Ransom Machine Pistol Rests will really display the accuracy of your handgun and ammo. But, most folks discover very quickly that it was a very serious waste of money. Before you drop hard cash on one, take a moment to watch this video!
Nothing to do with rests I know but I find myself going back and reviewing your older tutorials and reviews all the time. There's really nothing quite like the huge amount of 'in depth' accurate and informational material that you provide. So thanks for it all, please keep up the great work, very much appreciated.
Thank you for your comments about slide-to-frame fit. I first learned of the "tight slide" fallacy when I enter active duty in 1978. I had purchased a brand new Colt Commander for the princely sum of $200 and wanted all of the gunfighter features added to it that I'd read about in Guns & Ammo. I found a retired Air Force gunsmith by the name of Bob Day operating a small shop near Lackland AFB and handed him my list. He looked it over, then informed me that if I wanted accuracy and reliability, it would not be achieved by pinching the slide. It would only be accomplished by a snug fit of breech and muzzle to the slide during lockup. So he built up the lugs, legs, and muzzle of the barrel, carefully polished them down, polished an oversized link to fit, and fitted a reamed-out 38 Super bushing. The pistol now was tight only during the very last fraction of an inch of travel home. This was the way his group had rebuilt old 1911A1 45s when General LeMay created the gunsmith shop for the USAF shooting teams in the 1960s. Those teams went on to great success in the shooting sports.
I never have seen one of those. Be interesting if Lee had a online museum because they’ve had a lot of cool stuff over the years. Thank you for the video.
I watch your videos mainly for entertainment and to remind me of things I've known for years, that sometimes just slip the mind. Like all the fine and inexpensive tools and equipment made by Lee, that we all just took for granted fifty years ago. Always fun to watch and see what you're up to next.
Thank you for your support and kind words. Yes, Lee followed the best tradition of engineering, of thinking outside the box, which is the father of innovation. Oddly, while engineering in every other field has moved in great strides, conventional reloading tools are made no differently now than when Sputnik was launched. It's an industry that prides itself on being stuck in the mud.
Mechanical rest is a great way to eliminate shooter error when seeking to evaluate factory and hand loaded ammunition for use in a particular handgun or rifle. Nothing to be gained by not controlling all possible variables. Any load that gives best results in the rest will reward the marksman in the woods and fields.
A Ransom rest starts at almost $600, so it's a pretty expensive proposition for most shooters, however, I was at an estate sale last weekend and there was a Ransom rest with the windage base, which cost another $328, along with a 1911 grip insert which costs another $67 - priced at $68 for all of it and I got it for $50. I was giddy when I got home and my wife just laughed & rolled her eyes.
A rest is valuable for testing a gun with fixed sights also. Not just ammunition. If a fixed sight gun consistently shoots high and to the right on a rest then that tells one that you need to consistently aim low and to the left. This idea that many trainers will expouse is to get a perfect sight picture on the center of the bulls eye only works if the gun is fixed-sighted perfectly. My experience is that most aren't. Then on top of that if you have to offset aim, the aim will have to be adjusted further to the left and down as range distance increases. That means you need to know how to offset at 10 yards, then know another offset amount at 20 yards then another at 30 yards. Shooting accurately with an imperfect fixed sighted gun gets to be challenging. All that memorizing of offset amounts could be avoided if one could just have a perfect sighted gun. I am currently in the thinking process of modifying fixed sights someway to get an imperfect gun perfect. Thanks for your video.
Very informative post. And, of course, these are out of production. I always wonder why simple things that work well for a relatively affordable price get phased out for higher priced items. I know it’s a consumer driven process but why do people opt to buy more expensive items that have no great performance or quality upgrade? I’m guessing that if we pay more, we think we’re getting a product. Hope to see Mr Bennie in a future video soon! Take care!
I have one of the Lee machine rest.I also have the Caldwell version of the Ransom rest. It has adjustable windage & elevation and remote trigger activation cable and was only ~$150.00 back when ransoms were $500 w/o windage adjustments. It also has a pneumatic cylinder that absorbs recoil and returns to 0 elevation autonomously.
I am 80 yrs. Old and still have one of those lee machine rests which is the most underrated thing I have ever owned.!!!. I used to think those really short barreled handgun were not accurate and discovered in minutes what a fool I was!!!
