So, what happens to the smallbore rifles and ammunition components we put through the barrel. Why DO we need exhaustive tests? Why is there a difference?
I dunno, but there is! Unlike fullbore, we have no control over the rimfire ammunition, so really without testing, you are in a lottery. Will this stuff shoot or is it rubbish? Believe me, you need to find out….Big time!
A number of years ago, I was really lucky, when I visited the Eley factory in Birmingham UK, after an invitation from them to test my gear.
In due course, I fronted up with my gear and set the rifle up in their vice and down the tube at the test range. Along side of me I had a selection of Eley Tenex batches and started to fire ten-shot groups.
I started with a dead clean barrel (the Hart) and shot some tight groups and some not so tight. Nothing at that stage really rang my bell so to speak, even though I did have one batch that was pretty tight. I asked for some more selections of batches and once more cleaned the barrel again, then shot the batch I had put aside. Over the clean barrel, this was not quite as tight, which gave me more room for thought.
The new selection arrived, and so I started again. The first selection was tighter than the other batch from before, so I discarded that one and set up to test the second of the new series.
Ten shots later, I had them all in the one hole…. “Whoa” I thought, and set up again with the same batch of Tenex and brought the previous ten-shot group back so I could measure it. Just a shade over 7mm was the result of the measure. I reckoned I was on the way here!
Over the next hour of so, I shot a string of ten, 10-shot groups down that tunnel and all of them went around 6mm. In fact one of the groups would not allow a spent .22 case to go through the hole it had made. I had never seen accuracy of this type through my rifle before and in fact have not seen it since! Was this batch of Tenex just a fluke?
I had no idea but it did not take me too long to find out how much the factory had left of it….. it turned out they had 33,000 rounds left and I bought the lot. As it turned out Eley actually sponsored me with that batch, plus others, for quite a while. I am forever grateful to Eley for that gesture. I can tell you it made an enormous difference to my life. It was this batch of Tenex that I used for nearly five years of extremely high results, including world
72 Target Shooter
record prone stuff.
I only ever shot this batch in
matches, did not train with it and I have only just used the final 10 shots I had left of the best batch of Tenex I ever saw. Those last ten shots registered a very tight 100 over 50 metres on our club range and when you consider it is now 26 years old and still shooting very tight it does give you some idea. Was I lucky? I have no idea, but I was not complaining.
OK now consider this. That same trip overseas I was with a pretty hot team from Australia and we called in at the RWS factory in Furth, Germany as some of the guys (and gals) had not tested their rifles anywhere. The test bench at RWS was even better than the type used in the UK and the Team tested a lot of R50. Some of the results were not good and Anton Wurfel asked if he could test some of ‘my’ Tenex just to get an idea. I gave him a box of it and it did not set the world on fire through his barrel, so I shot the last ten shots from that same box out of my rifle.
There it was again, one very small hole! The RWS technician in charge of the test bench had his jaw on the floor and out came the vernier calliper and scales. I would not release any of that batch to him as I had a heap of respect for those in Birmingham, even more so when they flew me back there the following year to test again. Funny what world records will do eh? The RWS technician was astounded and even more so when that very same batch of Tenex shot very mediocre groups through another team mates rifle as well. Why?
Once more I dunno, but it lays a pretty good foundation for the thought that you need to test your own gear stringently, does it not? The guys did find some RWS R50 that shot quite well over that morning’s work in Furth and as a matter of fact, my current batch of R50 I use in my club work shoots very well also.
There is further evidence of barrel factors supporting this, when on that same tour of the World Cups I was watching a pretty young German elite team shooter who was having heaps of worries in her training at Weisbaden. I came to know her quite well eventually and I felt sorry that no results were on the horizon for her. We all went to sit and chat with her and I found she was really puzzled.
I asked her to shoot a series prone for us and with her team coach looking on, she dropped five points in 20 shots. He was shaking his head and with Anton and Wolfie Jobst speaking fluent German, I formed the opinion he was going to drop her from the squad to shoot the upcoming world cups in Suhl, Munich and Zurich. She was understandably shattered.
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