Straight Case

A different threat, your responses

The events unfolding in San Bernardino show us a different threat. Not an unknown threat, just a different one.

We have been used to seeing various formats of homicidal/suicidal Jihad here: 9-11, the various Jihadi gun attacks since then, etc. All these attacks had one common characteristic: the Muslims involved were all determined to kill members of the Western Civilization, but pretty much stuck to methods which left their shock troops dead with the event. One-way attacks. Don't "pass go", Get your 72 raisins immediately.

With San Berdoo, we have just seen an attack in which the Jihadis had trained and prepared to strike with force and effect, but moved on quickly to, presumably, strike again later. Far from the normal homicide/suicide attack, this is more like revolutionary attack. This resembles what we used to refer to as a "partisan" attack. Similar to the tactics of the French or Yugoslavian partisans who attacked the Nazis during WW2. What we just saw could have been very successful for the Jihadis, and the only reason it wasn't, was better training and discipline/communication on the part of the police authorities.

My purpose here is not to figure out how to defeat this different flavor of Jihad, but to prepare the average citizen to survive it. Methods of defeat for the Muslim Jihad will have to wait for a National Command Authority determined to defeat Islamic Jihad itself, and we don't have such leadership now, we have the opposite. We have political and command leadership determined to NOT face down islamic Jihad instead of the other way around. The effect for John Q. Citizen is that he will probably have to face the shock troops of Jihad alone, possibly with the help of local police.

A personal note: I am trained in various aspects of public safety, and as events unfolded and were reported yesterday in San Berdnardino, I evaluated the events as if they were the result of criminal gang activity, since, to me, the events more resembled the activity of, say, Mexican drug cartels or the criminal gang MS-13 (both very active in San Bernardino), and both are orgs not unwilling to create mass murder to get their point across. I was wrong in that analysis, mostly because I applied the usual standard of homicide/suicide Jihad, then rejected it, and this event did not fit that model.

So, how to prepare?

1. Arm up. The protected citizen will be armed at all times, with handgun(s) within hands' reach at home and away, and a long gun close by as well. You will have to figure out how to conform to "safe storage" laws to accomplish this in your home and in your car (presumably, your "away" long gun stays in the car). At home, I have quick-reaction pistol safes (plural), and the long gun goes back in the big safe when kids are present, so I comply. In the car, I carry on my person as I am permitted to do, and my long gun is a Kel-tec folding rifle with internal lock, carried in a locking gun case, kept in the locked trunk of the vehicle.That complies with local law as well (it would NOT comply in CA or several Eastern states though).
2. Train up. At this point, if you have not already done so, join a local gun club or commercial firearms practice facility. Your preference should be one which has practice facilities for handgun (any caliber), rifle (any caliber) and shotgun. With the exceptions of no 50BMG and no full-auto, my club fits these requirements. You will need to allot sufficient funds for ammo, and/or begin to reload your chosen calibers. You will need to allot sufficient time to practice, probably a minimum of once per month in the training phase, and four times per year with all defense firearms as a maintenance-of-training effort.
3. Smarten up. Apply some common sense as to your selection of events to attend, particularly if you will be responsible for others' safety. Large outdoor events are Jihad targets of opportunity, as are crowded shopping malls. Organized athletic events in arenas and stadia are probably safer to some degree, but the Jihadis wouold love to target one for the kill ratio that they could achieve. Consider applying a sliding scale of risk to your life and it's chosen events. Yeah, that's a bummer, but we are at war, dude! You are probably safest at home, relatively safe out and about in your vehicle, safe enough doing shopping that is NOT done in large, crowded venues at peak predictable times. You are less safe in any public crowd, on mass transportation, at any outdoor event which has been heavily advertised as to attendance prospects. The training and/or dedication of your local policing authority is a factor in your relative safety also. Evaluate it.
4. Vote up. National elections are close at hand. Regardless of your political affiliation, you need to vote for your own safety. Safety is personal, and politicians and political parties which refuse to recognize your personal safety as their Job #1 should NOT get your vote. This is not about flavors of morality, this is about survival. See my note on National Command Authority, above.

