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UPDATE August 30, 2011
Please Note that Paco has a new web site for
his tools:
www.pacotools.com
UPDATE!
June 17th, 2008
Paco Kelly
has now introduced two new versions of his ACU-RZR tool at the
request of shooters who want faster production. He now has
models which will reshape and resize the bullets in either three
or four cartridges at a time, depending upon the model chosen.
This makes for much faster production. With either tool, you
still get two different sizing options, depending upon which end
of the tool is used. The chambers can be sized to the
customer’s specifications, but must be the same on each end.
The Maxi-3 does three at a time, and the Maxi-4
does four at a time. At the time of this writing, the Maxi-3 is
$102 US shipped, and the Maxi-4 is $128 US shipped. These prices
include shipping to anywhere in the US only. The older Phase
1 and Phase 2 tools are no longer built, but the Phase
3 and Phase 4 are still in production at $71 US and
$78, respectively, including shipping to anywhere in the United
States. These new Maxi 3 and 4 tools are a good idea, and
greatly speed production. Simply seat the cartridges into the
tool, select the proper rod which suits your application, and
form the bullets with a few light taps of a hammer, just like
with the older style tools, but doing more than one cartridge at
a time. As always, these tools are built with precision
craftsmanship, and made in the USA.
Paco's latest tools: the Maxi-4
(left) and Maxi-3 (right).
Maxi-3
Maxi-4
With Paco's new Maxi-3 and Maxi-4
tools, you can re-form and accurize up to four
cartridges at a time.
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It has been over two years since I reviewed the
dandy little ACU-RZR and NASTINOSE bullet
reforming tools as produced by Paco Kelly. Those who
read Gunblast.com regularly are already familiar with Paco
Kelly’s writings, as he has written articles for Gunblast as
well as for his own website, Leverguns.com,
and has authored a couple
of very good books.
Paco is also a Shootist,
gunsmith, inventor, and tinkerer. One of his most useful devices
is the tool which he invented several years ago to resize and
reshape the bullets of .22 rimfire ammunition to make it both
more effective on game and vermin, and also more accurate.
Rimfire ammo is made to fit every .22 rifle and pistol that has
been made since the cartridge’s inception well over one
hundred and fifty years ago. With the dozens of gun makers over
those many decades making chambers of varying tolerances, ammo
makers have to make their .22 rimfire ammo so that it will fit
into each and every one of those guns. The result is a .22
caliber bullet that is a pretty loose fit in most of those
chambers. ", as it has
come to be known, bumps up the .22 caliber bullet to better fit
the rifle or pistol’s chamber. The latest variation of the
Paco Tool has four different sized chambers, allowing the
shooter to precisely fit the ammo to his firearm. The Paco Tool
allows the shooter to bump up the bullet size to increasingly
larger dimensions, to get a snug fit into his weapon. Paco
offers the tool with either chambers varying from .001 to .004
inch over, or from .002 to .005 inch over standard .22 rimfire
ammo sizes. Bumping up the size of the bullet makes for a
tighter chamber fit, which makes for better accuracy. The
shooter inserts a .22 cartridge into one of the four chambers,
inserts the shaping rod into the other end, and lightly taps on
the rod, bumping up the size of the soft lead bullet. It is
simple to do, and it works.
Now comes the good part. Getting match-grade
accuracy from cheap bulk ammo is a great thing, but even better
is that the Paco Tool also reshapes the nose profile of the ammo
into a more effective shape, greatly increasing the killing
power of the little cartridge. The tool comes with three
different rods. One reshapes a roundnose or hollowpoint bullet
into a more effective, blunt, cup point, with or without a
hollow point. Another rod makes any standard roundnose ammo into
a hollowpoint, and third rod makes what Paco calls his
SCORP‘N, which is a blunt, wide hollowpoint, with a post in
the middle. This is similar in shape to the Hydra-Shock
ammo that is sold for centerfire handguns. Any and all of these
nose shapes are much more effective than standard roundnose or
hollowpoint ammunition, and the shooter can choose whichever
best suits the game and the particular rifle or handgun chosen.
The newest tools work just like the originals,
but by having four chambers instead of two, are much more
versatile to the shooter who owns more than one .22 caliber
rimfire weapon. I tried the newest version of the Paco Tool
while testing a Beretta Neos
for accuracy. The Paco Tool was lying there on the bench, so I
decided to give it a try. The tool greatly improved the accuracy
of an already-accurate pistol, and bumping the bullet up .002
inch has no effect on the reliability of the auto pistol.
For a comparison of shooting standard ammo with
ammo which had been “Pacoed”, I fastened a Ruger
Single Six into my Ransom
Master Rest to compare the accuracy, while eliminating
all human error. My old Single Six has pretty tight chambers
already, and is plenty accurate, so I wanted to see if the
accuracy would be improved by using the Paco Tool. It was. With
some loads, the change was subtle, but with others, dramatic.
The Paco Tool allows a shooter to use cheap bulk ammo instead of
buying the more expensive stuff, and getting match grade
accuracy at a low price. With all of the cheap ammo tested, the
Paco Tool improved the accuracy. With match grade ammo, accuracy
was improved a little, but not as dramatically as with the bulk Federal
hollowpoint and Winchester Dynapoint ammo. Also,
Winchester bulk Xpert ammo showed a drastic improvement in
accuracy, and all of the ammo received a more effective bullet
profile in the process.
Jeff Quinn
Also available is a very handy
two-chamber pocket version.
The Paco Tool gives average ammo
match-grade accuracy!
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Click pictures for a larger version.
The "Paco Tool".
The Paco Tool is hand-machined from quality brass stock,
and has four differently-sized chambers.
It is a quick and simple process to re-form cheap bulk
.22 ammo into more effective, and more accurate, ammunition.
Top to bottom: cup-point "ACU-RZR" (shown with
unaltered ammo at right); hollow-point "NASTINOSE";
and "SCORP'N" (shown with unaltered ammo at right).
The Paco Tool comes with three forming
points for forming the ACU-RZR, NASTINOSE, or SCORP'N.
The tool can also be used to
re-form factory hollow point ammo (right) into a more
effective shape.
The Paco Tool even works with Aguila's
60-grain Super Subsonic ammo.
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