Range Report 02/01/2009

The shooting session at MV's property fell through. He was supposed to be part of a gang of fellows from his work helping one new guy move. Lots of guys, lots of trucks, 1, maybe 2 trips. MV was the only one who showed. I told him I hope the new guy never has to move any bodies. MV is the kind of People, he got the joke.

Anyway, the shooting session on Saturday fell apart. Sunday I was antsy to a degree rarely experienced since I left the high-stress semiconductor manufacturing industry and I felt like blowing off some steam. Saturday night I sent a few score BB's across the yard, but it only took the edge off. Sunday on the way home from church, my Darling Wife agreed to let me go out to the range after we got home. I got the children acceptably fed and tucked in or medicated as required and said I'd try to be back in less than an hour. Absolute max. was 1.5 hours before we had to get ready to go back to church.

At the very least, in this session I wanted to verify the function and check scope alignment on my two newest rifles, and verify proper function of the 1911 I borrowed from a co-worker. I had previously stripped and cleaned the 1911. The rifles have been sitting probably for several years without any cleaning to speak of by the previous owner. He seems to be of the "clean the bore and the action will be alright" school of rifle cleaning. I grew up when the M4 was the U.S. service rifle, so my idea of adequately is "you could eat off the action if you don't mind the taste of oil". Oh well, I gave a hunner't bucks for each rifle so even if there are some minor functional problems, the price is still right.

I was going, as I said, to verify function, not to enjoy myself. To truly get all my shooties out, I like to spend at least a couple of hours at the range, preferably with another Grey Man. At least I got to go out, and some is a fair piece better than no shooting, any day.

The man behind the counter recommended I go with a rifle range first because they are fewer and fill up faster at their shop. I did. First up was the Marlin Model 60 with a Redfield 4x scope. The rifle I got from a friend who is now dying of a defective heart. The scope is the only tangible thing, and one of the two things of any value Crazy New Daddy ever gave me. Maybe some other time I'll say what he gave me that you can't see. Anyhow, I loaded the Marlin with two rounds to check for doubling. I ran the target out to 25 yards, set the scope adjustments to zero, and let loose. It fired and did not double. So far so good. The second trigger pull got me bupkis. I cycled the bolt, and an empty case came flying out covered in nasty dirty gun oil. The second round loaded and pulled the same act. The first spent casings wouldn't eject, and when the bolt was cycled they came out filthy dirty. After a few shots, it started ejecting about 2/3rds of the casings, but it wouldn't cycle the bolt far enough back to load the next round. I chalked the performance up to being run very dirty. I noticed that a few of the casings had crushed mouths, but I won't know what to think of that until I shoot it again now that it's been cleaned. The scope was off, but not by much, and I got it close enough for recreational use. The air conditioning in this range is so strong that it makes the targets move a couple of inches side-to-side, but I could tell that it was close, so I killed a couple of paper people and enjoyed the near-total lack of recoil from the puny little .22LR round. It was truly almost like shooting my pellet rifle the other day. Fun, even as a bolt-action. Besides, I got some high quality malfunction drills in .

Next up was the Enfield M1917 that my source had "sporterized" by installing a Monte Carlo style stock, a Lyman All American 4x scope, cutting off the rear sight and its wings, cutting off most of the front sight, reblueing the action, and cutting off the end of the firing pin. This thing, being a bolt action, was visibly filthy. I had to jam the bolt home with considerable force with every round. I can't see how anyone could hunt with this thing, but I guess if it's just one shot at a time it would be useable. I just wanted to see how the scope was lined up. It was much more obvious with this rifle that the target, even at 25 yards, was just not stable. I put one round 2" right and the next 2" left without any scope adjustments. I ran the target out to 100 yards (love the moving target system, hate the low-mass swinging paper target feature) and put a few more down range. It was minute-of-Goblin accurate from offhand, which is the whole idea. The Lyman scope has an interesting reticule. A fine cross-hair with a coarse needle from the bottom, tapering to a point just above the cross-hair. It's a bit like a German, but the cross-hair is fine and the upright is tapered along its length. Very fast target acquisition. I decided to shoot a few more magazines full just so I could have the spent brass.*


I collected my brass and target and put the rifles away, and switched to a pistol range. The 1911 was clean and 100% rattles-when-shaken G.I., so of course it ran perfectly with 230 grain ball ammunition. It also slung the brass hard enough to dent about 40% of the case mouths on the wall next to my shooting station. An unfamiliar gun, an unfamiliar round, and a drifting side-to-side target got me a head-sized grouping from two full magazines at 7 yards. Good enough. I just wanted to be sure it worked. It did. Time's up, and I'm off back to the house.

****

Post-mortem examinations of the cases, conducted after church that night:

The .45 was really flinging them hard. Dented mouths all over the place. Solid hits on all the primers and nasty scraped rims from the extraction. This extractor works good for one time use of brass, not so much for reloading. Oh well, it's not my pistol. I'd give it a trigger job and tune the extractor at least, but that's up to the owner to do or not as he pleases (I think, he doesn't care). This pistol is so worn it's almost in the white anyhow, so I guess the dinged-up brass just adds character. Or something.



The Enfield was also hard on the cases. They all show a nasty triple-score that tells me something is either sticking out from or stuck in the action, or the cartridges are not feeding quite as straight-in as they should be. The rims all got chewed as well. The extractor can be dealt with and that's not too hard. The burr or whatever, makes me think this is also not a weapon to shoot for reloadable brass (yet). I'll have to get that taken care of, pronto. Good, hard primer hits in every case.



The Marlin was hard on the mouths of a few rounds and I wish I knew why. The first few cases were nasty dirty but it started to clean up the more I shot it and baked off the oil.




****

Clean-up:

The 1911 gave me no difficulty, and cleaning was as expected. Light GSR where you would think to find it, none where you wouldn't. The final assembly went well until I got to the last step, which gave me fits as you can read here.

The Enfield was nasty. The bolt was grey when I started and black & white when I finished cleaning it. The rags looked like I had cleaned up the garage floor with them, and that was just the action. This guy cleaned his barrels but not his actions. He had cut off the end of the firing pin which means I couldn't use a nickel behind the cocking piece to disassemble the bolt. Using screwdrivers to pry, I got the bolt apart after all, and it was full of GSR and cosmoline (!) when I got in there. Oh, and I pinched myself a new blood blister putting the bolt back together, thanks for asking. I've bled on this rifle now, so that means it's officially mine. The reciever was filthy too and also changed colors during cleaning. The locking grooves had not only chunks of powder, but also little chunks of metal in them. Maybe that explains why the bolt was so stiff to close and lock eh? It's smooth and fast now though, and I'm really looking forward to shooting this piece next time.

The Marlin had sand-sized chunks of powder stuck on and in the greasy action. Almost like it had never been cleaned since 4 years after I was born, when it was manufactured. The barrel, again , was spotless.

****

Lessons:
*Shooting is fun
*Col. Cooper was right. Percieved recoil is mostly mental. Playing football will give you a harder hit than shooting a .30-06 as long as you hold it properly to your shoulder.
*Of course, when I was just shooting to empty the brass, I got sloppy and put the corner of the butt to my shoulder. Once. Ow.
*Don't try to sight in a rifle at that shooting range


*At my work station, I have various decorations held up by push pins. The push pins have spent shell casings on them. It looks like my flair is held up with cartridges jammed into the wall, and I like it. I wanted some .30-06 brass up there, so I fired it off.