Paul's letter
Paul, thanks for the mail. I see you play with the beast also. What is that stuff on your bbl?
I have jacked up the hood ornament on mine and replaced most everything. It now aggs in the ones at 25 and have 4 consecutive groups at 50 that agg .139 It took about 6 months of frustration, trial and error to get it that way.
Woody Woodall of Lothar shocked and enlightened me all in the same sentence once stating "Everything you know about benchrest will not apply to airgun" At one point I began to believe he was a true visonary but continued testing and history has confirmed it to be only a partially true statement. It depends how much you know about benchrest.
He does sell flawless barrels and I really like the choke and tool work.
Ed Shilen and I have had a hard look at several of them inside with the borescope confirming this statement.
My enlightment did not come overnight and was aided by Larry Birchfield's constant whipping up on me like a red haired step child at matches with a stock gun. This leading to many a late night inspiration and revelation.
I either had to make it shoot, give it to Larry or sell it................. Humiliation is very humbling.
I bought a pair of Air Arms EV2's that were good for nothing but fenceposts no matter what you did to them. I have 50 years of serious benchrest and one world championship behind me and know just a bit about accuracy.
Neither EV2 shot well enough to be competitive for benchrest and sent both back to jolly old England after 6 months of fighting with the president on down and bought a used Mac1. The Mac1 was my first choice and even had one on order but Tim ran over my due date by several months. I got both frustrated and stupid all in the same moment.
To date I have worked my way through about 6 months of constant testing in a controlled envirement trying to leave nothing to chance. I have gone from barrels to bedding to torque to pellets to tuners to muzzle breaks to regulating air to lube to rests to triggers to shooting methods, all in an effort to perfect this gun AND in the process got re-educated.
All areas of concern proved to be critical each lending something to the end game.
The Mac1 will shoot very well and has a great valving system. The ES on the cronograph confirms this. The simplicity of this gun is outstanding.
I will be more than glad to tell you what I have done to get where I am over the phone. I have way too much time, effort and testing to give away all the good stuff over the net.
I do have two areas of concern left that I think do affect accuracy. Both require further evaluation and testing. One is pellet skirt concentricity and the second being valving. The genenis of same the result of an ongoing situation that seems to occur within 25 shots ruining your whole day.
We have noticed that one, maybe 2 pellets in 25 go out about 3/8 of an inch for no apparent reason while shooting 12 to 13 solid X's in both perfect or controlled conditions.
I somehow have to be able to find and identify these rouge pellets. I am presently knee deep in the process of systematically evaluating and testing to locate the problem.
I already know that any skirt variation will increase the pellets gyroscopic spin from it's true axis resulting in a larger group. No rocket, voodoo or BS science here just solid external ballistics. I have sorted pellet skirts from .0000 to .0004 variation in thickness for the test.
I do know that bullet jackets used in centerfire bench competition are rejected with .0002 wall thickness as the void fills with lead and lead is heavier than copper..........ie larger gyroscopic spin. It is logical the same science will apply here.
It too is reasonable to assume a valving variation would affect point of impact. I have noticed as well as Larry that we seem to lose them vertically at 10 and 2 o
clock. I personally do not recall them droping for reasons unknown at this writing, needing more history. I need to discussed the drop occurance with Larry when he gets back from killing Bambi to see what his other targets exhibit. In my mind if valving is the problem the point of impact should be random, not just up..........unless air is only increased at the time of malfunction.
In the hopes of resolving or at least learning something relating to the questionable problems I have made 2 pellet spinners to verify pellet concentricity to .0001.
One spinner checks skirt variation(THICKNESS) and the second verfies front to the rear skirt diameter variation and concentricity. both very repeatable.
I need to get into my new 70 yds indoor facility to fully evaluate both entities. I like testing and tuning at further distances than shooting as the errors/corrections show up much better and corrections can be refined to the nth degree.
Having no prior history to work with I do not presently know what the accuracy to runout ratio or affect will be. Pending tests will most likely shed a bunch of light on the subject.
The valving problem to flier comfirmation, if it even exists, can be verfied simply with the cronograph in front of the gun for each shot recording point of impact. This should be completed in about a week once I get my bench moved in.
History has taught me to never get excited looking at the results of a single test. It means nothing except maybe you lucked out. Doing the same test over and over until the obvious is undeniable is the only way to make a accurate decision.
Contact me in the evening 903-734-3667
Frank:
