I acquired the T3 receiver and trigger assembly, shown below, for $500. The beautifully machined bolt and receiver are proprietary, but everything else is compatible with the broad market of Ruger 10/22 accessories. The trigger assembly features a crisp 2.5-pound trigger, and is all metal except for the trigger itself and the convenient extended magazine release lever in front of the trigger guard.

I installed the receiver in a Hogue stock. The 18″ barrel came muzzle-threaded from EABCO and button rifled with a 1:9 twist rate: sufficient to stabilize subsonic 60gr Aguila .22 bullets. (The standard .22LR twist rate is 1:16.) Those two components brought total cost for the gun to $750, excluding a scope.

My goal with this rifle was to make it as quiet and accurate as possible. As I have previously explained, “quiet” firearms are created by:

1. Adding a suppressor to the muzzle to catch as much of the supersonic propellant gases as possible
2. Keeping bullet velocity below the sound barrier, thus avoiding the distinctive “crack” of a supersonic object
3. Selecting an action that avoids venting propellant gas under pressure other than through the suppressed muzzle

I already had a registered Gem-Tech Outback II — a light and competent .22 suppressor. There are plenty of subsonic factory loads for .22LR, including most target ammunition, so the second requirement was easy. To ensure the third requirement was met I knew I wanted a manual action, since especially with the shorter cases of 60gr .22LR bullets there is a risk an autoloader will extract the case while there is still enough pressure in the barrel to create an audible pop out of the chamber. (Note: I have since read that with the right combination of bolt handles and recoil springs a semi-auto 10/22 can be kept closed long enough that there’s no pop from the ejection cycle. Given that $500 can also buy a complete Volquartsen or KIDD receiver/bolt/trigger assembly I’m inclined to try making that work next time.)

As for accuracy: In principle manual actions are also the most accurate, since the gun doesn’t have to do anything to cycle the action before the bullet leaves the muzzle — things that could introduce variance from shot to shot. In practice, however, it seems that especially blow-back autoloaders in small calibers like .22LR can be made as accurate as all but the most finely tuned manual loaders. Nevertheless, I decided to remove that variable and build a gun with a manual action.

The most common manual action rifle is the bolt-action. (Lever- and pump-actions are also not uncommon, but I’m not aware of any that allow such easy customization as bolt guns, and since I wanted a precision barrel with an unusual twist rate I knew I would have to assemble my own gun.) I have a number of bolt-guns, including a .22, and it always struck me as overkill — like using a sledge hammer to push a thumbtack — to be using a camming bolt (or “turn-bolt”) on such a low-pressure round. So I started looking for “toggle” actions.

Straight-pull bolt actions are rarely seen outside of olympic biathlon shooting. They offer a slight speed advantage over turn-bolts, which require the shooter to rotate the bolt at least 60 degrees in and out of battery before it can be pushed and pulled to feed and extract a cartridge from the chamber. But toggles and straight-pulls do require a more complicated mechanism, so perhaps that explains their near-total absence from any niche where bolt actions aren’t required and fractions of a second don’t matter. (There are a few notable exceptions: The Blaser R93 and the Merkel RX Helix are high-end centerfire rifles with straight-pull actions.)

All I could find for toggle .22′s were Russian Izhmash rifles (customized for biathlon and running upwards of $1500) and a line by Browning called the T-Bolt (but not readily equipped with the fast-twist barrel I needed). Then PWS came out with their T3 rifle patterned on the Ruger 10/22, so I jumped on it.

Review

To date I have only tested this gun with Aguila subsonic ammunition — both 40gr and 60gr. When I first assembled it I had frequent failures to extract. PWS techs instructed me to file down the extraction groove of the barrel and that solved that problem. Then I had frequent failures to eject: The extractors would just drop the case before it hit the ejector, and even if it made it to the ejector more often than not it would fail to be kicked out the ejection port. This was a trickier problem. After some research the PWS techs concluded that the rim on Aguila 60gr .22LR is .269″ where a standard 22LR is .274″. They machined a primary extractor to account for the difference, but installing it didn’t completely eliminate the problem.

