Boyd Allen
Active member
It was a a good thing that I had some things that needed working out that I could do without flags. Even thought I managed to drive off without my flag stand bag, the day turned out well. I tried a couple of things, that worked. The first was an Otto ring that is sized for my standard footprint Edgewood rear bag. Although the bag stayed put better than it had before, it did not work as well as what I tried next, a sheet of 150 grit sanding screen. That was excellent. The bag stayed put...period. I like it. Everyone should try one. (For a little over three bucks, what could it hurt?)
The next thing on my list was to try bag squeezing as described to me by Bill Mellor. Don't get me wrong, I wasn't born with a front rest with side tension and a windage top, so some form of bag squeezing and shifting around had been the only way that I shot for years, but not for benchrest. Today I used my rest to set up at the top of the mothball, and put my thumb on one side of the base of the ears, and my index finger on the other. I found that I could put the cross hairs exactly where I wanted, at 6 O'clock, and had excellent control, and because I did not have to move my arms, or shift my weight in any way, the bench (a very good portable bench, but nonetheless portable) stayed very still while I made shots, and there were no mysterious fliers, in my very short test.
Earlier that day my first test group had lost one out the top, with paper, so I lightened the load by about .3 grains (of 133) in recognition of the fact that it was a few degrees warmer than the last time that I tuned the rifle, and that seemed to do the trick. I am somewhere near, but off of the lands (Columns and 133), and as soon as I finish my little dish of locally grown fresh strawberries, and angel food cake. I am off to the garage to do a more exact measurement, put the flag stands in the truck, and clean the barrel.
I didn't plan on shooting that much today, so I left my cleaning gear at home, which was good right up to the point that I wanted to use the Stoney Point/Hornady gauge to measure my seating depth, and realized that it would have to wait, because I didn't have anything to dislodge a bullet from the throat. For me, they always stick.
Earlier, as I was unloading and setting up at one end of the firing line, a couple of Navy F18 flight instructors, who had been at the range since eight, were finishing up their work on lead free bullet hunting loads for their Tikka .308s, using a Lee Loader and a plastic mallet. (Talk about a blast from the past. That was exactly how I started reloading, only my .308 was a 788.) One fellow had a respectable group, and the other had made up his mind to switch to the same bullets, after trying several loads that were stuck in the inch and a quarter range.
The last thing that I learned was that it would be a good idea to pick up a stout piece of steel rod to tighten the inch and a half, schedule 40 legs that my bench has. The legs are cross drilled about a foot down from their tops, for just such a "tool". When I tightened them up a second time, by hand, I could see the results as reduced cross hair movement on the target.
The last thing that I did was to volunteer my Chapman kit to a father who was teaching his criminology major son the rudiments of rifle marksmanship, with an AK clone in .223. As it turned out, he was not aware that changing brands of ammo would require resighting the rifle. We got him all fixed up in short order, and both father and son seemed a lot happier when they started hitting a lot closer to the mark.
So there you have it, a moderately successful afternoon from a shooting point of view, and and excellent one from a social point of view. The whole time, there were only four other people on the rifle range, and they were not there at the same time. The birds were chirping, a farmer was doing tractor work in the almond orchard nearby, it was 81 degrees, and it smelled like spring on the farm.
The next thing on my list was to try bag squeezing as described to me by Bill Mellor. Don't get me wrong, I wasn't born with a front rest with side tension and a windage top, so some form of bag squeezing and shifting around had been the only way that I shot for years, but not for benchrest. Today I used my rest to set up at the top of the mothball, and put my thumb on one side of the base of the ears, and my index finger on the other. I found that I could put the cross hairs exactly where I wanted, at 6 O'clock, and had excellent control, and because I did not have to move my arms, or shift my weight in any way, the bench (a very good portable bench, but nonetheless portable) stayed very still while I made shots, and there were no mysterious fliers, in my very short test.
Earlier that day my first test group had lost one out the top, with paper, so I lightened the load by about .3 grains (of 133) in recognition of the fact that it was a few degrees warmer than the last time that I tuned the rifle, and that seemed to do the trick. I am somewhere near, but off of the lands (Columns and 133), and as soon as I finish my little dish of locally grown fresh strawberries, and angel food cake. I am off to the garage to do a more exact measurement, put the flag stands in the truck, and clean the barrel.
I didn't plan on shooting that much today, so I left my cleaning gear at home, which was good right up to the point that I wanted to use the Stoney Point/Hornady gauge to measure my seating depth, and realized that it would have to wait, because I didn't have anything to dislodge a bullet from the throat. For me, they always stick.
Earlier, as I was unloading and setting up at one end of the firing line, a couple of Navy F18 flight instructors, who had been at the range since eight, were finishing up their work on lead free bullet hunting loads for their Tikka .308s, using a Lee Loader and a plastic mallet. (Talk about a blast from the past. That was exactly how I started reloading, only my .308 was a 788.) One fellow had a respectable group, and the other had made up his mind to switch to the same bullets, after trying several loads that were stuck in the inch and a quarter range.
The last thing that I learned was that it would be a good idea to pick up a stout piece of steel rod to tighten the inch and a half, schedule 40 legs that my bench has. The legs are cross drilled about a foot down from their tops, for just such a "tool". When I tightened them up a second time, by hand, I could see the results as reduced cross hair movement on the target.
The last thing that I did was to volunteer my Chapman kit to a father who was teaching his criminology major son the rudiments of rifle marksmanship, with an AK clone in .223. As it turned out, he was not aware that changing brands of ammo would require resighting the rifle. We got him all fixed up in short order, and both father and son seemed a lot happier when they started hitting a lot closer to the mark.
So there you have it, a moderately successful afternoon from a shooting point of view, and and excellent one from a social point of view. The whole time, there were only four other people on the rifle range, and they were not there at the same time. The birds were chirping, a farmer was doing tractor work in the almond orchard nearby, it was 81 degrees, and it smelled like spring on the farm.
