Forums.NitroExpress.com

Hm.

Shot the rifle again today, put another twelve rounds through it.
I ran different wadding today, did a tiny bit of doctoring to the sights, and ran a small adjustable aperture ring on my glasses. It was much easier to tell what was trigger issues and what were rifle issues.

I'd run 5/8" diameter quarter inch thick saddle felt wads with 5/16" donut holes cut out of the centers, soaked in bore butter and set atop a milk carton 'cup wad' punched out with a ten bore wad punch and spun into shallow little cups with a special die and punch I made up for the task.
That worked well. The idea of circular shaped felt wads instead of flat disc shaped wads was to get the felt wads pushing out against the bore, together with the cup shaped over powder cards creating a gas seal and keeping the fouling soft with the bore butter prep.
The diameter of a disc is less than half the circumference of a ball of the same diameter, I figured I'd have better luck starting off with a bowl shape via the disc and card than attempting to get that effect by wrapping the felt wad around the face of the ball under pressure.
Things were pretty consistent yesterday.
Today I used a harder felt, but with the same design idea. The felt I used came out of a hard felt cowboy hat. I didn't get as consistent of results today, I tried the same donut shape wad alone on top of the over powder card, I tried a donut shaped wad over a disc shaped wad too.
The saddle felt seems like the way to go.

The barrels had been printing left barrel hits to the left, right barrel hits to the right. At two and three quarter drams, the average distance between barrel groups at fifty yards was about two and a quarter inches.
Giving it three drams of powder opened the space between hits to four and three quarters inches.
I left my saddle felt back at the machine shop today, all I had at the ranch was the hat felt and decreasing the charge to two and a half drams got the gun to print similarly to the two and three quarters drams charge, but with a bit more elevation change between barrels.
I'll be back at it again likely tomorrow, with the saddle felt.
I'll be paying closer attention to overall cartridge length and bullet jump tomorrow. I've been a bit cavalier about overall length thinking the gun would likely not be very sensitive to that.
More to learn.
Lots of fun to shoot though, I do like this rifle a lot.

--Tinker

--------------------
--Self-Appointed Colonel, DRSS--

"It IS a dangerous game, and so named for a reason, and you can't play from the keyboard. " --Some Old Texan...

Post Extras