Equipment versus practice posts and Rifle practice/shooting

[Stu]

Stu mentions training with dummy rounds above which sounds like a great idea. I’m assuming they are mixed in with live rounds to show if you are flinching? Any ideas on how to accomplish this without a partner to load my mag?

I loaded up 12 dummies (no powder, no primer). I place them on my shooting mat (so I don't lose them in the grass), put one live round in the pile, close my eyes, mix them around, load my mag, place mag in rifle. No peeking. Its a little more convenient for me since I have a 10 round mag and can get more practice per loading. This means I have at most, one live round in the mag, and sometimes none.

Once the live round fires, even if it happened to be the first in the series, I unload the mag and start over.

 

[koppertop]

I loaded up 12 dummies (no powder, no primer). I place them on my shooting mat (so I don't lose them in the grass), put one live round in the pile, close my eyes, mix them around, load my mag, place mag in rifle. No peeking. Its a little more convenient for me since I have a 10 round mag and can get more practice per loading. This means I have at most, one live round in the mag, and sometimes none.

Once the live round fires, even if it happened to be the first in the series, I unload the mag and start over.

Thanks, Stu. I’ll give that a try. I like the idea of mixing them up on your mat, I think I can make that work even with my lower capacity mag.

 

[Rich M]

Stu has a sure fire way to find a flinch. I'm always pleasantly happy to get a misfire or empty chamber and be rock solid. Happens more w 243 Than 3006 I can say.

 

[fightthenoise]

Are you guys letting your barrel cool completely before shooting the next pair? My T3x 223 throws shots like a mother after about 5. I’m shooting suppressed if that matters

 

[Rich M]

I live and shoot in the heat all the time - shoot 5 and then let it sit for a bit.

Sometimes use a battery powered fan to help it cool down. Sometimes one of those mattress inflater things. Set it up to blow from the chamber out the end of the barrel. I'm shooting off or next to a folding table most of the time.

 

[Stu]

I don't, other than the time to walk down and back from marking hits.

 

[Formidilosus]

Are you guys letting your barrel cool completely before shooting the next pair? My T3x 223 throws shots like a mother after about 5. I’m shooting suppressed if that matters

If it is actually the barrel doing that, then you have a rifle problem. Properly stress relieved barrels do not “walk” until they are glowing. Now you are going to get mirage off the suppressor, which can and will string your groups (mirage that is).

So to answer your question (with multiple T3 223’s), no I do not let or worry about them cooling off. The only rest they get is when loading mags, setting up for the next string, or when checking targets. If it is really hot, about 10-15 rounds is when mirage starts effecting them enough to matter.

 

[Low_Sky]

Bringing this back to the front page for the weekend. Hope folks will see it and get inspired to go out and try it.
I'm headed to the range, first priority to test a lot of hand loads. If time allows I made up some targets and will give this drill a try.
Looking forward to seeing more results. Cheers!

 

[fightthenoise]

If it is actually the barrel doing that, then you have a rifle problem.

Thanks Form. I was afraid that might be the case. Aside from forened contact (there is none) is there anything I should check on? Don’t mean to derail the thread so if it’s a rabbit hole let me know and I’ll make my own post.

 

[Formidilosus]

Thanks Form. I was afraid that might be the case. Aside from forened contact (there is none) is there anything I should check on?

Does it do it without the suppressor?

 

[Low_Sky]

Learned some things.
1. I need more practice, especially standing freehand.
2. I need to take a little LOP out of my stock to make room for pack straps.
3. On the timed runs, counting in my head helped me manage time better. I rushed the earlier positions, shanking shots, then looked at the timer to see a lot of seconds left out there.

I dropped four points on 7 MOA standing (yuck), one on 3 MOA sitting supported and one on 2 MOA sitting supported.

Only brought enough ammo to do this once, but I’m looking forward to my next rematch.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[Formidilosus]

Learned some things.

2. I need to take a little LOP out of my stock to make room for pack straps.

I personally would not do that. Configuring a rifle for a situation that rarely happens, that compromises performance in all other positions isn’t a good trade off. A better way to to condition yourself to place the butt more centerline inside the strap, and slide out towards the pocket, moving the strap mostly out of the way.

Regardless of stock length, the butt moves way to much in recoils and cycling when it’s over the shoulder strap.

 

[HighUintas]

I’ll have to look but it’s over 12,000, probably not to 15k yet. It’s never had so much as a patch through it.

You have put that many rounds down the barrel without ever having even put a patch through it? Do you do that with all your rifles? How is it still shooting accurately? Have you ever cleaned the chamber?

I have a stainless tikka .30-06 and I'd love to completely abandon cleaning it. But I worry about the rust, pitting, buildup of carbon on the lands leading to pressure spikes, carbon building up in neck area of chamber, etc, etc, etc.

