A couple of months ago, my father bought a P14 Enfield. He calls her "Pillsbury." Feeling like Indiana Jones on his Last Crusade, I said, "Daaad! You know that's not what the Doughboys carried!" He said, "I know. 'Pillsbury.'" He has some Oddways about him
On the outside, Pillsbury has all the patina (that's what you call rust after you knock off the big chunks and oil what's left, right? ) of a 100 year old battle rifle. A few small chucks of stock are missing, but everything essential is there and serviceable. She is indeed beautiful...you know, for a military grade weapon designed to kill people
On the inside, she headspaces good, probably thanks to a mismatched bolt. She's got some barrel pitting, but her rifling is fully intact (i.e. no chunks missing, goes all the way from chamber to muzzle and is definitely "there"). The ol' stick a cartridge in her muzzle and hope it doesn't fit test...well......I mean, the bullet went all the way in, but at least it stopped when it hit the case mouth, right?
We took her to the range for the first time a couple of weeks ago. It was a busy day with a match later in the afternoon and a bunch of other rifles to shoot. She and Dad put her first three rounds into the black of a target at 25 yds, so I felt confident we'd be on paper at 100.
We went about the rest of our shooting without really scrutinizing the target. Then I put a bigger target stand at 100yds. His first hit was high and wide, barely on the paper. I don't have the greatest spotting scope in the world, but the hole looked funny. Maybe it knocked off a paster from an old hole? At least one was off the paper. When the third hole showed up as being "not round," I told him to stop throwing away ammo...'cuz we got problems
We talked about options. Maybe we could get over sized cast bullets (hollow base?!?) Maybe it was new barrel time? Maybe he would just not shoot past 25yds? Well...when I got home and started cleaning up my targets, I noticed that the third one really wasn't an option either:
As I said, we didn't pay too much attention to the 25 yd targets beyond seeing a disturbance in the black If we had, we wouldn't have wasted ammo at 100. I had been wondering if PPU used boattail bullets in their 174gr. .303 ammo. Yup, they sure do (another interesting aside: next to the 2 o'clock keyhole, you can see three .22 holes just about touching each other. Those were the first three shots Dad fired out of my .22 Garand As long as he's got the right glasses on, he usually can shoot ok )
This was pretty depressing. We've been incredibly lucky stumbling onto affordably priced old military rifles that headspace and shoot well. Our luck was bound to run out sometime...I just feel bad that it was on his rifle
Before we did anything drastic or expensive with Pillsbury, I had one hope that I could try. I assumed that the PPU ammo used .311" bullets. I had a box of .312." Would .001" really make a difference? I worked up a load of Varget from the starting (38 gr maybe? I don't remember...but I wrote it down so I wouldn't have to remember ) and going up by .5gr. Katie and I took Pillsbury to the range the next day, and did this at 100yds:
Pay no mind to the .22 holes in the X. That was Katie and her 10/22 There is, however, one .303 hole in the X. They aren't marked on that target, but as she spotted for me, Katie was documenting which hits where from which string.
The low flinger was from the first string, and I'll take credit for that...I was maybe a little nervous about the rifle blowing up if I misread my scale or something In general, as the charge increased, the POI moved up. Other than the first, each group was well within what I consider tolerance for my ability with iron sights from a simple rest. Heck, I was just happy that all the holes were round
So, now I need to pick on of the lower charges (because the POI is good and, more importantly, why put more stress on the old girl than necessary ), and start loading. Even taking the low flinger out, the starting charge made the biggest groups, so I'm wondering if it was a little too low and maybe had wonky ignition or something? I don't know...I'm certainly not a master reloader by any means. I don't even have a chrony. I do know that starting charge +.5gr and +1.0gr made perfectly acceptable groups, mostly in the black. That should work for us
I know it is a stopgap measure and not a real solution, but hopefully she can hold onto enough of these bullets to take Dad through a couple of Axis vs. Allies shoots.
What a difference a thousandth makes!
On the outside, Pillsbury has all the patina (that's what you call rust after you knock off the big chunks and oil what's left, right? ) of a 100 year old battle rifle. A few small chucks of stock are missing, but everything essential is there and serviceable. She is indeed beautiful...you know, for a military grade weapon designed to kill people
On the inside, she headspaces good, probably thanks to a mismatched bolt. She's got some barrel pitting, but her rifling is fully intact (i.e. no chunks missing, goes all the way from chamber to muzzle and is definitely "there"). The ol' stick a cartridge in her muzzle and hope it doesn't fit test...well......I mean, the bullet went all the way in, but at least it stopped when it hit the case mouth, right?
We took her to the range for the first time a couple of weeks ago. It was a busy day with a match later in the afternoon and a bunch of other rifles to shoot. She and Dad put her first three rounds into the black of a target at 25 yds, so I felt confident we'd be on paper at 100.
We went about the rest of our shooting without really scrutinizing the target. Then I put a bigger target stand at 100yds. His first hit was high and wide, barely on the paper. I don't have the greatest spotting scope in the world, but the hole looked funny. Maybe it knocked off a paster from an old hole? At least one was off the paper. When the third hole showed up as being "not round," I told him to stop throwing away ammo...'cuz we got problems
We talked about options. Maybe we could get over sized cast bullets (hollow base?!?) Maybe it was new barrel time? Maybe he would just not shoot past 25yds? Well...when I got home and started cleaning up my targets, I noticed that the third one really wasn't an option either:
As I said, we didn't pay too much attention to the 25 yd targets beyond seeing a disturbance in the black If we had, we wouldn't have wasted ammo at 100. I had been wondering if PPU used boattail bullets in their 174gr. .303 ammo. Yup, they sure do (another interesting aside: next to the 2 o'clock keyhole, you can see three .22 holes just about touching each other. Those were the first three shots Dad fired out of my .22 Garand As long as he's got the right glasses on, he usually can shoot ok )
This was pretty depressing. We've been incredibly lucky stumbling onto affordably priced old military rifles that headspace and shoot well. Our luck was bound to run out sometime...I just feel bad that it was on his rifle
Before we did anything drastic or expensive with Pillsbury, I had one hope that I could try. I assumed that the PPU ammo used .311" bullets. I had a box of .312." Would .001" really make a difference? I worked up a load of Varget from the starting (38 gr maybe? I don't remember...but I wrote it down so I wouldn't have to remember ) and going up by .5gr. Katie and I took Pillsbury to the range the next day, and did this at 100yds:
Pay no mind to the .22 holes in the X. That was Katie and her 10/22 There is, however, one .303 hole in the X. They aren't marked on that target, but as she spotted for me, Katie was documenting which hits where from which string.
The low flinger was from the first string, and I'll take credit for that...I was maybe a little nervous about the rifle blowing up if I misread my scale or something In general, as the charge increased, the POI moved up. Other than the first, each group was well within what I consider tolerance for my ability with iron sights from a simple rest. Heck, I was just happy that all the holes were round
So, now I need to pick on of the lower charges (because the POI is good and, more importantly, why put more stress on the old girl than necessary ), and start loading. Even taking the low flinger out, the starting charge made the biggest groups, so I'm wondering if it was a little too low and maybe had wonky ignition or something? I don't know...I'm certainly not a master reloader by any means. I don't even have a chrony. I do know that starting charge +.5gr and +1.0gr made perfectly acceptable groups, mostly in the black. That should work for us
I know it is a stopgap measure and not a real solution, but hopefully she can hold onto enough of these bullets to take Dad through a couple of Axis vs. Allies shoots.
What a difference a thousandth makes!