Building a benchrest rifle

[bradshaw]

"1,200 rounds into this barrel, I can say this. It doesn’t shoot past conditions like Kreiger #1. I’ve been told a tight shooting tube will get a bullet through mild air without minor hold offs. That’s to say, if the streamers are gently moving, simply center hold and let it fly. My first Kreiger did just that. This barrel needs tiny POA adjustments to land big X counts. It’s still a very good barrel, showing solid consistency. But it doesn’t have the killer attitude I found in my first 30. That may change as the round count climbs. Contrary to popular belief, some thirty cals settle in when you approach 2,000."

-Lee
www.singleactions.com
"Chasing perfection five shots at a time"

*****

Amazing information, Lee.
As a very wide digression, some M1 Garand barrels were judged to reach their peak at 2,000 rounds. Of course, the .30-06 Springfield is a different round than the .308 Winchester/7.62x51mm, as the .308 shoots tight out of a greater variety of barrels. A behavior from the slingshot M1 which parallels performance of individual barrels from Swiss Vault benchers rifles. I mention this phenomenon in support of your experience and that of fellow benchresters.

I wonder how an individual bore & groove affects oscillation of the bullet as said projectile “goes to sleep” or “stays awake.”
David Bradshaw

[Lee Martin]

Match #71
Black Creek Gun Club, Mechanicsville, VA
IBS 100 Yard VFS
_____________________________________

Last Saturday was another mild but tricky day at Black Creek. Through 5 mph wind, competitors found a lot of shots landing counter to what the flags suggested. I was no exception. For the 4th straight 100 yard match, I missed a few X’s on holds that should’ve taken the center. On one particular target, I had nailed 4 X’s in a row, only to have the 5th cut the bottom of the 10 ring. My friend Jeff Green fired within a few seconds of my shot and his went low into the 9 ring. We both looked at each other muttering ‘what the hell caused that?’. I finished 6th out of 23.





-Lee
www.singleactions.com
"Chasing perfection five shots at a time"

[Lee Martin]

Match #72
Bowmanstown Rod & Gun, Bowmanstown, PA
IBS 100 Yard VFS
_______________________________________________

Immediately following Black Creek, a few of us drove 6 hours north to shoot Bowmanstown on Sunday. Like Saturday, the air was mild and the sky was overcast. Ideal conditions for big X counts. And big X counts were had. The top 4 all finished with 24X ‘screamers’. I shot 3 screamers in 2018, but that was when 22X or more constituted the award. In 2019, IBS moved screamer qualification to 24X. Using the Creedmoor tie-breaker, good friend Shinny Shinglock won shooting my 114 gr pill (that’s the 10th victory for that bullet). Fellow friends Wayne France and Chris Allen took 2nd and 4th respectively. I finished 3rd.

A lot of credit goes to Chris. That week, he finished a new set of flags for me. Unlike the Graham flags I’ve been using, his contain a propeller and heavier tape. Chris’ advice was simple: “When the propellers are barely moving or still, center hold and shoot. Don’t worry about holding off for the tails. If your gun is in tune, you’ll hit X’s". Boy was he right. The one I missed was by a hair. A 24X finish represented my best 100 yard score yet.





Me and the winner, Shinny Shinglock:







My new Chris Allen built flags:



After shooting over Chris’ flags, I’m second guessing my assessment of Kreiger #2. I now believe I was over analyzing the tails on my very sensitive Graham flags. Perhaps I was hyper-finessing my holds causing me to narrowly miss X’s. It’ll take more matches to prove or disprove this theory. But one event in, I’m pleased.

-Lee
www.singleactions.com
"Chasing perfection five shots at a time"

[Rimfire69]

Incredible shooting again Lee.

[bradshaw]

Lee and I had a jawbone last night on the peculiarities of BARRELS and BULLETS, taking off with differences in ostensibly identical barrels perceived in tournament shooting. All high end competition raises questions which open new questions. Match shooters but most especially bench rest shooters have for decades remarked the the individual nature of a barrel, how two barrels made from the same hardware on the same tooling by the same craftsmen----and measuring the same and showing the same lap characteristics----may each assert an individual nature on the firing line.

In particular, bullets fired through one barrel sleep tighter through a wind. While the same bullet shows more reaction. Remember, all ingredients and dimensions measure identical. Is it possible one barrel imparts a microscopic oscillation or ultrasonic vibration absent or greatly reduced in the other barrel? You can’t think about this stuff while squeezing a shot. We spend time LEARNING a BULLET. A top bench rester spends time LEARNING a BARREL.