What did make things run reliably was to cycle the bolt quickly (which one should do anyway). This helped mitigate the other quirk of this toggle action, which is that the bolt runs into resistance at the rear of the stroke where it has to cock the trigger. You have to give up your grip on the trigger to cycle this thing, but if you just tug on it with two fingers and follow through to the rear of the stroke it runs back and forth smoothly.

I will cover accuracy results in an upcoming post.

The used car market is astonishingly efficient. Granted, there are significant nominal discounts in the private-party car market, but these are due to information and selection biases: Sellers know more about their car than you, and they are more likely to want to sell a car that is problematic, has been abused, or is otherwise of reduced value. You have to be an expert to overcome that information bias, and even experts need to spend time with each car to determine its fair value. If you’re a car expert with time on your hands you can make money trading used cars. But otherwise you should not expect to find bargains in the used market, and especially not from used car dealers, since they are among the experts who snap up bargains and know the fair market prices. Internet sales have only made it easier for them to capture “market” rates for used cars because the internet allows them to expand their geographic reach. (And it’s not for nothing that used car dealers have a sleazy reputation: They don’t stay in business by offering bargains. One car maven once told me most used car salesmen would sell their own mothers a piece of junk.)

In fact the used car market is often upside down. I have found new-car dealers selling used cars for more than they’re selling the new equivalents! There are probably two reasons for this: One is the persistent idea that “a new car loses x% of its value the moment it’s driven off the lot,” which is no longer true (if it ever was). The second is that new cars, except new models that are in high demand, can usually be bought for much less than MSRP, and often less than dealer invoice. So people go into dealers asking only about used cars because they assume the price on a new car is something close to MSRP when it really isn’t, or that they’ll capture a “used-car discount” you can only get from a private party.

If you want a bargain on a car you’re more likely to get it on a new one, especially if you’re flexible about when and what you’ll buy. You only have to do a little research to find brands and models with factory incentives and excess inventory in your region. Then just call a few dealers, ask for their internet sales manager, and find out where they’re selling relative to invoice. (Do it over the phone or Email so they don’t have the chance to waste your time with song-and-dance sales tactics, and try to reach their “internet sales” guys because those are the salesmen who know that you know exactly what invoice and current incentives are, and that if you buy you’ll be a “low-touch” customer who will help them move inventory without taking a lot of time.) Note that dealers can make money even selling below “invoice” for a number of reasons, so if you want a new-car bargain you’re not getting a competitive quote unless it’s at or less than dealer invoice.

The only reasons to buy a used car are:

1. You are mechanically savvy, and you have access or time to inspect at a lot of used cars to find the true bargains.
2. You don’t have enough money to buy the type of car you want to own new.
3. You have the opportunity to buy directly from a trusted acquaintance (avoiding the information and transaction “spread” you pay buying from an unrelated party)

Factors that affect the rate you can be offered

• Loan amount. If you are trying to borrow more than the conforming loan limit (currently $417k in most parts of the country) then you are looking for a “jumbo” mortgage, which always carries a higher rate because it can’t be easily resold.
• Loan-to-value (LTV): The ratio of your loan to your property’s assessed value. You’ll get the best rates with LTV < 60%. Anything above 80% carries extra premiums.
• Your credit score. Scores above the mid-700s are considered “prime” and qualify you for the best rates.
• Employment history and income: You need to show that you have stable income sufficient to cover the loan.
• Cash reserves: You need savings sufficient to cover the loan during a period of unemployment.
• Purpose of the loan: Best rates are for financing your primary residence.
• Cash-out refinancing: This generally increases the cost of the loan.
• What state the property is in.

How to shop for a mortgage

Bankrate.com gives the broadest view of lenders. The problem is that you may waste your time contacting some of those lenders because they have listed “teaser” rates and then tack on excessive fees.

