S&W Model 640 Range Report

I'm pleased to note that the gunsmithing I did on my S&W Model 640 I did this morning worked out. I took it to the range tonigh and put 50 rounds of my handloads through it. The loads were a 148 grain button nose, bevel base wadcutter from Matt's Bullets, 3.3 grains of Alliant Bullseye Powder, and CCI primers in Winchester wadcutter brass. The gun functioned perfectly.

Something to mention is that of the major American primer brands, CCIs have the hardest cups. So, if the gun runs well with them it should work fine with Federal (the softest), Remington, or Winchester primers.

Note that the reason I needed to work on it earlier today was because I'd installed an Apex Duty/Carry kit in it, which has a reduced power hammer spring and extended firing pin. (The kit also includes a reduced power rebound spring but I managed to launch that into the ether so my gun has the OEM rebound spring.) Even without the lighter rebound slide spring it's much easier to shoot well than as it came from the factory.

This is 50 shots at 7 yards. All of my shots were on the target.

This gun will definitely be carried.

Replacing the Hand Spring in a Smith & Wesson Revolver

If you need to replace a hand spring in a Smith & Wesson revolver this video shows how:

In the video he used a dental tool to push the spring forward so that it's in the correct position relative to the hand. I found that a spring bar tool as used for changing watch bands worked perfectly. I used one that was included in this inexpensive kit.

Cast Bullets Using the Lee TL358-158SWC Mold

Over the past month I've done a couple bullet casting sessions, mostly making 158 grain (nominally) lead semiwadcutters in a 2-cavity Lee TL358-158SWC mold. I also cast a couple hundred .490 round balls for my .50 caliber muzzleloading rifles.

Bullets cast from this Lee mold have a nice reputation for accuracy in .38 Special and mild .357 Magnum loads. I also like that the design incorporates a wide meplat that will perform well if I shoot anything besides paper or steel with it.

This image swiped borrowed from the Lee Precision website shows was they look like:

Aside from that wide meplat, the tumble lube design makes for easy casting and prep. I cast them from soft alloy since I'll be keeping them under 950 FPS. I used pure lead with some old, unneeded cast bullets added to the mix to add some tin for better mold fill-out and stretch the melt a little. I can still scratch the bullets with a thumbnail, however.

To lube, I put a batch in a small container and then dribble some Lee Liquid Alox on, then mix them all up until the lube is evenly distributed over all the bullets. LLA comes out of the bottle brown but you only need a very light coating, such that the bullets are still mostly silver colored.

You can also thin the LLA with some mineral spirits to stretch it out and speed drying.

White Label Lube's Liquid Xlox is a substitute for LLA and may be more cost effective than LLA, but I haven't tried it.

The wet bullets are then set on a sheet of wax paper to dry. They're good to go in about 12 hours.

Tumble lube designs are also good for powder coating if that's your thing.

Lee sells several other tumble lube designs, and I've read on forums devoted to cast bullet shooting that others get good results tumble lubing conventional designs as well.

I don't size the bullets before loading. Instead, I make sure that my case mouths are adequately flared. I seat them, then in a separate operation I run the loaded rounds through a Lee Factory Carbide Crimp Die, which also sizes the case down to factory dimensions. Thus, if the bullets are a bit oversized and caused a bulged case, it gets sized back down to the correct dimensions.

Yesterday I put 50 of the Lee bullets through a 3" Model 64, loaded on top of 4.1 grains of HP-38 in mixed brass, with CCI small pistol primers. In a 4" barrel and depending on barrel/cylinder gap, this load should run around 850 FPS +/-. It's probably closer to 800 from a 3" tube.

There was very minimal leading, if any. The lube leaves a bit of soot on the gun and is smokey. Many peopple don't like either but to me it's a part of shooting a revolver. The soot wipes right off with a rag anyway.

My late father's favorite .38 Special handload was a 158 grain LSWC, usually Remington swaged bullets, on top of 4.3 grains of HP-38 in mixed brass and usually with Winchester small pistol primers. It's very accurate but when I got the S&W Model 15 that he shot a lot of these through I had to remove quite a bit of leading. The front edges of the cylinder were actually covered in lead deposits. He shot a lot and got lazy with cleaning in his later years, what can I say?

