Well after years of talking about doing it I finally got my peashooter mostly finished, enough to toss lead anyways, and was able to attend my first F-class shoot today. I participated in the Forks Rifle Club practice/unsanctioned F-shoot today. There were two courses of fire, 5/20 at 300 and 5/20 at 600.
Leading up to today I have been picking away at a little project of mine that is still waiting things like a final stock finish, a good bluing job, and most importantly a recoil pad! My rifle of choice is a Frankenstein of sorts. a Pattern 1914 Enfield that has been closed up to resemble a tube type custom action with a welded up bottom and right ejection port. Feeds slick as silk and ejects like a charm, no mallet in my box O' tricks! I built the rifle myself. I fitted it with a Krieger 1.25 straight barrel in a 1-8.5" finished at 30". It is chambered in an old wildcat, the .280 RCBS, which if you are not familiar with it, it is a blown out body with a 30 degree improved shoulder. I have by default in the last couple years made several rifles with 30 degree shoulders and they have always produced superb accuracy. Sitting atop the round receiver is a one piece 0 MOA scope base originally made for a savage short action 110 RT. My stock is a modified Richard Microfit straight line thumbhole that has had a flat piece of ebony grafted in the rear toe of the stock to ride the rear bag and a chunk of hard maple in the front brought out to 3" for a front rider. After a miserable failure trying to modify the military trigger, I fell back on a Timney I had to cannibalize from another rifle just last night.
If you haven't picked up by now, this thing was done on the cheap. For a front rest I made myself a fully adjustable rest out of scrap steel and an old office chair. It cost me about $10 in bolts and 4-5 hours in time to make. The rear bag was just a cheap old bunny ear leather rear bag that you can pick up for about $30.
Here's the funny part, like I said earlier, I had a bad time with my original military trigger which caused me to have several failures to fire when I was load testing. This along with a botched resizing venture by yours truly left me re-fire forming all 50 cases I had all prepped and loaded. That was done yesterday, and I was up till 2 AM re-reloading all my match cases.
On to the bread and butter. I had an untested load, but I knew I was pretty close to 2775 fps with the 180 SMK's I was using, which I knew is way slower than I want to be. I had my rifle zeroed in at 100 with some 162 A-Max's I used to fire form some cases, so I did my best to click in with my new unknown load. First sighter at 300, far right, elevation a little high. Second sighter, over corrected, far left, elevation OK. third 8, 4th 9, 5th 10... OK.
Final score at 300 188-2x/200.
pit duty, then off to 600
Similar venture at 600. 6, 7, 9,9,9....OK.
did OK with the first 10, 2x and dropped 4, second ten not so good, up here the wind kills you if your not paying attention, and it got me a couple times along with many of the other shooters. dropped two 7's.
Final at 600, 183-3x/200.
So overall for both courses i did 371-5X/400
I feel I did OK with what I had to work with, scores were not posted which kinda took half the fun out of it for me, but I know I got a few guys that have more F-class experience than I. I think my worst handicap was that I don't have a stellar load yet, and I was using a 14X Nikon atop everything.
All and all it was fun to finally get out and do it after years of talking about it. I will defiantly be doing more of this!
Leading up to today I have been picking away at a little project of mine that is still waiting things like a final stock finish, a good bluing job, and most importantly a recoil pad! My rifle of choice is a Frankenstein of sorts. a Pattern 1914 Enfield that has been closed up to resemble a tube type custom action with a welded up bottom and right ejection port. Feeds slick as silk and ejects like a charm, no mallet in my box O' tricks! I built the rifle myself. I fitted it with a Krieger 1.25 straight barrel in a 1-8.5" finished at 30". It is chambered in an old wildcat, the .280 RCBS, which if you are not familiar with it, it is a blown out body with a 30 degree improved shoulder. I have by default in the last couple years made several rifles with 30 degree shoulders and they have always produced superb accuracy. Sitting atop the round receiver is a one piece 0 MOA scope base originally made for a savage short action 110 RT. My stock is a modified Richard Microfit straight line thumbhole that has had a flat piece of ebony grafted in the rear toe of the stock to ride the rear bag and a chunk of hard maple in the front brought out to 3" for a front rider. After a miserable failure trying to modify the military trigger, I fell back on a Timney I had to cannibalize from another rifle just last night.
If you haven't picked up by now, this thing was done on the cheap. For a front rest I made myself a fully adjustable rest out of scrap steel and an old office chair. It cost me about $10 in bolts and 4-5 hours in time to make. The rear bag was just a cheap old bunny ear leather rear bag that you can pick up for about $30.
Here's the funny part, like I said earlier, I had a bad time with my original military trigger which caused me to have several failures to fire when I was load testing. This along with a botched resizing venture by yours truly left me re-fire forming all 50 cases I had all prepped and loaded. That was done yesterday, and I was up till 2 AM re-reloading all my match cases.
On to the bread and butter. I had an untested load, but I knew I was pretty close to 2775 fps with the 180 SMK's I was using, which I knew is way slower than I want to be. I had my rifle zeroed in at 100 with some 162 A-Max's I used to fire form some cases, so I did my best to click in with my new unknown load. First sighter at 300, far right, elevation a little high. Second sighter, over corrected, far left, elevation OK. third 8, 4th 9, 5th 10... OK.
Final score at 300 188-2x/200.
pit duty, then off to 600
Similar venture at 600. 6, 7, 9,9,9....OK.
did OK with the first 10, 2x and dropped 4, second ten not so good, up here the wind kills you if your not paying attention, and it got me a couple times along with many of the other shooters. dropped two 7's.
Final at 600, 183-3x/200.
So overall for both courses i did 371-5X/400
I feel I did OK with what I had to work with, scores were not posted which kinda took half the fun out of it for me, but I know I got a few guys that have more F-class experience than I. I think my worst handicap was that I don't have a stellar load yet, and I was using a 14X Nikon atop everything.
All and all it was fun to finally get out and do it after years of talking about it. I will defiantly be doing more of this!
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