LED Upgrade for Surefire G2, and Why Lithium Batteries Rock

Why lithium batteries rock:

Tonight I replaced the old halogen bulb in a Surefire G2 flashlight with an LED conversion unit. The output is much brighter with a great throw. I checked the batteries in the flashlight and they are the original Surefire CR123A batteries, with a 2015 expiration date, which was 10 years from when they were manufactured. Yes, this thing is still functioning with 20 year old batteries.

This particular light lives on a nightstand and gets used very infrequently, which is why I haven't used up the batteries. But for them to last 20 years and still be useful is impressive, to say the least.

This is the LED conversion I used: https://amzn.to/4oaiHzv

To fit the G2 I had to remove the outer coil spring, after that it just dropped in. 

Casting Sessions

Today I did some bullet casting. The temp was around 70F so I was able to do so out in my shop without sweating like a pig.

I cast up a bunch of .530" round balls for use in my .54 caliber rifles, and a few Lee 578-478M Minie balls to try in my Zouave. I'd forgotten about the Minie ball mould. I think I picked it up used last year at Dixon's.

After I culled the bad ones, I wound up with 106 of the .530 balls and 16 of the Minies.

The Minie mould is a little challenging to cast with. I think it would work better if Lee had used larger blocks to retain the heat better once it's up to temp.

The Lee round ball mould works fine, although I wish it was a 6 cavity instead of the 2 cavity mould I have. In my experience, the 6 bangers maintain temp better and you can cast a large quantity of bullets in a relatively short time.

Zouave Rifle Range Report

Yesterday I shot my Euroarms Remington 1863 "Zouave" rifle with replicas of the Williams cleaner bullet and some Lyman 575213 Minie balls.

My rifle was made in 1986 and I traded into it two years ago.

The original nipple took musket caps as you'd expect on a military rifle, but I found that as a left handed shooter, my right forearm and hand got peppered with debris. That was extremely unpleasant. I put a nipple that takes No.11 caps on it, which still gives reliable ignition but without the annoying spray on my arm.

The Williams cleaner bullets I have came from Gimcrack & Bunkum, a one man shop located in Pennsylvania. They are replicas of those issued during the Civil War. Unlike the Minie balls, they have a disc on a post that's attached to the base of the bullet. The disc expands into the rifling and scrapes out the fouling. These are 487 grains and .574" in diameter. I found them to shoot to about the same point of impact as the Lyman 575213 Minies, which weigh 510 grains, when both were fired over 60 grains of 2Fg Goex. I got the Minies from Track of the Wolf.

Some of my shots showed that the base separated from the body of the bullet and impacted elsewhere on the target. At 50 yards they broke the paper but not the plastic target backer.

When I bought the Williams bullets I chose to get them pre-lubed. The gap between the bottom disc and the base of the bullet has to be lube-free for it to work properly. The Minie was lubed by me a couple years ago with something, I forget what.

Offhand accuracy with this rifle is challenging due to a heavy trigger, probably around 10 lbs. I've considered taking the Zouave out for Pennsylvania's early antlerless-only season in October. I'll be hunting from a blind and will be able to shoot from a rest. But I'll probably use just a .54 caliber Investarm Bridger Hawken which has a nice trigger and is easier to shoot well.

Aside from the conicals I brought some .562" round balls, which shoot well in the rifle. However, I forgot my short starter so I stuck with the Williams and Minie bullets.

On a Percussion Revolver Kick Again

Lately I've been on a percussion revolver kick again, and chronographing several different loads. With the Garmin Xero C1 chronograph I got last year it's very easy to measure the velocity of your loads. Among other things, this tells you the relative strength of different powders. I've put my results into a spreadsheet hosted on my Google Drive here:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1DUpnrvYi4rrXWYR4gLM9YhW5mkkv1WjWNZwE3c2W0sM/edit?usp=drive_link

I'll update the spreadsheet as I get more data, but as you can see, from least to most energetic are Scheutzen 3Fg, Goex 3Fg, Swiss 3Fg, and Hodgdon Triple 7 3Fg.