I never had to know very much about the barrel in silhouette. Compared to a bench rest target, a metallic silhouette looks like a planet. Which, as in sighting on a deer, holding for precise placement is critical too consistency. Yet, silhouette is measured in inches, bench rest in thousandths of one inch. All I had to learn from revolver barrel was how tight----in inches----it shot @ 200 meters (two football fields & two ends zones). And of course it is a given that a great barrel cannot wring great accuracy from a badly off cylinder and/or frame.

It is maddening to outshoot a revolver in competition. I have outshot some high end revolvers. The best you can do is to HOLD INSIDE YOUR HOLD. To loosen your sight picture makes matters worse, as groups open wider. At this point you hang on to survive. Any mental game amounts to CHASING THE LAST SHOT, a blueprint for disaster. To “outshoot a revolver” means you hold tighter than the accumulated dimensions of the revolver can group.... or, frame, cylinder, and alignment, and forcing cone are fine, but bore & grooves can’t deliver. The solution is another barrel.

The BULLET is a whole other subject. Suffice to say, Lee’s home swaged .30 racks impressive accuracy in Bench Rest.
David Bradshaw

[Lee Martin]

Match #73
Fairfax Rod & Gun, Manassas, VA
IBS 100 Yard VFS
__________________________________________

In typical Fairfax fashion, bullets strayed when the flags suggested otherwise. It bit everyone, even Wayne France who won with a stellar 250-22X. He said he had a fair number a ‘just hits’ on the dot. My day started off strong with a 5X warm-up, followed by 4 and 5 X targets. On target #3, I had two that were near hits, but under the reticle they didn’t make. This was followed by a decent 4X, then a disastrous 2X. On the last frame, 3 misses were close enough to require reticle scoring again. So over my new flags, focusing more on the propellers, I’m achieved 250-24X and 250-18X scores (3rd and 2nd finishes respectively). It’ll take more trigger time to determine if Kreiger #2 can stand up to Kreiger #1.





-Lee
www.singleactions.com
"Chasing perfection five shots at a time"

[squawberryman]

May I ask what it means to "be Creedmored"?

[Lee Martin]

Sept 25, 2019 14:50:22 GMT -5 squawberryman said:

May I ask what it means to "be Creedmored"?

The rule is used to break final score ties. On record target 1, I had a 50-4X whereas Justin had a 50-3X. Hence, I took the tiebreaker. It pays to shoot good early.

-Lee
www.singleactions.com
"Chasing perfection five shots at a time"

[Lee Martin]

Match #74
Georgia Mountain Shooters Association, Eastanollee, GA
IBS 200/300 Yard Nationals
___________________________________________________________

The 200/300 yard IBS Nationals were held in Eastanollee, GA this year. The conditions were a mixed bag of switchy wind, 95 degree temps, and B-I-G mirage. We shot the 200 yard leg Saturday and I finished 27th out of 51. I dropped two points on shots I wish like hell I could redo. On both, I rushed thinking the conditions were going to shift. Patience would’ve paid off because I had plenty of time and the flags laid down in the last two minutes. The 300 yard matches were on Sunday and by 10:00 the mirage was horrible. I could barely see my bullet holes. The ‘blur’ was so awful you couldn’t discern the rings. On the third target, I held for the condition not knowing where my sighters were landing. Three bulls in a row I held at 4:00 on red and had each shot go 10:00 just outside the 10-ring. If you superimposed the holes, they would’ve been stacked on top of one another. I finished 39th out of 51 at 300. Not the weekend I was hoping for, but we had a great time.

Looking back towards the firing line. The extension on the right was constructed for the Nationals, adding three more benches.



Flag setting early Saturday evening for 300 yards.


Equipment.



My gun on the line.







The award winners.



-Lee
www.singleactions.com
"Chasing perfection five shots at a time"

[Lee Martin]

Match #75
Black Creek Gun Club, Mechanicsville, VA
IBS 100 Yard VFS
____________________________________________________

Wind tends to swirl at Black Creek regardless of the intensity. But if you’re patient, it usually subsides long enough to get shots down range. That was the case during this match. For most of the day, we had mild right-to-left breeze. I held at 4:00 on the dot and consistently took the center. Even had a nice 2X lead going into the 3rd target but then I stumbled. Twice I held off for conditions and the bullet landed at my POA. It was sort of like the flags lied. Even so, I had a chance to win if I could nail 5 X’s on #5. That plus Tori Allen had to drop 1 X, which she did (I owned the tie-breaker). Unfortunately I missed the dot on bull #1 by a few hundredths of an inch. I cleanly took the rest and 2nd place.



