Silhouette shooters are pretty much like most other shooters in that we’re always looking for that magic something that will turn us and our guns into an unbeatable combination incapable of missing a target. “If I use this bullet or this powder, or this reloading tool, I’ll shoot 40’s every time.” Oh if it were only true. Sometimes we’ll take the technical approach and sometimes we can get downright silly.

To illustrate

     The moly frenzy is a good example of the technical approach. The most fantastic claims were made for this stuff. Moly was said to reduce chamber pressures but would also increase velocity at the same time - something that apparently defied the laws of nature. Eliminated bore wear. Increased accuracy. The claims went on and on.  

     In a two part series of articles published in “Precision Shooting” magazine, the chief ballistics expert at Sierra Bullets discussed a very thorough, blind test that he conducted involving five rifle barrels shot from a machine rest in the Sierra laboratory. Result? The fantastic claims made for moly bullets were totally debunked.

     Sierra wasn’t the only major bullet company to discover these facts. At one of the technical seminars at the Internationals a couple of years ago, the rep from Hornady agreed and stated the only advantage they saw for moly was during long continuous strings of shots such as found during varmint hunting where hundreds of shot could be fired. The Nosler rep stated they also found that moly would build up in the throat and bore of a firearm and could increase pressures significantly. This in turn, requires tiresome cleaning procedures and re-seasoning of the barrel afterwards. Thankfully, the moly frenzy has pretty much passed, but who knows what’s lurking around the corner.

     On the silly side of the coin, there was the banana craze. At one of the local clubs, the hot shooter of the time was asked how he was able to see the targets so well. I’m fully convinced that his reply was a joke, but he said with all apparent seriousness that just prior to going up to the line, he would eat a banana because the potassium it contained really did all kinds of good things for his eyes. Yes, you guessed it. Pretty soon the trash barrels on the line were filled with banana peels. Unlike moly, the banana craze only lasted a couple of months.

     Another accuracy improver involved a hair care product. I was talking to a friend at the range who shoots NRA silhouette, and he swore that if you put lanolin on your 22 bullets, accuracy would improve by 50%. Being somewhat intrigued, I questioned him further. He named a specific hair care product, a pomade containing lanolin as being the magic elixir. Just smear it on the bullet, and see the improved results. (Note: altering your 22 ammo is a violation of IHMSA rules. NRA rules however do not address this subject.)

     Being curious, I bought some of this stuff (It was only four bucks.) and slathered some on this junky 22 ammo I had laying around. For my test gun, I used the most accurate 22 I own - a Bullberry TC carbine which is capable of shooting a third of an inch at 100 yards.  

     At fifty yards, the BullBerry printed a group of an inch and a half with the unmodified junk ammo.  Amazingly, the greased up junk ammo went into a 3/4 inch cluster. Wow - a 50% reduction! “Maybe there’s something to this after all” I wondered.

     So, I decided to expand the experiment using a wide variety of high and mid level ammo from Eley, RWS, Lapua, and Federal. Overall, a dozen different kinds of 22 ammo were used both with and without the greasy kid’s stuff. Result? No difference, or in some cases the groups were worse.  

     Well what about that first group? Obviously it was a fluke or just a matter of wishful thinking. I sometimes find myself expecting to shoot a good group when using some new product or reloading technique and so will unconsciously concentrate more on the shots, and then - guess what - I shoot a better group. Not because the new product or technique actually was better, but because I simply put more effort into producing a good group. I admit that I often have to be careful when playing little brain games with myself - especially when doing a product review. 

     So what’s the moral of this long winded story? Actually the moral is a very old one. “If something seems too good to be true, it probably is.” Being a little bit of a skeptic is not a bad thing when it comes to shooting.

Burris 8 X 32 Airgun Scope

     It’s no secret that if you want to shoot small groups, big power scopes are a key ingredient in the formula for achieving that result. Benchrest shooters would routinely turn up their noses at anything less than a 36X scope. Now, 42X and 45X scopes seem to be the norm for that sport. Small groups require big scopes.

     The same is true when testing air guns and pellets for silhouette competition. I always want as much scope power as possible to insure that the results I see are due to the inherent capabilities of the equipment I’m evaluating and not due to errors on my part. The best way to minimize the effect of the shooter is to have as stable a rest as possible, and to use the big optics.

     In the airgun world, 12X is generally considered to be pretty big. Since most air gun competition is shot at 10 yards, 12X will give the impression you’re looking at the target from mere inches away. But IHMSA competition has always pushed the envelope. At the airgun ram distance, 12X no longer appears to be giant it was at the chicken line and you’ll find yourself wanting more magnification. If you want the really big airgun scope power and quality, the Burris 8 X 32 is the only way to go. 

