Looking for tips : Bench resting Marlin 1894

[357Mag]

Range Gypsy -

Howdy, again !

In my M-336 XLR .35 Rem " bench gun ", 14.5gr Trailboss was the max I could put in the case, under Rem 150PSP
" plated " bullets. It was relatively low on vel, and had non-existent recoil. IMHO - that made the bullets more susceptible to
wind, and my accuracy suffered accordingly @ 100. The Rem 150 PSP proved to be hyper accurate in this rifle, using a different powder & charge.


With regards,
357Mag

[FergusonTO35]

I can't shoot for groups unless I'm on an actual bench rest. I have numbness in my fingers and a bit of essential tremor and I'm never going to be one of those gun writers who can shoot sub-MOA off shooting sticks. What I try to focus on is, how close does the bullet strike to where the crosshair or front sight was pointed when the gun fired. If I see the muzzle flash and the crosshair or sight jumps a little bit I know I have done my part.

[pmer]

When I'm really tring to see how a load does I try to support rifle front and rear with bags. Like a V shaped sand bag for the but stock and a height adjustable rest for the front. Natural point of aim and breath control helps to. - get setup ready to fire and after a couple dry fires line up on target close your eyes and take a couple breaths and relax or fidget a little. Open your eyes and if you're off the target adjust your position to meet the target again then repeat till you are pretty much "naturally" on target. If you strain keep on target there is a tendency to drift off to the natural point of aim. Don't hold the shot too long and keep breathing till 3-4 seconds before the trigger break. Air effects vision. Don't keep a round in the barrel too long if the rifle is warm or hot. Then there is loading, weigh individual charges, weight separate boolits, debur flash holes, keep track of seating pressure. A concentricity gauge for boolit run out can be helpful too. I would keep the straightest rounds for longer range. Some loaded rounds would have up to .007 run out when I shot a lot of .223, .308 and 30-06.

[curioushooter]

First thing I did in these endavors (note the use of past tense) was to mount a good scope with steel rings and bases. Otherwise, in my opinion, you are wasting time and ammo.

Now, I would sit at a bagged bench holding the buttstock with my off hand and the trigger with the other. I would rest the forend on a padded bag. I would shoot very slowly because the major problem I always had was barrel heating expanding the barrel relative to the mag tube.

Now, if I took off the front barrel band, this effect would be dimished. So I kept stripping it down. Eventually I was firing my 1894 without the forend or magazine or on it (mine was with the barrel hanger, not middle barrel band) shooting one at a time, resting the receiver on a bag in front of the lever pivot. Under these circumstances it was as accurate with paper jacketed or copper jacketed bullets as any rifle I've owned. It was a microgroove, too. It was doing 1" groups reliably in spite of barrel warning (it certainly never got hot that way).

This is why I don't do it. It's pointless to turn it into a bench rifle. This is also why I am convinced that if leveractions were made with a rigid mag tube threaded into the receiver, and the forend hung off the mag tube, and barrel bands and hangers were banished from the design, they would shoot as well as bolt actions or rifles with one piece stocks.

[popper]

Paco developed a method for 'bedding' the tube to the receiver.

[curioushooter]

Popper, I suppose you are talking about this article.

It seems like a good idea to me, but he is still allowing the end of the magazine tube to contact the barrel near the muzzle.

What I am talking about is a free floating barrel entirely, and this is a whole lot more work.

My idea is basically this:

Take the barrel bands off and throw them in the garbage.

Take the forend and open it up enough that it doesn't touch the barrel anywhere.

Take the magazine tube cut it down so that the tube is only a few inches forward of the end of the forend.

Thread the receiver end of the tube. Fill the receiver with the strongest machinable epoxy and thread it to accept the magazine tube.

Fill the end of the forend near the receiver with epoxy and bed it to the receiver and tube.

Attach the forend to the magazine tube using a pin like Paco does instead of attaching it to the barrel. (Or you could machine an entirely new tube magazine and thread the forward end of it and hold the forend on with a nut).

This way the barrel free floats COMPLETELY. You do loose some space in the magazine. My 20" 30-30s hold six in the magazine, which is about 4 too many. I am pretty sure you could get three in the tube after this treatment.

In something chambered in handgun cartridges (like a Marlin 1894) this would work even better I think. You would loose less in capacity, and many of these are only 16" long anyway. But it may be pointless since these cartridges aren't going to have the reach to make good use of the improved accuracy.

