1911Tuner
Moderator Emeritus
Two short stories.
Back in the summer of two thousand-ought-seven, I offered room and board to Wild Bill Caldwell...noted knife maker, pistolsmith, and mad scientist from down Louisana way while he was here to take an engraving course at Montgomery Community College.. We'd had a few discussions on velocities and recoil, and he'd just come into a batch of RG .38 caliber snub nosed revolvers that were tossed into a deal he'd made on some other guns and parts. Figuring that the parts might be useful for somebody, he kept them.
The barrels on RG revolvers are easy to remove, being no more than a pot metal shroud with a liner, and only pinned in place...and extremely lightweight. We chose the best three for out test. Two had nearly equal barrel/cylinder gaps, and the third was to be barrel-less...so the gap didn't matter. All chamber throats were consistent enough to make no practical difference.
One would retail its barrel as the control. The second, I removed the barrel and shroud, and used the lathe to cut the barrel back to bare minimum, leaving just enough of the forcing cone to provide very shallow rifling so that the bullet would be stable enough not to tumble and destroy the chronograph. The length came in at just over a half-inch. The third gun had no barrel, and was to be fired through the hole in the frame. Ammunition was standard velocity 158 grain lead round nose.
The first two guns were chronographed with 5 rounds and averaged. I don't recall the exact numbers, but I do remember that the difference between 2.1 inches of barrel and a half-inch of barrel was just 42 fps. We couldn't detect any difference in recoil for any of the three guns, and a friend who arrived during the experiment couldn't, either...even in a blind back-to-back test in which he closed his eyes and fired the guns that we handed him in succession. On one, he actually picked the half-inch barrelled gun as "Uh...maybe...I dunno. Hard to tell." kicking the hardest.
Curiosity got the best of us...and figuring "What the hell." It was an old Chrony, and I wanted an excuse to buy a new one...so we decided to see if we could clock a few through the one with no barrel. Not only did we not shoot the machine, but we got some good numbers. The difference was just 58 fps between the barrelled control gun and the one with no barrel. Although I can't prove it, it's very likely that the bullets were...if not tumbling...at least yawing as they crossed the screens, which would tend to lower the velocity a bit.
Story #2 was an accident, and actually a slightly embarassing tale that I have to tell on myself. It entailed a session at the falling plate racks just for a little recreation with a pair of my single-action revolvers.
One...a 4.625 inch .41 Magnum Blackhawk, and the other a .45 Caliber New Vaquero with the same barrel length. Luckily, my .41 Magnum range ammo is loaded well below maximum...consisting of a 210 grain cast bullet and 8 grains of Unique. The standard .45 Colt load is a 250-grain cast bullet with the same powder charge.
In the middle of the shoot, a guy in the next bay approached me to talk about a little problem he was having with a 1911, and...thus distracted...I slipped 6 rounds of .41 ammo into the Vaquero. I didn't catch it until I ejected the badly bulged, but not burst empties. The odd thing was that I knocked 5 out of 6 plates down at 20 yards...and they were knocked down with just as much force as they were when hit by the correct gun/ammunition combination. Any recoil and report difference likewise went undected...and I shoot those revolvers a lot...so if there had been any real difference, I'd have noticed it immediately. I know that cast bullets will obturate and seal the bore in a gun...but I don't believe that they'll bump up .040 inch.
I understand that as long as the bullet is in the barrel and being accelerated, it generates an equal force push on the gun. BUT...What little is gained in the barrel after the initial punch is of little consequence compared to the peak impulse. While I'm certain that the difference is measureable...it's undectable by the human hand. It's over before the information reaches our brain.
And...Discuss!
Back in the summer of two thousand-ought-seven, I offered room and board to Wild Bill Caldwell...noted knife maker, pistolsmith, and mad scientist from down Louisana way while he was here to take an engraving course at Montgomery Community College.. We'd had a few discussions on velocities and recoil, and he'd just come into a batch of RG .38 caliber snub nosed revolvers that were tossed into a deal he'd made on some other guns and parts. Figuring that the parts might be useful for somebody, he kept them.
The barrels on RG revolvers are easy to remove, being no more than a pot metal shroud with a liner, and only pinned in place...and extremely lightweight. We chose the best three for out test. Two had nearly equal barrel/cylinder gaps, and the third was to be barrel-less...so the gap didn't matter. All chamber throats were consistent enough to make no practical difference.
One would retail its barrel as the control. The second, I removed the barrel and shroud, and used the lathe to cut the barrel back to bare minimum, leaving just enough of the forcing cone to provide very shallow rifling so that the bullet would be stable enough not to tumble and destroy the chronograph. The length came in at just over a half-inch. The third gun had no barrel, and was to be fired through the hole in the frame. Ammunition was standard velocity 158 grain lead round nose.
The first two guns were chronographed with 5 rounds and averaged. I don't recall the exact numbers, but I do remember that the difference between 2.1 inches of barrel and a half-inch of barrel was just 42 fps. We couldn't detect any difference in recoil for any of the three guns, and a friend who arrived during the experiment couldn't, either...even in a blind back-to-back test in which he closed his eyes and fired the guns that we handed him in succession. On one, he actually picked the half-inch barrelled gun as "Uh...maybe...I dunno. Hard to tell." kicking the hardest.
Curiosity got the best of us...and figuring "What the hell." It was an old Chrony, and I wanted an excuse to buy a new one...so we decided to see if we could clock a few through the one with no barrel. Not only did we not shoot the machine, but we got some good numbers. The difference was just 58 fps between the barrelled control gun and the one with no barrel. Although I can't prove it, it's very likely that the bullets were...if not tumbling...at least yawing as they crossed the screens, which would tend to lower the velocity a bit.
Story #2 was an accident, and actually a slightly embarassing tale that I have to tell on myself. It entailed a session at the falling plate racks just for a little recreation with a pair of my single-action revolvers.
One...a 4.625 inch .41 Magnum Blackhawk, and the other a .45 Caliber New Vaquero with the same barrel length. Luckily, my .41 Magnum range ammo is loaded well below maximum...consisting of a 210 grain cast bullet and 8 grains of Unique. The standard .45 Colt load is a 250-grain cast bullet with the same powder charge.
In the middle of the shoot, a guy in the next bay approached me to talk about a little problem he was having with a 1911, and...thus distracted...I slipped 6 rounds of .41 ammo into the Vaquero. I didn't catch it until I ejected the badly bulged, but not burst empties. The odd thing was that I knocked 5 out of 6 plates down at 20 yards...and they were knocked down with just as much force as they were when hit by the correct gun/ammunition combination. Any recoil and report difference likewise went undected...and I shoot those revolvers a lot...so if there had been any real difference, I'd have noticed it immediately. I know that cast bullets will obturate and seal the bore in a gun...but I don't believe that they'll bump up .040 inch.
I understand that as long as the bullet is in the barrel and being accelerated, it generates an equal force push on the gun. BUT...What little is gained in the barrel after the initial punch is of little consequence compared to the peak impulse. While I'm certain that the difference is measureable...it's undectable by the human hand. It's over before the information reaches our brain.
And...Discuss!