Again, we are at war. The war has been brought to these shores by Islam, and it's not going to get "wished away", even though this seems to be the primary "combat strategy" of the current political Administration. YOU are responsible for your OWN safety, so make safety happen for you, NOW!

A final word. Religion. Your personal religious creed should give you the mental strength to survive the mental rigors of mortal combat. It is NOT required for that purpose, but if you hold to a creed, it will pay you to increase your attention to it in these anxious times. Your creed is your business under our Constitution. Your survival is a natural AND Constitutional Right under our system. You MUST consider anyone who attacks you for your creed or attacks your Right to survival as your enemy. Islam is attacking/denying both

The events unfolding in San Bernardino show us a different threat. Not an unknown threat, just a different one.

We have been used to seeing various formats of homicidal/suicidal Jihad here: 9-11, the various Jihadi gun attacks since then, etc. All these attacks had one common characteristic: the Muslims involved were all determined to kill members of the Western Civilization, but pretty much stuck to methods which left their shock troops dead with the event. One-way attacks. Don't "pass go", Get your 72 raisins immediately.

With San Berdoo, we have just seen an attack in which the Jihadis had trained and prepared to strike with force and effect, but moved on quickly to, presumably, strike again later. Far from the normal homicide/suicide attack, this is more like revolutionary attack. This resembles what we used to refer to as a "partisan" attack. Similar to the tactics of the French or Yugoslavian partisans who attacked the Nazis during WW2. What we just saw could have been very successful for the Jihadis, and the only reason it wasn't, was better training and discipline/communication on the part of the police authorities.

My purpose here is not to figure out how to defeat this different flavor of Jihad, but to prepare the average citizen to survive it. Methods of defeat for the Muslim Jihad will have to wait for a National Command Authority determined to defeat Islamic Jihad itself, and we don't have such leadership now, we have the opposite. We have political and command leadership determined to NOT face down islamic Jihad instead of the other way around. The effect for John Q. Citizen is that he will probably have to face the shock troops of Jihad alone, possibly with the help of local police.

A personal note: I am trained in various aspects of public safety, and as events unfolded and were reported yesterday in San Berdnardino, I evaluated the events as if they were the result of criminal gang activity, since, to me, the events more resembled the activity of, say, Mexican drug cartels or the criminal gang MS-13 (both very active in San Bernardino), and both are orgs not unwilling to create mass murder to get their point across. I was wrong in that analysis, mostly because I applied the usual standard of homicide/suicide Jihad, then rejected it, and this event did not fit that model.

So, how to prepare?

1. Arm up. The protected citizen will be armed at all times, with handgun(s) within hands' reach at home and away, and a long gun close by as well. You will have to figure out how to conform to "safe storage" laws to accomplish this in your home and in your car (presumably, your "away" long gun stays in the car). At home, I have quick-reaction pistol safes (plural), and the long gun goes back in the big safe when kids are present, so I comply. In the car, I carry on my person as I am permitted to do, and my long gun is a Kel-tec folding rifle with internal lock, carried in a locking gun case, kept in the locked trunk of the vehicle.That complies with local law as well (it would NOT comply in CA or several Eastern states though).
2. Train up. At this point, if you have not already done so, join a local gun club or commercial firearms practice facility. Your preference should be one which has practice facilities for handgun (any caliber), rifle (any caliber) and shotgun. With the exceptions of no 50BMG and no full-auto, my club fits these requirements. You will need to allot sufficient funds for ammo, and/or begin to reload your chosen calibers. You will need to allot sufficient time to practice, probably a minimum of once per month in the training phase, and four times per year with all defense firearms as a maintenance-of-training effort.
3. Smarten up. Apply some common sense as to your selection of events to attend, particularly if you will be responsible for others' safety. Large outdoor events are Jihad targets of opportunity, as are crowded shopping malls. Organized athletic events in arenas and stadia are probably safer to some degree, but the Jihadis wouold love to target one for the kill ratio that they could achieve. Consider applying a sliding scale of risk to your life and it's chosen events. Yeah, that's a bummer, but we are at war, dude! You are probably safest at home, relatively safe out and about in your vehicle, safe enough doing shopping that is NOT done in large, crowded venues at peak predictable times. You are less safe in any public crowd, on mass transportation, at any outdoor event which has been heavily advertised as to attendance prospects. The training and/or dedication of your local policing authority is a factor in your relative safety also. Evaluate it.
4. Vote up. National elections are close at hand. Regardless of your political affiliation, you need to vote for your own safety. Safety is personal, and politicians and political parties which refuse to recognize your personal safety as their Job #1 should NOT get your vote. This is not about flavors of morality, this is about survival. See my note on National Command Authority, above.