[dverna]

I like to quote or at least a paraphrase of Frank Marshall an early cast boolit guru. "When working up loads, you need to ask yourself if you are going to hunt deer or try shooting cock roaches at 100 yards". We can sometimes get a bit carried away with the whole accuracy thing, which is measured by measurement of a 5 shot group. That standard has become ingrained so much as some see it as Gospel. I have an old 35 Remington Marlin that wanted to walk to the right after a couple of shots. I took it apart, loosened up the forestock fit and got it so it was not as bad. So far it has been good for 5 total shots at 5 deer. It still may walk a bit over 5 shots but it is accurate for one.
Those original 94's in 44-40 were sighted in till they hit the target and then generally shot once or twice at game.
There was that old saying. "One shot we eat, two shots maybe we eat, three shots nothing". I remember talking to some older men that went through the Depression who claimed a box of cartridges was good for 18-20 deer. Ed Harris tested a few of the old stand by rifles from those times and claimed that 4" groups were about the best one could do with them.
Maybe I am an old retired guy rambling now, but I see so many that agonize to get that magical 5 shot group that is not practical for anything but shooting 5 shots into a small group. There are many factors with a lever beyond just technique to start shrinking groups. A few mentioned. First thing is to look at each shot and see if the variations have a pattern such as the one my old 35 had of walking.

DEP

Spoken like a hunter. Most deer, at least here where I hunt, are taken at less than 100 yards. Medium velocity cast bullets of reasonable quality with meplats that trade low BC for enhanced killing performance which are fired in 3 MOA rifles get the job done. For the person desiring or needing to shoot at long range, the bullet and rifle requirements change.

As to the effects of POI wandering as things heat up, for the OP, it will affect his scores if he shoots a BCP match as he wishes to do.

5 shot groups are the minimum to evaluate a load. 10 are better. For a hunting gun that “walks” as it heats up, it will mean taking more time between shots. But a three shot group tells us almost nothing unless it is a large one.

[centershot]

.

Given it's pointless to benchrest a hunting, non-target rifle, for those times when checking a load for accuracy, I've a technique that lets me achieve maximum accuracy from rifles with 2-piece stocks.

To wit:

1) I don't allow ANY portion of the rifle to thouch anything except a portion of my body while firing it.

2) I grasp the forend with my off hand between the forend and the front rest, at the same time forcibly pulling the forend down & towards the rear.

3) I grasp the wrist of the stock tightly with my trigger hand, with the trigger finger held free, and at the same time pulling the buttstock as hard as I can against my shoulder - also ensuring that the toe of the buttstock never touches the bench top.

4) Once locked-in, the trigger finger fires the rifle, following through until after the boolit's left the muzzle.


.

Pietro's technique is exactly the same as mine! They are, after all, HUNTING rifles, not BENCHREST rifles. This works very well for me.

[curioushooter]

I have found the problem with barrel contact not so much one of making it impossible to get truly fine benchrest accuracy. That is not my goal. My goal is absolutely consistent first shot cold-barrel accuracy, the kind you need when you hunt deer. Barrel bands and mag tubes play hob with this sort of accuracy as badly as they do with really any other. I am amazed that when I work up loads in 30-30 in the summer and they are DEAD ON at 100 yards, when November rolls around, the thing is shooting a half foot high, or low, or to the left or to the right. My bolt actions don't do this. My experiments with a Marlin 1894 in 44 Mag proved to me that indeed this stuff matters. It is sheer lazyness in my opinion that the factories haven't corrected these problems with these lever guns by now. I think much of the reason can be traced back to the "good enough" attitude and the fact that many people don't take lever guns seriously. They want consistency...they get a bolt gun. I dislike bolt guns because they are either right or left handed. As a left handed shooter in a family of right handed shooters, I prefer things to be ambidextrous.

[robg]

.

Given it's pointless to benchrest a hunting, non-target rifle, for those times when checking a load for accuracy, I've a technique that lets me achieve maximum accuracy from rifles with 2-piece stocks.

To wit:

1) I don't allow ANY portion of the rifle to thouch anything except a portion of my body while firing it.

2) I grasp the forend with my off hand between the forend and the front rest, at the same time forcibly pulling the forend down & towards the rear.

3) I grasp the wrist of the stock tightly with my trigger hand, with the trigger finger held free, and at the same time pulling the buttstock as hard as I can against my shoulder - also ensuring that the toe of the buttstock never touches the bench top.

4) Once locked-in, the trigger finger fires the rifle, following through until after the boolit's left the muzzle.


.

what he said otherwise youll get vertical stringing