Well, you all inspired the interesting experiment described below. The description is long, but hopefully a worthwhile read for those who may be interested. For those who aren't interested, at least read the stuff at the end (Results, Notes):
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Recoil Comparison – S&W 340PD AirLite with Pachmyer Gripper vs. Ruger LCR with stock, factory-installed grip -- testing done 4/29/10. Blind, live-fire testing (not as crazy as it sounds) was conducted to determine the comparative recoil between the AirLite and the LCR and to eliminate any pre-existing bias towards either gun skewing the results.
Basic testing procedure:
Shooter with eyes closed to fire each gun as randomly presented by the assistant, and to numerically rate the discomfort of recoil after each shot. Shooter would never know which gun was coming next, and ideally wouldn't be able to identify the gun in hand due to holding it just long enough to grip, shoot, and immediately give gun back to assistant.
Assistant to randomly present guns and to record all results. Rating was on a 0-10 basis, with 0 being no recoil at all, and 10 being unbearable to fire more than once.
Safety measures:
Testing was done at the outdoor pistol range of our gun club. The range is cut deeply into a large hill so that when you enter the range, you are surrounded on three sides by very high dirt embankments. Firing was in the direction of a long 10-foot or higher embankment, to ensure that no shot would stray in a dangerous direction. Assistant would also have been able to provide warning to shooter if aim was wandering from safe area; happily, this was not necessary, other than to inform shooter that aim was tending to get lower over time. No significant lateral variation occurred.
No one else was on club premises at the time of testing.
We worked out the mechanics of the gun hand-offs first with an unloaded gun. Got the bugs worked out quickly this way, with zero risk.
The shooter remained in position throughout the entirety of testing, to increase consistency of shot placement. This worked very well.
The assistant supplied guns to the shooter's waiting hand from behind the shooter's firing side. The assistant would ask, "Are you ready?" The shooter would present the firing hand and say "Yes." The assistant would then place the gun in the shooter's hand. The assistant's hand was always behind the line of fire, and was completely clear in any event each time a shot was fired. The assistant was directly behind the shooter at all times.
Reliability measures:
Shooter kept eyes closed for the entirety of the testing session, to ensure no visual cue of any kind that would help shooter predict what might be coming next.
Assistant, without having previously discussed this with shooter, included three additional guns randomly in the rotation (Ruger SP 101 – a .38 snub; Ruger GP 100, a heavy .38; S&W Model 317 AirLite – an aluminum .22) to further hinder shooter's ability to identify the AirLite or LCR when firing them. While the weight differences among guns made it very easy to identify the lightest and heaviest among them, the constant change in grip type did make it much harder to get a fix on which of the test weapons was actually in hand at any given time. Numeric ratings were recorded for all shots, including the guns included only to increase randomness (the .22 with shorts actually scored a zero).
Shooter wore a lightly padded glove primarily to survive the repeated test-firing of high-recoil weapons, but found that the glove also impeded ability to identify the gun in hand since tactile features of the grip were less evident. This was excellent for the purposes of testing, and did not seem to impede gripping/shooting ability in any way. It actually provided a good psychological and physical advantage to a shooter with a history of nasty recoil injury.
Different loads were tested, even in the .22 (shorts and longs), to minimize shooter's ability to pick up any pattern at all, and to see if patterns in results between the test guns were consistent with different loads (they were).
Lighter loads had been made for this test: 4.3 grains of Unique Powder w/ 125 gr jacketed soft-points and Remington #5.5 primers. These were used for the first round of testing to reduce wear on the shooter.
Regular target loads were used for the second round of testing: Remington Eagle 130 gr total copper jacket round-noses.
Each round was five shots for each gun (plus various shots from the other three decoys); more than this would have been nice for data collection, but just not practical due to simple pain.
Results:
Recoil discomfort increased as a cylinder got emptier. This may be because these guns are so light that the weight of bullets in them may actually make a difference you can feel. It's hard to know for sure however, since each succeeding shot also happens with a slightly more beat-up hand.
Recoil discomfort increased across an accumulation of impacts (no surprise, but included here for completeness).
Patterns noted between the test weapons were the same with both lighter and heavier loads, in that (and this was a surprise), the LCR scored slightly worse than the AirLite.
The average recoil score for the light load round was 3 for the AirLite and 4.8 for the LCR. This is not a good result however, as most of the AirLite shots occurred early in this round, while most of the LCR shots occurred later (when there was more shooter fatigue).
The average recoil scores for the target load round were much closer, but still favored the AirLite (7.3) over the LCR (7.6). The AirLite and LCR shots were much more evenly balanced through this round, so this seems like a solid result.
Notes:
Doing this test was fascinating, and major fun. All the more so because the end result was actually the opposite of what we expected. No wonder the Mythbusters people enjoy themselves so much; I think we must have looked/sounded a lot like them when we were going over the data and saw what we saw. I would jump at a chance to try something like this again, and doing this gave me critical information in deciding what to do about my carry weapon (I'm keeping the AirLite, putting a Gripper Decelerator on it, and practicing with a glove).
As much as you're sure you "know" something, you really don't until you've tested it. I would have bet big bucks against the AirLite, and I'd have lost. I don't think
anyone would have guessed this outcome. It's got to be the grip, but that's just a guess. If anyone with two AirLites and different grips wants to chime in, please do.
The safety measures seemed reasonably complete, and all worked smoothly and very well. There was no moment of concern for either the shooter or the assistant at any time during the test, or in retrospect. Nothing went the slightest bit wrong. We had a blanket spread in front of the shooter in case any of the pretty guns got dropped, but this didn't even almost happen.
If you decide to do a test like this for whatever reason, make sure when you're randomizing the shots to get the test weapons equally represented throughout the sample to make sure the test conditions for each are as close to identical as possible. Otherwise, your results won't be meaningful.
The LCR feeling worse than the AirLite was informally verified by the assistant (owner of the LCR) who tried both after testing. On an amusing note, the assistant then put a couple of .357 mags through the AirLite. The first was followed by, "
OW!" The second was followed by, "This is stupid. I'm done."
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Thanks to everyone who contributed information and got the wheels turning in a direction that resulted in this outcome. I'm feeling confident about where to go from here on the issue, and hope the info above might be inspiring, helpful, or at least interesting/amusing to someone else.
Elizabeth
