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.32 H&R Experience | July 2012 | ||
Wade Heim
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When my father-in-law passed away last year, my wife was left with a few firearms
that had been handed down from other family members, one of which was this Harrington
& Richardson 5-shot break action revolver in 32 S&W Long.
Story is that this gun was carried by a great uncle while he was a Deputy Sheriff of
Kleberg County Texas.
Overall the gun was in pretty poor condition. The bluing was mostly intact, but rust
was bubbling out from the areas that didn’t get blued, such as under the front sight.
I suspect this is quite common for unmaintained firearms in high humidity parts of the
country like Missouri. This included the barrel which had quite a lot of pitting.
Other than sentimental value, these firearms have very little monetary value, so what
would it hurt to shoot it? Now all that was needed was to locate some ammo.
A quick visit to Sportsman’s Warehouse and Cabelas was unsuccessful in locating loaded
ammunition or even the dies and brass needed to roll my own. This was all resolved by
a quick search on the MidwayUSA website. Within a week I had a set of dies and 100
new Lapua cases. Why Lapua you ask? Because Lapua brass was the only brass available
at any of the online sources. Most likely because it was twice as expensive and the
minimum quantity was 100 count, more than I would ever need.
Since my goal was to shoot the pistol and not necessarily to extract the highest
performance potential, I decided to load at the minimum level per the Hornady reloading
manual using 85 grain copper jacketed bullets.
I have concluded that there were three major factors that lead to the blockage. First
was the pitted barrel. Second, was the decision to load at the low end of the loading
manual guidance. Third, was the use of jacketed bullets instead of lead. All in all,
I find myself quite lucky that this incident ended as unexciting as it did, and no one
was hurt.
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