Sometimes pleasurable things come with a downside and this is certainly the case with one of the hobbies I have. No, it's certainly not enough to make me stop doing it, but it's annoying enough to make me seek an easier method of getting it done.
As you'll know, if you follow me regularly, I shoot guns; Rifles handguns and shotguns. I shoot a lot, or normally do when we are not affected by Corona-chan, and with shooting a lot comes reloading a lot which is what I'm going to talk about today, just a little bit.
With a semi-automatic handgun the rounds are fed into the firing chamber by way of the magazine which needs to be loaded with the rounds in the first place. It's not a difficult job and if loading one or two rounds is quite elementary. The problem comes when many rounds are loaded.
In the shooting discipline I use the pictured handgun for, called IPSC, it is conceivable that I could shoot a couple hundred rounds in competition in a single day, sometimes more. Certainly, in practice, it would not be uncommon for me to shoot 300+ rounds in only a few hours...That's a lot of reloading of magazines right there.
The issue starts to become untenable, and somewhat painful, when one is using one's thumbs to push the rounds into the magazine. It starts to really hurt after a while, if enough rounds are loaded.
You can see a magazine below and will note the black funny shaped part in the middle, the follower and the metal casing that rises up on both sides of it. The follower sits on top of a spring, unsurprisingly called the follower spring, and it is the spring and follower which push rounds upwards and into the gun and then on into the chamber for firing. Considering the fact they need to feed quickly, the spring provides a lot of tension ensuring the rounds are there when required.
When loading the rounds the spring gets forced downwards and obviously the further it goes, the more tension or resistance it will give.
The fact that the rounds are not flat-edged means it can get a little tricky when loading. The follower needs to be depressed and the round pushed down and back to locate correctly. The first one or two are fine but after that it gets more and more difficult. Don't get me wrong, I can do it with ease, but it gets painful on the thumbs...And most new shooters have trouble with it after only about 8-10 rounds.
To mitigate thumb-painyness (yes that's a word now) I use a loading thingamy. It's actually called an UpLULA® and comes in very handy. You can see mine below and above in the main image. It makes loading much faster and mitigates the impact on one's thumbs. Most of the competition shooters use these due to the volume of rounds being loaded.
It is very simple to use.
One simply puts it over the top of a magazine making sure it's on the right way around then presses it to close it and force it down on the magazine. The little lug on the loading thingamy covers the top of the follower and when forced down it pushes the follower down so a round can be loaded without any tension from the follower spring being exerted on the actual round. It's released then repeated over and over until the magazine is loaded.
That probably makes no sense to you so I did a video to show you.
Below is me loading some rounds by hand and also with the loading thingamy, the UpLULA®, and you can clearly see how much easier it is.
In the video you will see how I have to press down and push back as each round is hand loaded. They you'll see how they are simply dropped in essentially when using the loading thingamy.
As you can see it is much easier to use the loading thingamy and rather than having painful thumbs at the end of the day my thumbs are feeling good and ready for action. (Just what that action is I don't know...But they are ready for it.
I usually do this standing up as rarely do I have a bench to use on the range. I simply use the belt on my holster-rig to rest the base of the magazine on and feed the rounds in that way, it's surprisingly fast. I can load 6 magazines, 60 rounds, in a under a couple minutes.
So, there you have it...The magazine loading thingamy explained and demonstrated. Please feel free to ask any questions if you like as I'll be happy to oblige.
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The handgun pictured is the CZ Shadow 2 (9mm semi-automatic), the firearm I use for IPSC competition shooting.
