Moon Clip Gun

I have a 625, a 627 Pro Series, and a 929. They are all super accurate and fun to shoot. The key to using moon clips is to do your mooning and de mooning at home not at the range. Use a piece of wood to divide an ammo can with 2/3 for clipped rounds and 1/3 for spent clips. Better load a bunch because it’s easy to shoot a bunch.
 

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The half moon clipsand the full moon clips were not designed to improve loading the revolver. They were designed to allow the rimless ACP cartridge to be ejected from the revolver. A wartime expedient that had a real world advantage that took years to discover.

Kevin
 
I have both a 625-8 JM and a 627 pro. My 627 also has a second cylinder reamed to shoot 9mm and a few other similar rounds.

I shoot both in ICORE and the 625 in IDPA.

Both serve me well. Think you can’t go wrong with either
 
A friend at deer camp got an X frame 350 Legend. Those long skinny rounds were difficult to load into the cylinder and worse yet to get in and out of the moon clips.
I used to have a 625 45ACP the moons worked well there. Some rounds are just not moon material IMO
 
The "old school" guns like the 1917 and 22 models are also tons of fun. I like to think of this TR22-4 as my "Indiana Jones" revolver.

22-4-Right.jpg
 
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I shoot my 1917 with moon clips and love it. I tried the clips that came with my 640 P but they didn't work well for me. So IMHO .45s yes, .38/.357 probably not.

I regret trading off a 3" 625 long ago.
 
10mm work good too but not like the .45's!
Click to expand...

A friend ran into trouble with that. A big 10mm fan, he bought a 610 for IDPA SSR. It had a couple of characteristics that slowed the reload.
Most 10mm ammo is loaded with flat nosed or stubby hollowpoints to fit a .45 length auto action.
The 10mm's smaller diameter chambers leave a wide space of cylinder face between the charge holes.

Flat nose lands on flat cylinder and the reload fails. He had to look where he was going not just drop a clip full in.
 
I have a 986 snub which is a 7 shot 9mm. Great action, very accurate but the factory thin wood grips are very painful. I put rubbers on it and this made the gun very soft shooting, but recently I added Culina Combats which do a fair job spreading the recoil and make it tolerable.
 
I haven't bought any for a long time, but Brownell's sold full moon (metal) in bags of 100! That's why I have around 225 clips. I use my standard 45 ACP ammo with uncoated bullets and keep about 80 clips loaded for "Plinking". I won a door prize of 500 200 gr RNFP Coated bullets and found a nice load for them, I keep all of them on the clips. Easy to tell apart!

I own 3 or 4 De-Mooners and 1 Mooner (Moon Loader) I have a 50 Cal ammo can always ready to go!

Ivan
 
joespapa said:
Now I need a soft shooting load for 200 gr. Bullets!k
Click to expand...

There are lots of loads that work well!

The one I use is 5.5gr of WW231, Win LPP, mixed brass. Feeds well in 1911'a Sig 220's and works great in my 625-3 and 1917 Brazilian Contract. (The COAL is a little shorter, I leave the seating plug the same as 230 RN, so powder volume is the same. There are softer loads but this very manageable in all my 45 ACP guns, including my Marlin Camp 45.

I use a cheap Uncle Mike's nylon holster when I stomp around the woods. I think of my 1917 as a long-nosed Mountain Gun!

Ivan
 
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