Ammo Testing in the Club

OK, so it is not Eley with a 50m indoor range and a clamp that weighs tons, but it will give you an idea if you can select ammo that does decent groups from your barrel.

You need

  1. 2 people - 1 to do, 1 to help,
  2. Duncan Murrays patent rifle holder - to hold the rifle,
  3. FP4 - it has been drilled to take the rifle holder,
  4. 2 clamps - to hold the rear of the rifle holder solid,
  5. The plastic risers and some tops off eley boxes - to give height under the bench leg,
  6. 2-3 consectutive details,
  7. 2-3 blank cards put on OLD backing cards.  The first card has a spotter taped in the middle,
  8. A pen and paper,
  9. Oh and at least 10 rounds of each type of ammo you need to test.

The Plan

  1. Be methodical,
  2. Be slow,
  3. Warm the barrel,
  4. Shoot groups of 10 with each ammo, move the rifle clamp after each group,
  5. Document,
  6. Select any particularly good or bad ammo and retest,
  7. Document everthing.

Some more Detail

  1. You need 2-3 consectutive details to do a decent job.  You NEED to be on FP4,
  2. Put up 3 BLANK cards for your details.  On the first card put a single black target in the middle.  Dont use good backer cards, use scrap ones.
  3. Fit the rifle clamp to FP4 - which has a hole drilled for the pivot point.  The rear is held in place with the two wood clamps.
  4. Put your normal sights on the rifle (you wont use them but they may will effect the groups), but remove the handstop and dont put the bolt in to start with.
  5. Clamp up the rifle, and with the bolt removed have a go at bore-sighting on your single aiming mark.  DONT use the screw leg on the bench to give height - it shakes too much in use - use the wee black plastic risers under the leg.  1 Eley top of a box (about 1mm) under the leg will rise you about 1" on target.
  6. Warm the barrel on the black mark, use a scope to make sure you are on target

Now we start