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Thread: Making Dummy Rounds: What Bullets?

  1. #11
    One of the movie set armorers I saw after the Baldwin thing said that the realistic dummies for movies have a BB inside. You can shake the round and feel the BB. Thought that was a nice touch.

    Dedicated dry fire mags that are a different color are also nice. I used the nickel plated CZ mags for matches and the black ones for dryfire. Saved me the hassle of loading and unloading mags for dryfire. You can see the that top round has no primer when you pick them up. I had them stored in a dryfire kit. They never left the basement.

    I won't say never, but I rarely manipulate the slide in dryfire. Unloaded starts aren't that common. You can limit their practice to live fire, then you should not be chambering a round during dryfire.

    You should have layers of safety, obviously the first is dryfiring somewhere that an accident would not be catastrophic.

    As for what top GM's do. Maybe Les Pepperoni could comment. I have read about competitors from foreign countries practicing exclusively with airsoft unless they are stateside, because they have no choice. If you are seeing them practice with a blue gun or other device, they could be marketing it, or just somewhere non permissive, or just doing it to make a video clip. I am sure most use a real gun with dummies.

  2. #12
    Those look like a very good solution - too bad I've already invested in ST's for 9mm, .45 and 5.56.
    Adding nothing to the conversation since 2015....

  3. #13
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    Quote Originally Posted by 45dotACP View Post
    But if you were to rate on a scale of 1-10, how much of an effect that had on you becoming a grandmaster though?

    Again, I'm just a B class scrub, so for me, there's lower hanging fruit...but at what point does it become super important? There are GMs who practice with those blue guns that have detachable mags and have had top 20 finishes at major matches....

    Sent from my moto g(6) using Tapatalk
    I think you’re thinking about it backwards.
    Remember about 20 years ago when Tiger was in his prime and there was a skins game where each hole the winner would get to remove one of the opposing team’s golf clubs?

    Tiger was good enough to still win driving with a putter…

    The point is that the best in the world can do things aspiring GMs can’t.

    For me, it was actually SUPER important.

    @JCS
    @Moylan
    @BWT
    @TWR
    @OldRunner/CSAT Neighbor
    @DMF13

    When I was gaming for GM, I counted on my draws and reloads to gain advantage.

    One fumbled reload and the run was over. My hands weren’t versatile enough to adjust on the fly if the ergonomics or weight distribution was off. I had no margin for error at that time.

    So it was very important. I had a pair of dry fire pants so the holster draw and weight distribution would be similar.

    You can’t leave it to luck when you’re at the upper margin of your ability.

    You know how they say it’s important to train with the gun you carry? That kind of only applies to people who are sub-GM. My belief is that it doesn’t much matter when you’re so versatile that you can shoot anything and make micro adjustments at speed.

    Just my opinion.

    So I felt like it was super important to have similar ergonomics at the upper levels.

    At the super upper levels of the best in the world, they have such margin that they don’t need the simplicity.

    Also, why wouldn’t you make it consistent? For the cost of a Bill Drill you could make faithful practice.

  4. #14
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    Quote Originally Posted by JCN View Post
    I think you’re thinking about it backwards.
    Remember about 20 years ago when Tiger was in his prime and there was a skins game where each hole the winner would get to remove one of the opposing team’s golf clubs?

    Tiger was good enough to still win driving with a putter…

    The point is that the best in the world can do things aspiring GMs can’t.

    For me, it was actually SUPER important.

    @JCS
    @Moylan
    @BWT
    @TWR
    @OldRunner/CSAT Neighbor
    @DMF13

    When I was gaming for GM, I counted on my draws and reloads to gain advantage.

    One fumbled reload and the run was over. My hands weren’t versatile enough to adjust on the fly if the ergonomics or weight distribution was off. I had no margin for error at that time.

    So it was very important. I had a pair of dry fire pants so the holster draw and weight distribution would be similar.

    You can’t leave it to luck when you’re at the upper margin of your ability.

    You know how they say it’s important to train with the gun you carry? That kind of only applies to people who are sub-GM. My belief is that it doesn’t much matter when you’re so versatile that you can shoot anything and make micro adjustments at speed.

    Just my opinion.

    So I felt like it was super important to have similar ergonomics at the upper levels.

    At the super upper levels of the best in the world, they have such margin that they don’t need the simplicity.

    Also, why wouldn’t you make it consistent? For the cost of a Bill Drill you could make faithful practice.
    Why for me has more to do with the stakes of an error to me.

    Living in an apartment building, there is no safe direction in which to dry fire. As such, dry practice would need to be done with an extremely layered approach safety wise. From backstops to completely apparent dummy rounds, perhaps even involving a dedicated inert firearm (a 1911 without a firing pin say) and the sequestration of any and all live ammunition during dry practice.

    Certainly if you have access to a safe direction, you should also be cautious, but the prospect of a ND pissing off your wife might just be different than the prospect of an ND killing your neighbor.

