Working on the range

My dad came down last weekend and hooked me up with some reloading supplies, and a bench he built by hand.  Can't thank him enough for that.  More on that in a future post.

We spent a few days working on some data and getting all the equipment set up.  All we could do was pick some starting loads and head to the range to test them out.  These tests would include getting average velocities using a chronograph, zeroing in the rifles, and seeing how they grouped at 100 yards.

I only worked up one load for my daughters 7mm-08 since I really had no starting point with that caliber.  I loaded it about medium range based on the data I had.  It proved to be a pretty good starting point as I was able to get them to group pretty good after I got the scope zeroed in. This will provide a good base to start from.  I'm pretty happy with the group, but I'd like to see the velocity a little higher.  This caliber is starting to prove itself as being one of my favorite, and I can see myself picking up one of these in the future.

After I got my daughters rifle dialed in I let her have her time.  She jumped right in and started sending some lead downrange.

I had put up some new targets so I had a hard time seeing where she was hitting since they were dark, in fact we thought she wasn't even hitting the paper till we went up to get the target.

A serious confidence booster for my daughter, and she couldn't have made her dad and grandpa more proud of her.  Like I said before, we will be spending a lot of time at the range before hunting season so I can only see her improving.

I was up next with the 280.  I had a few more loads to try out.  I started out with a pretty conservative load and wasn't impressed too much with the velocity.  My next load was the one that my dad had been using for a while, but with a different bullet.  The velocity was faster, and more in line with what my dad had figured for this load when he developed it.  I had one more load to try as I had decided to make one a little hotter.  Just these few grains increased my velocity by about 100fps.  I was getting close to 3,000fps which was pretty amazing.  Not to mention my groups were looking pretty good, even considering the barrel being pretty warm after doing a fair amount of shooting.  I expect that had something to do with them not being a little tighter.

I'm happy with our first outing to the range, and I've already started working on some adjustments to the loads we started developing.  The options are endless when you do your own reloading.

Breaking in the barrel

Last Sunday we decided to take my daughter's gun to the range and break the barrel in.  My girls love to go shooting.

Everyone has their own opinion about the proper way to break a barrel in.  Most of them are quite tedious and overkill in my opinion.  Bore pastes and solvents are used in some of the more complicated break in methods that I found.  Why make things so difficult?  I like to go old school...I mean it worked for many years before all these new high tech methods were thought about right?

The method I finally came up with was pretty straight forward.  I grabbed a couple boxes of the cheaper yet still fairly decent quality ammo from the local sporting goods store.  The first 10 rounds we would shoot one at a time and then run the brush down the bore.  Then the next 30 rounds we would shoot 3 round groups and run the brush down the barrel.  Of course you want to make sure and let your barrel cool some during this whole procedure.  It worked out pretty good and I feel confident that those 40 rounds took any burrs out of the rifling in the barrel that there might have been.

Another goal was to get the rifle on paper (I should have brought a bigger piece of paper).  It took me quite a few rounds to get it in there where I could see it on the paper, by this time the barrel was pretty warm so it wasn't really giving me an accurate representation.

Taylor had only shot the .22 before this, so she was a little startled on her first shot.  Her and I took turns doing some shooting, I could tell she was getting more comfortable.  Exactly what I wanted to see...her having fun, and not looking at it like it was work.  With much shooting left to do this summer before hunting season I feel she will be very comfortable executing any shots on game that we find.

Our next step will be developing some hunting loads for both our rifles and getting them zeroed in.  It should be a fun summer indeed!

New rifle

A few weeks ago I picked up my daughters new rifle.  A Savage Trophy Hunter XP 7mm-08 w/ Nikon 3x9 BDC.  As you can tell by the pictures she was pretty excited.  We'll be spending the next few months doing a lot of shooting!