Monday, May 14, 2007

A Mothers Day Range Report

So as I said yesterday, Mels mothers day present was her newly repaired and functional Llama Especial (first model) in .380; a repaired and reconditioned bubba gun acquired from a pawnshop as a Box-O'-Gun.

Well, yesterday we took it out to the range to test fire with the new parts; and excepting one failure to eject (I limp wristed) the pistol functioned flawlessly through 70 rounds, including two mags fast as I could fire controllably…

...which is very. This thing has practically no recoil. I was emptying a 7rd mag in just over a second into an 8” gong at 10 yards. Sounded great, like bolts dropping on a tin roof. VERY fun.

It’s a sweet little pistol to shoot; with basically no recoil to speak of; but the same feel and function of a 1911.

Anyway, more important than my impression is Mels, and she really liked shooting it.

Only one problem. The safety worked loose under rapid fire; and while I was reassembling, the plunger tube spring launched into the ether…

...so, one day after we get it back together with new parts, it's back to the parts guys for a a new plunger tube spring and detents… joy. We're also going to pick up a new safety, a couple spare mags, and some spare parts for it as well. I would have done that before, but I didn't want to buy parts for a gun that might not be functional.

Anyway, we took some pictures. Unfortunately the lighting was a bit off for the "Mel smiling and happy holding her new toy" shots, but I did get some decent action snaps.




I tried to get her in “full recoil” as the gun writers say, but the best I could do was a shot with the hammer falling, and then one with her in recovery.



The final shot is the string I shot for group, offhand at 10 yards. There were 4 into 3/4” with one flyer (I screwed it up and I called it) opening the group to 1-1/4”.



Thats with the cheap winchester white box. We need to do some load testing with it to see what it likes, but if it can put 4 into 3/4” at 10 yards offhand with the WWB, I’m entirely satisfied it can do the job with whatever we feed through it.

Sure, it makes small holes, but it can make a lot of them in a very small space, very quickly… and I’d say that’s pretty good.