JC's SHOOTING PAGE
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Man, that was a long time ago. I was 18, and that Sako .222 Magnum was the first rifle I ever had built. It's long gone, like a lot of other things.
This page will be an on-going project that grows quickly, I hope. Let's start with my Ruger 10/22. I bought it stock for $170 at Wal-Mart with the intention of doing a complete refit, but it shot with every indication of wanting to be good so I am doing it slowly. I'll probably keep the factory barrel on this one and get another to outfit with a custom heavy barrel. The factory trigger broke cleanly at 6.5 lbs., but it felt like much more. I put in a Volquartsen trigger/sear/hammer upgrade which brought the trigger pull down to about 3 3/4 lb. but is a bit mushy. I'll try to get used to it. More shooting might smooth it out, too. I also added an extended magazine release and a new bolt release. Here it is.
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This is the factory carbine stock, which I hated. I cut off the fore end where the barrel band fits on and rounded it off, preserving (for now) the factory bedding point. I also hate the factory butt plate, so I added the recoil pad, adding about 1/2" to the length of pull while I was at it. But before that I built up the comb and added the cheekpiece. I like powerful scopes, and this Simmons 6.5-20X sits so high that the factory stock didn't begin to fit right. This is an easy project for the DIY shooter, and I'll explain it later on another gun. The job was totally ugly before the paint went on, which was fine. My gunsmith instructors at Trinidad State Jr. College would have shit had they seen it (and would have smacked me up-side the head), but I had the paint scheme in mind all along. The paint is lacquer that I mixed myself. First white, then yellow, then orange, followed by a shot of black Vreeble. Vreeble is a crackle paint that goes on in a uniform coat and then shrinks back into random patterns. It's so strong in its shrinkage that it usually pulls some of the under-colors with it, so some yellow shows through the orange. I was hoping it wouldn't shrink all the way to the white, and it didn't. Vreeble also thickens as it shrinks, creating a texture that is useful and pleasing on a firearm. I finished it off with two coats of clear to protect the colors. I think I'd like to paint the metal the same way, but I'm resisting it for now. The comb height is perfect for field shooting but a bit too high for comfortable bench shooting.
Rifles that don't fit suck.
Finding Max Cartridge Length
For any cartridge/bullet combination it's nice to know the max over-all length, since proper seating often contributes much to accuracy. There are commercial gauges for this but I thought of a much cheaper solution. I epoxied short lengths of 3/16" rod to the back of some bullets with a jig that looks like this:
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Here's another view:
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The upper block holding the rod is permanent. The lower block is merely clamped in place so that I can interchange bullet diameters. Here's what you get:
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That's a .25 cal 75 gr. Hornady V-Max, a .22 40 gr. V-Max, and a 120 gr. Sierra 7mm Pro-Hunter. Wooden dowels might work just as well but I thought the rod would be straighter. On an open breech gun simply insert the bullet into the chamber until it contacts the throat, then hold a piece of tape against the end of the breech and touch it to the rod. It looks like this with my T/C Contender:
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The distance from the bullet tip to the edge of the tape is your maximum overall length. Record that figure in your reloading log.
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Seat the bullet at least .020" shy of max length to keep pressures from jumping. With a repeater you may find that max length cartridges are too long to function through your action, in which case you may have to decide between best accuracy and fast repeat shots.
Bolt guns and such require a different trick to measure overall maximum length. Insert a cleaning rod through the muzzle and rest it against the closed bolt, then flag the rod at the muzzle with a piece of tape. Then remove the bolt, carefully insert the bullet/rod into the chamber as far as it will go, gently touch the bullet tip with the cleaning rod, and apply another piece of tape. The distance between like edges of the tape will be your max overall length. Reduce that figure by .020" and load some shells. (Short bullets may have to be seated deeper than this to be held securely by the neck, in which case load them as far out as seems reasonable). Max overall length will change from bullet to bullet because they mostly have different ogives and shapes, and max length should be determined for each bullet. But the difference between the max length with any two bullets will usually be the same, so when a new gun is acquired in a caliber you already have you only need to find the max LOA for one bullet you already have figures for, then adjust the others accordingly.
Super-Trimming Cartridge Cases
Sometimes you need to trim the hell out of a case when reforming it. Trim dies are available, but when I wanted to shorten some .30/30 cases into .30 Herretts I didn't want to wait. I threw together this simple jig to hold my Moto-Tool and trimmed the cases with a fiberglass cutoff wheel. Like this:
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The Dremel base parts were made with a 2" hole saw. Since the Moto-Tool is about 1.830" in diameter weather stripping was used to make up the difference. The tool is held in the base by a wooden cam clamp. The case (already trimmed in this picture) is held snugly in a block of MDF. The two big spring clamps hold the depth stop and hold the whole shebang to my drill press table. With a little finagling the case can be cut very close to finished length, then finished off in a regular case trimmer. Trimming each case takes less than a second. If you've already got the Moto-Tool this is a really cheap way to go. It wouldn't be hard to make this into a nice permanent jig if you do a lot of this sort of work.
