First of all congratulations to your wife, and also to you, for loads that were better than you realized they were. You mentioned something about pushing the rifle against the bench stop. By that, did you mean the rest's forend stop? If you did, you might consider that that contact may be one of several issues that you might want to experiment with. Just because your rest has a feature, does not mean that a particular technique will produce the best results with a given rifle. I see a lot of fellows that have a rather strong opinion as to how a rifle is supposed to be shot from a bench. As a result the do not do much experimenting. I think that that is a mistake. Also, you mentioned the price of your equipment. While there is some general correlation between price and performance, it seems to me that you have a very good rifle, better than one would expect for what it cost you. Perhaps you might want to invest in a upgrade or two. It seems to be worth the investment. One thing in particular comes to mind, the trigger. Doing a little research, it seems that you have several options. The lightest pull that I saw was from Rifle Basix. In any case, it seems that you have lucked out with these particular purchases, rifle and scope, and I am sure that you will continue to enjoy both. Good for both of you.
No....... very little luck involved actually. Anyone can put together a fun gun for not too much money and expect to shoot 1/2 MOA 5 shot groups.
I did quite a bit of research before I purchased any of these components. The scope is a Mueller, a powerful buy inexpensive scope made in China. It's not what I use in competition, but it's actually a great scope for a fun gun. By the way, if I somehow damaged one of the scopes on my competition rifles, I wouldn't hesitate a minute to bolt on this particular Mueller scope; but I'd be ready for my fellow competitors to tease me a bit.
The barreled action, a Stainless Steel Howa 1500 from Japan, is a very nicely made piece with a heavy barrel and a very well made action. The workmanship puts Savage to shame, yet the price is low. Nothing wrong with Savage by the way, I own several and they shoot great, and a couple shoot even better than my Howa.
The stock is something I made from an inletted blank of Grade AA Select walnut. It took quite a bit of work, but it turned out very well; mostly because of my many years of experience in wood working.
As for modifications, remember this is a fun Sunday range gun used for just goofing around and training for F-Class and Bench Rest competition. Of course, I have dedicated competition guns for those disciplines, but I don't wear them out shooting expensive-to-make ammo when I'm just fooling around. That's what the Howa is for. Right now there are 5024 rounds down the barrel.
The standard trigger was nice, but knew I could improve it. Spending a quarter of what the action cost to replace the already good trigger makes little sense, at least to me. So I modified the standard trigger to reduce the creep, lighten the pull, and improve the crispness at the cost of some time, a couple of replacement springs, a few bits of fine sandpaper, and a dab of polishing compound. Now, it's very good; at least as good as the triggers on my competition rifles.
The point is, that anyone with a little bit of common sense can purchase a similar inexpensive factory rifle, or inexpensive components, and put together a budget gun which will shoot 5 shot, sub 1/5 MOA at 100 yards most of the time. This assumes, of course, that they also reload with some care, but the components just have to be good, not competition grade; i.e. Sierra, not Berger. It has little to do with luck. People I shoot next to on the local range have plenty of rifles, some purchased and some built from component parts, which perform quite well. Some of them are quite talented, but many of them also have terrible luck.
Taking a factory rifle which shoots 1 MOA with factory ammo and changing it to something which shoots 1/2 MOA with hand-loads isn't rocket surgery. Lots of guys at the local range do that without spending a lot of money. Sub 1/4 MOA, on the other hand, is something entirely different; but we all know that already.
Chings Group
