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View Full Version : WHY THE FIRST SHOT OFTEN MISSES C.S. Landis (Recreation, Oct 1916)



ohland
07-07-2015, 07:40 PM
Why The First Shot Often Misses

Recreation, vol 55, No.4, Oct 1916, pgs 171-172

https://books.google.com/books?id=qXw7AQAAMAAJ&pg=PA25&dq=casting+rifle+bullets&hl=en&sa=X&ei=djicVavlKoTBtQXL25jIBQ&ved=0CFYQ6AEwBw#v=onepage&q=casting%20rifle%20bullets&f=false

WHY THE FIRST SHOT OFTEN MISSES
Others, the more practical ones. had decided that an oily rifle shot wild . . . just how wild or how high at any given range no one knew

C.S. Landis

A knowledge of whether oil or grease in the rifle barrel will affect the flight of the bullet, and how much, becomes of prime importance to every rifleman who must, at times, hunt in rainy or damp weather. To the target shot it is not important, as a few shots or five minutes' work with a cleaning rod, rags and gasoline, will remove all traces of it. A shot fouls the bore and we are ready for the day's work with the barrel in its “usual working condition.

My own game shooting is mostly still-hunting. This means, of course, plenty of rainy, drizzly or foggy days, when anything made of iron will rust to a dirty brown in an hour. A good rifle costs a fair price, and requires more or less elaborate care to prevent its being ruined by rust in the bore. Well and good—I leave the oil in the barrel when I go out. But—

If the first shot from a greasy or oily bore flies wild, in what direction will it print from the normal group, and how far, so that the sighting may be changed accordingly? I have asked this question of nearly every rifleman I know. Some have never even thought about it. Others, the more practical ones, had decided that an oily rifle shot wild. Most of them said it shot high. Just how wild or how high at any given range no one knew. No one seemed to care enough about the matter to find out. They either cleaned or shot out the oil and left the rest to fate.

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Rust and fate are often unkind.

Again, some riflemen use Mobile Lubricant, which is a grease, on bullets in high-power rifles. They get good results. If it is possible to grease the bullets and get accuracy why not reverse the process and grease the barrel instead, to get the same results, and incidentally preserve the barrel from rust at the same time?

Why not?

As a comparison, let us say that the bullet has a bearing of one inch, the barrel, of 26 inches length, a bearing of 23 inches. Theoretically then the barrel must be greased only the first inch in front of the chamber to get the same results as greasing the bullet a certain amount.

Is the bullet still greasy when it leaves the barrel? Is the barrel still greasy? If so, then the next bullet will be “horned” easier. If the grease is all disintegrated into its elements in the barrel, in what portion of the barrel does this happen? It takes more muscle, and sometimes profanity, to drive a dry screw into a yellow pine knot than a greased screw into that same knot. How about a dry bullet in a grooved barrel?

The experiments the data of which follow are not selected in any manner. The targets are consecutive ones; only those are shown that the editor has room to reproduce, but complete data are given. Experiments were made most care fully, using a very accurate rifle, using smokeless powder and lead alloy bullet ammunition. Calm weather throughout and all shots held- Well in the 1-inch bull; telescope sight used. Another rifle may perform differently; particularly if it uses ammunition of an entirely different character, or has a thin barrel.

First we take up the case of the barrel that is cold, clean, and has been oiled for a long time. See group No. 1. White circles show the two 10-shot groups fired immediately following, both plotted on the same sheet, and the oily shots high and to the right, and colored black to distinguish them.

This showing, with others of a similar character, condemns at once using a clean, oily bore for all small game shooting, long range shooting or any kind of shooting demanding accuracy. I have never but once put the first shot from a clean, cold, oily bore into the normal group at 50 yards either with a .22 or a .25-caliber low power rifle. A .22 usually shows an error for two shots. The barrel in this case was oiled with Winchester Gun Oil.

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Next, the first shot from a clean, oily barrel that is warm from previous firing.

In this test sometimes I oiled the barrel very slightly and other times quite heavily—sometimes so much that the black smoke at the discharge seemed to come from a charge of' black powder.

The results were practically always the same, viz: using either Winchester Gun Oil or Three-in-One, the group was always very badly scattered. I always got a hollow group. All of the bullets were tipping and worse still it was absolutely impossible to tell where the shot would strike. All bullets were larger than the diameter of the bore to the bottom of the grooves. Both powder charge and bullet temper had been tested to secure the most accurate load for this rifle.

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This proved that the idea that a shot from an oily barrel always struck high was not true. This barrel shot lower on the average when it was oiled than when it was dry; when it was shot from- a rest.

In each case the rifle was cleaned from the breech with dry rags until it was as bright as a mirror. –

All shots were spotted with a twelve-power telescope, numbered, and subsequently measured, both for distance from the center of the bull, and for the greatest diameter of the bullet hole.

First five shots, bore oiled with Winchester Gun Oil
1. 0.86 inch high, at 12 o'clock
2. 1.12 inches off center at 7 o’clock
3. 1.14 inches off center at 5 o’clock
4. 2.06 inches off center at 2 o’clock
5. 0.91 inches off center at 8 o’clock
Diameter of 5-shot group, center to center, 3.10 inches. Greatest diameter of holes, .27, .27, .30, .37 and .30 inch, respectively.

