Shilen Octagon - more questions

S

steve b.

Guest
Howdy all,

Assuming that there are a good number of these out there now, I'm curious as to how they are holding up? Has anyone noticed any indications of accuracy life? Also, do they seem more or less sensitive to cleaning as a conventional rifled barrel?

Thanks for the info,

s.
 
cleaning octagon

You clean an octagon according to how much money you have to buy ammo. I find it takes longer to get a barrel seasoned to shoot a card than other barrels. I shot and found best lot for barrel, cleaned barrel on friday then shot 15 fowlers, pushed 2 dry patches, put rifle up till sat morning shot first card pushed 2 dry patches continued till I shot all 5 cards pushing 2 dry patches between cards,. That was all the cleaning I did Shot a 2500 so something I was doing must have worked Chief P S Brushing means the U P S Truck comes to your house more often.:)
 
Been asking much the same for some time now and here's what I've found so far. All comes from qualified sources but 2nd hand none the less.
Sounds like nobody has consistant chambering methodology, nor cleaning regamine......If any, some seem to do well dirty. The biggest issue seems to be that some start out hot then fade fast and nobody knows why.
 
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Everything I've heard is pretty much the same as Tim posted and I've visited with a few shooters who either love them or are frustrated by them. I can relate my experience with a new rifle with Octagon I picked up 2 weeks ago at the Eley Customer Range and tested while on my annual winter shooting vacation.
While testing 21 lots of Tenex I cleaned after the first 50 rds and then cleaned every 100 rds until I'd fired 580 rds total. It was nearly impossible to tell if accuracy was degrading toward the end of 100 strings, but it certainly wasn't obvious.

The following weekend I stopped at the Louisiana ARA State Championships and shot a 4 target club match followed by the 6 target State match. 10 targets and 300 rds with no cleaning whatsoever netted an 11th place finish out of 30 some shooters and this was without a tuner using a random brick of Eley Match purchased from Dan. The 10 targets scored at less than 5% variation from start to finish, which is about the expected variation you'll see with a series of 25-shot targets.

I have to admit I'm optimistic that I may have found a keeper, but I've been disappointed before and this is a far cry from being any type of definitive testing. It would sure be nice if I can get it agging at 2300+ without cleaning though. LOL
I'll know a lot more when the weather improves and I have a chance to wring it out in my tunnel.

I just pushed a couple of wet patches thru it in my garage followed by a couple of dry and I'm going to bore scope it later this afternoon to see if there's anything interesting to discover.

Landy
 
Life of Octogan

If you worry about how long a barrel will last you may need to take up fishing. Go to wally world and buy a zebco 202 and you can fish a lifetime.
 
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