Incidentally, I've read in several places that Triple 7 begins to lose power once you open the bottle, due to it absorbing atmospheric moisture. If that's true then it must've really been energetic because this is from a bottle I bought at least 10 years ago. Up until a couple months ago the T7 powder had remained in the bottle with the lid screwed on tightly, inside my house with central air conditioning. A few months ago I put the remaining T7 into a powder flask, which doesn't seal nearly as well as the factory bottle.

For the most part, I use loose powder and ball, but have experimented with combustible paper cartridges. The cartridges can be handy but many modern replica revolvers have loading ports which make using them difficult, unless you grind away some excess metal.

A good compromise between the convenience of cartridges and loose powder and ball are the Quick Load tubes sold by Dixie Gun Works. I've seen them in the Dixie catalog for years (really, decades) and more recently on Blackie Thomas's YouTube channel. I finally bought a couple bags, one each for .36 and .44 caliber.

Dixie tubes: https://www.dixiegunworks.com/index/page/search?FullText=dixie+tubes

I got the target tubes. In .44 caliber the maximum charge they'll hold and securely hold a roundball is 40 grains of black powder. Likewise, Dixie lists 25 grains as the maximum charge for the .36 tubes but I found 20 grains to be the most it can hold with a .380 ball. It's possible the batch I got are shorter than older batches.

(Yeah, my workbench is a mess.)

Compared with combustible cartridges in a properly setup revolver they're a bit slower to use but they are much quicker to load at home, and also more robust. That "properly setup" part is important. While the 19th Century revolvers were setup with the proper dimensions around the loading port to accept cartridges, many modern revolvers won't without some grinding. If you don't want to modify the loading port on your gun, the Dixie tubes are a nice alternative.

The Dixie tubes should also be more water resistant than combustible cartridges.

The .36 caliber tubes will fit into an MTM flip top cartridge box for .38 Special or .357 Magnum cartridges. The .44 tubes are a little too fat to fit into the MTM .44 Mag boxes but fit well in the MTM box for .500 S&W.

Another good option for field carry of pre-measured black powder charges are flip-top centrifuge tubes. I've been using them for several years to carry reloads for my rifle during the muzzleloader deer season. Patches balls are carried in a loading block.

Musket Capper and Powder Can Spout

Yesterday I went up to the Gunmakers Fair at Kempton and drooled over a bunch of guns I cannot currently afford. However, I did pick up a couple items that will be handy when shooting my smokepoles.

The first is a musket capper. It doesn't have any markings on it except for "ITALY" but it appears to be the same capper that Dixie Gun Works used to sell as item # NA0401. When I got my Euroarms Zouave a few years ago I wanted to get one of these but they appear to be out of production, or at least nobody is importing them into the USA.

Dixie's description on how to load the caps is incorrect. You don't remove the lid, which is riveted on. Rather there is a sliding door through which you feed the caps.

I found it at one of the vendor's tables for $20. It even had seven musket caps in it. I've removed them for storage in a test tube since the make and whether they're any good is unknown. I'll pop them on the nipple to clear it of any oil before loading, saving a few of my known-good caps.

Incidentally, you can see why musket caps are sometimes called "top hat" caps.

The capper was a bit grungy so I rubbed it down with 0000 steel wool, just enough to remove any bumpy verdigris but not the patina.

The second item is a valve to install on a powder can lid for use at the range. The spout itself is a recycled 7.62 NATO blank, mated with a brass nipple, a couple washers, and a spring loaded cap.

EDIT: I discovered that you can unscrew the top of the capper. What I thought was a rivet is actually a threaded stud. I think though that using the sliding door on the side is how you're meant to fill it.

Stainless Wheelgun Sunday

Today I took a couple wheelguns to the range and spent most of my time smacking the 25 yard plate rack.