I just refinanced my mortgage using Costco where quality control should be a little tighter and lenders listed agree to make their most competitive prices. If you go through Costco you should expect to pay the lender less than $600. I will cover other costs shortly.

In any case, while shopping for a mortgage do not give out your social security number or consent to a credit check until you have picked a lender you actually intend to use: Every lender that runs a credit check can reduce your credit score by 5 points.

When contacting prospective lenders just give them the information they would need to produce a good-faith estimate (GFE). Since a GFE is now a regulated and legally-binding item they won’t actually give you a “real” GFE until you start an application with them, but they can give you something like it if you give them enough information to price a mortgage. When I call lenders I simply ask something like, “Can you give me rates and fees for the following:

• Refinancing a mortgage with a $200k balance on my $400k single-family primary residence in Pennsylvania.
• Assume that my credit scores are prime (i.e., above 750), and that I will clear underwriting for debt, income, and assets.
• Quote me rates without points.

The most important number I’m looking for is their interest rate, and in order to make it easy for me to compare across lenders I ask for rates with “no points.” (“Points” are up-front premiums for a lower rate, which may make sense to pay when you close the loan, but which only confuse things at the shopping stage.)

The second thing I’m looking for are their fees. This is where it can be tricky depending on which state you are in. There are a lot of fees involved with processing a loan, but when it comes down to it there should only be 3 parties collecting money during the transaction:

1. The lender/broker. As I mentioned before, their fee should be under $600, and it covers their cost of underwriting and processing the loan.
2. The appraiser. Independent appraisals are now effectively mandatory, and shouldn’t vary across lenders. Typically you are billed directly by the appraiser. For my recent refinance this was $375.
3. The title/transfer company. This is the biggest variable by state, and is usually highly regulated. I just refinanced in Pennsylvania, so what follows is only necessarily true there: Bizarrely, title insurance rates are set so high that profit margins are above 70%. Lenders tell you that you can choose your own title company but that since rates are regulated you may as well use theirs. Not so fast: Call the company that last insured/processed your mortgage, tell them you’re refinancing and that if they can offer you any concessions you’ll choose them. They may not be allowed to offer you a discount on the title insurance premium, but mine waived almost every other charge they are legally entitled to levy, saving me $500 (and still keeping a handsome profit for themselves).

If you go ahead with an application be ready to sign absurd numbers of disclosures and authorizations, and to produce a lot of documentation. For my refinancing I had to provide the following:

1. 2009 and 2010 Federal tax returns (all pages)
2. 2009, 2010 and 2011 W-2s
3. 3 recent pay stubs
4. Recent mortgage statement
5. Savings account statement covering last 60 days
6. Copy of driver licenses
7. Copy of social security cards

RAT WORX made the clever design decision to build this upgrade around a standard AR-15 trigger group, which they suggest will allow users to tap the extensive market for AR-15 parts to further customize it. I just put it right in my MSAR and took it for testing.

Trigger weight measured a very consistent 6 pounds. Nominally that doesn’t sound any better than what I found with the Trigger Tamer. But practically there is no comparison: the HTM’s all-metal linkage from the trigger bar through to the sear and hammer eliminates sticking and stacking I couldn’t polish or lubricate out of any previous trigger systems. With this trigger I finally feel confident shooting my MSAR against standard AR-15s. With a 4x optic my test group was able to consistently ring a 200-yard steel silhouette shooting at rates up to 5 rounds per second.

Snobs are people who make judgments for non-intrinsic reasons. Like brands for example (Starbucks is great, Starbucks sucks), or market ideologies (corporate coffee is bad, coffee from tiny stores with a roaster in the back are good), or on the basis of various other untested assumptions. We try to be anti-snob at Coffee Review by tasting coffees blind and honestly reporting on our findings, even when the findings run counter to assumptions among some of our readers or preferences of long-time drinkers of certain kinds of coffee. We may not be right, of course, because last I checked there is no god certifying cupping results, but we’re honest and try to be transparent.

