Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters What is your Loony Index?

Dan,

From my reading on the subject I don't think Harry Pope came up with the idea entirely on his own, but he certainly refined it. Which would of course be natural for a guy who went to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

You need a better loony index.

Shotgun ammo? I buy 25 flats of "throwaway" shells about twice a year. That's 6250 shells. All I want to fit in my car without bottoming the shocks. Also have a few thousand empties around, AAs and Gun Clubs.

Rifle and pistol? Probably that alone would make me a 5 or 7.

Revolvers? First CF shooter I ever owned other than scatterguns was a RSB. I didn't shoot much paper with it, but one day there I was, plinkin' with a .50 ML on the 50 yard line and decided to give Mr. Ruger a chance. Standin' there on my own two feet I was....



My eyes were working a little better back then.

I got about a half box of mixed high brass for my sweet 16.........wonder where that puts me. Be back in minute with a recount I'm going to empty the pockets of my hunting coat and check under the seat of the pickup.

Add 17 more to my count please.........

Well, OK. What have ya got right now? Don't mess with guessing. Maybe bent shocks would be good measure, I dunno.


MD, I haven't read anything in particular about the origins of the ML cartridge concept, but recall it was Pope that put the polish on the idea. Vague memory has it that one of his guns set a match record that stood for over 50 years, maybe on the 200 yard line?

My version...not the greatest of pictures, sans scope but with false muzzle in place. Built by Barry Darr

Schalck invented it, Pope refined it. Pope's unique form of rifling (wide very shallow grooves) was what made it work so well. That, and his painstakingly anal attention to detail.

"Painstakingly anal" is exactly right. Pope was so into detail that he never made more than an average living (and often less) during his lifetime, despite his genius. There's nothing wrong with that at all, but often technical geniuses aren't very good at basic business.

Yep. One little example: he cut his rifling grooves one at a time, and each pass was so light that there were no visible chips in the cutting oil- just a faint discolorng of the oil that meant there something in it. Ungodly number of passes up the bore is what it took him to rifle a barrel. That meant he but rarely had to resort to lapping a finished product to achieve perfection in bore finish but it also meant that his volume of output sucked, in spite of 12-18 hour workdays.

One definition of my looniness: my personal unicorn is a Pope muzzle-breech loader in fine condition. Who else wants a crazy expensive rig with which it would take half a day to fire two 10-shot groups? Not to mention putting unnecessary wear on a priceless piece of history by shooting the heck out of it? I guess I would...

True there arn't the chamberings in shotguns but barrel length can make up for that. I have multiple 20's and 16's (all SXS) with barrel lengths from 26 to 32 inches.

Stunt shooting with scatterguns is way too much fun.

You can use volume of brass as an indicator but I much prefer to52 use number of rifles you own chambered in weird and/or obsolete cartridges. You can have 10,000 rounds of .223 or .308 brass and not be a looney but you can have a few rifles chambered in different weird cartridges that all have to be reloaded for because you can't find ammo for it and you gotta be a weirdo looney.I have a couple rifles chambered in cartridges that need reloading because factory ammo is almost extinct but I also have weird rifles. Like many of my rfles have 26 inch barrels such as my .250 Savage and my .257 AI. These two are mostly desired for their light weight and subsequent good handling and here I have 26" heavy sporter barrels on them. That's Looney!

As for brass, I don't have large volumes, either loaded or fiired because high volume shooting is not what I'm into. But I'm as looney as anybody on here.

Not a bad idea, but you need to define weird and obsolete.

How much brass do you have for the .25-20 Stevens or .30 Sneezer? .22 GTC (.22 LR centerfire)?

How many guns do you have so saddled with these burdens?

I agree with this. How many of you own rifles chambered in the following: 30 Remington, 256 Winchester, 416 Rigby, 280AI, 375 Whelen AI, 375 H&H AI, 22-250 AI, several types of 303 Brit, 32 Special, several types of 358 Win's, several types of 350 Rem Mag's, several types of 35 Rem's, 30-40 Krag, 17 Hornet, 204, several 300 Weatherby's and a high wall 45-90 plus have owned a 7mm TCU, a 6.5x55 Krag, 264 Win Mag and a 7mm International. (There's some this old mind no longer can remember.) I own ultra-modern rifles - 7x57, 45-70's, 8x57, 270's, 30-06's & others for instance :D, but I will usually shy away from the cartridges of the month. (Cartridge of the month = came out and were first factory chambered in the last 50 years [ok, a couple notable exceptions].)

My needs are for a few Winchester cartridge rifles - 348, 33, 35 and then why not some hot rods - a 6mm-06 & a 6.5-06 AI in bolt actions.

Sharing the winners circle with others here, hell, right behind me there are:

200+ rounds of 577 Nitro
200 rounds 505 Gibbs
250+ rounds 500 Nitro
250+ rounds 458 Win
150 rounds 400 H&H
300+ rounds 375 H&H

And that's just the little stuff ; ]

110 cases for the .25-20 SS and 120 for the .416R. Ballpark 250 ea for the .250 Sav and .257 Roberts. Pondering these things...other than the Sneezer all of my cartridges are ancient. Somehow they still work.

Maybe we could have 2 kinds of Loonies? Curmudgeon Loonies and Snowflake Loonies.

Will standby, lemme know.