Last Saturday, I attended the Foundations in Shooting Sports class from Texas Defensive Firearms Training. I knew that I would get a lot of good information and coaching, but even expecting it, I was surprised how much of an immediate difference the instruction would make in my shooting skills.

Before I continue, I’d like to report that my 5.5 grain Power Pistol loads functioned completely without incident, not counting one weak hand fail to eject that was likely from limp wristing the pistol. I have done that weak hand shooting before.

I am a fair marksman, particularly if given a little time, and I am always willing to learn more. I listen for pro-tips, whether directed to me or just given in my presence, I observe as best I can how the more advanced shooters I see at matches prepare and when someone gives me specific advice, I am quite likely to try it and to research it and maybe modify it. One such piece of advice that made a huge difference in my control of the pistol was when someone spent some time to help me establish the grip commonly called Thumbs Forward. I have big beefy hands that were allowing me to shoot OK, even with a poor grip, but a solid grip instantly improved my shooting.

Old habits are hard to break, though, and the slightly unnatural support hand position was easy to forget to do until I was missing targets then I’d suddenly remember, correct the grip, and be instantly rewarded with better shots. Also, I was pretty bad about failing to reestablish that grip after a magazine change, or other action that transitioned my grip. I am largely over that and tend to grip consistently now, or at least more consistently. It now seems unnatural to hold the pistol wrong 🙂

That grip had been, until last Saturday, probably the single best improvement I had made in shooting skills. Now I have a few new skills to add to that list. They all tie together, too, and much of it starts with a good grip.

A good grip conducts the energy of recoil through your body and skeleton and ultimately into the ground, minimizing the movement of the pistol, giving better control and faster target acquisition. A solid stance will conduct that energy to the ground better. A poor stance will dissipate that energy into you and as noted by Newton, some part of you will move. Chances are, whatever it is will not help your shooting.

As IDPA is an action shooting sport, the shooter moves around through a course of fire to solve problems in a defensive scenario. Scoring is by time and every movement costs time. It takes pretty much a half second to take a step, whether at a shuffle, a walk or a run. A good stance lets you be positioned such that you are moving with all steps, in any direction. Otherwise, you might need to take a step to set up to move, then a step to move and 1 second is now gone from your time.

You will rarely enjoy the perfect stance, since you are subject to movement that may be restricted by obstacles, but you can make a good stance second nature. A good stance starts with your feet separated, laterally and medially. They should be about as far apart laterally as your shoulders are wide and medially, the toes of the rearward foot should be about even with the heel of the forward foot. Which foot is best to have forward varies with the situation. You should be bent at the knees and waist, with your shoulders over your knees, which both lowers your center of gravity and gives you better flexibility on directions you can move.

I learned what I knew about trigger control largely from old literature and years of practice. Get your sight picture, hold steady and slowly squeeze the trigger. Turns out, there is a better way.

The trigger has a bit of slack in it, where it takes a small amount of force to move the trigger until it reaches a point near release, where it becomes stiffer. If you are shooting something besides a Glock, the exact experience may be slightly different, but they pretty much all do this to some degree. Even the 1911 trigger has play to take up, though sometimes a gunsmith shortened that play with a trigger job. If this slack is taken out while the pistol is in transition to the next target, then you are ready to release the projectile sooner upon acquisition of the sight picture, saving precious time. Since you aren’t moving your trigger finger as much while the sight picture is in place, you have less opportunity to move the pistol as it fires. It’s a simple concept that made a surprisingly big difference in my shooting, but it’s maybe up there with the grip in it’s single cause improvement.

We covered some tips on dealing with barriers, like using your walkthrough to mentally mark where the edge of the barrier and the zero zone of the target line up so you can actually have much of your sight picture and slack out done before you emerge from the barrier and take a rapid shot, saving precious time. Similarly, if you need to move to advance around a barrier to address multiple targets in tactical priority, you want to set up the positions for your feet so that you don’t have to take any non-productive steps, saving precious time. In your walkthrough, you mentally mark where your rearward foot should land to set up any such steps ahead of time.

We covered target transitions. Until this class, I transitioned from target to target much like a tank, turning head and pistol together until the sight picture rests upon the target. A better way is to take advantage of the much higher speed at which you can move your head or eyes. As you finish one target, turn your vision to the spot on the next target to aim for, letting your comparatively slower body move to catch up and move the sights into your field of view on the target you have already acquired visually. While the pistol is moving, you can be taking out the slack in the trigger so that it’s ready to fire immediately when complete sight picture is acquired, all saving precious time.

We also covered moving, while maintaining grip, stance and trigger control. I had done some of this fairly successfully, but now armed with a better stance for moving and better trigger control, I was able to put 7 or 8 out of 10 shots onto a 6 inch steel plate at 10 yards while moving laterally. It was extremely gratifying and definitely made the day worth the price of admission!

Now I have specific drills to work on with my SIRT pistol as well as dry fire and range practice with my G20.