The next batch of these I load will probably be a bit slower, with either 3.9 grains of HP-38, 3.5 grains of Bullseye, or some other charge. The paper or steel targets I shoot won't know the difference and recoil will be a little less, which is good for my hands.

I've recently acquired a pound each of Accurate No.2, Hodgdon Titegroup, and Winchester 244, none of which I've previously used. The No.2 and Titegroup should good for light target loads while the 244 is closer to Unique and may be good for heavier loads suitable for woods carry.

IMHO, bullet casting is not only fun but it's a good prep. Yes, it's time consuming but it helps insulate you from component shortages that happen every election cycle or artificially generated panic. Cast bullets are old fashioned but remain effective projectiles.

FN PS90

One of the guns I've had an interest in for several years is the FN PS90. This is the semiauto-only civilian version of the P90 submachine gun/personal defense weapon that FN created for NATO use back in 1989 - 90. 

Last summer I picked up a PSA Rock 5.7 so I already had some experience with the 5.7x28 cartridge. 

A couple weeks ago I turned the proceeds of consigning three guns into a PS90. I added a Primary Arms SLx Advanced Push Button Micro Red Dot Sight - Gen II red dot sight, along with a sling from Urban ERT. The PS90 came with a single 50 round magazine so I bought three more from Grabagun.com, who had the lowest price on them.

One final accessory that I highly recommend is a spent cartridge collector AKA brass catcher. FN offers one but the price is ridiculous. Instead, I got one from jemachinetech.us that works well. It is large enough to hold 50 spent cases.

My initial impressions are as follows:

• The gun is totally ambidextrous. The charging handles and magazine catch are symmetrical and easily operated with either hand. There is no last round bolt hold-open. Spent cartridges eject out the bottom of the gun.
• It's very small but heavier than you think it would be. Since it's a straight blowback design the bolt is heavy.
• Even though it's fitted with a 16" barrel to prevent it from classed a short barreled rifle under the National Firearms Act, it's very compact. If you filed a Form 1 and SBRed it, it would be about the same length as a computer keyboard.
• The length of pull is a bit short. Since I'm short this isn't a problem for me but if you're tall it might be. I think there are extended butt pads available.
• Takedown for field stripping is stupid simple. The mechanism appears to be quite simple.
• The magazine design is genius.
• The trigger pull sucks. It's heavy and spongy. OK in a combat gun and the risk of an inadvertent discharge is low but it would be nicer to shoot if it was several pounds lighter.
• I like the horizontal rocker safety.
• The charging handles don't provide a lot of purchase. I may install an extended handle at least on the right side.

Today I put 190 rounds through the PS90:

• 100 x FN SS197SR 40 grain Hornady VMAX (made by Fiocchi USA)
• 40 x Fiocchi Range Dymanics 40 grain FMJ
• 50 x AAC 40 grain FMJ

The AAC ammunition felt very consistent. In contrast, the ammo made Fiocchi had a few rounds which felt like they were loaded a bit light.

The SS197SR and FRD ammo gave me a few malfunctions where the bolt didn't seem to reciprocate far enough back to recock the hammer and strip a new round into the chamber. However, they may have been related to my #2 magazine so I'll keep an eye on that one.

The PS90 performed perfectly with the AAC ammo.

Recoil was a little more than I expected though not by any means unpleasant. This is due to the heavy mass of the reciprocating parts.

The Primary Arms red dot sight is a good fit for the PS90 (or any other close-in gun, for that matter). The 2MOA dot is large enough to see easily but small enough to be precise. Even with my astigmatism the dot was defined enough to use, albeit not perfectly sharp.

I got it zeroed easily so that point of aim = point of impact at 50 yards. Due to the high sight line over the bore, I plan to shoot the gun at both closer and longer distances to see how POI is affected. E.g., I'm expecting it to shoot low at close range.