-Lee
www.singleactions.com
"Chasing perfection five shots at a time"

[Lee Martin]

Match #76
Fairfax Rod & Gun Club, Manassas, VA
IBS 100 Yard VFS
__________________________________________

This was a match from a few weeks ago. Conditions were a tad switchy, but still shootable. The gun had better than 21 X’s in it. I missed a couple of very small flag shifts. Even so, I got out of there with 3rd place.





-Lee
www.singleactions.com
"Chasing perfection five shots at a time"

[bradshaw]

Benchrest for score----to kill a pencil dot a football field from your muzzle----certainly is a TARGET DISCIPLINE. Unlike the same rifle intent on burying five shots center-to-center in .000-inch, the game Lee Martin pursues strives to erase a series of pencil dots. There are sighters for warm up (WU); take advantage. Because, for score you must hit the ground on target. The group shooter wants the tightest group, not the most centered. The score shooter must strike tight indeed to blot each pencil dot, bullets may group like flower petals, just so they eat the dot. A perfect numerical score of 10’s isn’t good enough. Note in this last match, 7 of 10 shooters scored the clean 250x250 (25 shots x 10 points=250.).

X-count----the pencil dot----is where the action is. The dot becomes the head count. Lee obliterates 21 of 25 pencil dots from the length of a football field, for 2nd place. Wayne France, a perennial heavy, shoots clean, with 24x25 pencil dots to win.

To further reduce need for a SHOOTOFF, an equal score with equal X-count is settled by X-count on the first of five targets. Et cetera. This is CREEMOOR scoring, as, “I got creedmoored by Axeface the Alchemist.” And let us reiterate one more time, the term is spelled double-E double-O----crEEdmOOr----Creedmoor.

Otherwise known as SUDDEN DEATH. In a shootoff, the first to miss packs up. Creedmoor connotes sharpshooting, and means "Sudden Death awaits those who miss first." Great fun was had in the early days of handgun silhouette, as a tie ended in a sudden death shootoff. This is way the great Wimbledon Cup 1000 yard High Power match at Camp Perry is determined. Sad to say, the days of sudden death were phased out of handgun silhouette. To eliminate silhouette shootoffs (nearly impossible), the IHMSA instituted ram count, wherein a tie was broken by ram count. If the tied shooters each had equal ram count, he or she with highest turkey count wins, and so on.
David Bradshaw

[Lee Martin]

Match #77
Mid-Carolina Gun Club, Orangeburg, SC
IBS 100 & 200 Meter VFS Nationals
_______________________________________________________

The 2019 IBS 100/200 Meter Nationals were held in Orangeburg, SC. And if I shot well, it wouldn’t have been the Nationals. For the 4 straight big IBS show, my performance was way off. Conditions were testy however. We had heavy rain Saturday and a lot of stiff wind which constantly changed direction (this is quite common for Orangeburg. It’s one of the toughest places we shoot). At 100 meters I was hit and miss on X’s...pun intended. Then on target #3, I dropped a full point. The first one I lost all year at that distance. Oddly, it felt like the best shot of the day. For a fleeting moment, the flags laid down, I touched the trigger, the gun tracked beautifully, and the bullet landed at 11:00 just outside the 10 ring. Drop a point at 100 and your day is over. And mine was. I finished 51st out of 69 VFS guns. Sunday was a tad milder on wind but still challenging. I hung in there and actually shot better as the day progressed. For the weekend, I finished in 45th place out of 69.




The wailing wall







The highlight of 2019 has been watching my good friend Chris Allen’s daughter Tori compete. She’s been on fire, beating some of the best. Not to mention winning 5 or 6 matches. And for her efforts, she’ll win the rookie of the year award. Not bad for a 13 year old. I know mom and dad are proud.





