Monte,
I think I can give you a meaningful answer on this..... a BTDT answer.
A LONG answer
A Storie.... anyone in a hurry or easily bored, please move on, life's too short.
Ye Accounte Le' Loose, a saga of Hand Tightened Barrels....
It's The Year Of Our Lord Nineteen Hunnerd and Ninety Three and Ol' Alinwa is waiting for his first Pro-Built True-Blue Bench Rest Rifle. Now here it must be noted that the aforementioned Alinwa already considers hisself to be a serious Factory Action Riflemeister..... He's got groups on his wall and groups in his wallet. He's got STACKS of groups and copious notes. He's already got 3 "6PPC USA's" and several SERIOUS Varmint Rifles with SS barrels handcrafted by famous barrel-makers which will "shoot in the two's when he does his part...." he shoots Columbia Ground Squirrels too far out to be resolved by the naked eye... He's also a fan of Parker O Ackley, trained and schooled in the Brownell's School of Gunbuilding........He WAS a Charter Member of the Pine Technical Institute School Of Gunsmithing and IS an astute student of Ye Accuracy Grail, and he HAS worked as a gunsmith in several Sporting Goods Stores.....
And he is on An Holy Quest, The Quest to prove that the PPC is just another cartridge, that ANY rifle can be made to shoot like a BR rifle and ANY chambering will shoot.....provided it's built to "BR Standard" from BR components and reloading is accomplished by BR methods.....
He's got a bunch of really accurate stuff, and those BR guys are a bunch of stuffed shirts anyways..... ( not really, remember this is a story...
)But in the meantime he needs a "Benchmark" against which to stack his stuff because there are just so many variables! PLUS, to really prove the point there must be a PPC to prove AGAINST.....to compare TO....
Soooo, The Benchrest Platform finally arrives, the wait has been interminable. It's got three barrels. A .243AI, a 22BR and of course the PPC barrel. It's got a powerful 36X optical unit from Leupold undt Stevens and it's hand assembled by Art Cocchia of Time Precision Rifles. A Multi-Purpose Benchrest Testing and Comparing Platform par excellence.
Let The Testing begin:
FIRST of all, the .243AI. This is a "known quantity", a proven round which has given Ol Alwina a lot of pleasure. And the barrel tenon is LONG and the fit is TIGHT and doesn't even WIGGLE! Tightening it in by hand it just goes t'CHUNK like a vault door....And it SHOOTS!! OHHhhh Yeahhh, It SHOOTS!! Halleluiahhhh!!! The platform is sound!
He spends several weeks wringing out the .243AI, GLORIOUS weeks......more stacks of targets.... "BEAT THESE!!!"..... little ripped out KNOTS for groups, turtles and ducks and rabbits built of 5 bullets ALL IN THE SAME HOLE!!! AGGREGATES of groups which rivaled the wall-N-wallets.......
But finally it's time to test a "Bench Rest Round"......not the PPC yet, but the 22BR. If it'll shoot as well as a custom 22-250 (Although 'WAYYY slower of course..
) then whoopeeee....Wipe on the grease and k'CHUNK.....the new barrel is on. (hand tight)
And the rounds are loaded.... just so.
And the bags are set up....
And the windflags are out even though it's a Frabjous Day with no real wind....
First shot on paper, only 3" away.. !!! wow!
Second shot.... ????
SECOND shot???
hmmmm
Third shot....and the hole TWITCHed...
holy cow.
!
kRACK #4 and k'RACK #5 ....... And there sets the TINIEST 5-hole Ol' Alinwa has EVER seen!!!
It was a stunning moment for Mr inwa.... a revelation, a 'piphany.
He had "done his part!" And there WAS Joy in Mudville indeed. Alinwa had NOT struck out! The birdies chirped the sweeter, the clouds parted and sent a special ray of sunshine JUST for heem......and in the next several weeks his whole carefully structured WORLD fell apart! GONE were the wallet-N-wall groups. GONE were the stacks of targets and notes..... relegated to the dustbin of history because THIS rifle simply ECLIPSED anything previous. A "flier" at 100yds was now a ripped bump on a hole.... And the wind became a visible, readable FORCE which would repeatably send bullets this way and that...... but the GUN was like a loong Magic Marking pen which made dots on a target. And FINALLY, "tuning" seemed a workable goal! FINALLY it could be seen that "vertical" was not random 2 O-Clock fliers but VERTICAL!
