Success

Well, sort of. 

All my rounds fed successfully, without any cleaning of the firearm between stages.  No failures except for one I caused by myself:  I thought I fully inserted a mag and it ran for 7 out of 8 rounds, but it turns out it didn't secure itself on the mag catch.  I guess it's a testament to Wilson 47D magazines if they can feed my gun without being fully seated.

124.28, despite about 10 seconds of fussing with the one mag problem.

Next week, the 9mm's.  Starting with the XD9 since I have a decent kydex holster for it.  Need to get one for the CZ-75, still.

Progressing at Steel

Last week I improved to 121.24 seconds, and ran flawless for 3 out of 4 stages as far as reliability was concerned.  I was all set to break 100 seconds, actually.

Then I shot the last stage and came across some rounds that turned out to be too large in crimp diameter, measuring 0.474" across at the mouth.  Grr.  Argh.

So... this week I went through 200 rounds that I made on my Dillon Square Deal B, and hand-chambered them in my Colt Government 1991 barrel (removed the barrel from the slide to do this quickly and easily).  Of those 200 rounds, 182 seem to chamber reliably.

I have those 182 rounds set aside.  I will run them in my 5 known good magazines (3 wilsons and 2 ACT's).  In theory, I should run a flawless night, and hopefully clear 100 seconds tonight.

In theory.  :-)

I also cleaned the lube-sludge that oozes out when loading .45 with lead bullets, so the chamber should stay cleaner longer.  I'll also run the bore snake through it once between the 2nd and 3rd stages, just as a preventative maintenance issue.

More Steel

Well, I'm finally shooting halfway decently at the steel matches.

Last time I went, I ran the course in 142.32, right-smack in the middle of the pack of D-rank shooters.  All the Grand Master shooters are still running the same courses in about 45 seconds with the tricked out race guns in the space-man holsters.

I had one gear issue that appears to be caused by my lead roundnose reloads.  I wasn't flaring the case quite enough and I was getting wax/lead residue on the case mouth, affecting headspace.  I changed my press to flare the case a bit more, and I went out and tested the results this last weekend.  The cartridges look cleaner and function just fine.

So, that should save me about 10 seconds hopefully.  Put me closer to the top of D-class if my reloads work properly tonight with no malfunctions.

Also got a really good pointer last time:  To build speed, I need to assume that my shot is good and bring the gun down out of recoil and onto the next target immediately.  Right now, I am bringing it down out of recoil and preserving sight picture onto the previous target, like I do with rifle shooting.  I'll try that tonight.

So tonight will be my Colt 1991 government pistol.