Uberti 357 Magnum El Patron 1st Outing. Wow.
Posted: Fri Mar 01, 2019 4:45 pm
This was one of those trips where I had no idea what to expect. A platform (revolvers) I'm not that familiar with. A manual of arms (SAA) I have almost zero experience with. Brand new gun, so new sight picture and grips to figure out. Throw in 3 different reload recipes that were originally loaded up with only the Big Boy Steel 357 in mind, and you get what you see below.
Target on the left is where I started out with some factory Fiocchi 142 gr flat-points, just to try to get my bearings from 6 yds, standing, two handed hold. Okay, but, man, even with a 2.3 lb + gun, this is a fun handful. Sight picture is somewhat different than my 45 Colt Uberti, which just wants to see the very top of the front blade. Tried that here and ended up landing low on almost all the loads. The "low/left" phenomenon is just me trying to get this gun NOT to twist in my hands.
Went from the factory load to the 110 gr XTP/9.0 gr of Unique. The muzzle blast and flames shooting outward from the cylinder is considerably different from the Fiocchi. A LOT different. Same issue: low, left, and this trigger, by the way, is tuned almost exactly like the 45, which is to say light enough for the flyers you see. Another learning curve...
Ended up with the target on the right, where the head shots are 125 gr XTP/17.5 gr of Alliant 2400 and the body shots are 125 gr XTP/19.0 gr of 2400. As noted above, both were loaded a few weeks ago as part of my "anything but a 158 gr XTP" testing. As before, the firestorm coming out of the front of this revolver was a hoot, but a hoot to be treated in a very respectful way. More wrangling with grip, sight picture, the "holy crap" factor, stuff like that. Not very happy with it, but at least my deficiencies are of a consistent nature.
The pic below is of the cylinder, post-cleaning, where you can see an example of where the aforementioned blasts (mostly from the Unique and 2400 loads) have taken the bluing off of the front edge of the cylinder (in the same spot in every chamber) in a sort of half-moon shape. Much more of that, and they cylinder will match the CCH look of the frame!
Anyway, my takeaway is that I need to research some good "cowboy" loads for this gun. It's not going to be a HD or carry piece, obviously, so I need to figure out a softer shooting, easier to handle load. To that end, I'm all ears from my reloading compadres here on the forum.
All in all, however, I'm very glad I ventured back into the revolver world, just have a few things to figure out.
Target on the left is where I started out with some factory Fiocchi 142 gr flat-points, just to try to get my bearings from 6 yds, standing, two handed hold. Okay, but, man, even with a 2.3 lb + gun, this is a fun handful. Sight picture is somewhat different than my 45 Colt Uberti, which just wants to see the very top of the front blade. Tried that here and ended up landing low on almost all the loads. The "low/left" phenomenon is just me trying to get this gun NOT to twist in my hands.
Went from the factory load to the 110 gr XTP/9.0 gr of Unique. The muzzle blast and flames shooting outward from the cylinder is considerably different from the Fiocchi. A LOT different. Same issue: low, left, and this trigger, by the way, is tuned almost exactly like the 45, which is to say light enough for the flyers you see. Another learning curve...
Ended up with the target on the right, where the head shots are 125 gr XTP/17.5 gr of Alliant 2400 and the body shots are 125 gr XTP/19.0 gr of 2400. As noted above, both were loaded a few weeks ago as part of my "anything but a 158 gr XTP" testing. As before, the firestorm coming out of the front of this revolver was a hoot, but a hoot to be treated in a very respectful way. More wrangling with grip, sight picture, the "holy crap" factor, stuff like that. Not very happy with it, but at least my deficiencies are of a consistent nature.
- Uberti 357 El Paton 1st Range Trip 3-1-19 003.JPG (170.15 KiB) Viewed 2610 times
- Uberti 357 El Paton 1st Range Trip 3-1-19 011.JPG (90.19 KiB) Viewed 2610 times
All in all, however, I'm very glad I ventured back into the revolver world, just have a few things to figure out.
) Took me a while to kinda "untrain" from all the memory work I've done with a D/A trigger. I haven't forgotten it because I still regularly shoot D/A with my LCRx. But had to work at the S/A side of revolvers.