Jones

Post!

Just for Chris!

-Indy

If I hadn't just recently blinged you that would be another *facepalm*.

**Indiana_Jones** · 14th October 2009, 11:14

Originally Posted by jono035

If I hadn't just recently blinged you that would be another *facepalm*.

Don't do it bro, I know where that palm has been!

-Indy

**jono035** · 14th October 2009, 11:17

Originally Posted by Indiana_Jones

Don't do it bro, I know where that palm has been!

-Indy

But that's half the fun!

Or at least that's what your mum said...

**jono035** · 14th October 2009, 11:28

Went to the range last night and mowed through a heap more of my lead hand-loads. It is still making an ugly, ugly mess of the barrel, but they appear to be plenty accurate enough. I guess once the barrel is leaded up then the bullets are just running happily over the top of the leaded grooves. Might fire the rest of the lead rounds I have without worrying about cleaning and see what happens.

I was also shooting with some blanks that I had made up (resized without decapping the spent primer, filled with flour, bullet seated and crimped as normal) and after a few strings of 5 live rounds mixed with 4 blank rounds I was consistently getting everything in the black and wasn't flinching when a blank came up. Was an interesting exercise all up with the best result being 2 rounds in the 10, 7 rounds in the 9 and 3 rounds in the 8 rings out of 10 rounds fired.

Still going to have to work out a more permanent fix for the rear sight working itself loose, maybe just locktite it in place and be done with it.

**Mr Merde** · 14th October 2009, 11:51

Originally Posted by jono035

..... best result being 2 rounds in the 10, 7 rounds in the 9 and 3 rounds in the 8 rings out of 10 rounds fired.

...

Not bad

So you shot an 87\100.

I am assuming this was at 25 metres.

Have you tried the exercise I showed you, with the pencil.

Helps to control the waver.

Try and keep the barrel moving in a circular motiuon nand gradually tighten it.

No more than 7 seconds fromn raising the pistol to tasking the shot. Its been proven that any longer and you develop muscle fatigue.

**jono035** · 14th October 2009, 13:32

Originally Posted by Mr Merde

Not bad

So you shot an 87\100.

I am assuming this was at 25 metres.

Have you tried the exercise I showed you, with the pencil.

Helps to control the waver.

Try and keep the barrel moving in a circular motiuon nand gradually tighten it.

No more than 7 seconds fromn raising the pistol to tasking the shot. Its been proven that any longer and you develop muscle fatigue.

This has been without any dry firing practice recently and shot as a full string with no resting between shots, probably about 5-6 seconds to line up each shot.

Haven't given the pencil thing a try due to a lack of pencils and complete inability to remember to buy some. Will grab some on my way home today from the campus bookstore now that you've reminded me...

**Mr Merde** · 14th October 2009, 14:19

"Shooting the pencil is an aid to training I have used to great effect with both experienced shooters and rookies. To do this you take a regular number 2 pencil with an eraser and "size" it to fit just barely loose in the barrel of the pistol you are practicing with. Of course this means you can only use this in a caliber larger than the pencil used. I have used this method with 9mm/38/357 .40 and .45 cal pistols effectively. First make sure that your pistol is empty and the chamber is clear. Then take your pencil and wrap a little masking tape around the pencil in two places one about an inch up from the eraser or a little more (so you don't get hung up on the chamber mouth) and another about an inch or so short of the end of the barrel until it fits well but is still loose in the barrel. Loose enough to fall out when tipped down, but enough so it doesn't wobble a lot. The pencil should protrude an inch or two out the end of the barrel when in contact with the breech face to be most effective"

"Then take a sheet of paper and draw a number of small 1/8" or smaller circles or little silhouette targets or whatever you want to "aim" at. Tape the paper up on a wall with "cork board", dart board or something that you won't mind poking some little holes in. Then holding your pistol in your shooting hand pull back the hammer or appropriately charge it and tip up to allow the pencil to fall back against the breech. Then step forward until your are within an inch or two of the pencil touching the paper target. Sight in on the first "target" spot and carefully engage the target. The pencil will be shot out of the barrel the short distance to the paper target and put a mark on the paper. Charge the weapon again and tip it up to let your pencil fall back to the breech face and do it again. You will begin to create a group of pencil marks below the aiming point. Our goal was to get those groups smaller and smaller working toward the magical single small dot. Remember to sharpen your pencil periodically between strings as needed, if the pencil gets to short you may have to set up another. We could get a 30 minute session or two without having to sharpen, depending on the "target" backing. This assists in your "technical" training to help you in consistent sight alignment, trigger squeeze and follow-through"

**jono035** · 14th October 2009, 14:24

It is a very neat idea and I can definitely see the usefulness of it as a training aid, but the flinching needs to be cured first otherwise dry firing practice won't show much.

Edit: Just looking over the page that the website is from and basically what I've been doing is the first exercise described... It won't be anywhere near as good for fine trigger control as the pencil method though.

**Mr Merde** · 14th October 2009, 14:39

When I was heavily involved in "skittle shooting" with my AMT longslide in .45 ACP oh so many years ago.

I used this training technique very extensively.

You get to a stage where you are firing almost instinctively when the pistol is in the firing position. You become less aware of the fact that you are looking at the sights, although you abviously are, and more involved in making that clean shot.

The other training aid i used was to develop muscle memory.

It may sound funny but I used to sit on my couch watching the box. Had the pistol in my hand and kept raising it to the firing poisition and lowering it. I had a spot marked on the wall above the TV and that was my aiming point. You get used to raising the firearm to the point where the sights are aligned with the target. In that way sighting almost becomes a subconcious act. Your body and eye seem to know when the pistol isnt in the right area of the target.

Sort of like putting a key into a door lock. How many times to you actually sit down and think about the actions of inserting the key. Your body just does the job and you are semi supprised when it doesnt go into the lock first off. Even when a person is drunk they dont seem to have a lot of problems getting the key to the area of the lock, unless they are totally blitzed and cant even see the door.

**Mr Merde** · 14th October 2009, 14:48

http://www.personaldefensetraining.c...et=dryfire.php

Try this site. At the bottom of the page are some links that bring up targets that come on for a number of seconds and then disappear for a niumber.

Starts from showing for 2 seconds going down to .5 seconds

JDK · 14th October 2009, 15:06

i keep chopping the pencil into 2 inch long bits and find the cyclinder hard to turn HAHA i'm guessing index it frist before dropping the pencil in fully ..

**jono035** · 14th October 2009, 15:17

Originally Posted by JDK

i keep chopping the pencil into 2 inch long bits and find the cyclinder hard to turn HAHA i'm guessing index it frist before dropping the pencil in fully ..

Not a problem I'm likely to have with my autoloader