Miz Liz Tunes Up

[BruceB]

So, I bought this NEW #4 Mk2 Rifle a couple years back, and dabbled with it off-and-on ever since. Never did get anything approaching what I thought should be obtainable from a brand-new peacetime-production (1955) rifle.

After the last outing, and having Buckshot ask what the rifle delivered with "regular" ammunition, I gave it some thought and decided to glass-bed whatever seemed to need the treatment. Before the bedding, Hornady .312" 150s usually grouped around 3-4" at FIFTY yards for five rounds, and cast loads sometimes beat that figure but mostly didn't.

Stripping the rifle, I found the action to be bearing very uniformly in the stock, and the floor/triggerguard assembly was likewise carefully fitted. The rear of the fore-end also bore evenly on the action shoulders.

I relieved the area under the chamber and at the fore-end's midpoint "partition", and also scraped down the area at the front bearing of the fore-end. Glassbedding the chamber and midpoint bearing, I left the front bearing for future attention if needed.

Taking the rifle out today, after all the bedding was well set-up, the same batch of ammo with Hornady bullets (150/2680 fps) that previously went 3"-4" at fifty yards, grouped two consecutive five-round series into 0.5" and 0.6", center to center. Out of pure curiosity, I then fired a group with 311299 WITHOUT cleaning the copper from the barrel, and five of these grouped right at 0.75". The next five didn't do nearly this well, but still....

After cleaning the daylights out of the bore and leaving it lightly lubed with bullet lube, I tried some 311467/4198/dacron loads which have been rattling around in Der Schuetzenwagen for a couple of years. A ten-round group came in at 1.5" top-to-bottom but only 0.6" wide. I suspect my vision may have something to do with the vertical component, as I was using the iron sights and elevation control can be tough at times.

The exercise was well worth the trouble. The rifle clearly shoots much better than before, and now......now, I guess I get to repeat several dozen loads already tried at least once before. Dang, this sure is fun.

[NVcurmudgeon]

Glad to see that Miss Liz is behaving like a lady.

[Char-Gar]

Bruce.. In the current issue of "Fouling Shot" there is a short article by a guy who glassed a couple of SLMEs. His accuracy took a major jump for the good.

I am paying attention to your attentions to Miss Liz. My beat up 1945 Longbranch is starting to catch my eye.

[Buckshot]

...............BruceB, wow it's nice to have one turn out so well! Sounds like she'll be a fine shooter. It'd be neat if it always turned out that way.

................Buckshot

[Four Fingers of Death]

Queen Liz is famous for say 'we are not amused!' Howevr, on this occasion, I am sure she would be saying 'we are amused!'
Mick.

[BruceB]

Miz Liz got a real workout today. I took no less than THIRTY separate and distinct loads along, ten rounds each, plus about 100 rounds of assorted leftover stuff to empty for the brass....call it 400 rounds and you won't be far off. Over the five hours on the benchrest, I saw a few things, but not much in the way of sterling accuracy.

The rifle seems to be a bit twitchy on ten-round strings, often forming two distinct groups an inch or two apart. On some targets, there was a very well-defined group of six or seven rounds, but also several wild flyers. I can assure y'all that my holding ability is FAR better than the flyers demonstrated, some being three or four inches out from a perfect hold.

I suspect that there may be some miniscule imperfection in the bedding done to date. The next step, I believe, is to skim-bed the chamber area and the midpoint partition, and then fully bed the muzzle bearing area. That should tone down any undue erratic flexing of the barrel.

Temps were quite mild today, in the high 60s, and all the chronograph results indicate uniform ammunition..... extreme spreads in the 20-50 fps range and standard deviations as low as 6 fps and as high as about 17 fps, if I recall correctly. Shots were fired at 45-second intervals, as the rifle was apparently keeping a nice constant temperature at that spacing.

One very obvious condition is the shift of zero with varying loads. For instance, a load with 20 grains of powder might hit point-of-aim, 21 grains would land three inches higher, 22 grains still higher, and if I didn't change the sight adjustment, 23 grains could be off the top of the paper. With three bullets from 177 to 220 grains, each with stair-stepped loads of three powders,with four or five grains total span in one-grain increments, the first round with any one combo was a real crapshoot and the first round often became a zeroing shot with the remaining nine being the "group". Fortunately, the Parker-Hale match sight makes adjustments almost pathetically simple, even for El Klutzo here.

There were several decent one-hole grops fired, but always with attendant flyers, which do not make a pretty picture. I'm back to work tomorrow night, but figure to complete the bedding job in the next couple of days. This will allow ample time for it to set up before the next test, which should be Monday if everything works out.

A hundred rounds of off-hand plinking was a fun way to end the afternoon. The handguards really paid their freight! Also, that much empty .303 brass on the ground sure looks like a lot of picking-up to do....

[NVcurmudgeon]

Cor blimey, mate! Four hundred empty .303s on the ground? Must have looked like Omdurman. Sure seems like bedding from here, but it looks like you are closing in on it. Don't you just love a challenging project?

[Buckshot]

Cor blimey, mate! Four hundred empty .303s on the ground? Must have looked like Omdurman. Sure seems like bedding from here, but it looks like you are closing in on it. Don't you just love a challenging project?

............I liked his first post better :-)

............Buckshot