what cal would you choose.. Just for fun???

S

skeetlee

Active member
I am thinking i will build a dedicated f-class rifle for 600 yard shooting only. the closest range is st Louis and there long range, range is 600 yards. I will be using a Lawton 7500 dual port action and a mcmillan f-class stock. What i want to know is what caliber would you choose if this were your rifle. I already know that I am going to do a 6mm dasher, or possibly a 6.5x47L but i am curious as to what you fellas might choose. The build wont happen until winter so this is just basically a for fun type question. thanks Lee
 
Lee,

Well... I already did one pretty much along those lines. I alread had my 'competition' rigs in .308 (F/TR) and 6.5-284 (F/Open) that I shoot in big matches and such. I'd been kind of dinking around on a side-project, so I made it something that I hadn't had yet, and had wanted to try. Nothing too exotic - 6 Dasher, 30" Rock 5R barrel, Savage Target Action all trued-n-timed and 2 oz. trigger, McRee stock, etc. Way fun to shoot - although I did find using a joy-stick front rest is definitely a distinct skill from shooting F/TR, at least for me. If there was one thing that I might do different, I might try a straight-up 6.5x47L as I've been watching the results some friends have been getting from B130VLDs or JLK 130VLDs with considerable interest. Then again, if the weather wasn't being too harsh, I wouldn't balk at taking either to 1k now and again.

YMMV,

Monte
 
6 mm Competition Match

I have a similar situation shooting in South Jersey. 600 yds. is the longest range. I've had great results with 6 mm Competition Match with 115 gr. DTAC bullets. Modified Remington 700 with 30" Satarn barrel and HS Precision benchrest stock.

Good Luck,
--Dave MacD
 
"I've had great results with 6 mm Competition Match with 115 gr. DTAC bullets"

Good Luck,
--Dave MacD

So Dave what powder....H1000? How you speed with that 30" tube? What twist? I've been thinking 1-7".

My thoughts have been to switch from F/TR and a mouse gun (Rem. 700 w/Krieger 1.250", 28", 1-7", H.S. Stock, Shilen Trigger, 20X-50X Premier Leupold Target Dot w/10 moa hold over) over to the unlimited caliber Open Class and really give it a try with 6CM built off my never used Rem. 700 .308 Win F/TR Rifle, B&C A-5, Rifle Basix BR Trigger, Single Shot mod., 3/8" lug, as with the .223 all trued with an extra bolt fit, and a 20X-50X Premier Leupold Target Dot w/10 moa hold over. Our local (Peru Rod & Gun) is only 300 yds. walk & paste (which is pretty tough when you have no idea where your hits are) and I can travel to Vermont and shoot at the Army Guard Base that is 600 yds. for the VT State Prone Championship and a few NRA Appoved Matches thought out the year.
 
6br

I will second that , a 6br.with a gary eliseo tube stock !!
 
6CM has almost double the barrel life of a 6BR.....and the extra punch to go to a 1000 yds. if needed.
 
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Taildrag15X said:
"I've had great results with 6 mm Competition Match with 115 gr. DTAC bullets"

Good Luck,
--Dave MacD

So Dave what powder....H1000? How you speed with that 30" tube? What twist? I've been thinking 1-7".
Click to expand...

I'm using 49.0 gr of H-1000 to get around 2950 fps. Twist is 1-7.5". Of course, I've also done most of the other mods with the bolt, action, etc. Jewel benchrest trigger without safety. EGW extended 20 MOA base allows me to mount my Nightforce 12-42x60 Benchrest scope a bit farther forward for prone use. Most of the other results come from careful reloading much like benchrest. :rolleyes:

--Dave MacD
 
I am not a Fclass shooter, but didn't the USA team get beat by the British using the 6.5X284 ? The British used the 7mm something. Maybe you should explore what they used. Our shooters are as good as anybody, but they were handicapped by caliber?
Butch
 
Butch,

Just my $0.02 worth... they pushed those 7mm pretty hard from the sounds of it; a cartridge that gets 500-700rds of barrel life is not something I'd recommend to anybody unless they are really determined to win no matter the cost. I highly doubt at 600 and in you'd ever notice the difference unless the conditions were really, really bad. A lot of shooters won't even un-case a 6.5-284 for 'only' 600yds if they have something else available, as it's typically not worth it to burn up the barrel for said distance.

Monte
 
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7mm option

The straight 284Win is less brutal on barrels than the 7mmWSM.

I will give the Brits their just due. They were on their home field and knew how to handle themselves.

The US team was not on the cutting edge of technology, and got out shot by a more skilled team.

Remember Nascar cars don't last 100,000 miles either but they win they run long enough to run the race....

Look at the F-TR teams and you will see a more even playing field.