Kind sir … I thoroughly enjoy your videos!!! Please keep up the excellent work!!! I love your grandfatherly demeanor!!! Until your next video, take care, be safe, best wishes and God bless!!! Chuck Knight from Buffalo, Texas. 👨🌾✝️🙏🖖👍🏼
Firing the most accurate ammo doesn't mean that it will be the ammo that a specific person can shoot the most accurately. I hardly ever use a rest. I want to find the load that works best for how I shoot the pistol. Sometimes that is the most accurate ammo sometimes not. But that is only my preference. Preferences vary...
True. But also depends IF you’re testing for the firearm..OR the firearm AND the shooter combined. Isolation of one or the other varies with objective..just stating the obvious.
@@m118lr In my particular situation, I'm more interested in the shooter/firearm combination. It is interesting to know which load is most accurate but it really doesn't provide much useful information for me. And components are considerably more expensive than when I started shooting 45+ years ago...or when I started loading my own 30+ years ago. We can get over-burdened with data and lose sight of what really matters sometimes. Like, do I want the most accurate ammo from a rest or do I want the best set of circumstances that will provide me the best opportunity in a hunting or self-defense situation? If all a shooter ever does with their pistol is shoot paper, then a rest is probably the best option.
Bad ammo is bad ammo. Your poor shooting technique producing an occasional small group is called a "coincidence". It is not a valid way of assessing accuracy.
@@excelsior6365 What is accuracy? I would consider shooting from a rest as NOT accurate shooting. Because I never shoot from a rest. That type of shooting doesn't accurately reflect how I use my firearm. If all I ever do is shoot my pistol from a rest, I would bet when I need to put it into action, it won't be accurate. Real world vs. target. BTW....nobody ever said anything about bad ammo until you. Just because it shoots a .75 group instead of .5 group doesn't mean it's bad ammo... They are both sub-MOA...which is considered accurate in most circles. But I would bet the shooter will be able to accurately shoot one load better than the other............
I just try my stuff free handed. I went through very fast to quite slow powders in 9 mm, .357 and .44 as well, and it just feels so different. In 9 mm, rather slowish powders feel bettter to me, giving a bit more punch, a bit more haptic feedback experience. For ,357 i settled with middle of the road burn rates. I just recently took up .44 Magnum, got a 29-3 few months ago, and of course there, the experience between very fast powders and slow powders is as different as it can get. From an airgun - feeling (still beefy .45 ACP levels) to full whack .44 Magnum, clearing the range of noise - sensitive visitors alltogether. For bullseye target shooting, i compare the choice of powders and loads to the tuning of a stradivari violin. It has to sing to your hands and ears. Shootting from a rest might not give you the full, true experience. Technically, it might be all good and insightful.....
It even uses ransom grip inserts or it’s own brand from Caldwell. I guess ransoms version patent must have run out when when Caldwell started producing them. Can’t seem to find the Caldwell version anywhere now.
I actually have a ransom rest and yes, it is very expensive. That being said, it does exactly what it says it does. The main reason I got it was for zeroing my sights and confirming the zero of my sights with my ammo. I have tried other methods but I could never get a good zero. Great video sir. I really enjoy your content. Could you please do a video on the 260 Remington?
Every video that I see using the Ransom Rest always involves constant fussing around with the soft grip inserts. I'm not convinced that its all its cracked up to be.
Unless one is engaged in the practice of continually testing and evaluating the actual accuracy potential of ammo, a mechanical rest is really a serious waste of money. In practice, the only tests that matter are how they perform with a standard sandbag rest, because a mechanical rest can influence gun performance in ways that it wouldn't perform in the hand. For instance, many handguns such as the 1911 have sights that are mounted on the slide. The bare handed shooter uses those sights and corrects for whatever slop there may be between the grip frame and the slide. A Ransom rest doesn't do that. All accuracy is dependent upon the grip being mechanically tight to the slide and barrel. So, normally reliable and loose slide that can shoot fine with the eyes will perform less than desired in a rest. That's why I take custom gun maker claims of Ransom rest performance with useless sticky, unreliable slides with a grain of salt.
Any real world test rests in the shooters hands. A rest might be good for competition but not hunting; at least, not for me. I need to zero me.👍🏻🍀✝️🇺🇸👊🏻
Thank you for your comment. I wanted to spell out the realities for those who haven't reached that conclusion. It's a tool that can be very useful for a small segment of the shooting population, but not for most.
They look cool but see no need in it for a handgun. Unless for silhouette work up. Most handguns shoot like crap anyways! Just the way it is. No problem with it. Only one I have found satisfactory for my standards of precision is a TC contender. Just my figuring.😂
All the T/C Contenders I ever owned and shot were called handguns, and shot no more accurately than any other handgun with similar barrel lengths and sights. The shooter, not the gun, is to blame for any crappy shooting.
