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ekp

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I am not a competition shooter but spend many hours shooting from the bench for load development. I keep discovering how much I do not know about both reloading and shooting from a bench. Would it be a good idea for some of our more experience shooters to post some of the most questions they receive along with the answers on both shooting from a bench and reloading?

My lack of knowledge at this moment is shooting position. How to position body at the bench for the most repeatable shots. Yesterday I discovered what I should have known that resting my chest on the bench took some of the variable out of buttstock pressure on my shoulder. I found myself before that constantly changing the pressure on my shoulder. The other question I have is whether to squeeze the bag at the butt, hold the forend or leave my left hand next to the front rest after adjusting for windage and elevation.
 
Wow! I can offer you some reading material that may answer many of your questions. Problem is for many of your questions there are or will be multiple answers which will confuse you. Rarely is a single answer correct for all. Specific questions here will get responses. General questions like you have posted will scare those of us away who don't want to write a book.

I suggest you read this and other forums you like and see what has been discussed in the past several years. I suspect very few issues have not been discussed many times. It will be time well spent and its likely you won't run out of reading material.

If you so desire get copies of two books; One by Tony Boyer who wrote "The book of rifle accuracy" and one by Mike Ratigan (Sorry I forget the title). These two volumes delve into many details of bench rest shooting you likely have never even thought of yet.

The very best advice I can give you is to attend a few matches, make some friends and find a mentor that can help you. Bench rest shooters are among the most helpful you will ever find. We want you to succeed. bob
 
You need a br mentor. Most of these questions need to be answered in person. Try to attend an nbrsa or ibs match and there will be cats there that will help you. You can learn in one day what it would take years to figure out on the net. Itll be fun and money well spent!
 
In the past when I had my rifle tuned up and shooting about as well as I could expect on that day, I would sometimes experiment with rifle hold, and the other things that you mentioned, and let the targets tell me what the rifle preferred. I still do this when working with a new rifle. I suggest that you experiment and take notes. Another thing to look at is where you have your bags positioned on your stock. This can make a surprising amount of difference.
 
Fag

we have several of these here in California so I will ask around to see what they say?

(sorry I couldn't resist)(and I have the dress to prove it);):D

Tom
 
free recoil

Fag, Don't shoot benchrest but have a BR rifle. Shot my best groups free recoil or as free as I could get it. The more pressure you can get off the rifle the better,for me. But you don't have to worry about recoil with a 6ppc.
 
ekp said:
I am not a competition shooter but spend many hours shooting from the bench for load development. I keep discovering how much I do not know about both reloading and shooting from a bench. Would it be a good idea for some of our more experience shooters to post some of the most questions they receive along with the answers on both shooting from a bench and reloading?

My lack of knowledge at this moment is shooting position. How to position body at the bench for the most repeatable shots. Yesterday I discovered what I should have known that resting my chest on the bench took some of the variable out of butt stock pressure on my shoulder. I found myself before that constantly changing the pressure on my shoulder. The other question I have is whether to squeeze the bag at the butt, hold the forend or leave my left hand next to the front rest after adjusting for windage and elevation.
Click to expand...

Here's a good technique [Free Recoil, only the tip of the index finger touches the rifle ... the trigger] for load development since it eliminates a lot of the extraneous variables that humans interject into the process: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CKswldMjS2E

A good set of wind flags also help with shooting in the same conditions, which again helps but does not eliminate our greatest challenge ... the ever changing wind.

Once you can arrest as many of the extraneous variables as you can, then you may have a chance at determining what's going on with your loads. Otherwise you're pretty much beating your head against a stone. A Ransom Rest http://www.ransomrest.com/ used in load development for Pistol shooting is a good parallel example. :)
 
Best I can say

Is ask away anytime you want. That's the better way concerning a forum but you should get those books, read them, and adopt whatever works for you. I said that because the folks that wrote the books do things that works for them and there are many variables that cause one thing to work while other things work given a couple of thousandths difference. That ain't right exactly but I couldn't find other words to explain - and you probably caught my drift anyway.

AND....shooting a hunting rifle from a bench does NOT equate to competition benchrest shooting as many believe.....too many.
 
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