Again, we are at war. The war has been brought to these shores by Islam, and it's not going to get "wished away", even though this seems to be the primary "combat strategy" of the current political Administration. YOU are responsible for your OWN safety, so make safety happen for you, NOW!

A final word. Religion. Your personal religious creed should give you the mental strength to survive the mental rigors of mortal combat. It is NOT required for that purpose, but if you hold to a creed, it will pay you to increase your attention to it in these anxious times. Your creed is your business under our Constitution. Your survival is a natural AND Constitutional Right under our system. You MUST consider anyone who attacks you for your creed or attacks your Right to survival as your enemy. Islam is attacking/denying both

The 40 S&W as a revolver round

Whatziss you say? a Fotay Revolver? Ain't no sucha thang, you say. Yes there is, and I own one. It is the Charter Arms Pitbull snubbie in 40 S&W caliber. Charter arms deals with the concept of using rimless ammo in a revolver by a mechanical construct which projects little tabs out of the ejection star to grab the cartridges by their rebated-rim channel for ejection. The cartridges headspace themselves in the cylinder by the mouth of the brass.

When you think about the 40 S&W, it is simply a larger semi-auto cartridge than the 9mm Luger, and it will handle the pressures that a Nine will, up into the mid 30,000 CUP range. 38 Special, even in +P+, won't take over 20K-CUP. 45 ACP, same as 38 Special. 357 Magnum will take up into the low 40,000 CUP range, but for most snubbie applications, you have to load it down well below what it will take.

So, the Fotay makes a decent snubbie cartridge. Out of the Charter Arms' 2.5" barrel, it will make close to 1,000 fps in most defensive loadings, and closer to 1,050 fps in the lightest bullets.

I am currently loading some 40 S&W for my Pitbull in 135-gr, the lightest bullet commonly available. I get these from MidwayUSA, which house gets them from Rainier Bullets. They are Copper Plated Lead Truncated Cone. The first batch for testing will be shoved by 6.2-gr of IMR Hi-Skor 700-X. Federal Small Pistol primer lights the fire. In a 4" test barrel, these get 1,210 fps, which would be 439 #/ft muzzle energy, about a third more than a 9mm out of that barrel. Out of the 2.5", with a cylinder gap to jump, I will likely get 1050 fps, translating to 330 #/ft muzzle energy, about a third more than a 38 Special loading out of a snubbie revo. For comparison, the NATO 124-gr 9mm war round gets 336 #/ft out of a 5" service auto.

After the 135s, I will load some with Hornady Action Pistol JHP-180s. This is a bullet designed for the competition crowd. It has a tough hide of copper to handle metal targets, unlike the lightly-plated Rainiers. It will make decent penetration, pushed by 6.0-gr of Unique out of the snubbie at about 950 fps, giving me 361 #/ft of muzzle energy, just a tad more than 45ACP military ball gives. I have a 1911A1, and it weighs twice as much as the Pitbull, carries 3 more rounds and does not easily conceal. My shoot-all-day Glock Model 22 doesn't conceal well, either (no Glock double-stacker does).

