Many of you may know I am some what of a Coonan fan boy. I love the 357 magnum round and I love 1911s so when I heard of the Coonan I jumped on board.
Well my newest addition to the Coonan is a 6 inch hunter barrel for it.
as you can see the barrel sticks out of the end of the slide a bit. Any way this got me thinking. I wonder how fast it shoots ammo. I have tested lots of rounds and I knew the Coonan was fast. I finally decided to test the hottest factory rounds I am aware of. These are the high velocity buffalo bore 125 grain JHP. The factory claims 1700 FPS from a 6 inch barrel revolver.
After getting the ammo I took it out to the back woods to gets some numbers. I shot 5 shots over my chronograph I got pictures of 4 of the five shots (still trying to figure out my new camera phone)
1791
1812
1781
1814
1795
for an average speed of 1798.6 FPS and a difference of 33 fps from the fastest and slowest shot. That is just under 900 foot pounds of energy (897 to be exact).
The recoil was actually not as bad as what I expected. It was only slightly worse than my hand loaded 158 grain bullets
sorry I did not get a picture of the 1812 shot
as you can see the Coonan is a pretty hot pistol. It is pretty heavy so that does take a lot of the recoil out of it. The gun is more accurate than I am.
But any way you slice it 900 foot pounds of energy is pretty good in a semiauto. I smiled after every round was fired.
p.s. yes those are rattle snake skin grips http://thefinergrain.com is where I got them and they fit better than the factory grips 