Bent Ramrod
09-30-2007, 08:06 PM
I certainly wouldn't have bought the New Model 70, but since I won it at a Friends of the NRA dinner, it seemed like spitting on Providence to refuse it. What kept me from trading it in on something of more interest was that it had the short-lived BOSS tuner option on the end of the barrel, and I'm a sucker for gadgetry when it comes with a really scientific explanation of how it works. Especially when it is a new discovery which solves the accuracy problems which have bedeviled shooters and handloaders for centuries.
The rifle was certainly everything its on-line detractors said it was, before the demise of Winchester in New Haven and the cries from the same quarters to bring all that great stuff back. The stock was warped over on the barrel, the bedding was a dab of some kind of clear hot-melt glue, already starting to chip, and the checkering looked like termite damage. You could slide a business card between the floorplate and the bottom metal, and the action and trigger were quite stiff, especially compared to the Pre-War and Pre-64 actions my friends were wont to show me in comparison. On the other hand, it did function, and it was "free," and some diligent souvenir hunting at Gun Shows had netted me a fair collection of .270 moulds. I mounted a scope on the thing and started checking it out.
I dinked around with the BOSS system and full-bore jacketed bullet loads. With the favorite loads, the "best" setting for the BOSS was about where they recommended I start in the first place. I eventually got bored with messing with it, locked it down and let it alone. Some judicious scraping of the side of the stock where it bore on the barrel did more for the accuracy than any BOSS tweaking. I ignored as best I could the large canyon between wood and metal on the right side, got an "M" die and cast some boolits up.
The gun shoots very well with jacketed, but a lot of guns (especially new ones) shoot very well with jacketed. This one shoots phenomenally well with cast, even with rather casually-assembled loads. I was using VitaVouri 133 in it for a while, and then somebody gave me half a canister of Unique to use up. Shooting off the truck tailgate at 50 yards today gave me the groups shown below.
8 grains Unique was what the Ideal Handbooks recommended, and it seems to work just fine, even with the "custom" plain-base boolit mould I found. The Ideal 280468 with gas check is a real wonder. I haven't tried the "S" version with this powder, but with VV it shoots about as good as this longer version.
I hate to think of all the sweating I've done with other rifles to get even the occasional one-hole and under-inch cast boolit group at fifty yards. Generally I figure on under 2" at a hundred yards being in the gilt-edge range. This rifle shoots well with powder I just want to use up and get in a little practice with. Even more shocking, these groups were made with the bore presumably plated with jacket fouling, as all I've ever done is patch the thing out with Hoppe's #9. The only boolit design I've found that gives outright mediocre accuracy in this rifle is the Ideal 280412; even the Handbook kind of apologized for that one.
Nobody's ever touted the .270 as any kind of "classic cast boolit rifle," and I don't know if this is just one of those anomalies or the indication that in this caliber we have some kind of sleeper. I didn't use any fillers, or take any care to position the powder. Anybody else getting startling results with little effort out of their .270's?
Maybe I ought to do something about that stiff trigger...:roll:
The rifle was certainly everything its on-line detractors said it was, before the demise of Winchester in New Haven and the cries from the same quarters to bring all that great stuff back. The stock was warped over on the barrel, the bedding was a dab of some kind of clear hot-melt glue, already starting to chip, and the checkering looked like termite damage. You could slide a business card between the floorplate and the bottom metal, and the action and trigger were quite stiff, especially compared to the Pre-War and Pre-64 actions my friends were wont to show me in comparison. On the other hand, it did function, and it was "free," and some diligent souvenir hunting at Gun Shows had netted me a fair collection of .270 moulds. I mounted a scope on the thing and started checking it out.
I dinked around with the BOSS system and full-bore jacketed bullet loads. With the favorite loads, the "best" setting for the BOSS was about where they recommended I start in the first place. I eventually got bored with messing with it, locked it down and let it alone. Some judicious scraping of the side of the stock where it bore on the barrel did more for the accuracy than any BOSS tweaking. I ignored as best I could the large canyon between wood and metal on the right side, got an "M" die and cast some boolits up.
The gun shoots very well with jacketed, but a lot of guns (especially new ones) shoot very well with jacketed. This one shoots phenomenally well with cast, even with rather casually-assembled loads. I was using VitaVouri 133 in it for a while, and then somebody gave me half a canister of Unique to use up. Shooting off the truck tailgate at 50 yards today gave me the groups shown below.
8 grains Unique was what the Ideal Handbooks recommended, and it seems to work just fine, even with the "custom" plain-base boolit mould I found. The Ideal 280468 with gas check is a real wonder. I haven't tried the "S" version with this powder, but with VV it shoots about as good as this longer version.
I hate to think of all the sweating I've done with other rifles to get even the occasional one-hole and under-inch cast boolit group at fifty yards. Generally I figure on under 2" at a hundred yards being in the gilt-edge range. This rifle shoots well with powder I just want to use up and get in a little practice with. Even more shocking, these groups were made with the bore presumably plated with jacket fouling, as all I've ever done is patch the thing out with Hoppe's #9. The only boolit design I've found that gives outright mediocre accuracy in this rifle is the Ideal 280412; even the Handbook kind of apologized for that one.
Nobody's ever touted the .270 as any kind of "classic cast boolit rifle," and I don't know if this is just one of those anomalies or the indication that in this caliber we have some kind of sleeper. I didn't use any fillers, or take any care to position the powder. Anybody else getting startling results with little effort out of their .270's?
Maybe I ought to do something about that stiff trigger...:roll: