Help me set-up new .357 birthday toy for my Dad

13479 Views 4 Replies 4 Participants Last post by reggierrb, May 26, 2016

jack70707

Discussion Starter · Dec 16, 2010

Hello Everyone.

I just bought a Colt king cobra .357 mag on 4" barrel as a gift for my dad's birthday/retirement . He shot one before , loved it ( and soon he will own it :wink: ) .

Having No previous experience with pistols, it is hard for me to define any baseline for accuracy on this rig . After testing few boxes of premium and value factory loads to find what the barrel likes the most, i nearly gave up on the whole thing. I get tighter groups with my archery rig at 90m than with pistol at 20 yards.

What king of avg. grouping should i expect from this gun at 20yards ??
Which pills would You recommend for re-loading to start with ??

I only shoot rifles ( local pill shooting tourneys most of the time ) and Fita/Field Archery , but pistols are a complete Taboo to me. Spend some time asking folks at the ranges about this problem , but most of the time people either don't know or have that "half-arse know-it-all" attitude on the subject.

Any help will be appreciated.
Jack

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wwb

· #2 · Dec 16, 2010

Shooting a handgun accurately is far more difficult than shooting a rifle accurately. It requires a ton of practice with the proper form... learning bad habits is very easy to do.

A King Cobra, unless there is something terribly wrong, will be a very accurate revolver. Unless it has oversize cylinder throats, a terribly eroded forcing cone, or a ruined bore, it should shoot fine.

In the short term, shoot from a rest with very careful attention to the sight picture. In the longer term, to become proficient with a handgun, download and study this:

http://www.bullseyepistol.com/chapterf.htm

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jack70707

Discussion Starter · #3 · Dec 17, 2010

Thank You WWB for reply and the link.

So far i checked the bore with scope for wear , trigger mech. and overall finish is mint condition. Previous owner -old friend- is a gun collector, this gun sat on a display shelf in his house for a few years without use.There is no doubt in my mind the gun functions flawlessly , it is the monkey behind the trigger that requires a good tune up, thats all :lol: .

I will build a shooting rig to precisely test re-loads and remove the human factor out of this equasion. All i need is to find an accurate target load that will work in this gun, save myself time and money on buying all different pills , ladder testing different powders and so on... this would require a lot of shooting - the very thing i want to avoid on a gun meant to be a gift.

So far i worked up 2 recipes that gave me the steadiest numbers on chrono, but without accurate shooter all this data is pretty much useless- hence the idea to build shooting jig. The best groups i got was avg. 1.87" @ 20 yds , 6 shots to a group x 30 rounds ammo overall - question still stands : is this good or bad ??

Ive been reloading rifle loads for good 17 years now and this type of accuracy drives me Nuts to say the least . I know i should not expect wonders since i never owned a pistol before , but when you jump from 6mm PPC rifle blasting one oversized hole at 200 yds to 2" group @ 20yds with pistol... it really gets under my skin.

Once again , thanks for the link.
Jack

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Tango_Charli

· #4 · Jan 9, 2013

Smith @ Wesson Model 19 are the best 357 magnium revelover. its sthe best

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reggierrb

· #5 · May 26, 2016

I have a Colt Trooper 111 357 mag .That is an excellent revolver. It has good balance and great accuracy. I would recommend this revolver to any one .

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