The revolver, with two reloads of ammo, gets me to my rifle, in the case I can't end the fight with five rounds, but that's why we make lots of ammo and practice a lot, isn't it?

The OLD handgun cartridges...

By "old", I mean cartridges which started out as blackpowder rounds. In other words, 38 Special, most of the 32 rimmed stuff (EXCEPT the H&R & the .327 Federal), ALL of the short (and weak) 38's, and most everything the Colt Single Action Army was chambered for. Gawd, I'd have to fire up the Wayback Machine to list all of those, because I believe Colt had a rule then: if they thought they could sell 2000 revolvers in a particular caliber, they would tool up for it.

As the era of black powder began to wane (although not knowing it yet), some manufacturers began to experiment with bottleneck rounds. The rounds built for the Winchester Model 1873 are a good example: 32-20 and 44-40. The whole idea of bottleneck rounds in ANY form is to put more push behind the bullet. In black powder days, that push was important, since black powder is very anemic compared to modern (or even original) smokeless powder. The SAAMI max pressures for black powder run around 12,000 CUP, where hotter large cartridges like the 44 Remington Magnum run closer to 50,000 CUP.

It all translates to energy, or that measurement of the whack the bullet imparts to what it hits. In the 44 Russian, an originally-blackpowder round, which we will look at in detail below, the max energy is just under 300 pounds/feet at max SAMMI pressure of 10,000 CUP (with smokeless powder). In the 44 Remington Magnum, the max energy is closer to 1800 pounds/feet, a sixfold increase, even though the cartridge capacity is maybe 25% more than 44 Russian.

I have been shooting .44 guns for about 8 years. I have a Marlin Model 1894 in 44 Magnum, a Colt Anaconda revolver in that caliber, and a pocket 5-shot Charter Arms Bulldog revolver in 44 Special, the blackpowder precursor to 44 Magnum. The 44 Special has a SAAMI max of 14,000 CUP, so all I get out of the snub-nose Bulldog is 1,000 feet per second at best, but that is okay for short-range defensive duty, and the Bulldog's bark is worse than it's bite. If ever called upon to be in a multi-enemy shootout, I plan to yell "forty-four" before I fire the first round. The enemy WILL believe I am shooting at least a 44 Magnum, maybe even a Cassul at them. They will hesitate, which gives me the advantage.

The 44 Russian. 

One of the issues which keeps me from shooting my Anaconda more is it's savage recoil. I am a lightly-built dude with my wrists being only 6 7/8" at the forearm end. I also have small hands, taking the smallest work gloves made for men, or medium women's gloves. I can just barely grip the Anaconda's Hogue-style grip with one hand, and I never shoot it that way. I can and have shot 60 rounds of full-power 44 Magnum through it in one range session (Cap'n Jim will remember that!), but I had leather gloves on which were taped to my wrists! Okay, the smarties say, why don't you just carry and practice with 44 Special? I did that until I got the Charter Bulldog. The Anaconda is a HUGE revolver, weighing 47 ounces. Add the ammo, and it's almost 4 1/2 pounds. The Bulldog weighs 20 1/2 ounces, and is almost an inch narrower. It conceals nicely. I carry the Anaconda open when I carry it. I have decided to drop back 3/4 of a century and load some 44 Russian ammo to practice with. I came up with this:

Bullet: 200-gr LFN, 5.0-gr Green Dot, LPP. Performance: 836 fps, 2" groups at 15 yards out of a Bulldog!

These will make shooting the Anaconda about equal to shooting an old S&W K-22: 22LR out of a heavy old 38 revolver. They will make shooting the Bulldog. about like shooting 38 out of a heavy old revolver.

And, of course, it is one of the missions of Straight Case to promote shooting the old firearms/loads which figured so prominently in our Nation's history...

