After much thought, I finally decided I didn't need yet another snubby revolver at home in the safe, in this case the Ruger SP101, so I decided to sell it and use the proceeds to pay for laser grips for my S&W 642 snubby. According to my reasoning this gun is almost always with me and, given its limited round count, I need to maximize my potential for hits should I ever--God forbid--need to use it to defend me or mine. I got the LG-405 grip because it has padding for the backstrap of the frame. Usually, after only a few rounds, the web of my hand smarts after firing the gun, but with the CT grip I fired 20 rounds with no aftereffect.
The first five rounds from the gun with the laser installed were astoundingly accurate. I fired them at 6.67 yards (I forgot my measuring tape and had to step-off the distance, which I later measured at home) and had all five holes touching (see below). 'Twas truly amazing.
The other device I purchased this week was a Bear "Charge" compound bow, financed via the sale of two traditional bows. I was thunderstruck by how easy it is to make accurate hits at 20 and 30 yards with the bow, and I'll need this accuracy if I pull my archery deer tag this year (fingers firmly crossed). It's no wonder the compound bow has become the dominant force in archery. As much as I enjoyed shooting my long bow and recurve bow, I'll never go back to either type. Chalk up another one for technology.
I'll be the first one to step up and say that a lot of products on the market that purport to be quantum leaps usually only make things more complicated without much benefit. That is not, however, always true, as the two products above attest.
Take care.
DAL357
P.S. None of the companies mentioned in this post gave me any form of compensation.
1 comment:
CT grips are great. One thing to watch for and think about is how you want to zero them and at what distance. With that model the laser is offset from the bore both horizontally and vertically, so the POI will meet the POA at most at one distance.
Depending on your shooting stance, your strength, the ammo you are using and other things the relationship of POI to POA will change with distance to a varying degree. Say you zero it at 7 yards so the POI = POA. If you move in to 5 yards or even 3 yards the POI will be to the size of the POA. If you move out to 10 or 15 yards the POI will be on the other side of the POA. The greater the recoil of the ammo and the weaker your stance the more it will move.
Another zeroing option is to set it so the laser is parallel to the bore in the horizontal axis or as close as you can get it. This way the offset will be nearly constant. It will be constant if you get it exactly right. However, you will still have a shift in the vertical direction.
Why would you use a laser at 3 yards? Snakes for one thing. Having an emergency without your glasses for another.
The change isn't that great but can be annoying. It is like deciding what distance to zero a rifle at. You just have to pick a compromise that you can live with. The difference won't matter if you are shooting COM but if you are trying to be more precise it is worth thinking about and experimenting with.
Lasers that mount in the same vertical axis as the bore (like the LaserMax guide rod models) only have the vertical shift.
The first time I played with one of those I thought the zero was moving until I figured out what was really happening.
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