OU812
Handloader
- Apr 18, 2006
- 2,099
- 2
A week ago we went out and shot at 400 and 600 yards and boy was that a hoot. At 400 we put up grapefruit sized balloons so hits were easy to see and 600 we had a piece of 18x21 plate steel painted orange. With the spotting scope we could see the vapor trail of the bullet as it impacted, that was cool to watch. The 8mm was shooting awesome at those ranges.
Soooooooooo I come home and clean the rifle and notice that the end of the fore arm is ever so slightly touching the barrel, dollar bill wont slide in between the two. I pull the action out and sand a little off the stock and reassemble. When I reassemble I tap the butt of the stock on the ground to set the recoil lug and tighten up the action screws equally. All seems good now. In the next day or so I go to my range which only goes out to 200 yards and check my zero after pulling the stock off. I would post up pictures but I'm not sure everyones screen will be wide enough or if shotgun looking patterns are of interest. I'm thinking what in the hell is going on here. The cases have had 5 firing and I remember my friend Rick S. telling me about cases getting work hardened and the need to anneal them. I go home and anneal the cases and go back out and shoot again, same exact load, gun, rest ect.. At first I though I forgot to take down my old targets because these looked just as bad but no such luck.
I got to thinking about how I reassemled the gun after pulling the action and could find no fault other than I did not use my inch lb torque wrench. I don't need no stinking torque wrench I could precision guess 30-35 inch lbs. I was wrong, add this to my long list of "wrong". Loosen up the action screws and retighten with torque wrench. Went out yesterday and at 200 yards shot the following.The gun had shot just fine until I decided to "keep fixing it until it's broke".
Soooooooooo I come home and clean the rifle and notice that the end of the fore arm is ever so slightly touching the barrel, dollar bill wont slide in between the two. I pull the action out and sand a little off the stock and reassemble. When I reassemble I tap the butt of the stock on the ground to set the recoil lug and tighten up the action screws equally. All seems good now. In the next day or so I go to my range which only goes out to 200 yards and check my zero after pulling the stock off. I would post up pictures but I'm not sure everyones screen will be wide enough or if shotgun looking patterns are of interest. I'm thinking what in the hell is going on here. The cases have had 5 firing and I remember my friend Rick S. telling me about cases getting work hardened and the need to anneal them. I go home and anneal the cases and go back out and shoot again, same exact load, gun, rest ect.. At first I though I forgot to take down my old targets because these looked just as bad but no such luck.
I got to thinking about how I reassemled the gun after pulling the action and could find no fault other than I did not use my inch lb torque wrench. I don't need no stinking torque wrench I could precision guess 30-35 inch lbs. I was wrong, add this to my long list of "wrong". Loosen up the action screws and retighten with torque wrench. Went out yesterday and at 200 yards shot the following.The gun had shot just fine until I decided to "keep fixing it until it's broke".