Five shots, bore oiled with Three-in-One Oil
1. 2.12 inches off center at 7 o'clock
2 1.99 inches off center at 7 o'clock
3. 3.60 inches off center at 5 o'clock
4. 0.45 inches off center at 12 o'clock
5. 1.72 inches off center at 1 o'clock
Diameter of 5-shot group, center to center, 4.92 inches. Greatest diameter of bullet hole, .34, .28, .32, .26, .30 inch, respectively.

Using Winchester Gun Oil and Three-in-One Oil I had two shots high and three low and both shot with normal elevation. And out of the ten shots in the group, that was very nicely centered, only one hit the one-inch bull'-eye while six hit the 2-inch bull.

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When the barrel was very heavily oiled it had a greater tendency to shoot low.

What caused the bullets to tip so excessively? Note that no two of these bullets tipped with their points striking in the same direction. The paper was not set at an appreciable angle to the line of tire, nor was it possible to tip the paper in any manner so that all the bullets would appear to the eye to be striking point on all at the same time.

In all this shooting the muzzle of the rifle had probably not been moved as much as one-tenth inch from one position on an axis at a right angle to the line of re. The rest was marked and the barrel had a target paster pasted on its left side above the point I wished it to touch the rest, so that it probably was not moved more than one fourth inch, as a maximum error of movement, on an axis parallel to the line of fire.

Those who do not believe that a bullet will ever tip from accurate hand—loaded ammunition, every bullet examined before loading, should consider these points in judging just how accurately this work was done.

The position of a shot from, a dirty,- or fouled, and oiled barrel

On the same day and on the same targets as the above, five shots were fired from a dirty barrel oiled with Winchester Gun Oil and five from a dirty barrel oiled with Three-in-One Oil. To be more definite, the barrel was fouled by firing one shot through it, then a very small rag, soaked in oil and squeezed out, was run through the bore until the barrel was just oily enough to moisten it. The rag was not large enough to fit the bore tightly enough to remove the fouling, except the very small trace unavoidably so removed.

The first five shots fired with the barrel in this condition and oiled with Winchester Gun Oil were all bulls. Four of them were in the lower half of the bull. No appreciable tipping. Clean cut holes measuring .24 inch.

The first five with Three-in-One had four bulls in the lower half of the bull and one just .04 inch out of the bull at 5 o'clock. Score for the ten shots 99. Loetscher's Schuetzen load. This ended the work with an oily barrel for this day. Incidentally, it took half a day to do this and do it right.

The next shooting day, after getting on the target I made six straight bulls with my Schuetzen load and shooting a dirty, dry rifle to test the sighting. I flinched clear off the target on the seventh shot and quit.

Putting up a new target I fired ten shots with the barrel dirty and oiled slightly with Three-in-One Oil for each shot. The first nine shots were all bulls in the lower two-thirds of the bull. The tenth shot was a nine, 1/4 inch above the edge of the bull at 12 o’clock. Score 99.

Dirty shooting with an oily bore oiled with Three-in-One Oil therefore gave thirteen hits out of fifteen shots or a score of 148 out of 150. One-inch bull, 50 yards.

I then tried the same thing with Winchester Gun Oil in the barrel.

The first two shots were good bulls but then I flinched two straight shots badly and started over again. This time the first six shots were bulls, followed by a nine at ten o'clock. This shot was held just as well as the others. The eighth shot was also a bull.

At this moment a gang of crows started a tremendous commotion up over the woods back of the range and I had business to attend to up there immediately.

A half hour or so later when I got back to the range I found that the rifle ,had changed its grouping low and to the right, so that I had to take the two shots on the other target to make the ten. Score 99. Total for the fifteen shots with Winchester Gun Oil, fourteen bulls. Score 149 out of 150.

This gives a total for the thirty shots from a dirty, slightly oiled barrel, using two kinds of oil, and sighted for normal shooting, of twenty-seven bulls or a score of 297 out of 300. This is as good as most hunters will do—except some of those who use open sights, never clean the barrel, and have a short memory and an india-rubber imagination.

I found later that oiling the barrel heavily near the muzzle usually made it throw the shots about two inches low at 50 yards.

I would like to know if these results would be changed very much if the oil had a chance to stay in the barrel for an hour or so.

To test the effect of Winchester Gun Grease in the barrel on the location of the shot on the target, five shots were fired with the barrel cleaned and then greased and five with the grease on top of the fouling. I could not notice any appreciable difference in either the position or size of the groups using the two methods. Nine of the shots gave a 2.20 inch group, 1.30 inches to the right of center. Seven of the nine shots that hit the target were tipping. Three shots hit the bull, the others being to the right.

For one shot I filled the muzzle one-third full of grease. The grease was placed at 8 o'clock in the muzzle, that is, looking toward the muzzle from the breech, not the reverse, and the shot struck the ground about 15 inches from the center of the bull, at 8 o'clock in direction from the bull.

In general the apparent results were:

1. That gun grease should not be left in the barrel in hunting.

2. That a clean, oily bore was not reliable, cold or hot, and every bullet fired from it was tip ping badly. Might this explain partly why rifles sometimes tear very much larger holes in game, at the point of entrance of the bullet, than at other times?

3. That a dirty, oily bore that was oiled very lightly would shoot into its normal group. That this was true only so far as it concerned a barrel freshly fouled with Schuetzen powder fouling, when used with cast bullets and used at velocities not in excess of those that a cast bullet would stand without stripping.