As an aside, I noticed today that my current classifier has expired as of March 15. I’m still Marksman in three divisions, but without a current classifier, I wont be able to shoot in any sanctioned matches. I have none scheduled before the next classifier shoot in mid-April, so that’s probably ok.

I spent a few minutes this afternoon setting up my chronograph so I could quantify the difference between the two loads I currently have.

The normal spot where I shoot is overgrown right now, so I set up to shoot at a low angle across the creek.

As a control, I shot 10 rounds of Remington UMC. It ranged from 976 to 1023 fps, averaging 1002 fps, for a muzzle energy (and thus, recoil energy) of 401 ft-lbs.

The 4.4 grain Power Pistol loads, the ones that don’t run the gun well, were, not surprisingly, significantly slower. They ranged from 677 to 743 fps, averaging 705 fps, energy 199 ft-lbs. Interestingly enough, the first shot was the lowest speed and it was the only one that didn’t cycle the pistol, but several of the empties literally rolled off my knuckles on ejection.

For the 5.5 grain loads, I shot 15 rounds instead of 10, partly because I wanted to give it more chance to fail to eject. The velocities ranged from 838 to 899 fps, averaging 869 fps, energy 302 ft-pounds. That is an energy increase of 50% over the 4.4 grain. They were definitely a little sharper, but more importantly, they worked the pistol really well.

I will split the difference in a future load, seeking the balance. In the mean time, I have a stack ready for the class.

While cleaning the pistol for the class tomorrow, I finally found and solved the issue where my magazines would rarely, if ever, drop free without being manually pulled out. I kept examining the magazines themselves, but it turns out to have been a roll/burr in the magazine well on the pistol itself. I neglected to take before pictures, but here is the repaired well.

All magazines I have drop freely now, so I can put the stock floor plates back on them, presuming I can find them. The big plates didn’t help anyway.

I had the first local IDPA match with ammo I loaded entirely on the Dillon press. I had several ammo malfunctions, but they were all pretty simple failure to eject the spent cartridge. I have a 13 pound spring in the pistol. I can order an 11 pound spring, and I may still, but in the mean time, I will just twiddle with the carb and richen the mixture a little.

The ammo I had is 4.4 grains of Power Pistol pushing a 180 grain plated RNFP. This load is actually below what’s shown on the chart in my Hornady book for 180 grain FMJ. The intent was to try to get something around 700 feet per second to meet 125 power factor with the softest recoil possible. Seems I may have met that last criteria a bit too well by not generating enough recoil to operate the pistol reliably. I’d say maybe 10 or 15 percent of them stovepiped or rechambered or otherwise failed to eject completely from the pistol. It was even worse on a stage shooting with weak hand while on the move.

The 11 pound spring may help, but the slide on the Glock 20 is still pretty heavy, designed to help absorb the significant recoil generated by the sometimes 700-800 ft-lbs muzzle energy from full tilt 10mm Auto, while keeping the stock 16 pound spring, versus operating on the paltry 200 ft-lbs or so that my soft shooting load is producing.

Because I need 300+ rounds of reliable ammunition *tomorrow*, I am bumping it up more than I would if I were just working up the final load. I’m going to try 5.5 grains of Power Pistol, which should run my 180 grain bullet at about 800-900 FPS.

Well, the extra bins definitely helped speed up production!

The color difference is fairly apparent here. The bin in the foreground is the Akro-Mills native bin, the background is the Dillon version.

This arrangement with empty brass within easy reach definitely sped up the loading rate. I was able to get well over 150 rounds loaded in a little more than an hour, including some troubleshooting as detailed below. My QA fail rate is about the same, with most rounds dropping unrestricted into my gauge block, a few fitting well enough to probably work in the pistol, but I rejected them to the rework bin (since I now have enough bins to have a rework bin) and a couple that wouldn’t go in well at all. Historically, I can usually get most of those those back with the Bulge Buster, but it is not currently mounted on the bench.

I had two or three rounds where the bullet seating went badly. I probably need just a tiny bit more flare in the case mouth to address that. I set it intentionally close to help keep from overworking the brass, so I have some adjustment range. Cartridge OAL was well maintained in spot checks, 1.125″ to 1.130″ with most checked units at 1.127″.

The biggest problem was with primer feeding, mostly due to the spent primer catcher chute not pivoting freely on it’s somewhat damaged cotter pin. This chute is gravity operated. The down stroke of the ram opens the chute to allow the spent primer to fall out, but the chute would bind on the pin and not fall closed on the upstroke. The spent primer would fall into the works, frequently landing where it would prevent the slide assembly from returning forward to align the new primer with the shell plate. I reworked the pin a couple of times before I got the chute working reliably. I will add that pin to the list of minor parts I’d like to order from Dillon.

