Okay let me start with a bunch of disclaimers. This is the first handgun I've ever owned, and the first handgun I've fired as an adult and within the last quarter century.
I printed out some targets from that ProTarget web site, 8.5x11, so the outer circle of the target is 6" in diameter.
First thing I did was put one .38 special in a cylinder to sort of guage my expectations of recoil, etc. Target set at 20 feet but I had the table in front of me so distance to target about 7 yards. First round hit the paper, which is all I was hoping for.
Then I loaded up the entire cylinder, closed it, aimed, squeezed the trigger and the trigger felt really light and the gun didn't fire. I emptied the gun and tried dry firing and the same thing happened. Tried it a third time, dry firing and it clicked the way it's supposed to. I could be wrong, and I have not yet tried to recreate the problem, but I think maybe I hadn't firmly put the cylinder in place. Would that sort of thing happen?? I would have thought that if the cylinder wasn't tightly secured the trigger wouldn't pull at all. Regardless, I never had that problem again through a box of 50 .38 specials and a box of 50 .357s.
This is getting long, so I'll post scans of the targets in another post. But some things I discovered:
1. Twenty feet is plenty far enough away to practice! I tried 30 and did okay, tried six rounds at 45 though and only hit the 8.5x11 sheet three times. The next several trips to the range I will probably start at 20 feet and go back to 30.
2. Boy, there sure is a difference between .38 and .357! I did better, generally, with the .38s and that might have been because I was anticipating recoil with the .357. I did settle down with the .357 later though, after making some adjustments with my left hand (I'm right handed), getting better contact with the heel of my left palm onto the grip. That really helped.
3. As the scans will show you, I am very frugle. I apparently like to keep all bullets away from the right half of the target. This way, next time I go to the range I can just rotate the targets 180 degrees and reuse them. This, as you know, takes an expert marksman to pull off.
4. On the .38s, several but not all of the spent casings had dark shading coming back from the end of the shell. The range officer said to look for a pattern, see if those all come from the same cylinder, but they didn't really seem to. Nothing like that with the .357s. Is this normal?
5. One .357 round failed to go off. I'm using target ammo, white and blue box, maybe Independence brand? Can't remember off hand. The primer had a small dent in it. Again I asked the range officer and he said that happens, put it in again and see if it works. It did.
Overall it was a nice time, but I was worried about that business at the beginning. I will try to recreate that problem at home tonight, but let me know if you think it sounds like a problem. As I said, once I became more deliberate about closing the cylinder, it never happened again.
Thanks.
Ed.
I printed out some targets from that ProTarget web site, 8.5x11, so the outer circle of the target is 6" in diameter.
First thing I did was put one .38 special in a cylinder to sort of guage my expectations of recoil, etc. Target set at 20 feet but I had the table in front of me so distance to target about 7 yards. First round hit the paper, which is all I was hoping for.
Then I loaded up the entire cylinder, closed it, aimed, squeezed the trigger and the trigger felt really light and the gun didn't fire. I emptied the gun and tried dry firing and the same thing happened. Tried it a third time, dry firing and it clicked the way it's supposed to. I could be wrong, and I have not yet tried to recreate the problem, but I think maybe I hadn't firmly put the cylinder in place. Would that sort of thing happen?? I would have thought that if the cylinder wasn't tightly secured the trigger wouldn't pull at all. Regardless, I never had that problem again through a box of 50 .38 specials and a box of 50 .357s.
This is getting long, so I'll post scans of the targets in another post. But some things I discovered:
1. Twenty feet is plenty far enough away to practice! I tried 30 and did okay, tried six rounds at 45 though and only hit the 8.5x11 sheet three times. The next several trips to the range I will probably start at 20 feet and go back to 30.
2. Boy, there sure is a difference between .38 and .357! I did better, generally, with the .38s and that might have been because I was anticipating recoil with the .357. I did settle down with the .357 later though, after making some adjustments with my left hand (I'm right handed), getting better contact with the heel of my left palm onto the grip. That really helped.
3. As the scans will show you, I am very frugle. I apparently like to keep all bullets away from the right half of the target. This way, next time I go to the range I can just rotate the targets 180 degrees and reuse them. This, as you know, takes an expert marksman to pull off.
4. On the .38s, several but not all of the spent casings had dark shading coming back from the end of the shell. The range officer said to look for a pattern, see if those all come from the same cylinder, but they didn't really seem to. Nothing like that with the .357s. Is this normal?
5. One .357 round failed to go off. I'm using target ammo, white and blue box, maybe Independence brand? Can't remember off hand. The primer had a small dent in it. Again I asked the range officer and he said that happens, put it in again and see if it works. It did.
Overall it was a nice time, but I was worried about that business at the beginning. I will try to recreate that problem at home tonight, but let me know if you think it sounds like a problem. As I said, once I became more deliberate about closing the cylinder, it never happened again.
Thanks.
Ed.
