|
Good Morning BSB's. Back in late December, 2008 I jumped on Gunbroker to do some auction surfing. I immediately came across an auction for a Tanfoglio GT41 who's current bid was in the 325$ range that kinda grabbed me. It was a nice looking cz75 type handgun. I knew Tanfoglio, fairly well. Several months earlier I had gotten a Witness in 10mm that I really liked. I had no clue what a GT41 was, though. And the auction was ending in 4 minutes so I did the only rational thing and threw a 400$ bid down (to reset the 15 minute rule) THEN went down to the description to read exactly what I had bid on.
A .41 Action Express ???
No clue. Pulled out the ole Cartridges of the World and did some reading while the auction timer ran down. It looked like a decent enough cartridge created in 1986 but one that appeared to have potentially been made obsolete by the introduction of the .40 S&W 3 years later. Auction ended with no other bids so I got it for 390$ delivered.
She's proven to be a hard case to come by. And kinda expensive. Back in 2008, Qual-Cart had brass in stock so that's what I started with. It's since been a backorder item that I haven't seen available for over a decade.
Thank Goodness for Israel Military Industries (IMI). Over the years, I've been able to collect a nice supply of their brass with more popping up on Gunbroker fairly regularly.
Visually, you really can't tell a difference between my .40 S&W and .41 AE handloads, side by side, save for the rebated rim on the AE. And with similar weight bullets, their performance is near identical.
Bullet choices aren't the greatest in .410 for a semiauto. I worked my handload around the 210 gr XTP. Using AA#5, it's moving along right around 950 fps.
As with my other Tanfoglio, it really feels nice in the hand. And it's a comfortable enough round to shoot.
What started out as a total spur of the moment, impulse purchase that I had no clue about the cartridge and that could have turned out badly if I couldn't have found some brass to feed it, it has really turned into one of my favorite handguns in the safe. k
------------- A Big Mouth Don't Make A Big Man !!!
The Duke
|