Garrison Joe, SASS #60708

I've seen no cartridge data for Perfect Pattern YET. In theory it would be suitable. But I know of no company willing to perform pressure testing and other safety tests on cartridges. I've seen tons of data for cartridges with TiteGroup powder, which is also very available. Make it easy on yourself and get some TG for now, and perhaps someone else will test out PP. (Hint, that is something very similar to what I'm doing right now) good luck, GJ.

If you post this in the Classifieds section of the web site, as a "Want to Buy," you might find a suitable offer. good luck, GJ

And the gun being fired when this happened was the revolver. And the instructions allowed any makeup shots on a missed revolver target until the shooter either ran out of that ammo, or started firing on the dump target. So, you may think the shooter had a miss, but that is not true with a makeup style of scenario, where until the ammo is expended, the shooter can reverse that miss with a subsequent hit. good luck, GJ .

Any powder that sends a slug down range will be GOOD ENOUGH for a SASS main match. I've even shot Elephant and Kik. Which is close to using mule dung. Schuetzen will be much better. good luck, GJ

It will have an auto safety - that needs to be modified to be a manual safety. It's a heavy gun. Lift weights regularly. Hinge surfaces need to be regreased after every cleaning. good luck, GJ

If you need serious work (like action retiming or barrel work), I'd suggest NuLine Guns in Rhineland, MO http://www.nulineguns.com/ I'm not familiar with gunsmiths in Alaska. GJ

125 grains with 3 grains of Clays or Clay Dot makes a right fine .38 special cowboy load. good luck, GJ

Thanks Too Tall.! Does look like the "Second Entry" heading needs to be raised up one line higher so the "Second" alias follows the "Second Entry" heading. And, the day of the Wild Bunch match is Tuesday, correct? The Entry Fee section seems to have it wrong --- as Wednesday. good luck, GJ

Hmmm, 14 thousandths of slack between which ever lug is tightest and the locking bar. Not real bad. Would not take much tapping of the lug(s) to bring that back down to about 0.005" My Baikal will close nicely with a 0.008" feeler gauge blade placed on the water table right where the standing breech of the action meets the watertable. Feels like I still have a lot of life in that gun. Converting that, that is 0.20 mm. good luck, GJ

Well, you can't see the sliding lock fitting into the lugs when action is closed. You could disassemble the receiver enough to get the sliding lock block out, then push block in by hand. But that is lots of work. I'd smoke or marker color the lug engagement surfaces, then open and close the action several times. You should see drag marks where the bar touches the lugs. Spots where the lugs DO NOT rub off their color are not making contact. Gentle tapping on the lug to close up the lugs' slots can usually get the lockup tighter. But, if the action is not auto-opening when you fire it, I'd leave it alone. A little up and down play in the action won't hurt much of anything good luck, GJ

If the rim cut in the chamber has been ground out completely, and even worse, if the extractors have the same coning done, yes, the gun has lost it's headspace location! Shotguns headspace on the front surface of the shell rim being against the ledge in the chamber. Shells vary a little in outside rim diameter, and if the headspace ledge is cut out into a tapered cone, they try to stop when the OD of the rim reaches a tight spot in the tapered wall. So each hull, each brand, tries to stop at a different distance from the firing pins. And at some point, you get failures of the firing pins to set off primers! Leave the extractor alone when "coning" the breech. Leave at least some of the headspace ledge in the barrel - I never cut out more than half of the ledge depth. good luck, GJ

Mostly locking lug / sliding lock bar fit.

Play (if any) between the barrel breech and the vertical face of the action (where firing pins are located) is the slop which can make a gun quit firing. That play adds to head space, and eventually the firing pins cannot hit the primers enough to fire the shells. This is due to wear between the hinge at the front of the receiver, and the socket for the hinge in the barrel underlug.. Usually fixed by fitting an oversize hinge pin (they are all replaceable). This loosening of the hinge also sometimes shows up as a side-to-side flop of the barrels. Play in the lock down of the barrels - yes, that's mainly from the sliding action lock no longer snugly fitting the slots in the underbarrel lugs. Often fixed by either replacing the sliding lock bar or tightening the lug gap(s) in the underbarrel lug(s). Too much play here means recoil can cause the action to unlock without the top lever being worked. Lots of old and cheaply made guns develop play in the action. Some need to be fixed to prevent failures. good luck, GJ

