"A friend who's an _excellent_ offhand shooter said not to worry about fine-tuning loads for pistols. That's for rifles, he said. Now I figure if I can shoot a group offhand that's almost as good as my sandbag group, I'm doing well, and I should thus try to tweak the sandbag loads. Who's right?"
Your friend's right. Think about buying racing gasoline to put in your 4 cyl Ford ranger to drive to work in. Maybe not an EXACT analogy.
For most pistols, if you get the pistol tuned up, you'll probably notice the difference in accuracy with a "just okay" load. OTOH, with a pistol that needs, for example, trigger work, better sights and grips, you may not be able to tell that "best load" when you shoot it.
Anyway, shooting off-hand for accuracy is a plan for frustration. Shooting off bags at the bench and shooting off-hand are two different standards of accuracy.
If your friend is a rifle shooter he probably got a good chuckle at an attempt to work on accuracy loads for a .45 ACP. By rifle standards, 'ain't no such thing.
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Sensop
"Get your mind right and the body will follow." - Shino Takazawa, sinsei, hachi dan, Keishinkan do.
Sensop's Corner