 

[Runwilderness]

Great post. You got me to come off the sidelines and register an account.

I’m a new hunter with 8 days total of chasing elk with rifle in hand under my belt. A myriad of things ran through my head on the hunt, but worrying over what type of shot I could or could not let myself take was the most stressful.

Shooting offhand is hard. And depressing. And I need to work it. Yet I’m always shocked at the range when I’m the only person that even bothers to get off the bench and into the prone...

 

[Formidilosus]

You have put that many rounds down the barrel without ever having even put a patch through it? Do you do that with all your rifles? How is it still shooting accurately? Have you ever cleaned the chamber?

Yes I have shot that many rounds with no cleaning. Yes, almost across the board I do not clean the barrel of any rifle anymore. No, I have never cleaned the chamber.

As for “how is it still shooting accurately”? How do you KNOW for a FACT that a rifle barrel needs to be cleaned for it to shoot acceptably? It is common knowledge that you should clean, but is it really knowledge or passed down myth and grandpappy said so lore... ?

Great post. You got me to come off the sidelines and register an account.

That’s good. Shoot the drill and post it up.
And yes, offhand can be humbling.

 

[HighUintas]

As for “how is it still shooting accurately”? How do you KNOW for a FACT that a rifle barrel needs to be cleaned for it to shoot acceptably? It is common knowledge that you should clean, but is it really knowledge or passed down myth and grandpappy said so lore... ?

Of course it was passed down from grandpappy originally, corrosive primers, blued steel, etc. Continued on by companies wanting to sell their cleaning products.
You and others have shown proof you don't HAVE to clean a barrel, or at least some barrels, for it to shoot accurately through it's life.

But, how do you know for a FACT that you can do this with any quality (Tikka or custom) stainless barrel without running into issues? I've seen reports of people having so much carbon/powder residue built up in the neck of their chamber that the case failed to expand enough, causing excess pressure in even middle range charged loads. Another where pitting started to form in the chamber which caused a very hard extraction after firing due to the case expanding into those pits.

How do you know for a FACT that you can do this without causing rusting and pitting underneath all the fouling, which would possibly ruin your barrel if you do have to clean it?

The goal here is to have a consistent, accurate barrel that will not fail until that barrel's expected life is up. So, are you actually advocating that anyone can do this with their stainless Tikka barrel without issue?

I'm not trying to be argumentative on the subject, but would like to nail down some worries that I and others may have about attempting such a thing. I don't want to try it and then have to replace my barrel after 1000 rounds due to pitting and rust.

 

[Formidilosus]

How do you know for a FACT that you can do this without causing rusting and pitting underneath all the fouling, which would possibly ruin your barrel if you do have to clean it?

The goal here is to have a consistent, accurate barrel that will not fail until that barrel's expected life is up. So, are you actually advocating that anyone can do this with their stainless Tikka barrel without issue?

I’m not advocating anything, other than if we don’t have a large data set on an item or topic, it’s probably not true. I was a psycho barrel cleaner for most of my life. It’s how I learned and what was common knowledge. Then I started shooting multiple barrels out a year- at some points a barrel every 2-3 weeks. Combined with learning what grouping really means, it didn’t take long before the “why the fugg am I wasting time every day cleaning, when this barrel is gone in less than a month” came out. So, as long as it shot fine, I stopped cleaning. Because of so many barrels beforehand, I knew what the barrel life should be. Funny thing was when I stopped cleaning, barrel life was identical, or longer. The best part was that the static zero that resulted, and velocity loss is steady and generally consistent.

Volume. That is how I know it does it. In an average year, I will see around half a million CF rounds fired by those I shoot with. I personally will average between 35k and 65k a year combined. Most of these are 5.56/223. A bunch is 308, quite a bit of 6.5 CM, and a few thousands of 300 and 338 magnums. Add in hunting rifles and there’s another 20k+ of various chamberings.
Each gun has a purpose and for that purpose there is an allowable precision cutoff. When it goes over that cutoff, it gets replaced. If the allowable precision is 1.5 MOA for 30 rounds, and the gun is shooting 1.3 MOA, I don’t care if the gun would do 1.2 MOA if I cleaned it every 20 rounds. As long as it meets the requirement, I don’t care what the bore looks like, only does it stay zeroed and does it meet spec. If so- I’m not wasting time cleaning.


