About 30 years back, I met a fellow at the range that was practicing with his benchrest rifle. He was loading at the range, and had some wind flags out. It turned out that he built his own rifles, and some for acquaintances. They shot sanctioned matches at a range in Visalia, less than an hour's drive away. One of his shooting friends was a fellow named Lee Six, a name that may ring a bell with some of the more knowledgeable among you. He is the one who taught Kelblys how to make stocks (when he retired). The matches were put on by Dennis Thornbury, who still puts them on to this day, and is the current NBRSA president. In the past, I have participated in several of those matches. It was there that I got to know a number of very successful shooters, Hall of Fame members, and record holders. Some time after that I had the chance to write some equipment columns for Shooters News, a small circulation magazine that published NBRSA match results as well as a number of good articles related to the sport. It was during that time, that I was the first to write about Jerry Stiller's then new company, and his first Viper actions. Between the time that I met my first benchrest mentor, and the time that I started writing, I was in charge of building one of the finest firing lines, that I know of. It has 42 poured in place, monolithic concrete benches, that sit 8' back from the front edge of a 256' x 30' foot slab, with a roof of the same size (front half cantilevered) above. I put months of my life into the building of that range. The bench forms were shared with the Visalia club, which used them to pour new benches on their range. After that project, I served a two year term as club president. The point of this is that I have what I consider a reasonable amount of experience to be qualified to write about benchrest practices, certainly more than reading a book. The start of it all was that fellow that I met at the range, who took the time to explain quite a lot to me, and it was his copies of Precision Shooting magazine that were the first that I read. Eventually, I managed to have a couple of articles published in it. At various points in time, the Fresno range had, and in some cases still has subordinate clubs that put on various forms of competition, most on dedicated ranges at the 222 acre facility. They include, IPSC, pistol and cast bullet rifle silhouette, small bore prone, cowboy (currently a favorite), highpower, and black powder. I was privileged to know shooters and match directors of all of those, and enjoyed learning about the finer points of each. I have also read just about every book that I have come across related to shooting, and still have a number of them on my shelves, those that did not forget where their home was, after I had lent them out.
) knows more about Benchrest which has a lot more in common to F-Class than high power comp. which German shoots. Pretty sure Kevin does not shoot Benchrest or F-Class either. Remember the OP was also interested in F-class?