The top 3 for each class, yardage, and agg (VFS, Hunter, 2-gun, and 3-gun, plus Junior):



The sun finally came out when finished Sunday afternoon:



-Lee
www.singleactions.com
"Chasing perfection five shots at a time"

[Lee Martin]

Match #78
Black Creek Gun Club, Mechanicsville, VA
IBS 100 Yard VFS
________________________________________________

The Black Creek Winter League began with mild temps and equally mild wind. Like last year, I agreed to be the Match Director for the series. I’ve also assumed the Match Director position for all Black Creek IBS events going forward. KC Young, who owns the range, deserves a break at age 84. Time for him to just enjoy shooting and not have to manage the logistics.

I stayed clean on the day, but was light on X count. I’ve been a bit off the past few months. Enough so that I’m going to rework my bullet and load. More to come on that in future posts.





-Lee
www.singleactions.com
"Chasing perfection five shots at a time"

[Lee Martin]

Bullet Testing
____________________________________

The IBS points schedule ended this week, leaving just the Virginia Winter Leagues. I want to accomplish two things this quasi off season. First, I plan on practicing more. Barring weather, I’m on track to shoot 32 registered matches in 2019. Competition is the best type of trigger time, but it also isn't the place to experiment. Second, I want to adjust my bullet and load to tighten up at 200 & 300 yards.

When I started swaging .30 caliber bullets, I chose 114 grains. 112 to 116 grs are commonly used for 7 ogive on 0.925” jackets. However, a lot of top shooters have gone lighter, as low as 108 grains. One thing I’ve struggled with at 114 in my 1:18 twist Kreigers is getting top accuracy from the upper node. The .30 Stingray has shown two distinct sweet spots – 2,950 fps and 3,020 fps. Thirty-three and thirty-four grains of LT-30 achieve those respectively. Of the two, the lower node prints a hair tighter and for that reason I’ve shot 33.0. Quick BR rule of thumb: speed and wind bucking take a back seat to precision. You always run with what produces the smallest and most consistent groups. Even so, 70 fps can make a difference in wind, especially farther out. At 100 yards in 10 mph cross air, that equates to 0.109” less horizontal drift. At 200 yards, the wind drift delta is 0.221”. Move to 300 yards and it grows to a 0.407” advantage. On paper that doesn’t sound like much, but it matters when attempting to hit 0.062”, 0.125”, and 0.250” dots.

Recently, I formed some 111 grain bullets and tried them at 100 yards. These were shot in parallel with my 114 grain. Nodes appeared at 2,950 and 3,020 so the lighter weight didn’t bounce off tune. What the 111 did show however was a preference for the bigger charge. The 114’s shot in the high 1’s and low 2’s at 3,020 whereas the 111’s consistently gave mid-1’s (note – the tests were done in very mild air; < 5mph). My only concern with the lighter weight was jacket adhesion. 7 ogive is a relatively blunt spire point, though it’s a common .30 BR profile. On a 0.925” jacket, some bullet makers move to 8 or 9 ogives to get shorter columns to bleed higher in the ogive. The more lead you push into the nose, the better the core adhesion. To confirm the 111, I sectioned one and compared it to my 114 grain. Core height differs by 0.020” between the two.

111 grs on the left, 114 grs on the right:



Cross-sectioning shows I’m still getting solid lead movement into the point. Also, the smaller core further separates the center-of-gravity (CoG) and center-of-form (CoF). This may, and I stress “may”, settle the bullet faster. Or as we like to say, it goes to sleep sooner. I pointed these to produce a smaller meplat too. My 114’s have a 0.070” tip and 0.328” bearing surface. I set the point die to close the 111 meplat at 0.066”, reducing the bearing surface to 0.320”. Since the die’s knock out pin measures 0.065”, I can’t go smaller. Another quick rule of thumb – less meplat equals slightly higher BC. Wider meplat typically gives a more stable tune. I’ll start at 0.320” and 0.066” and see how they do. Later I’ll grow the 111’s bearing surface and open the tip to see if there’s any performance gain.

At the last 200 yard match I shot three 111’s into the sighter bull and was impressed. In 5 -7 mph push, they touched with almost no vertical. The only dispersion was slight right-to-left as the wind picked up. Center-to-center, they measured 0.336”, or 0.168” MOA ((0.644” – 0.308”/2). It’s worth noting this was done with no tuner adjustment off my 114 grain setup. I need to shoot more 111’s and play with the tuner before drawing firm conclusions. But so far they look good. The other variable I’ll test this winter is neck annealing by way of an AMP unit I just purchased.

-Lee
www.singleactions.com
"Chasing perfection five shots at a time"