I’m not telling anyone to not clean. I’m saying that if you haven’t personally shot multiples of like barrels out, chambered in the same cartridge, shooting the same ammo, tracking precision with statistically relevant group sizes and zero shifts, both cleaning and then not cleaning at all- then your information isn’t real. The key here is- no one I have ever met except those I shoot with, has done so. No one that advocates cleaning regularly has ever taken a barrel 3,000, 6,000, or 10,000 rounds without cleaning and tracked it the whole time. They shoot 3 or maybe 5 round “groups” and as soon as one or two go over whatever size they believe the gun shoots- out comes the cleaning rod. Then they soak, and scrub, and patch, and when it’s perfectly clean they’ll shoot again. Usually it needs quite a few rounds through it to start shooting good again. They get a couple good groups, ignore the rounds they don’t like on the target, and exclaim it just needed cleaning.



I have yet to see not cleaning cause any issues in reliability, longevity, or safety. Cleaning a barrel before it stops shooting, is akin to wiping ones butt before they poop.

 

[Formidilosus]

I've seen reports of people having so much carbon/powder residue built up in the neck of their chamber that the case failed to expand enough, causing excess pressure in even middle range charged loads. Another where pitting started to form in the chamber which caused a very hard extraction after firing due to the case expanding into those pits.

In hundreds of thousands of rounds I’ve not seen carbon buildup that caused pressure issues. Of course it may be a possibility, though how is that fouling not getting heated up and broken down to some extent when the rifle fires?


As for pouting causing extraction issues.... that ain’t a claiming thing, that’s a “I left my gun in the bottom of a boat for months” thing.

How do you know for a FACT that you can do this without causing rusting and pitting underneath all the fouling, which would possibly ruin your barrel if you do have to clean it?

Why would I need to clean it? If all you care about is hitting targets, and the gun is hitting those targets, who cares what’s underneath the fouling? The above mentioned competition rifle has more than 10k rounds on it without cleaning and is absolutely disgusting under a bore scope. Every single smith that looks at it, including the one who barreled it, immediately wants to rebarrel it. Yet it still shoots the same size groups, as it did when it was brand new.

 

[Runwilderness]

That’s good. Shoot the drill and post it up.
And yes, offhand can be humbling.

Will do. Just need Fish and Game to reopen the local range. And or finally find a good spot of BLM and buy a target setup.

 

[HighUintas]

I’m not advocating anything, other than if we don’t have a large data set on an item or topic, it’s probably not true. I was a psycho barrel cleaner for most of my life. It’s how I learned and what was common knowledge. Then I started shooting multiple barrels out a year- at some points a barrel every 2-3 weeks. Combined with learning what grouping really means, it didn’t take long before the “why the fugg am I wasting time every day cleaning, when this barrel is gone in less than a month” came out. So, as long as it shot fine, I stopped cleaning. Because of so many barrels beforehand, I knew what the barrel life should be. Funny thing was when I stopped cleaning, barrel life was identical, or longer. The best part was that the static zero that resulted, and velocity loss is steady and generally consistent.

Volume. That is how I know it does it. In an average year, I will see around half a million CF rounds fired by those I shoot with. I personally will average between 35k and 65k a year combined. Most of these are 5.56/223. A bunch is 308, quite a bit of 6.5 CM, and a few thousands of 300 and 338 magnums. Add in hunting rifles and there’s another 20k+ of various chamberings.
Each gun has a purpose and for that purpose there is an allowable precision cutoff. When it goes over that cutoff, it gets replaced. If the allowable precision is 1.5 MOA for 30 rounds, and the gun is shooting 1.3 MOA, I don’t care if the gun would do 1.2 MOA if I cleaned it every 20 rounds. As long as it meets the requirement, I don’t care what the bore looks like, only does it stay zeroed and does it meet spec. If so- I’m not wasting time cleaning.


I’m not telling anyone to not clean. I’m saying that if you haven’t personally shot multiples of like barrels out, chambered in the same cartridge, shooting the same ammo, tracking precision with statistically relevant group sizes and zero shifts, both cleaning and then not cleaning at all- then your information isn’t real. The key here is- no one I have ever met except those I shoot with, has done so. No one that advocates cleaning regularly has ever taken a barrel 3,000, 6,000, or 10,000 rounds without cleaning and tracked it the whole time. They shoot 3 or maybe 5 round “groups” and as soon as one or two go over whatever size they believe the gun shoots- out comes the cleaning rod. Then they soak, and scrub, and patch, and when it’s perfectly clean they’ll shoot again. Usually it needs quite a few rounds through it to start shooting good again. They get a couple good groups, ignore the rounds they don’t like on the target, and exclaim it just needed cleaning.



I have yet to see not cleaning cause any issues in reliability, longevity, or safety. Cleaning a barrel before it stops shooting, is akin to wiping ones butt before they poop.

Have you shot out a statistically valid sample of barrels without cleaning where the barrel lasted quite a few years? ie shooting maybe 100 rounds a year?