(Indeed, EmptorMaven tries to avoid luxury and “premium” products precisely because they generally command a price premium that exceeds any intrinsic or functional value.)

If we gave out medals the whole review would win a Commendation, accompanied by following citation: With his engaging and informative review of instant coffee, Kenneth Davids set a sterling example for product reviews everywhere. His writing is in keeping with the finest traditions of informing consumers, and reflects great credit upon himself, CoffeeReview.com, and the free markets.

Expanding subsonic rifle bullets: Right now there are no commercial .30-caliber rifle bullets that expand at subsonic velocities. AAC/Remington have promised they will introduce one this year. I hope they’re not the only one. After .22LR .30-caliber cartridges are the next stop for subsonic rifles — whether .300 BLK, 7.62 Thumper, or .308 Winchester. The problem is that rifle bullets have traditionally been designed for terminal effect at rifle velocities: Much below Mach 1.5 and they don’t expand at all. At 1000 fps they can virtually have the rifling marks polished out and be reused!

Gun powder for consistent subsonic rifle loads: Trailboss is the current go-to powder for subsonics, but it doesn’t produce consistent muzzle velocities and, at less than 5 grains per cc, is too bulky for some cartridges. The only other option in this range of burn-rates is IMR SR 4759, but its density jumps to 10gr/cc and consequently doesn’t produce very consistent muzzle velocities at reduced loadings. There is nothing on the market to bridge the gap between the two. Give us a powder with a burn rate roughly in line with SR4759 but a density around 7gr/cc.

High-speed consumer video cameras: When Casio came out with the F1 in 2008 I was hopeful that it would not be long before consumers would be able to buy sensitive video cameras capable of recording 480p at thousands of frames per second. The technology is certainly there to produce such a product in scale for under $1000. However Casio discontinued its nascent consumer HSV product line in 2009 and nobody has pursued this since. The market is now free for the taking!

Reasons to get a .22LR conversion for your semi-auto pistol:

• Cheap ammo allows for more practice ($.03-.05/round vs $.15-.30/round)
• Low recoil helps inexperienced shooters acquire good shooting habits and experienced shooters to verify they haven’t developed bad trigger habits
• Semi-auto malfunctions are still encountered — in fact, far more frequently than with the standard gun, which is actually a positive since it gives the user more practice correcting them
• Suppressors don’t require booster devices because the .22 conversions are all blow-back actions

Advantage Arms has had a Glock .22 conversion kit on the market for years. But they never offered a threaded barrel, and for me the ability to shoot suppressed in my back yard was a big draw. This year Tactical Solutions came out with a conversion kit that is available with a threaded barrel, so that’s the one I bought. I paid $350 for the kit, but what they did not make clear (at least when I bought it) is that their slide does not come with sights. So add $40-90 for another set of sights!

This picture shows my original Glock 17 slide. The .22 conversion is just a replacement slide, shown underneath without and with my suppressor attached. Weight and balance of this conversion are kept pretty close to the original:

• G17 slide is 17.2 ounces and its center of balance is 3 3/8″ from rear
• TSG slide is 13.3 ounces and its center of balance is 3 3/4″ from rear
• TSG with Outback suppressor weights 16.6 ounces with center of balance 5 1/8″ from rear

The other piece of the .22 conversion is a magazine. A fully loaded G17 mag weighs about 10 ounces. The TSG magazines can hold up to 15 rounds, but they weigh only 4 ounces loaded and protrude from the bottom of the grip by about half an inch. The magazines are one of the big shortcomings of this conversion kit, and not just due to their careless proportions: I bought an extra mag, and even after sending everything back to Tactical Solutions and shooting at least 1000 rounds through it the conversion will stovepipe virtually every round it tries to feed from a mag containing more than 10 rounds.

The other big drawback to this conversion, which it shares with seemingly every other .22 semi-auto on the market, is that full take-down for cleaning requires undoing screws. In this case, two tiny screws that are very difficult to reseat and very prone to galling. You can’t even fully remove the barrel without doing a complete take-down. And as with anything that eats .22 ammo, things get very dirty. But you can probably clean enough to keep it running just by scrubbing the feed ramp, bore, breech face, and extractor.

