. . . I thought I was going to have a steady rest.


Which is probably why the backpack works better.

I'd love to get a good rest like one of those, but until I do the backpack will suffice for my pistol shooting needs.

This is what I'm using, $34.00 from Calelas, I use it for my .45 colt blackhawk. I sometimes take the barrel section to use on the rails of my deer stand for my rifle.. Handy carrying bag to carry them to the bench. They also have this: http://www.cabelas.com/product/Cabel...ts%26CQ_st%3Db

Man NM!!! Those are some AMAZING shooin irons!!!! I know they are not yours, but I would love to sit down to send some lead downrange with those!!!

Maybe I got caught up in the assumption you wanted to eliminate those fliers and help improve your precision - why else do load work up and measure groups if not, right? So forgive me for trying to pass on advice you didn't ask for to try to help you improve.

It takes an open mind and enough willingness to give it a chance, but it also DOES NOT take a $1,500 front rest to produce a better platform than a backpack.

The suede under your rubberized grip needs to go. Running a slick butt grip on a slick leather rear bag to let the revolver "ride" the bag, you'll eliminate that bag jump you're seeing when using a rest. Using a proper rear bag and a slick grip rider, I get very little difference in precision potential between my Sinclair Varmint machine rest and the cheap MTM, just a lot longer set up, and a lot more re-set time to get back on target. The rear bag tends to make the greatest difference.

I was shooting an XP100R in 1996 over a set of X-bags, didn't learn how to shoot from a machine rest until early 2000's, been in your shoes. Took me a long time to realize there really didn't need to be so much of an offset between my hunting rifle and specialty pistol groups at short ranges.

Been using the old heavy cloth lead shot bags longer than I can remember. Up till recently just added a light dusting of talc powder to allow them to slide when needed. Now that I am shooting my 460 with such a vicious cylinder blast, blew a new bag apart in 4 shots!!!, I have added a heavy leather sleeve to the top bag just for it alone. A 10# shot bag as my heel/rabbit ear bag. Work great. Sand in my home bags, new, clean cat liter in my work bags. Liter in a plastic trash bag first, then into the cloth bag. Plastic bag eliminates the dust that will seep out of the cloth bag.

Whatever the rest, that's good shooting!
-Jake

I'm going to go back to the loads and the firearm and leave the rest question alone.

Fliers can be caused by many things, one of those things is barrel heat.

If the "flyer" was usually the first shot or the last shot that the odds are that barrel heat may be a factor.

How fast were you shooting these groups and how hot was the barrel after #5.

I don't have a 221 Handgun, but I do have a 221 CZ 527 American.

I tested a lot of powders in this thing and some produced more barrel heat than others, IMR 4227 produced the most heat, it also produced the poorest groups.

2400 produced not only the least amount of heat it also produced the best groups.

Is there a correlation between heat and accuracy, prolly not, but I like the way 2400 allows me to shoot a whole bunch of rounds with one hole accuracy and zero flyers.

YMMV