Shooting the Old H&R This Morning

by JimT, Texas, Thursday, March 02, 2023, 11:52 (568 days ago)

I got to messing around with the old H&R this morning, wanting to shoot it. I had noticed weeks ago that the 9mm case is just a tad shorter than the .38 S&W case. I pushed a .375" diameter round ball on the end of a 9mm case and dropped it in the chamber. Lo and behold it was the exact length that would be needed. So today I decided to shoot some of them.

I loaded one with 1.5 gr. Bullseye and fired it into a wadded up old flannel shirt. It was quite wimpy and did not even penetrate the cloth. So back to the shop and I loaded one with 2.0 gr. Bullseye. Fired into the shirt it still did not penetrate 1 layer of cloth. A fun load for shooting rats but I am not sure it would hurt them severely. Back to the loading bench and this time 2.6 gr. Bullseye. The report was more like a gun and the wadded up shirt was knocked off the table I had it on. Checking I found it penetrated 1 layer of cloth and dented the next layer. THIS would be a rat load!

None of the cartridges swelled out to the chamber at all. All 3 were smoked pretty well. I don't trust this old gun too much and don't plan on going any heavier right now. I may work up to 3 gr. in a couple steps, but I am not real sure I want to. It's more for fun than anything else.

Here's some photos of the steps during testing this morning.

9mm case with .375" round ball ... grease on the ball

9mm case with .375" round ball ... note that headspace is almost perfect.

2.0 gr. Bullseye load did not penetrate 1 layer of cloth!

2.6 gr. Bullseye penetrated 1 layer of cloth.

Fired balls ...