No SOTU

...working my huge collection of 9mm brass to cull up the 9mm+P hulls. Gonna put together some hot, fast, light 90-gr short-range stuff with Hornady XTP.

It should look like this:

5.5-gr W231, WSP, OAL 1.063

It should make 1250-1400 FPS M/V. That's fast for the XTP, but I'm not looking for penetration, but big, shallow wound channel. The XTP will get through the clothes but fragment nicely in 10" or less. For comparison, I might load some with AA#9 (less powder) and Unique (more powder). Test gun will be my Glock 19. It has a standard barrel (with the cut-out), so if I'm gonna blow up a case, it would be in the Glock, not in my new Remington R51 (when it gets here).

Bullets are back!

Just went through the 9mm reloading bullet pages at Midway USA, my favorite place for such. Three months ago, there were 30 selections out of stock for every one available. Now more than half of the selections are available, and if you don't see your favorite bullet, there will be some alternatives offered. Prices seem to be about what they were, pre-Obama Gun Rush 2. As a bennie, some of the pure copper bullets are showing up, in case you live in a cursed place that mandates such. I see no reason to change from lead-core otherwise.

Powder is slowly coming back, as are primers. Most stores will sell you at least 100 primers per visit, some up to 300. Visit often. At my local reloading places, powder seems to have the slowest recovery.

A load for the Second most versatile cartridge...

Since I just got some Accurate #9 in, I think I will gin up some of these:

200gr JHP	25.0 gr	No. 9	1,676 fps	1.595"	CCI 300	Accurate
	Suggested starting load: 22.5 gr

Adding about 175 fps for the rifle barrel of the Marlin 1894, the Muzzle Energy Computer gives me 1520 #/ft at the muzzle for that XTP JHP. They'll work just fine in the Colt Anaconda, too.

 

Thankew very mucho, Elmer.

Gaaah! Powder order fiasco!

The order:

Product ID	Product Title	Price	Qty.	Ext. Price
AA91	ACCURATE POWDER #9 1LB. (0550)	$18.99	1	$18.99
60N	NATCHEZ CATALOG	$0.00	1	$0.00
HP4101	ALLIANT POWDER 410 1#	$17.49	1	$17.49
AA27001	ACCURATE POWDER #2700 1LB (0576)	$19.99	1	$19.99
			Subtotal Items:	$56.47
			Shipping:	$19.12
			Hazmat:	$27.50
			Total Order:	$103.09

Over $100 for three pounds of powder? I'm lucky to get it, even if it's powder I've never used before, there are loads for the AA2700 in the 300 Savage, the 308 Winchester and the 243 Winchester, which I need to reload. $46.62 just to be able to continue reloading. The Shipping fee I can accept, but the EPA Hazmat Fee is pure bullshit harrassment, nothing less. It is anti-2A to the max. Congress needs to delete it. It adds 50% to the powder cost in reloading in this instance.

The 410 is for my first foray into shotshell reloading, some 410 loads in brass shotshells.

The AA9 is a pistol powder for larger-capacity cartridges.

Ordinarily, I would have used IMR 4831 for the rifle and W231 for the pistol, or H110, or some other bulky pistol powder.

These days, ya load with what you can get. Believe it or not, I was considering loading FFFg blackpowder for the 38 Special and 44 Special, just because that's the only thing I can find locally...

Reloading Fail

Yep, I had one. A total fail. I recently got some of these 310-grain boolits, with the intention of making some serious "bear loads" for the Colt Anaconda and also some heavy rifle rounds for the Marlin 1894C.

After I got the boolits in, I began to look at published loads, and the first thing I found out is that the Marlin shouldn't use a boolit that heavy! 260-grains is tops, due to the twist rate of the rifling. Crap on a stick! Oh, well, load the revolver rounds, says I, and maybe I'll melt down the remaining 310s and recast them as 240 SWCs, I have that mould.

