Building a benchrest rifle

[flyingzebra]

Fantastic!

We were talking about you today in the shop.
Wishing you all the best.

[Rimfire69]

Fantastic performance Lee.

[cmillard]

Outstanding job lee! Are you shooting conventional land krieger or 5R krieger? Keep up the great work!

[Lee Martin]

Nov 12, 2020 15:30:54 GMT -5 cmillard said:

Are you shooting conventional land krieger or 5R krieger? Keep up the great work!

I use Krieger's conventional 4-groove. But I've heard good things about the 5R too. Just haven't tried one yet.

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

[cmillard]

I am running a .236 bore 5R in my 6BR and love it! Cleans supper easy

[Lee Martin]

For the first time in over a year, I’m swaging 6mm bullets again. As the match schedule slows down, I'm going to get my PPC dialed in. It needs a new barrel, which I’ll chamber in the coming weeks. While I enjoy score shooting, I plan on entering a few short-range group events next season. These bullets will also feed my rail gun.

1,000 of my 67 gr 6mm’s.





My light varmint 6mm PPC.



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

[bushog]

Whoa!

[sal]

Lee are you selling 6mm bullets. Sure would like to try some

[Lee Martin]

Nov 19, 2020 20:42:16 GMT -5 sal said:

Lee are you selling 6mm bullets. Sure would like to try some

Sal - I don't sell them. You need a class 6 FFL for that. I make them for myself and a few fellow competitors. They supply the jackets, I supply the time. No money is exchanged. I like it better that way. The only thing I ask is that they try to win some matches with them....and they have.

Drop me a line at [e-mail] and I'll send you a few to try.

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

[Lee Martin]

Hummer Barrels
___________________________________

David Bradshaw and I were talking Sunday about how well my .30 Stingray is shooting. I couldn’t explain why it is other than to say the new Krieger barrel may be a hummer. I’m not a fan of the term, mostly because it’s so nondescript. Then again, no one in benchrest can explain why some barrels shoot like they’re coated in pixie dust. They just do and when you get one, who cares about the why. But the academic in me wants to at least theorize, regardless of whether those theories can be proven. And trust me, most of them can’t be.

Ask a room full of precision shooters what trait best describes a hummer and one answer will repeat – “they just seem to get through the wind better”. Matches aren’t held in tunnels. We contend with wind, temperature changes, humidity, and so forth. Hummers make it easier for us to shoot high scores or tight groups throughout. With less than 700 rounds on Krieger #3, I’m reluctant to call it a hummer...at least not yet. I will say this however:

1) In testing, it aggs tighter than #1 or #2. Each has been screwed into the same action and stock. Whereas the first two would agg high 1’s to low 2’s on a calm day, #3 returns mid-to-high 1’s. And I’m talking averages here across many targets. All three have shot screamers (< 0.10”) and plenty of low 1’s. Isolated small groups mean little compared to the larger body of work. The difference between a mid-1 barrel and a flat 2 barrel is huge when trying to hit a 0.0625” dot at 100 yards. In fact, that 0.050” spread is nearly the width of the dot itself.

2) I’m holding off a hair less with #3 than the first two in similar conditions. I’ve shot dozens of matches at Fairfax and Black Creek and know how to hold for various wind speeds and directions. Those holds repeated for Krieger #1 and #2 and are less aggressive with #3. Take Black Creek for example. In 5 mph right-to-left wind, I always held at the red POA shown below. With #3, I’m holding at the black POA. For reference, the inner circle is a 0.50” and the dot is 0.0625”. The delta between those POAs is probably 0.050” to 0.060”. Hardly enough to say #3 shoots radically better than #1 or #2. Or does it? Think about this. If a flag or two flipped from right-to-left to left-to-right, the red hold may lose the 10 ring. The black hold may keep the POI on the edge of the 10. I know I’m splitting hairs here, but that’s exactly what we’re forced to do in this game.



So technically what gives between #3 and the first two? All of them are 1:18” twist, cut 21.5” in length and torqued to 75 lbs. Krieger hand laps and air-gauges them to a ten-thousandth or two. I cut my chambers using the same reamer. Chamber alignment is always dead-zeroed on all four grooves; dead zero being to 0.0000”. I’ve also never found a land height or bore discrepancy between the three. Yet #3 clearly shoots better. Other possibilities:

1) The steel in #3 is microscopically different. Harder? Softer? Who knows. Maybe I’ll Rockwell test them and see.

2) Does #3 put the bullet to sleep faster and tighter than the first two? Sounds like a good theory, but how does one prove that? I guess with very high end video equipment, one could. I’ve heard of such tests.

3) Is the chamber lead a few one-hundred thousandths (0.00001”) better aligned? Or did the lead cut and fire lap in smoother? I can’t measure alignment that far out and can only visually guess on the lead using a borescope.

Part of me wants to pin some of this on the load. Late last year, I switched to the upper node charge of 34.0 grs of LT-30. I also increased the bearing surface on my 114 gr bullet, going from 0.327” to 0.339”. That caused the meplat diameter to increase as well. But I shot that combination in Krieger #2. While it performed better than the 33.0 gr load with 0.327” bearing surface, barrel #3 is shooting heads above that. Unquestionably, much of this is on the barrel.

I’m left with more questions than answers, defaulting to the old Budweiser Dry motto – “why ask why?” I’ll keep trying to do my part as the shooter and let the bullets land where they land. I also remember some sage advice a fellow competitor once gave me: “A good shooter won’t make a bad barrel work. But a poor shooter sure as hell can f-up a great barrel”

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

[bradshaw]

Just as auto racing has contributed major advances to automobile suspensions and power plants, knowledge gained in Bench Rest competition has raised performance and expectation in riflery.

