I took a day to do a little fishing and shooting, yesterday. It was good to be out.
In the 1980s and 1990s my main hunting gun was a .54 caliber plains rifle, and I had it sighted in at 100 yards, About 20 years ago I did some work on the rear sight. My sighting method is a little different, I use a V-notch rear and blade or bead front which looks like this when properly lined up:
Back then the gun was properly sighted in, but the rear notch was too shallow, gave me problems in some lighting conditions, so I decided to deepen it. I filed it a bit deeper, but then got distracted by a smoothbore and never got back to finish adjusting the front sight.
Last week I decided to get the old vet out and use it some after more than 15 years, so I fired a few to see where it was shooting. By pure luck, it happened to be sighted in very well at 25 yards.
Yesterday I shot it at 25, 50 and 100 yards with the same charge just to see what needed to be adjusted, and wound up with an interesting target.
I fired two shots at each distance, but used 3 different types of balls. One was a Hornady swaged .530”, one was a .530” ball cast in my Dixie Gun Works brass bag mold but then shaken to dimple it and even out the sprue, the other four were the same bag mold .530” but as they came from the mold. All the undimpled brass mold balls had a large sprue.
This target is a very good example what happens when you shoot a gun at long distance which is sighted in at a close distance. Other than the different balls, all else was the same for every shot, same lube, patch, powder charge, point of aim, shooter and rest, shot in the same session.
At each distance both balls showed the same drop.
The change was in elevation only, essentially falling further down as distance increased.
Swaged, bag mold and dimpled bag mold balls, all within a few grains the same weight, shot into the same groups.
Balls with big sprues shot the same as swaged and dimpled balls with no sprues.
I was just figuring out what needs to be done, yesterday, didn’t intend to do any filing. Deer season is a long time away, I can go at it slow and easy.
Spence
In the 1980s and 1990s my main hunting gun was a .54 caliber plains rifle, and I had it sighted in at 100 yards, About 20 years ago I did some work on the rear sight. My sighting method is a little different, I use a V-notch rear and blade or bead front which looks like this when properly lined up:
Back then the gun was properly sighted in, but the rear notch was too shallow, gave me problems in some lighting conditions, so I decided to deepen it. I filed it a bit deeper, but then got distracted by a smoothbore and never got back to finish adjusting the front sight.
Last week I decided to get the old vet out and use it some after more than 15 years, so I fired a few to see where it was shooting. By pure luck, it happened to be sighted in very well at 25 yards.
Yesterday I shot it at 25, 50 and 100 yards with the same charge just to see what needed to be adjusted, and wound up with an interesting target.
I fired two shots at each distance, but used 3 different types of balls. One was a Hornady swaged .530”, one was a .530” ball cast in my Dixie Gun Works brass bag mold but then shaken to dimple it and even out the sprue, the other four were the same bag mold .530” but as they came from the mold. All the undimpled brass mold balls had a large sprue.
This target is a very good example what happens when you shoot a gun at long distance which is sighted in at a close distance. Other than the different balls, all else was the same for every shot, same lube, patch, powder charge, point of aim, shooter and rest, shot in the same session.
At each distance both balls showed the same drop.
The change was in elevation only, essentially falling further down as distance increased.
Swaged, bag mold and dimpled bag mold balls, all within a few grains the same weight, shot into the same groups.
Balls with big sprues shot the same as swaged and dimpled balls with no sprues.
I was just figuring out what needs to be done, yesterday, didn’t intend to do any filing. Deer season is a long time away, I can go at it slow and easy.
Spence