     This is really an exceptional scope with a lot of capabilities. The scope’s main feature of course, is that it can deliver 32 power of crystal clear magnification to the shooter’s eye at 10 yards - a distance most teenage boys  can spit. As a general rule, the higher the magnification, the further away an object must be before it can be brought into focus, and yet, here it’s being done at a mere 30 feet. Remarkably, image quality is also as crisp as a saltine cracker right out of the oven. Neither is there any sign of milkiness, color distortion, or parallax at 32 power. This is really a significant accomplishment when you think of it.

     Similarly, we know higher magnifications usually dictate shorter lengths for the eye relief. On most scopes, the designers will strive to give the shooter three inches of eye relief, which is ok but nothing to get excited about. The Burris scope on the other hand, gives the shooter a generous 3.5” of eye relief at 8X and a whooping 4 inches at 32X. That means that guys like me who wear glasses, have plenty of room to see through the scope without having to press our specs almost against the eyepiece. 

     Field of view isn’t all that shabby either. At 100 yards, the Burris provides us with 13 feet at 8X and 3.5 feet at 32X. For a scope that’s designed strictly for target work only, that’s just fine. The scope is also equipped with full sized, adjustable, target turrets that give us crisp quarter inch clicks.

     Additionally, this is no wimp scope like most others built for airgun. It’s kind of a shame as most manufacturers equate air gun shooting with casual plinking on the cheap. Consequently, their airgun scopes are also cheaply constructed. Not this one. Like all of Burris’s products, it’s built strong and tough. So if you want to mount it on a 30-06 and shoot it all day long, go right ahead. I wouldn’t dare do that with some of the other airgun scopes that I own. They’d be turned to junk after a single shot.

     All this capability doesn’t come without a price however. The laws of optics says in order to get that much magnification to focus that close, you need a long focal length. Consequently, this scope is big - just slightly over 17 inches long. When mounted on your gun, it’s not a classic case of a gun with a scope, but rather it’s a scope with a gun.

     It also won’t focus beyond a 100 yards. However, I don’t know of any airgun shooting that’s done very often beyond a hundred yards anyway. So it’s not a big deal as far as I’m concerned.

     When I want a scope to do some airgun, or 22 ammo testing, this is the one that I always take out of the safe to get the job done. I’m not going to be shy to use it on my big bore guns either. The optical quality is first class, it’s strong, it’s extremely flexible for all kinds of target shooting, and it’s reliable. What more could anyone want?

Thompson Center G2

     Ever wonder what “G2”, the new name for the successor to the Thompson Contender is supposed to stand for? I have. It’s always struck me as a very odd name for a gun. As someone recently told me, it sounded more like a model number rather than a model name. Of course these days you can never tell. Just look at the goofy names you run across in the automobile marketplace. There, made up words coupled with letters and numbers seem to be the norm i.e. “The Ultrerra RX-5.5” etc. Maybe the practice is migrating over to the shooting industry.

     With a little investigation I found that G2 stands for “Generation Two”. I’m told that Contender is still part of the name, so, to be precisely accurate, the name of the new gun is “Generation Two Contender” or perhaps, “Contender Generation Two”. It still sounds like a fairly awkward name that would be somewhat cumbersome to market, but hey, what do I know about such things? All I really care about is how it shoots.

     The latest info is that production of the new gun is currently scheduled to start in October and so I would guess it will take around 30-60 days after that for the new gun to actually hit the shelves. Sounds like they’re shooting for this year’s Christmas season. 

Accurate Arms Scot 4100

     Scot’s is a line of shotgun powders that Accurate Arms bought several years ago as part of a successful effort to broaden its product line up. At that time, Accurate was offering primarily powders that were geared to pistol and rifle reloading only. Among the new acquisitions was Scot 4100 - a powder developed for the 410 shotgun. Sound a little familiar? Sound like Hodgdon’s LilGun - also developed for the 410? You bet.

     Frankly, like a lot of other people, I never made the connection between 4100 and the 410 shotgun, although looking back at it in retrospect, it seems patently obvious. While at the Shot Show, I got into a interesting conversation with an old friend of mine and Accurate’s new ballistics expert from South Africa. The new guy happened to mention that recent testing by Accurate Arms had revealed that the burning rate for 4100 and LilGun were almost identical. Now that was intriguing.

     I’ve found that LilGun is an excellent powder for extra large magnum pistol cases like the 454, any of the Super Mag series like the 357, or even in the 44 or 41 Mag with heavy bullets. It’s also an ideal powder for the 22 Hornet. Hornady is even using it in their new 17 Rim Fire Magnum cartridge. If 4100 could match its performance, that would be quite an accomplishment. It’s always nice to have options.

