Camp Perry Rifles
Working my rifles through the cleaning rack one by one. Seems like every gun I have is dirty: both ARs- I shot the newest barrel (R11) for bullseye in the Presidents 100, EIC, Hearst Doubles, National Team Trophy. The other rifle (Betsy) with a 3+ throat was my Infantry Trophy gun. The Garand and the 1903 both needed work on the barrels. (The M1A belonged to someone else and he must be cleaning it.)
Betsy is named after Crocketts rifle. R11 is named for a painted “11” on the handguards. Every night at Perry I pulled the bolt, cleaned and lubed it then ran a snake through the barrel. You don’t want to really clean a barrel during competiton. Makes the first shot go low. No sighters at Camp Perry during CMP week.
In the debacle of six-man team shooting I saved a round when R11 stovepiped in the 300 rapid. I raised my hand and didn’t touch it for the first stovepipe. The second stovepipe, in the alibi string, came on the last shot. I ran out of time because I “fired” that shot, then noticed and cleared the stovepipe. I had a mag ready but by the time I was on the trigger the target was going down. Saved a round and threw away ten points. I just now replaced the whole bolt in the bolt carrier as a fix. Have to have Rick Crawford cut the ejection post spring down so it just flips the brass clear to the 2:00 front. Everything is worn on the old bolt. I’m not going to try postmortem the failure. No symptoms before the jams. First replacement bolt on R11. Betsy had one a year ago.
R11 is the number one gun right now because it was rebarreled last. I’ve never really warmed up to that gun. Seems like Betsy is luckier or smoother somehow. That’s kind of odd because I have shot some good scores with R11: 490 in a LEG match this year, Won two NRA Regional medals and the Texas Highpower Rifle Championship (Ike Lee Trophy) with it. I’m going to have Betsy rebarrelled after the Texas Service Rifle Championship in Oct.
They probably look like any ordinary ARs to anyone else, but I could find them in a pile like a penguin finds its chick.
I’ve had more fun and learned more about shooting in Highpower Rifle with these ARs than I could have imagined. Be glad when everything is clean.
August 10th, 2007 at 12:03 am
I read an article a while back where they tried to figure out why we need fouling shots. As it turns out, it looks like it’s a matter of burning out the oil in the barrel. They found that if they sprayed the barrel down really well with one of the GunScrubber or carb cleaner type of cleaners that leave no residue (making sure that the gun was positioned to let it all run through it) and they had the first shot hitting the same place as the rest of them.
Haven’t done any “scientific” testing of the theory myself, but it makes sense.