Super Comanche -- Follow-up Report
Following up on my earlier post, I finally had a chance to spend a little range time with the new Comanche.
The thing was definitely a "hit" at the range. I got numerous slack-jawed "what the heck is that?" looks from other range patrons, so that was kind of fun. It goes off with quite a noise, and grabbed the attention of most of the people there.
Several of my shooting buddies tried it out, and two have stated intentions to buy their own Comanches, so there's a pretty good endorsement. I found the recoil to be fairly manageable, but some of my fellow shooters were definitely handling it with a little fear and respect. Fun gun. I expect it will become a popular "take along" on trips to the range. (Cleaning is a breeze, so no big deal to pop a few rounds through it and then move on to something else.)
We all confirmed my preliminary assessment that the pistol grips felt a little too "squared off". You can start to feel that after a while, as the gun has a bit of a "bite" to it when it recoils. I think rounder grips would help to soften that a little.
So at the range, I worked through a variety of shells including slugs, a few 45 long colts, buckshot, and a box of bird shot.
45 Long Colt -- Meh. You want to shoot a target gun, you can do a lot better with just about anything else out there, and for less money spent on ammo. .45 LC is EXPENSIVE!
I used a few of the .45 LC to zero in the sights, but they seemed pretty much fine right from the factory. No tweaking needed.
.410 Slugs -- Moving on, I wanted to see if .410 slugs would do any better in the accuracy department, given that they don't have to make the long jump through the chamber before they hit rifling. OK - self inflicted wound -- I bought "Silver Bear" brand slugs. About half the price of regular .410 slugs, and NOT worth it. They come in a full length (2 3/4" -- odd length) steel casing (brass coated steel, I believe). The casing expands when fired and JAMS UP TIGHT in the chamber every time. The extractor would push the casing out the standard 1/4" or so, but from there it took pliers to wrench the things out. Tore up the rim on the back of most of the casings if that serves as an indicator as to the force it took to remove them. The gun was clean when I started, so the chamber shouldn't have had too much chance to dirty up before I tried the slugs. I'll blame the ammo, not the gun. The jammed up shells were so hard to extract that (1) I thought I might have to resort to driving them out with a dowel from the barrel end, and (2) I began to get a little worried about the stress that it might be putting on the extractor mechanism. All other shells extracted and removed effortlessly. Anyone wanna buy some .410 slug ammo? Rock-bottom prices... Sorry, just kidding -- and bitter. :-(
Accuracy didn't seem much improved over the .45 LC, but the slugs were saboted, so at the relatively short range, it was the slug, plus parts of the sabot, plus whatever else the Russians put in their ammo (glass, horseshoes, knitting needles, etc.) hitting and tattering the target. In the frustration over extracting the jammed up shells, I didn't pay too much attention to the accuracy.
.410 Buck -- Oddly, Silver Bear brand Buck shells (same full length metal case) extracted and removed just fine. They patterned pretty tight -- ranging from 2" to 3" spread at 5 yards. Some research on Brassfetcher.com shows that 410 buckshot has some very lethal ballistics-gel penetration (16") so buckshot would make a handy defense round out of the gun -- assuming you like attending a gun fight with a single-shot pistol. I've read the primers are typically a little harder in the Russian ammo, and I found they didn't fire real reliably. Numerous miss-fires on the Silverbear buckshot, that usually went off successfully after a second or third try. I'll go with the Winchester brand 410 buckshot for some hopefully more reliable rounds in the future.
(I don't want to come across as an ammo "snob". I love shooting the cheap Russian stuff -- if it works reliably. I've got an AK-47 and a CZ-82 that will chew Wolf brand ammo all day long without a hiccup, and you can't beat the price. But that Silver Bear ammo -- either in slug or #4 Buckshot -- is a bad combination with the Comanche.)
.410 Birdshot -- OK, here's where the Comanche earns its keep, at least as far as I'm concerned. I didn't go shopping for a target gun, and .410 buckshot (at least the good stuff) is like a buck a pop. I wanted a pistol length .410 that held a pattern out to a decent range. Using Winchester #6 "Super Speed" game loads (2 1/2" shells, 1275 fps), and the .410 choke, I got about a 4" diameter spread at about 5 yards. Extrapolating, that's 8" at 10 yards, and 12" at 15 yards. I'll rely on the experienced hunters in the group to comment or contradict, but I imagine that the limited number of shot in a 2 1/2" .410 shell is starting to spread pretty thin at a 12" spread, so I'm going to speculate that maybe 15 to 20 yards is the maximum effective range of hoping to reliably put enough lead on target to do any good. The pattern seemed pretty uniform -- circular and no huge gaps.
I figure I'll pretty much just leave the .410 choke on the gun from here on in. As I mentioned above, there's plenty of other guns out there that will do a much better job with conventional pistol rounds (9mm, .357, .22... pick your poison). Also, I'm pretty sure that one or the other of those little choke tubes will eventually end up dropped and lost if I keep switching them out. Getting a replacement might be a little more difficult than I imagined. Just about every web site I've seen that carries them is either "out of stock" or "backordered". Haven't actually tried to order one from the few sites that do appear to have them in stock. I might just order a spare 410 choke just to have it around, if they're really that tough to get.
I wish I had some open land to try the gun out in a little less of a "controlled" setting than the gun range. I speculate that the .410 shot shells would wreck absolutely wondeful havoc on more reactive targets (beer cans, charcoal briquettes, or blocks of ice.)
One thing that really started bugging me about the Comanche is the backward swept angle on the front sight. I suspect it might actually be useful for the purposes of eliminating glare on the front sight, but the darn thing has kind of an annoying "hook" effect to it that will snag on just about anything. You guys may cringe, but I clamped the Comanche into my milling machine and milled off the back of the sight into a more forward sweeping angle, leaving about a 1/4 inch width / length at the top of the sight blade. A little gun bluing, (and a touch-up with a ... gasp... "sharpie" permanent black marker) and it looks factory original.
Addressing some of the questions / comments from the other posts:
Clone: .45 Long Colt +P / Buffalo Bore -- Don't do it. At least according to the owner's manual. The Comanche is not rated for +P ammo and will void the warranty (for whatever that's worth.)
Ranger Gus & McGunner: On the safety and reliability -- I don't really know how to address that. It didn't blow up in my hand when I shot it -- maybe it will next time. Probably not real useful info. My thinking on that is: If you have a safety concern about the gun, best to err on the side of caution and shop around for something you feel better about. Better safe than sorry. On the other hand, they say "Chicks dig scars..."
Ranger Gus: Quality and reliability -- well, about 50 rounds doesn't really qualify as a long-term torture test, but the gun seems to be holding up as good as new after my first real trip to the range. Regarding whether or not I know what I'm talking about (re: machining marks, etc.) -- I've got a civil engineering degree and limited experience with a small milling machine in my workshop -- so at best I'm a qualified "hack" when it comes to metal working. No background in metalurgy or such, so how "strong" the gun is, I can't really assess. Its big and heavy, feels stout and locks up tight, but beyond that, I really don't know. If there's micro-flaws in the barrel chamber due to poor casting or forging, I suppose I'll find out when it blows up. (Currently still have all 10 fingers, so I guess I have a few spares...). Basically I'm putting my faith in the overly-aggressive American legal system, and assuming that no one would dare to bring a dangerously flawed gun onto the market for fear of getting sued into oblivian.
TJU1973 -- $130 !?!???! Is that for a new gun? (looks new in your photo) Score! Excellent price.