The guns are a 2.75" Ruger Speed Six in .357 Magnum and a 4" Smith & Wesson Model 64-3 in .38 Special. All the ammo I shot today were my own .38 reloads with Speer 158 grain LSWCs in mixed brass, Servicio Aventuras primers, and Bullseye powder. 100 rounds had 3.3 grains of Bullseye while the other hundred had a more typical 3.5 grains.

With 3.5 grains of Bullseye, a 4" .38 will push a 158 grain bullet to about 775 FPS average, duplicating typical non-plus P performance. It's accurate and very pleasant to shoot in a service sized revolver.

I was also pleased to see that the two other people on the range while I was there were a couple fellow Members of the Tribe. It's always good to see fellow Jews exercising their Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms. One guy was instructing the other. They had some kind of semiatuomatic 9mm with a red dot sight, and learning defensive shooting.

My free PDF book for Jews looking to arm themselves is available from my Google Drive, Guns for Jews v5.0.

(How'd I know they were Jewish? Well, the kippah was the big giveaway. But a lot of us have Jewdar, too. ;) )

High Desert Cartridge Company .38 Special 148 Grain Wadcutters

Today I ran some High Desert Cartridge Company .38 Special 148 grain HBWCs over my Garmin chronograph from 2 .357 Magnum revolvers.

First, from my S&W 640-1 with a 1-/7/8" (nominal 2") barrel, 10 shots averaged 753 FPS.

Second, from my S&W 66-2 with a 2.5" barrel, 8 shots averaged 788.7 FPS. For some reason 2 shots didn't register.

Everything else being equal, I would expect 25 - 50 FPS more velocity from a gun chambered in .38 Special, due to less freebore.

High Desert Cartridge Company advertises this load at 725 FPS from a 2" snubbie with 18" of penetration in ballistic gelatin.

In my opinion this would be an excellent carry load in .38 Special of .357 Magnum snubbie revolvers. It's controllable in rapid fire but will poke a clean hole all the way into the vitals.

A Factory Nickel Smith & Wesson Model 10-8

Last year after my father died, my brother and I split up his gun collection. Among the large number of Smith & Wesson double actions was this factory nickel Model 10-8, chambered in .38 Special, of course.

Over on AmericanFightingRevolver.com, "Bryan with a Y" did a video covering the 10-8 variant of the Military & Police and noted it as being one of his favorites, for several reasons. Based on my sample of one he's absolutely right.

The action on this revolver is exceptionally smooth. Dad wasn't one to tinker. His idea of a trigger job on a K-Frame was putting 1,000 rounds through it double action. I don't think he fired this one all that much, though because it was very clean when I got it. In his later years he got less meticulous with cleaning, and this one was pretty much spotless.

As indicated by the "TWC (redacted number)" stamped on the left side of the frame, the gun formerly belonged to The Wackenhutt Corporation, a provider of security services. It appears to have spent most of its time in the armory.

When I got it the gun wore a set of S&W Magnas and I shot it like that for awhile. However, even when fitted with a grip adapter I find the old Uncle Mike's Combat grips more comfortable for long shooting sessions.

When looking at the back of the cylinder you can see that although the gun is nickeled, the ejector star and ratchet are blued. There is an "N" stamped between the top two charge holes, indicating that it came from the factory in nickel.

S&W matted the top of the frame and barrel but for improved visibility I painted the front sight using a white base coat topped with 2 or 3 coats of lime green nail polish. I blacked out the rear sight with a Sharpie marker to reduce glare.

Yesterday I got together with a friend to shoot on his property and put 100 rounds through the Model 10-8. From 10 yards in rapid double action it was easy to blow out the black on a B-8 repair center target.

The loads were a Speer 148 grain BBWC over 2.9 grains of Accurate No.2 in W-W wadcutter brass, and Servicio Aventuras primers. This is a very pleasant load to shoot in a K-Frame, and cleaner burning than the equivalent when loaded with Bullseye.