That left a much simpler issue wherein the slide itself needed cleaning and lubrication. Normally, the slide is operated by a carefully formed steel wire rod and rollers that push the slide out to pick up a new primer at the top of the upstroke. A spring pulls the slide back in, against the rollers and rod on the downstroke. It would on some occasions, snag for a fraction of a second and when the spring would overcome the friction, the slide would move suddenly, often unseating the primer from the punch assembly. This primer would most often land in the works somewhere, either stopping the slide from going all the way home, or landing where it would interfere with the shell plate platform. If by a some miracle of chaotic physics it landed clear of the works, then there was obviously no primer for the next case.

In the course of looking up the proper part names above, I did finally find the Dillon bins, for $2.95 each. 🙂

Having only one bin on the Dillon press definitely slows production. I couldn’t find only the bins on Dillon’s website, but in perusing Amazon, I found the same physical bins, with even the same manufacturer’s part number (Akro-Mils 30220), offered in case quantities. I ordered 1 case of 24, about $50. They arrived today.

Though as depicted here, the color looks like Dillon blue, it’s a trick of my office lighting, for the actual color is more like Pantone 280C.

While I don’t think I really need 24 of these, it does seem as though several would be handy. I think that will make it easier to load a large batch of the same ammo without necessarily stopping to process the output bin.

They have a nice slot for a labeling card and they stack nicely.

The good thing is that they stack without reducing the volume of storage they provide. The bad thing is that they stack without reducing the volume of storage they require. Still, the whole case of them is 9″ x 17″ x 15″.

I finally got the Dillon RL-550B press all set up and loading ammo!

I reused my Lee Precision dies, partly because I had them already and partly because the Lee Factory Crimp die is highly recommended, even by many Dillon users.

On the Lee Pro-1000 press, there are three stations with dies, resize and deprime, flare and charge, seat and crimp. The Dillon is a four station press. I kept my Lee resize and deprime die on station 1 and used the Dillon flare and powder die.

For the bullet seating and crimping stations, I elected to keep my seat and crimp die, but adjusted it pretty high up so that it will only seat the bullet. I got a second die for crimping, with the bullet seating punch on it adjusted very high. This separates bullet seating and crimping operations. I may consider the Dillon seating die in the future, for it does have some interesting features, like the ability to disassemble it for cleaning without losing it’s setting. For now, I went with what I know.

I stopped using polycoated bullets, such as BBIs, because I was getting a ring of shaved material right at the case mouth, which was usually caught at the case gauge, but occasionally caused difficulties going all the way into battery. More case flare did not seem to address the issue, and I believe it was likely because the one step seat and crimp is still pushing the bullet down as the die is crimping the case. The harder copper plating on bullets like the Xtreme Bullets are just not as sensitive to it and are essentially just as inexpensive with frequently free shipping, minus BBI’s always included shipping. However, with these operations separated, perhaps I can revisit the poly ammo option.

Compared to the Lee, it is a substantially beefy press. It’s a bit more manual, though. My Lee has an automatic case feeder and the Dillon does not. The case feeder option for the Dillon is very nice, with a motorized unit up top to load loose brass into the press ready to process, whereas the Lee is really just a chute that you fill manually. With the case feeder in place on either press, one hand stays on the handle and the other handles placing bullets and, in the case of the Dillon, also indexing the shell plate.

There is much to recommend the simplicity of the Lee approach. It’s a fairly simple plastic turret with four clear tubes and a shallow funnel collator to simplify filling them, and a simple pusher to position the case into the shell plate during the upstroke of the handle. Each tube holds about 40 empty rounds of 40S&W. As each tube empties, you turn the turret assembly to bring a full tube into battery. Once empty, you reload the tubes all at once with the attached funnel and an agitation technique that causes the cases to drop, head first, into the tubes. It takes all of 20 seconds and you’re back to loading. It’s such a simple and inexpensive approach that it’s not really optional; the press ships with all the but the $12 funnel collator included.

The Dillon case feeder, however, is a large motorized contraption that costs more than the entire Lee press. Not saying I don’t want one, just thinking the $270-ish would buy a lot of reloading components right now. I wish there was an intermediate option, something between having no casefeeder and having the super-deluxe model.

No, for now I will get a few extra bins so that I can have empty brass at my right hand and and thus become the case feeder. 🙂 These trays from Amazon are the exact model provided by Dillon, though they are likely a different shade of blue and don’d have Dillon’s logo on their sides.

Since I have had some feeding problems with some ammo I made recently, particularly bullet setback while feeding, I am starting conservatively. I loaded 180gr RNFP over 4.4g of PowerPistol, 15 each with new brass and range brass. They are 1.125 OAL and crimped to 0.420, +/- 0.002. As I was setting the seating and crimping dies, I tested the crimp (with unprimed, uncharged brass) by compressing the finished round with pliers to verify that it takes substantial effort to move the crimped bullet.

If these feed and shoot correctly, I will see about having a bunch ready to go for a shooting class I am attending this weekend 🙂