The final serious problem with this conversion, which is common to all other rimfire guns, is that dry firing can eventually break it: Rimfire rounds “fire” when the firing pin crushes the case rim (which contains the primer compound) against the chamber rim. Dry-firing causes the firing pin to directly strike the chamber rim, gradually denting the “anvil” needed to support a round’s rim during firing. In theory perhaps the firing pin could be made of a metal sufficiently soft relative to the chamber that it couldn’t dent it no matter how many times it hit. But in practice I was able to observe cratering beginning after just a handful of dry strikes. This is particularly problematic because the Glock is designed to be dry-fired before take-down. If you’re careful it is possible to dry-fire for disassembly while holding the slide slightly off the barrel so the firing-pin doesn’t hit it. But even if you are diligent in that you will probably inadvertently dry-fire many times during shooting because it doesn’t reliably lock the slide back on an empty magazine.

Bearing these issues in mind, I was reasonably satisfied overall with the conversion kit. As this photo shows the gun is capable of more accuracy than most people can wring from open sights on a standard-length pistol. Tactical Solutions recommends shooting either Federal AutoMatch or CCI Mini-Mag HV ammo (both of which shoot about 1050fps with a suppressor, which is only marginally subsonic but still quiet enough to not bother the neighbors) for maximum reliability. Granted, “reliability” for a .22 semi-auto is relative: Even without loading more than 10 rounds I count myself lucky if I make it through a magazine or two of AutoMatch without a failure to feed. But that’s part of the practice, and with .22s I can afford to practice a lot more.

I had her plug an external monitor into the machine’s VGA port to check it out. While backing up her files to our NAS she continued using the computer and everything else seemed to work. Now fairly confident that the damage was confined to the LCD panel I searched for a replacement.

For $75 LaptopScreen.com had an exact replacement for her model’s display at our house in two days. I managed to unscrew and peel open the cover, install the new panel, and close it up using a single small Phillips-head screwdriver in just ten minutes.

This is an XCR semi-automatic rifle in 7.62 Thumper. Shown is the “mini” upper with a 10″ barrel and AAC’s Cyclone suppressor. This is an awesome firearm that offers the power and accuracy of a rifle with the option of using subsonic loads that are not only hearing-safe but which “won’t wake the neighbors.”

In the following video I shoot a ten-round magazine of subsonic 220gr bullets. These leave the muzzle at 1000fps, which means they carry 500 foot-pounds of energy — comparable to a .357 magnum at point blank range, and greater than a .45 ACP pistol. And because they are very long, ballistically efficient rifle bullets they retain 80% of their energy out to 300 yards, which is roughly the outer limit of being able to accurately place a subsonic bullet.

Like most, I began my quest for subsonic rifles shortly after buying my first rifle suppressor (a.k.a. silencer). After all, it was cool to be able to shoot without hearing protection, but supersonic bullets make a loud and unmistakeable sonic crack of their own. The only way to further suppress a rifle’s noise is to shoot the bullet below the speed of sound.

What is 7.62 Thumper?

In principle it might seem easy to slow down a bullet: just put less powder behind it, right? However a number of undesirable things begin to happen as you do this with a given cartridge: First, as you continue to reduce the powder charge below roughly 80% you will begin to get increasingly inconsistent muzzle velocities, which dramatically reduces the gun’s accuracy. Drop the charge even further and you occasionally get a bullet stuck in the barrel, sometimes accompanied by a potentially catastrophic phenomenon often called “secondary explosive effect” which has destroyed many guns! Also, since a bullet’s energy equals mass times velocity squared you will be severely weakening your bullet’s power as you slow it down. To solve these problems you soon realize that what you want is to shoot a much heavier bullet. But as I explained in a previous post the only practical way to make a bullet heavier is to make it longer. And longer bullets combined with slower muzzle velocities require faster barrel rifling to get spin-stabilized enough to shoot straight. Before long you will realize that if you’re going to build a subsonic rifle capable of producing appreciably more energy than a .22LR it’s going to need at least a .30-caliber bore.

