Spray painting speedloaders and other USPSA revolver preps

[03RN]

I signed up for a uspsa on sat and plan on using my revolver and had the bright idea to spray paint my speedloaders to make them easier to find.

On the way home from the range I grabbed some neon green spray paint. After I sprayed I happened to notice that my grass in my back yard was prit near the same color green. Woops... At least there's no grass at this club so I should be safe.

I avoided neon orange because I do a lot of shooting on pine needles and fallen leaves in the woods.

Is there another color that would be universally easy to see that I'm missing?

Also, I find every once in a while a bullet doesnt leave as quick as the other five and gets hung up when I close the cylinder. Not every reload but at least every time I shoot. Is it something I'm doing?

[Stephanie B]

There's a range not far away that has USPSA shoots. The guy telling me about them was correcting me, because I was calling them "USPS". Which was kind of an `80s thing.

[Hambo]

Is there another color that would be universally easy to see that I'm missing?

Hot pink.

Are you painting HKS or Safariland, and are you masking part of the loader?

[nalesq]

If you shoot outdoors in a part of the country where the leaves turn pretty colors in the fall, colors like red, orange, yellow, and even pink can get lost midst the foliage, especially in certain lighting conditions. So I go with the brightest blue spray paint I can find for all of my training mag baseplates.



Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro

[Alpha Sierra]

The ground surface in the shooting bays of every IDPA and USPSA club I've shot at (probably 8 or 9 in total) has always been a combination of gravel and dirt, with the occasional mulch to tame muddy spots. Hardly ever grass, except at one club. No leaves, pine needles, sticks, deadfall, or anything else.

Painting speedloaders seems like a waste of time. You'll more than likely be the only one using speedloaders so your risk of mixing your loaders with someone else's is basically zero. Finding them on gravel/dirt will also be extremely easy. All my pistol magazines are black (same color as pretty much all speedloaders) and I've never lost one yet.

[Norville]

Also, I find every once in a while a bullet doesnt leave as quick as the other five and gets hung up when I close the cylinder. Not every reload but at least every time I shoot. Is it something I'm doing?

It’s Pinot your technique, just a quirk of revolvers in general. A flake of powder, blob of lube (smoke means lead buckets?) or some other variable can hang up a round. The old Allison Speed Brush was invented to keep the cylinder clean by quickly brushing the chambers.

And you are doing this for fun, right? A six shot minor revolver too much of a handicap, even six shot major is dead these days.

[Totem Polar]

Also, I find every once in a while a bullet doesnt leave as quick as the other five and gets hung up when I close the cylinder. Not every reload but at least every time I shoot. Is it something I'm doing?

A couple of things might be worth considering. First off, when you are in the process of feeding rounds into the cylinder, your wheelie isn’t going totally vertical. In your first reload, you’re feeding more at 45 degrees, and there’s a hitch. Your second is more towards inversion of the chambers, and everything slides in smoothly, but I’d still find a way to get the cylinder going so the chambers are as vertical as possible, with the cylinder face parallel to the ground. Even with spring release speedloaders, it’s not a controlled feed: as soon as the rounds disengage from the loader, all you have is gravity to overcome friction. I use HKS loaders, so *all* I have is gravity—I don’t even have any token initial inertia with those things.

So I grip the cylinder during the active reload portion of my "speedload" so those holes are facing straight up. I use Ayoob’s ‘stressfire,’ as taught to me by Mas in the early 90s, FWIW.

As noted, if there is minor crud accumulation in one of the cylinder chambers, a 45-degree angle may not give gravity enough to overcome the extra resistance. Also, I chamber-check each of my carry rounds, including what goes into the (typically) 2 speedloaders pocketed for spare ammo, before putting them in the HKS’s. Modern ammo is pretty consistent, but I still have yet to see a box of name ammo without a round or two that are oddly crimped, or somehow slightly misshapen—even with "premium" ammo that’s been in production since Obama was another Hawaiian (eg. Fed 129 hydra-shok; in a box of 50, I’ll get 48 miniature faberge eggs, and two rounds that look like a child’s crayon drawing of a rocket ship...)

With cheap range fodder, you can’t check them all without making a part-time job of it, so I try not to get hung up (heh!) on practice reloads at the range with cheap stuff. A reload that hangs/delays with HP carry ammo is a session stopper for me, however, not that it really happens with anything bigger than a j-frame running stock rubber grips; those are just flat-out hard to speedload, and even more important to grip so the cylinder is vertical.

Anyhoo, combine a powder flake with an ever so slightly out of round round, and that 45 degree slide becomes impassible. Fortunately, lead is dense; gong vertical will allow almost anything that will fit into a chamber to drop in past minor crud and crimp weirdness.

JMO.

[03RN]

Hot pink.

Are you painting HKS or Safariland, and are you masking part of the loader?

Safariland, I wasn't masking but I had them pushed in.

[03RN]

A couple of things might be worth considering. First off, when you are in the process of feeding rounds into the cylinder, your wheelie isn’t going totally vertical. In your first reload, you’re feeding more at 45 degrees, and there’s a hitch. Your second is more towards inversion of the chambers, and everything slides in smoothly, but I’d still find a way to get the cylinder going so the chambers are as vertical as possible, with the cylinder face parallel to the ground. Even with spring release speedloaders, it’s not a controlled feed: as soon as the rounds disengage from the loader, all you have is gravity to overcome friction. I use HKS loaders, so *all* I have is gravity—I don’t even have any token initial inertia with those things.

So I grip the cylinder during the active reload portion of my "speedload" so those holes are facing straight up. I use Ayoob’s ‘stressfire,’ as taught to me by Mas in the early 90s, FWIW.

As noted, if there is minor crud accumulation in one of the cylinder chambers, a 45-degree angle may not give gravity enough to overcome the extra resistance. Also, I chamber-check each of my carry rounds, including what goes into the (typically) 2 speedloaders pocketed for spare ammo, before putting them in the HKS’s. Modern ammo is pretty consistent, but I still have yet to see a box of name ammo without a round or two that are oddly crimped, or somehow slightly misshapen—even with "premium" ammo that’s been in production since Obama was another Hawaiian (eg. Fed 129 hydra-shok; in a box of 50, I’ll get 48 miniature faberge eggs, and two rounds that look like a child’s crayon drawing of a rocket ship...)

With cheap range fodder, you can’t check them all without making a part-time job of it, so I try not to get hung up (heh!) on practice reloads at the range with cheap stuff. A reload that hangs/delays with HP carry ammo is a session stopper for me, however, not that it really happens with anything bigger than a j-frame running stock rubber grips; those are just flat-out hard to speedload, and even more important to grip so the cylinder is vertical.

Anyhoo, combine a powder flake with an ever so slightly out of round round, and that 45 degree slide becomes impassible. Fortunately, lead is dense; gong vertical will allow almost anything that will fit into a chamber to drop in past minor crud and crimp weirdness.

JMO.

Thank you very much. I'll try to be more aware of keeping the muzzle straight down.

I reload and use the lee factory crimp die on all of them

[03RN]

It’s Pinot your technique, just a quirk of revolvers in general. A flake of powder, blob of lube (smoke means lead buckets?) or some other variable can hang up a round. The old Allison Speed Brush was invented to keep the cylinder clean by quickly brushing the chambers.

And you are doing this for fun, right? A six shot minor revolver too much of a handicap, even six shot major is dead these days.

I'm shooting major

Yes, just for fun. I do carry a k frame so it should help me all around.