I primed up 50 new Starline cases with LPPs, and ran them through the expander die. I decided to skip the usual step of building a dummy or two, so I put the powder in one case to make this load:

310gr LSWC	21.5 gr	H110	1,275 fps	1.749"	Win LP	Admin

So, I decided to short the powder a full grain and load 20.5 grains of H110. Weighed it out and funneled it into the case, lined up the case and boolit under the seating die, set almost wide open, since that 1.749" might just be too long for the die. I push on the RCBS handle...and the boolit stops cold a full quarter-inch from the seating cannelure. Powder compression limit. This COAL is right up to the 1.9" area, way too long for any .44 Magnum gun, and probably going to be way over SAAMI pressure if it was ever capped off.

Then I make a primerless, powderless dummy, it COALs out at 1.66" just at the start of the cannelure, and I now have to acquire a syringe to fill the hull with a measured amount of water to see how much room there actually IS in there for powder, then calculate the powder so as to be in SAAMI limits. I suspect that I'll use Unique, and I suspect that the load will be between 8.5 and 10.0 grains, but some science lies ahead here.

The usual bleg applies: any one with experience in 44 maggy 310-gr Bear loads please chime in.

Advanced gunny bleg

Very advanced. You might have to be a serious benchrest shooter to answer this.

Problem: I have acquired a rifle in the caliber of .300 Savage. Highly advanced for it's 1921 day of introduction, the 300 Savage had the approximate power of the .30-06 Springfield, but was built into a shorter case. Chuck Hawks says that much later, in the 1950's, the .308 Winchester, then the 7.62X51 NATO was developed from the 300 Savage, and of course we know of the provenance of the .308 Winchester.

Here's my personal problem: time has passed this caliber by. Once the most popular non-military deer AND elk caliber in the Northwest woods (Northwest hunters are cheap bastards, and used a lot of milsurp rifles to hunt with), it is still available, but there is little in the way of new cases to be reloaded, and the ammo itself commands a high price, almost $30/box. Hulls are over $25 for 50, and they are VERY hard to find.

I just completed some study, both in the SAAMI charts and by detailed measurement with a dial caliper, and it seems to me that the body of the 300 Savage cartridge case is virtually identical to the .308 WIN from the base to the start of the bottleneck. The only difference below the bottleneck is that the rim-cannelure (is that called the rebate or the extraction-channel?) is much wider in the .308 WIN than it is in the 300 Savage. I would guess that the 300 Savage, being designed for bolt or lever guns only, would not need as wide an extraction-channel as the .308 WIN, which was designed with semi-auto and full-auto battle rifles and MMGs in mind.

So, the big question is: Can the profile of a .308 WIN case be changed to the 300 Savage profile? Of course, the bottleneck in the 300 Savage is much steeper, it reminds me of Ackley-Improved calibers, and the actual case neck is much longer in .308 WIN, but that is just a matter of using a case trimmer on it. The main thing is changing the angle-profile of the bottleneck.

Can that be done?

If it can be done, there might be a few grains of difference in powder capacity between a re-made .308WIN/300SAV hull, but that can be measured and the powder loads recalculated so as to have the right pressures.

Secondary question: if the change can be made, will it best be made with dies or fire-forming?

Another secondary question: what will the longevity of these changed hulls be? My intent would be to use them with cast-boolit loads, which are much lighter in pressure than high-power jacketed hunting loads.

Some photos:

On the left is the .308 WIN round, a Hornady 168-gr AMAX match round. On the right is the 300 Savage round, a 150-gr Remington Corelokt. This gives you an idea of the cartridge profiles, side-by-side.

Another sXs view:

Well, there you have it, advanced gunnies. All advice welcome. Of course, I also know that I can just start hoarding the scarce 300 Savage ammo, but apparently, it is only made by Remington now, and I just don't like the Core-Loct bullets. Yeah, I have killed deer with them myself, and they did their job, but that little lead protrusion at the tip gets beat up easily, and I figure it causes some inaccuracy. I suppose I could pull the Core-Loct bullets from factory, and reload with my choice, that's always an option as well. I have a large selection of .308 bullets to try out in load development, everything from 110-gr up to 180-gr with several in between.