Reckon it’s fair to say this archive of Lee Martin’s odyssey in Bench Rest carries value for all who work to shoot straight. As Lee reports, we had quite a discussion the other night, and it came down to a barrel giving birth to a bullet’s path. Between “identical” barrels, how is one more accurate than the other? What is this stuff about “putting a bullet to sleep?” We’re talking in mere thousandths of an inch @ 100 yards, and farther. Now, if a Lab Radar or other chronograph can be set up to measure:

TIME of FLIGHT between muzzle and target
* Will there be a difference between two barrels?
* Has the more accurate bullet a faster elapsed time?
* What does it mean when a bullet “goes to sleep?”
* Is time of flight between 0 and 50 yards more important indicator of a bullet going to sleep than time of flight between 50 and 100 yards?
* What does a bullet se in a barrel that we don’t?
David Bradshaw

[Lee Martin]

Match #107
Black Creek Gun Club, Mechanicsville, VA
IBS 100 Yard VFS
__________________________________________________

Saturday’s match could’ve been a wild one. We had very heavy rain and nasty wind the night before. Gusts were over 30 mph and I have no clue what the sustained wind was. But it was bad enough to wake me at 3 AM. Originally, the forecast called for the storm to hit Richmond Saturday morning between 6AM and noon; the hours in which most of the match is held. By the time I got to the range, the rain had ended and the winds were dying down. We still faced some switchy conditions, but nothing like originally forecasted.

My gun went right back to shooting tight. The warm-up went as follows – two fouling shots that landed inside the 10 and on the X. Hard to beat that for cold-bore. I then dropped to the second sighter mothball and laid 3 shots into a tiny dot. Never measured it, but if I had to guess I’d say high 0’s to low 1’s. From there, it took out all five X’s. The first target was going great until the second record bull. I had the hold for what the flags were showing. Then they changed. I came off the gun, watched the flags, saw something I liked, and came back to the gun. When I did, I touched the trigger when placing my finger inside the trigger guard. My POA was pretty much lined up, but not fine-tuned. The rifle went off and that split second panic hit me. I checked the scope and the bullet split the 10-ring. At least I didn’t drop a point, but I missed the X. Using what would’ve been my POA for the next 3, I cleanly took out the dot. That slip may have cost me the match, but I’m not one to play ‘what if’. There isn’t room for error in benchrest, especially at 100 yards. I finished second behind good friend Wayne France.



View from behind my gun as the target crew sets 2nd relay:





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

[Lee Martin]

Match #108
Fairfax Rod & Gun Club, Manassas VA
UBR 200 yard VFS
________________________________________________

For the second straight year, the FR&GC winter league is run under Ultimate Benchrest rules. Ultimate Benchrest (UBR) has been around for ten years. Like IBS varmint for score, the object is to hit the center 10-ring dot at 100, 200, or 300 yards. But the targets and the scoring deviate from the IBS and NBRSA system. UBR matches span four record targets, each containing six record bulls and two sighter areas (IBS & NBRSA have five records targets with five bulls and one sighter). UBR also doesn’t measure X counts on top of your score total. Instead, hitting the center dot counts for 11 points. Hitting the 10-ring but missing the dot equals at 10. Beyond that, it sticks to the standard 9, 8, 7, 6, and so forth scoring. In UBR, a perfect match equates to 264 (11 x 24 center dots). Moreover, UBR uses caliber neutral targets. There are .22, 6mm, and .30 caliber targets that scale the rings and dots to compensate for the bullet diameter. Take .30 caliber for example. The IBS 200 yard target has a 1.0” 10-ring and 0.125” center dot. In UBR, the .30 cal 200 yard target uses a 0.900” 10-ring and 0.100” dot. The 6mm has a 0.965” 10-ring and 0.165”. Lastly, the .22 200 yard target contains a 0.984” 10-ring and 0.184” dot. This eliminates a caliber advantage.

I took my back-up .30 Stingray and got off to slow start. The gun was shooting tight in the sighter box, but I kept missing X’s by a hair. On bull #5 I got caught in a flag shift and dropped a point. As the day went on, I found some good holds for the conditions and climbed back to 4th place. Wayne Shaw Creedmored me for 3rd place (he was shooting my 6mm bullets, so I was pleased with that).





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

[Lee Martin]

Match #109
Black Creek Gun Club, Mechanicsville, VA
IBS 100 Yard VFS
_____________________________________________

We held the third match of our Black Creek Winter league last Saturday. The weather felt nothing like winter though. It started in the high 30’s but rose to 62 degrees by noon. Fortunately, these 30-calibers hold tune pretty well as the air changes. I was ready to bump the tuner if needed. It never came to that however; the gun shot very well. Wind was typical Black Creek - switchy but nothing too hard and sustained. I managed to win the match but wasn’t happy with the last frame. I took three X’s, but missed two by a hair. What I am pleased with is the consistency of this Krieger barrel. It never goes wild, hanging shots on the edge of the 10-ring. When it loses an X, the hole is well within the mothball. I’ve come to really trust the barrel. And in benchrest, that’s pure gold.





I also snapped some really good pictures of the Black Creek club. Mechanicsville is 100 miles from my house, so these make for early days. I usually wake around 4 AM, load the car, and am on the road by 5 AM. Saturday I got to the range just as the sun was breaking. This shot of the benches is sort of creepy. It was just me and a lot of concrete. Dead still and dark. It did give me time to set everything up before folks pulled in.



A photo from the 50 yard mark. Black Creek has more benches than any other range we shoot in short range IBS. 40 in total.



After the match, I was driving the golf cart back from the target frames. There’s a side road we use that was cut out of pine trees. I thought this was quite picturesque.



A view of the firing line from the access road.



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

[JM]

That's a nice looking range!