     I then decided to obtain a supply of 4100 and see for myself just how close the two powders actually were. Since Lil Gun has been a top performer in my Dan Wesson 414 revolver, I decided to use it as a test bed in my little experiment. Upon examining the Scot powder, I found it to be uniformly composed of tiny, very fine, ball type granules which were gray in color. LilGun, on the other hand, is composed of a blend of glossy black, flattened ball granules of different sizes. While LilGun meters very well indeed, 4100 is in a class by itself. The tiny granules flow through my Redding powder measure better than fine sand flowing through an hour glass. In fact, this may be the very best metering powder I have ever seen except for, perhaps, Hodgdon’s H108.

     Since I really wasn’t sure what to expect, I decided on a conservative course of action and would compare a light, but proven load of LilGun against the same amount of 4100. Here’s the results.

414 Dan Wesson

     While it might seem that LilGun had a small advantage in velocity and that 4100 had a small advantage in standard deviation, statistically, the differences were practically non existent.

     I then thought I’d look at how the powders compared when used in a Dan Wesson 360 revolver. The load would consist of 18.1 grains of each powder ignited with a Remington BR rifle primer and topped with a Sierra 180 grain silhouette bullet. First, I filled 10 cases with LilGun. Then, leaving the powder measure adjustment in the same position, I replaced the LilGun with the 4100 and dropped a load in another case. Interestingly, the case filled with 4100 was noticeably more full. I then dumped the powder into the pan of my RCBS digital scale. It measured 17.5 grains - .6 of a grain less than the same volume of Lil Gun even though it filled the case higher. So from a volume standpoint, you can’t just substitute one for the other. Here’s the chronograph data which was fairly surprising.

360 Dan Wesson

     While it might seem that LilGun had a small advantage in velocity and that 4100 had a small advantage in standard deviation, statistically, the differences were practically non existent.

     I then thought I’d look at how the powders compared when used in a Dan Wesson 360 revolver. The load would consist of 18.1 grains of each powder ignited with a Remington BR rifle primer and topped with a Sierra 180 grain silhouette bullet. First, I filled 10 cases with LilGun. Then, leaving the powder measure adjustment in the same position, I replaced the LilGun with the 4100 and dropped a load in another case. Interestingly, the case filled with 4100 was noticeably more full. I then dumped the powder into the pan of my RCBS digital scale. It measured 17.5 grains - .6 of a grain less than the same volume of LilGun even though it filled the case higher. So from a volume standpoint, you can’t just substitute one for the other. Here’s the chronograph data which was fairly surprising.

     To say I was surprised by the results would be putting it mildly. To get nearly a 100 fps more out of a powder that was supposed to have the same burning rate as LilGun didn’t seem likely, but never the less, there it was. I strongly suspect that because the same amount (by weight) of 4100 was occupying more volume in the case, that it was being compressed when the bullet was seated. Consequently, that was boosting pressures and velocity. Primers for both loads were flattened but not cratered.

     Checking the Hornady reloading guide showed me that 1500 fps was a reasonable top end velocity that you could expect with a 180 gr. bullet when shot out of a 10”, 357 Maximum revolver. In this case, I was getting the equivalent velocity out of the smaller 360 case in a 8” revolver. Very interesting indeed.  At any rate, in this application, Lil Gun and 4100 were definitely NOT equivalent powders because the volume to weight ratios.

TC 22 Hornet

     Lastly, I thought I’d try them both in my 10” 22 Hornet Contender. The load would consist of 10.3 grains of each powder in Winchester cases, a 50 grain Remington bulk spire point bullet, and a Remington BR rifle primer. Here are the results.

     Here the two powders were producing more similar results, with the velocities being within one standard deviation of the other. I was also pleasantly surprised that both powders were producing some very impressive velocities out of the TC’s ten inch barrel.

     One last observation about 4100. It’s advertised as being clean burning, and so it is. In examining the barrels of the three firearms used in this little experiment, I never saw any evidence of unburned powder granules in the barrel - just a thin dusting of fine ash.

     Conclusions? Well, the laboratory may say that the two powders have near identical burning rates, but practical practice would seem to indicate that the cartridge they’re used in, can, and does, make a difference. Unfortunately, Accurate doesn’t publish any data in their reloading manual for 4100. However, some limited handgun data is available if you call them on their info line (800-416-3006). The situation is similar in regards to Hodgdon’s LilGun. So far, there is no published load data for LilGun for magnum pistol cartridges either. Again, try their tech line (800-338-3220).

     When using 4100 in a cartridge for which there is absolutely no data available from any source, you might try going to AA #9 data as a starting point. Since 4100 is slower burning than #9, you should be safe. Similarly, in the case of LilGun, H110 data can be used as a starting point as well. Considering that factory reloading data is relatively scarce for both these powders in handgun applications, be extra careful when using them, and work up loads slowly and carefully. If you do so, I’m sure you’ll be rewarded with a with a lot of steel animals with their feet in the air.