And the PPC barrel was just as good.
EVERYTHING else on the rack became boring, two more barrels came. One of them a shortened 308 for use as a HBR round. Another 6PPC..... And everything was changed.
In the next 5 yrs the testing platform became a huge 7-barrel guncase with a notebook and a collimator.... Squirrel Safari's were tremendous affairs where one could heat up a barrel and just SWITCH IT in the field and make first-round hits at 350yds..... Amazing stuff.
A couple years of this and Yours Truly was feeling ready for some competitions.... there was BR available quite close down the road.
Time to get SERIOUS with the practice..........
"Tuning".........
Mysterious and not really well explained yet by the BR Community, commonest method being to "go up a couple cliks when you get vertical"......
Well HOW FAR up can you go??
So it's off to the phones and forum and books for information on how to get the rifle tuned to ONE ROUND HOLE.........
And those mysterious two-groups!!! 3-and-2, 2-and-3, 4-n-1....... Still TEENY holes at 100yds...... a whole new WORLD from the old days of half-inch holes in the paper but DIFFERENT because the sets of bullets would be ONE HOLE next to ONE HOLE.... It was obvious that the rifle wanted to shoot one TINY hole......
hence the Scope Checker mentioned earlier......
And the advice (which I'd herad before but ignored, typical
)To end my "accounte" and bring us into the present let it be said that it was a REAL EYE OPENER when I took the time to crank those barrels down! NOW the real work started! NOW the gun would SHOOT! The gun would TUNE!!! All that was left was me. I ordered up another PPC, this one a HV from Borden.. I went to the IBS BR school and watched the pro's...
HOLY @#$%%^&!!!!
I gotta' do THAT!! in THIS WIND???
So YES Monte, I'll go along with your "rating"...... a gun can still shoot one-hole in the .2's or .3's which means it's still shooting UNBELIEVABLY WELL compared to the rest of the world BUT.............. it'll never even PLACE in a Bench Rest competition!
and another thing, I believe that short tenon guns like the Rem700 will move around more than a long-tenon custom but the custom WILL STILL MOVE AROUND. Just enough to drive you batty and a loose barrel WILL NOT tune. It'll hit something as huge as a ground squirrel even at 300yds.....which is the effective distance for the little BR style bullets anyway. But what does this prove?
And YES the long range Bench Rest rifles NEED TO BE TIGHT. They move worse. For many of the long range disciplines you could be fooled for a long time with a loose barrel. The problem is that many long range comp's are styled around 1moa rifles and a nicely built BR rifle will stay well under a half-inch EVEN WITH A LOOSE BARREL! Now out on the sniper range or the squirrel patch or when teetering on your hindfeet you CAN'T SEE IT. But try 1/2 moa at a 100-200BR Match and see yourself not even placing. Try a quarter moa rifle and you'll not even place unless you're lucky in the wind. The Bench Rest GROUPS might well be 1/4 moa or even 1/2 moa on a windy day but by then your half-inch rifle is shooting over an inch. You're STILL out of the running.
Take it from one who's burnt up barrels shooting loose..... thousands of rounds through probably a dozen barrels...... A LOOSE BARREL CAN'T COMPETE!
There, now I said it...... finally
And furthermore, THE PRO'S ARE RIGHT!!!
About just about EVERYTHING!! The informed opinion of ONE winning Bench Rest Shooter perty much trumps all the speculation and varmint shooting opinions, non-competitor opinions.
I will still fiddle around in the varmint patch switching barrels and having fun with the family just as long as the shots are under 400yds...... but for ANYTHING requiring real accuracy, the barrel must be tight.
I once bet a guy shooting a factory 22-250 that I could switch barrels between shots and STILL smoke him at 100yds.... and I DID, with a 1/2" group. In this case though I did cheat a little. I used a barrel vise and an index mark and about 50ftlb of torque......
It's more fun now though to tune the gun up right and bet that I can beat him WITHOUT LOOKING THROUGH THE SCOPE!!
Easier too.
anyway.... to all who got through this...
WAKE UP!!!!
Look around, Streeetch the arms out and shake the cramp out of your neck and heave a sigh of relief that you don't live in Al's World eh!wheewwww....
LOL
al