It's going to be a fun Winter, both at the bench and the range. Speaking of winter, it starts here in the PacNorWest in 2 days, so I need to get my bippy iun gear and put all the summer-living stuff away.

Looking for a Pitbull load...

Okay, now that I have the Pitbull, what do I shoot in it? What do I shoot for practice and what do I carry for the best defense loads?

Here's my first trip around the reloading bench:

For max defense, I'm using the Hornady "Hornady Action Pistol" (HAP) bullet, a tight-jacketed JHP of 180 grains. First, I'm building loads around it because I have some, and second, I'm bearing in mind that this IS a Snubbie revolver I'm loading for, and so I will lose some oomph with the cylinder/barrel jump AND with the short barrel, so I need to work for penetration as the primary wounding effect of the round, not expansion. I had similar considerations with the 44 Bulldog, if you recall.

So, at the bench, I have these fine Hornady bullets, actually two different bullets. The second one is the classic Hornady JHP, their XTP, in the 155-gr weight.

Last night, though, I loaded only for the Hornady 180-HAP.

Three loadings, one powder. I'm sold on Unique for a fast powder. Old School, yes, but it works. PITA to measure because it comes in large flakes, but a fine powder.

I set up to reload.

First, it's so cold here I had to turn on TWO propane heaters to take the chill off my Survival and Reloading Shed. Late Spring, yes, but as it began to warm up, I worked up 60 once-fired cases, the usual Range Brass, from the Sheriff's Tactical Range. I used my new RCBS Carbide dies in my ancient RCBS (pre-Rock Chucker) press. The brass was done soon enough, so first, I loaded the maxi-rounds with 6.0 grains of Unique. Twenty of those, just enough for 4 cylinders-full. Next, I went down to 5.5 grains of powder, another 20, then finally, 5.0 grains. The comparison between these rounds will tell me where to fine-tune the final product.

The 6.0 might be close to SAAMI max for standard-pressure, but they won't be up to +P max, so I should be all right.

JHP	6.0 gr	Unique	1,020 fps	1.125"	CCI SP	guest
	Speer Gold Dot bullet. Gun used was a Colt Z40 with a 4.4" barrel. Velocity was a 10 shot average. Extreme spread was 27 fps.

No pressure listed, but another listed load with MORE Unique, 6.4 grains, is from the Alliant tables, and they are unlikely to list a load which is over SAAMI max, in fact, theirs lists well below SAAMI max of 35,000 CUP.

JHP	6.4 gr	Unique	1,065 fps	1.125"	WSP	Alliant
	Suggested starting load: 5.8 gr Pressure: 33,800

(Both these loads are from Handloads.com, using a search term of "180" only)

When I go to the range next week, I'll take these, and some Remington Green Box 180's for comparison. I don't do penetration tests myself, but if I meet the guy with the chrono there, the velocity ought to tell the tale on what I've brewed up so far. I'll probably shoot 5 of the $$pendy Hornady Gold Dot Personal Protection rounds as another baseline, since it's the closest thing to a purpose-built factory round for this gun that I've found so far.

Of course, I will need beaucoup loading/unloading drills if I'm to depend on this revolver for personal defense. I've noticed that small but definite positive force is required to PUSH each round into each chamber, to get it by the little spring-loaded tab in the star which holds it in place. I need to dig up a .357 speedloader for my SP-101 to see if it will work with Fotay rimless. The chambers in the loader ought to be big enough, considering that the .357 is rimmed, so the question is whether the star mechanism of the HKS speedloader will retain the bullets in it, then to see how much force would be involved to get by all 5 of those spring-retainers at once.

Ah, I love a good mystery!