    Perhaps I am more sensitive to this, having had an ND during dry practice for the same reason as described in this thread. A dummy round that looked exactly like my real ammunition. I'd had a dud round in a range session and must have dropped it next to the dummies after getting home from the range. So a dented primer and a bullet seemed like it was just another dummy round.

    Nope.

    Incidentally, I also don't do unloaded starts for that reason.

    Colossally stupid? Yes. Without a doubt. Nobody was harmed and it was in the basement of my house and backstopped by a bulletproof stop...nevertheless I will never personally use a dummy round made of the same components I use to make ammo.

    I might be dumber than the rest of everyone (certainly I was then) and I don't mean to project the failings of my younger self on to other members here...but for what it's worth, I thought I was a pretty smart dude at the time.

    Which should have been the first clue that I was in fact, dumber than I thought.

    Additionally, the dummies I used tended to wear and bits of lead would shave off and were overall less durable.

    Sent from my moto g(6) using Tapatalk

  5. #15
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    Quote Originally Posted by 45dotACP View Post
    Why for me has more to do with the stakes of an error to me.

    Living in an apartment building, there is no safe direction in which to dry fire. As such, dry practice would need to be done with an extremely layered approach safety wise. From backstops to completely apparent dummy rounds, perhaps even involving a dedicated inert firearm (a 1911 without a firing pin say) and the sequestration of any and all live ammunition during dry practice.

    Certainly if you have access to a safe direction, you should also be cautious, but the prospect of a ND pissing off your wife might just be different than the prospect of an ND killing your neighbor.

    Perhaps I am more sensitive to this, having had an ND during dry practice for the same reason as described in this thread. A dummy round that looked exactly like my real ammunition. I'd had a dud round in a range session and must have dropped it next to the dummies after getting home from the range. So a dented primer and a bullet seemed like it was just another dummy round.

    Nope.

    Incidentally, I also don't do unloaded starts for that reason.

    Colossally stupid? Yes. Without a doubt. Nobody was harmed and it was in the basement of my house and backstopped by a bulletproof stop...nevertheless I will never personally use a dummy round made of the same components I use to make ammo.

    I might be dumber than the rest of everyone (certainly I was then) and I don't mean to project the failings of my younger self on to other members here...but for what it's worth, I thought I was a pretty smart dude at the time.

    Which should have been the first clue that I was in fact, dumber than I thought.

    Additionally, the dummies I used tended to wear and bits of lead would shave off and were overall less durable.

    Sent from my moto g(6) using Tapatalk
    Thanks for being brave enough to share that with us. Glad nobody was hurt!

    Safety is one of my reasons for insisting on having separate dry fire guns and magazines that live together in a lock box. The dry magazines never see live ammo and the dry gun never sees live ammo except for occasional zeroing and function checks.

    Having a dedicated dry area with dry fire guns and specifically marked, dedicated magazines with different colored baseplates and bullets than my live bullets and conspicuously colored plastic primer pockets is the added layer of safety.

    My dry guns are also specifically labeled with different colored grips than my match guns so there's no confusion either.

  6. #16
    Quote Originally Posted by 45dotACP View Post
    There are GMs who practice with those blue guns that have detachable mags and have had top 20 finishes at major matches....
    Who are the GMs that are doing this? I’m genuinely curious and would like to know who they are.

  7. #17
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    Quote Originally Posted by JCS View Post
    Who are the GMs that are doing this? I’m genuinely curious and would like to know who they are.
    I'm pretty sure @Les Pepperoni uses one.

    Then again, if you've ever seen the magwell of his practice gun, it's pretty clear that's not the ONLY thing he uses for dry fire reloads.

    As for if he uses dummy rounds, I'm not sure.

    Sent from my moto g(6) using Tapatalk

  8. #18
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    Quote Originally Posted by 45dotACP View Post
    I'm pretty sure @Les Pepperoni uses one.

    Then again, if you've ever seen the magwell of his practice gun, it's pretty clear that's not the ONLY thing he uses for dry fire reloads.

    As for if he uses dummy rounds, I'm not sure.

    Sent from my moto g(6) using Tapatalk
    Yeah - I've got a blue gun that I literally leave by the coffee maker.

    Grab a few reps while making eggs.

    etc.

    I'm no longer top-20, but... I'll try harder!

  9. #19
    For dummy rounds I use silver casings and 147s to try and match the weight as close as possible. The bullets are a different color but the silver casings is something That’s easy to spot. My match gun never gets HST in the mags (which are where I get the silver cases from). Additionally my dry fire mags have purple base pads which is different from my match and live Fire mags. Lastly, I rarely put on in the chamber for dry fire. The more levels of safety in place the better from my viewpoint.

  10. #20
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    Lots of good feedback here. After considering the safety aspects, I think I'll go with @JCN's solution.



    Quote Originally Posted by JCN View Post
    I use these:

    h
    Attachment 79694
    I'll also swap out my base plates on my dry fire mags for a distinctive color, as several others folks do. Thanks everyone.

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