I wish all the F-TR team had been shooting 185 Bergers when they could and they would have won by a larger numbers. Hopefully they will learn from their experience.

The .284Win with Lapua brass and the .280AI may be the best answers to the 7mm question.

If you can rebarrel every 900-1000 rounds the 7mmWSM may be the answer.

Nat Lambeth
 
Monte, do you have an answer for this?

Quote form Rustystud
"Look at the F-TR teams and you will see a more even playing field.

I wish all the F-TR team had been shooting 185 Bergers when they could and they would have won by a larger numbers. Hopefully they will learn from their experience."
 
Monte, do you have an answer for this?
Click to expand...

We're getting really far afield from the original topic but...

The person in question did shoot a B185 load for 1000yds each day of the team match. His average wind zero was, if I recall, roughly a minute or maybe a little more, inside of the wind zero being used by the shooter coming off the line immediately preceding him (me, as it happens). The wind coach confirmed that.

The problem with leaping to the conclusion that the B185 was some magic solution that would have widened the gap between the two teams - is that wind zeroes are somewhat relative. The captain, coach and shooters all spent some time in the practices during the Imperial Meeting working to establish a common 'zero' for everyone. Despite that, some people still shot consistently more wind or less wind than the others. If the person shooting 185s used less wind than the person before him, but that person tended to use more wind than everybody else anyway... what exactly did you prove? The answer: not much.

Is the 185 something worth looking into? Sure. I have two boxes of them sitting on my bench, waiting for when I get time/energy to get around to them. I do think (personally) that in theory (ballistic program output, etc.) they should help. Whether the difference is enough to make a meaningful difference... takes more than two strings of fire under very difficult conditions.
 
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Rustystud said:
I wish all the F-TR team had been shooting 185 Bergers when they could and they would have won by a larger numbers. Hopefully they will learn from their experience.

Nat Lambeth
Click to expand...


I'd have to debate this one. There is no certainty whatsoever that the 185's would have made any difference at all in the World Championship Team Match. Jeff performed outstandingly well at all of the distances we shot over the two day match. His performance, however, (and I have been analyzing them closely for a while now) was not notably better at 1000 yards than it was at the 800 and 900 yard lines. He was only running the 185's at 1000. His zero was off from the shooter in front of him (as Monte's was off from the shooter in front of him) that may have led to his impression that he was shooting 1.5 minutes inside all of the 155.5s. For the entire 2 day match, Monte's zero was ~1-2 minutes to the right of the shooter in front of him, and as the winds were typically howling in from the left, I can see why that impression could have been left.

Again, while Jeff's performance (like all of the shooters) was excellent, he was not the top scorer at 1000 yards, John Weil was, shooting the 155.5 at ~3050 fps. Over the two days at 1000 yards, John ended up 6 points ahead of Jeff, although Jeff had one more "V". The main reason I ended up letting Jeff run the 185's at 1000 was that there was the impression that they might have been holding slightly better vertical, and that Gary indicated that the wind drift difference between the two loads was minimal ("not enough to be distracting").

The 2 day aggregates for the shooters in the Team Match were:
John Weil...405-21V
Jeff Rorer...404-21V
Paul Phillips...393-16V
Monte Milanuk...379-18V

All of this said, to try to compare scores between the guys is a bit unfair, the conditions were terrible, and extremely variable between each shooter, so it is more of an apples to oranges comparison. It is more reasonable to compare the shooters with their GB Team counterparts. On one horrendous 1000 yard string, Monte shot a 51-0V... sounds terrible until you see that his GB counterpart only shot a 55-1V! Jeff shot a 62-1V on the last string at 1000, his GB counterpart shot a 63-1V.

To further muddy the waters, on the UK Team, one of the shooters was shooting 200SMK's, all of the others were running some flavor of 155. George Barnard was their top shooter at 1000 yards, but only by 1 point. You'd think that shooting 200's against 155's would have let him gain a bigger advantage, but there too, we get back to the apples vs. oranges comparisons due to wild weather.

Take it for what it's worth :)

Darrell
 
I already did-first timer, newbie, was impressed after the first time i shot a 900m match. I picked up a second hand 6.5x.284, tikka action, laminated thumbhole stock, 1" shilen 26 inch barrel, and the scope is a nightforce 12-42 i believe.Awaiting the police clearance to take possession...
 
Just for fun

The caliber I would choose would be 7mm.

The cartridge would be a 7 Wally.

A 7 Wally uses the 300 Savage case.

The reamer is a 7-08 run in .165 short.

Cut your 7-08 dies .165 short etc.

Have a good long barrel life;-)=
 
I'm shooting a Lawton 7500 dual port 6.5x47 for 600yd BR. WHen this barrel dies I am going to try a 6mm somthing. Dasher,br,brx, 6x47L.
Larry
 
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