After zeroing the rifle I spent some time banging gongs at 50 yards. Two of these are about 8" wide while one is about 12" wide x 18" high, and there's also a 12" - 16" plate. Finally, there's an old bowling pin hanging in the bunker setup to catch splatter from the steel plates.

It's very easy with the PS90 to hit the small plates doing drills from low ready, either single shots or double taps.

From the bench it grouped into about 1.5" to 2" at 50 yards.

Especially from the PS90's longer barrel, the 5.7x28's ballistics should make it suitable for close range self defense. It's an easy gun to quickly get hits on face-sized targets out to 50 yards at least. Recoil is very mild and the noise and blast are much less than 5.56 NATO. It's not a replacement for an AR15 or AK. It's not an infantry rifle. It's a PDW.

I could see where a PS90 would be useful on a farm or ranch as a tractor gun to take care of varmints up to the size of coyote or even a bit bigger. It's super compact and carries a lot of rounds on board.

Yom HaShoah 2024

Yom HaShoah / Yom HaZikaron laShoah ve-laG'vurah, known in English as Holocaust and Heroism Remembrance Day begins tonight at sundown and runs until Monday evening.

For my entire life I've heard the rallying cry, "Never Again!" But it's happening again.

It is now over six months since the pogrom of October 7, 2023. This was the greatest loss of Jewish lives since the Holocaust. Many of the men, women, and children taken as hostages by Hamas and their allies in Gaza still languish in captivity, among them several American citizens.

Indeed, the Hamas founding charter explicitly calls for the destruction of Israel and the slaughter of Jews. You can read an English translation of the 1988 charter here. 

In other words, Hamas is not too far different from Nazism regarding Jews.

Since October 7th, I have seen more antisemitism in the United States than I did in my previous 55 years COMBINED. The level of open hatred on display in "progressive" media and on university campuses should shock the conscience of every upstanding American.

Much of this hate that we're now seeing domestically is the direct result of allowing mass quantities of people from traditionally antisemitic cultures into the county, and allowing donations to American universities from places like Qatar (which is one of the biggest supporters of Hamas).

What can we as Jewish Americans do?

• Jewish business owners should blacklist from any kind of financial support any university that allows the pro-Palestinian protests to continue. Peaceful protest is our right as Americans but these immediately went far beyond peaceful to harassing and intimidating Jewish students and faculty.
• The "protestors" on American college campuses are providing material aid to terrorist organizations and should be treated as such.
• Identify organizations and companies that provide support to the Palestinian protesters, and boycott them. Make them infamous for their support of Nazi ideology.
• Demand that foreign countries be barred from donating to American universities.
• Demand the explusion and deportation of any foreign students who participated in these protests.
• Demand that immigration from places like Gaza is shut down.

But all of these will take time and in the interim Jewish Americans are seeing increased levels of harassment. Most of us are of Ashkenazic ancestry and in one way or another are infected with the Shtetl Mentality. For our survival that needs to be discarded.

As I have said many times, Jewish Americans need to embrace their Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms. As Americans we have the nearly unique ability to arm ourselves for self- and the common defense.

For "Never Again!" to mean anything it must be backed up with more than words. It needs to be backed up with the ability to immediately and decisively respond to violence with force. Without that, the slogan may as well be, "Never Forget."

Nobody will protect us, but us. And this is something we as individuals must take to heart. Even in Israel the government not only failed miserably to protect its citizens, it actively prevented them from defending themselves because most Jews in Israel are disarmed.

I have decades of experience with firearms so back in November 2023, I published the first version of an ebook, "Guns for Jews." It's a primer especially intended for American Jews who are looking into buying a gun for self preservation. In it I include some justifications for doing so under Jewish law, some general recommendations, and some specific recommendations.

Last week I uploaded v3.0 of "Guns for Jews" as a PDF that you can download here: 

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1WgjlXp2sDGPYTpjNdskWqYQVwF380SlG/view?usp=sharing

Note that in the document I am not trying to sell anything. This is a brain dump to benefit my fellow Jewish Americans. I also encourage sharing the link or the file in the hopes of spreading knowledge.