Things were kind of slow at the shop this past week, with the Labor Day weekend coming up and a local classic car/hot rod show going on, so I decided to tinker in the back while an absolutely filthy Remington 7400 was taking a solvent bath.
I had a 24" bull profile Mossberg AR barrel with a 5.56x45 chamber and a 1:9 twist in the rack and some other odds and ends lying around, so I built a rifle on Thursday afternoon. Nothing special - the single most expensive component was a Timney 3lb. Skeleton trigger, followed by a decent NiB BCG. I mounted a Sightron S-Tac 4-20x50 in Weaver six hole tactical rings on it and it turned out like this:
I took it to the range on Sunday afternoon for a break-in and to shoot a few groups. Knowing what I paid for the barrel, my expectations were modest - I'd be happy with .5 - .75 MOA.
It got a 15 round break-in (PITA with an AR) and roughly zeroed at 100 yards. It shot well during the break-in routine so I changed targets and settled in to shoot a few groups.
I shot off the bipod you see in the photo and I fed it a load of proven accuracy in a number of rifles - 68 gr. Hornady BTHP seated to mag length, 23.8 gr. IMR 8208XBR, LC '09 brass and a Tula SRM primer. My expectations were cautiously raised when I put the first two on paper and made a sight correction for the third. This was the first group, including the sight correction:
About .430 - ish, with the third shot one click right and two clicks up.
I hung another target and the second group turned out like this:
.220 - ish. Could be a couple of flukes, but the expectations were starting to rise a bit.
A third target went up and I did my best to bear down and hold-breathe-squeeze in disciplined fashion. Three shots later, and this was the result:
That's one of the best groups I've ever shot with any kind of rifle and definitely the best I've shot off a bipod. It measures about .270 edge to edge, so this one's in the .05 range. Three very nice outcomes in a row start to shrink the probability of 'fluke' pretty dramatically, so I decided to move to the 200 meter line for the next group. I fairly ran down to the target board and put up a fresh target.
After getting myself under control, I dialed seven clicks of elevation and fired three more times. This was the result:
That's about .300 CTC. Needless to say, I'm quite pleased with the results so far. Not bad at all for an AR built around a $150 (retail) barrel! I'm thinking the local crows and coyotes will absolutely hate this thing.
Oh, and the Remington 7400 is still soaking out back. The *@!% thing's so filthy I don't want to touch it.
I had a 24" bull profile Mossberg AR barrel with a 5.56x45 chamber and a 1:9 twist in the rack and some other odds and ends lying around, so I built a rifle on Thursday afternoon. Nothing special - the single most expensive component was a Timney 3lb. Skeleton trigger, followed by a decent NiB BCG. I mounted a Sightron S-Tac 4-20x50 in Weaver six hole tactical rings on it and it turned out like this:
I took it to the range on Sunday afternoon for a break-in and to shoot a few groups. Knowing what I paid for the barrel, my expectations were modest - I'd be happy with .5 - .75 MOA.
It got a 15 round break-in (PITA with an AR) and roughly zeroed at 100 yards. It shot well during the break-in routine so I changed targets and settled in to shoot a few groups.
I shot off the bipod you see in the photo and I fed it a load of proven accuracy in a number of rifles - 68 gr. Hornady BTHP seated to mag length, 23.8 gr. IMR 8208XBR, LC '09 brass and a Tula SRM primer. My expectations were cautiously raised when I put the first two on paper and made a sight correction for the third. This was the first group, including the sight correction:
About .430 - ish, with the third shot one click right and two clicks up.
I hung another target and the second group turned out like this:
.220 - ish. Could be a couple of flukes, but the expectations were starting to rise a bit.
A third target went up and I did my best to bear down and hold-breathe-squeeze in disciplined fashion. Three shots later, and this was the result:
That's one of the best groups I've ever shot with any kind of rifle and definitely the best I've shot off a bipod. It measures about .270 edge to edge, so this one's in the .05 range. Three very nice outcomes in a row start to shrink the probability of 'fluke' pretty dramatically, so I decided to move to the 200 meter line for the next group. I fairly ran down to the target board and put up a fresh target.
After getting myself under control, I dialed seven clicks of elevation and fired three more times. This was the result:
That's about .300 CTC. Needless to say, I'm quite pleased with the results so far. Not bad at all for an AR built around a $150 (retail) barrel! I'm thinking the local crows and coyotes will absolutely hate this thing.
Oh, and the Remington 7400 is still soaking out back. The *@!% thing's so filthy I don't want to touch it.