With our commonly very low pressure loads, there will be no noticeable difference between a .38 spl loaded to 1.45" or 1.50" OAL. You might find the 1.45" load has slightly higher velocity if you chronographed both. I have done the same kind of length tweaking in a 73 rifle and the shooter could not tell the difference in the "power" of the loads. Just make sure your gun(s) feed them with no hangups. And what's this "accuracy" you are concerned about? At 7 yards, or even 15? That you won't hit a 12" or 18" target? Now, if you were tuning up a load for 100 yards shooting - THEN I could see you being concerned. good luck, GJ

Shell stop screw. Yep, those tiny screws loosen and fall out. Worth keeping blue loctite on if you want to keep the screw in. BTW - the only correct way to orient the gun to describe where parts are, is when the gun is held in firing position. Left is then on your left, and right is (who woulda thunk it) on your right. Top of the gun is up, etc. good luck, GJ

THAT is an ELBOW carry. Not a trail carry, and not legal for SASS use. good luck, GJ

It's all about the muzzle direction. A one-hand carry with the arm straight down and the muzzle within the 170 deg down range direction is perfectly safe. As you can see, not a lot of folks remember from hunter safety class what "Trail Carry" really is. good luck, GJ

Long range black powder - about a 1 in 20 or 1 in 30 slug (tin to lead) Long range smokeless - whatever the gun shoots best, and does not lead the barrel with your load and lubes. Since each gun has it's own accuracy response to hardness and powder and lube, it's really hard to tell you one answer, because even if it's right for my gun , it quite likely will be wrong for each of yours. For smokeless less than 2000 FPS I often start with a Brinnell Hardness of 20 (wheel weights with maybe 10% linotype added) and work from there. Usually shooting with gas checks. Bullet diameter 0.001" larger than groove diameter in YOUR barrel (so slug it). With the wide spread use of HiTek poly coating, hardness counts less than it used to when proper hardness of a lubed lead alloy slug helped with leading control. And, then there 's heat treating of lead bullets, too, to increase hardness. There may be some silver-colored bullets, but in long range shooting there are NO "silver bullets" that are best for every gun/cartridge/loading. If you want to go down a deep rabbit hole, start reading this forum: https://castboolits.gunloads.com/ or this one: https://www.artfulbullet.com/index.php#discussions.12 good luck, GJ

When you don't standardize parts machining to a well documented blueprint, holding tight tolerances in parts, as Eli Whitney developed back about 1845, then you have to do some part swapping and hand fitting just to get the parts into the gun during factory assembly. Brazilian and Pakistani firearms illustrate this manufacturing nightmare very often. Chinese guns used to have this nature, too. To our detriment, they at least learned a Whitney approach. good luck, GJ

And you may not realize I trust almost nothing self-published on YT.

No, not in Apache Trail per se.

Hammer forging, if the mandrel has some circumferential defects in the surface, could make those marks all the way around the lands and grooves. Was not aware Ruger was using hammer forged revolver barrels. OP may just have to live with those minor divots in the barrel. Thanks, GJ

They will if they want to sell me one. I carry a borelight and a cleaning kit into gun stores. One in Mesa AZ got a big kick of me taking a M1 Garand down to do a 5 minute inspection before money changed hands. good luck, GJ

There is no machine that makes a circular mark across both the lands and the grooves of a barrel at the same spot in the barrel. The bore (what becomes the lands) is cut with a deep hole drill and, if lucky, is precision reamed after that. Those give mostly circular marks on the lands. But the grooves are cut or swaged with a broaching type tool that runs lengthwise down the barrel, with a twist of the cutting head to give the twist rate. That tooling leaves just lengthwise marks, and sometimes chatter marks across the grooves, but only in the grooves. So, completely circular rings in the barrel on both the lands and grooves do not come from any of the cutting operations that Ruger would perform. Look at the rings - they cross both the lands AND the grooves at the same exact spot down the barrel. good luck, GJ

The new Ruger handguns I have bought come with 2 (TWO) fired cases each. Hardly enough to leave that much fouling. And certainly nothing that would put circular defects or rings in both the lands and grooves of a barrel. Even if Ruger retains 2 or 3 cases (which they have never said they do), that is not enough in my experience to foul a barrel that badly. And I am even more certain that Ruger does not provide fired cases to individual states' Crime Forensics departments without evidence that a crime has been committed. (That is why police are SO dedicated to picking up any fired cases from any crime scene - they have to get their own cases.) good luck, GJ