7.62 Thumper is one of a number of specifications for short rifle cartridges designed to shoot .30″ bullets at subsonic velocities. A host of proprietary and wildcat cartridges have existed for this purpose for decades, like the .300 Whisper and .300-221. However various drawbacks have prevented them from being widely adopted. The attraction of 7.62 Thumper is that it uses a standardized and widely-available case and chamber: 7.62x39mm Russian, which is the standard caliber for AK-47s. Peter Cronhelm posted a fair amount of research on subsonic shooting with the 7.62x39mm from bolt guns. My goal was to start with that and work up a gun and load that would shoot standard 7.62x39mm rounds but also reliably cycle subsonic rounds in a semi-automatic rifle.

The heaviest standard .30-caliber bullets are 240gr, which require a barrel rifled with a 1:8 twist to stabilize at subsonic velocities. Since no standard .30-caliber barrel has such a fast twist a new barrel is going to be part of any subsonic conversion. And this is why we make the distinction between 7.62 Thumper and 7.62x39mm: Russian bullets are .311″ diameter, whereas the only widely-available .30-caliber bullets heavier than 200gr are .308″. In theory you can shoot .311″ and .308″ bullets in either bore diameter, but I have tried that and the effects tend to be either bad accuracy in the case of undersized bullets or else shredded jackets and exploding bullets in the case of Wolf Military ammo in the high-twist .308″ bore. So a 7.62 Thumper gun is 7.62x39mm chamber but a .308″ bore with a 1:8 twist rate, and it’s best fired with .308″ bullets.

What about .300 AAC Blackout?

Halfway through my development of this rifle the Freedom Group announced its own solution to the same objective: the now SAAMI-standard .300 BLK caliber, which is designed specifically to work on the AR-15 platform. The ballistics are virtually identical to 7.62x39mm, and as with 7.62 Thumper a standard rifle only requires a new 1:8-twist .308″ barrel to shoot accurate subsonic loads. The advantages of .300 BLK are (1) It uses the small .223Rem bolt standard on AR-15 rifles instead of the large 7.62x39mm bolt standard on AK-47s, and (2) Remington will be producing factory subsonic ammunition, whereas you still have to load your own 7.62 Thumper ammo.

Why the XCR?

Getting a 7.62x39mm to shoot 220gr subsonic would be easy enough. But getting it to cycle a semi-auto action was unknown territory. I knew that I wanted a piston-driven semi-auto with an easily-modified gas system.

Given that I wanted to work with 7.62x39mm AR-15s with their small bolt were immediately ruled out. I also knew that I would potentially be yanking and changing a lot of barrels to get this to work. Fortunately, my favorite tactical rifle, the XCR, met the bill. The XCR’s barrel goes in and out with a single screw. The XCR also has one of the best piston gas systems for tuning: From the factory it comes with 5 hand-adjustable settings. And if those don’t work it’s easy to remove the regulator and gas block to enlarge holes to increase pressure.

The machinists at Robinson Armament, maker of the XCR, were also willing to build some custom barrels for this project at a reasonable price. I sent them a Shilen stainless steel barrel blank bored to .308″ with 1:8 twist cut rifling. RA cut it in half and put it on their machines to turn out the two drop-in short barrels shown here: 10″ for the shorter “mini” XCR upper, and 12″ for the standard-length upper.

Short barrels and subsonics go hand in hand. Longer barrels serve only to increase a bullet’s velocity. Of course you have to register a rifle as an SBR with the ATF before you can install a barrel shorter than 16″, but this entire project is only interesting if you are already in the practice of registering NFA items like the suppressor you’re going to put on the end of the barrel.

The Subsonic Load

With the rifle in hand my goal was to work up a load that would shoot right at 1000fps — about .9Mach under comfortable atmospheric conditions, and safely below the transonic barrier where bullets start to make their own flight noise. But I also wanted one that would do so with enough energy to cycle a semi-automatic rifle action, and this has not been easily done in the past! It is compounded by the fact that no smokeless powders commercially available are designed for short-barrelled rifles. The military has specified and bought batches of powder customized for SBR loads, but they don’t leave any for sale to the public. For now reloaders are stuck with suboptimal options in terms of bulk and burning speed. The new standby for subsonic loads, TrailBoss, is too bulky to work in any rifle cartridge capable of firing and cycling both high-velocity and subsonic ammo. After significant research and testing I have found that the two best powders for subsonic SBRs are IMR 4227 and IMR SR-4759. In the case of the 7.62 Thumper XCR SBR, 12 grains of 4227 or 11 grains of SR-4759 over 220gr-240gr bullets will shoot right about 1000fps and, with a suppressor, provide enough pressure to reliably cycle the action.

These should not be confused with “less lethal” or riot-control projectiles. Rather, these are reusable primer-powered training bullets. I tested both .38 and .44 caliber versions.

Because they are powered only be a primer X-rings carry very little energy: They certainly will not cycle an auto-loading action. But they function seamlessly in revolvers when correctly loaded: In order to prevent the detonating primer from jamming itself against a revolver’s breech face it is necessary to drill out the primer pocket’s flash hole to 3/32″ on .38 brass and 1/8″ on .44 or .45 brass. (Note that with these expanded flash holes that brass should never again be used with standard loads, so it’s important to mark and segregate brass for use with X-rings.)

Loading X-ring ammunition is simple: seat a primer, then push a bullet into the neck of the case by hand. The average .38 X-ring bullet weighs 7.7gr, and the average .44 X-ring weights 14gr. I tested the .38s out of my 2″ S&W 642 revolver and the .44s out of my 3″ S&W 629. Longer barrels will only decrease muzzle velocity since primers produce so little propellant gas.

On the .38 I tested both WSP and CCI 550 “Magnum” primers and didn’t detect any significant difference in velocity. On the .44 I used WLP primers. I measured the average velocity for each load at 5, 15, and 21 feet:

Obviously these are not ballistically efficient projectiles. At these ranges they are as accurate as conventional ammunition, but even at 7 yards their point of impact has dropped almost a full foot due to their low velocity, which is decreasing so rapidly I don’t think they would be useful at much greater distances.

The great thing is that because they are so light the bullets will stop inside a cardboard box with a towel draped in the middle. They are reusable — the manufacturer claims that if they’re cleaned with silicone lubricant they are good for 75-100 firings. I didn’t see any degradation after shooting them five times. I noted that the first bullet through a clean barrel leaves a thin stripe of rubber against any sharp rifling, and that seems to buffer subsequent shots against wear.

It’s easy to clean a gun after shooting these: Any rubber peals away from the barrel with a single pass of a dry brush. However I was surprised at how dirty primers are: In the photo above you can see the fired nickel-plated case coated in a layer of soot, which also ends up in all the usual places on the gun. Immediately after testing I was able to wipe off all the fouling with a dry rag.

If you’re using conventional (lead styphnate) primers I would hesitate to shoot them in unventilated indoor spaces because this lead-laced fouling doesn’t all settle on the gun: It’s dispersed in the air, and it’s not good for you, especially if it accumulates in an enclosed space.

Finally a note of caution: These look like a tempting tool for close-quarters force-on-force training. Their impact energy is in the same league as a paintball, Simunition, or heavy air-soft pellet, which means that with adequate clothing and head protection these should in principle be safe to shoot at a real person. However, unlike those other projectiles X-rings fire from unmodified guns that are fully capable of shooting full-power ammunition. No matter how careful you are eventually a standard round will slip into a gun somebody thinks is loaded only with X-rings. Therefore, I would never fire these at a person, and I would always ensure my practice backstop can safely contain a real bullet.