Hi hotmetal,
My Lithgow is performing ok. It's no Anschutz but it is a consistant grouper with no drastically wayward shots.
I have tried a lot of the premium match ammo from Lapua, RWS, Eley, Norma and SK. They are all the same at about 15-20mm groups. The cheap CCI and Win T22 ammo is 1.5" at best. The Federal 922A is also mostly 15-20mm groups but occasionally it throws me a bone with an 8-9mm group. Im mentioning the part number because some of the first boxes i bought from the range were labeled "Ultra Match" but now the same part number is "Match". The "ultra match" is now part UM2 and i want to try some but at $30 a box it'll have to wait.
I haven't checked the headspace on my rifle but I can say it feeds perfectly from the magazine. I do get the occasional empty case bouncing back into the ejection port which needs to be cleared and the fastest way is to drop the magazine and let it fall out the bottom.
After my previous posts i discovered something that was effecting the bedding. On my rifle, the bottom of the magazine well was touching the stock at the bottom of it's inletting. This meant that the action wasn't seating properly in the bedding 'V's because it was rocking on the magazine well and it was impossible to get consistent torque on the stock screws. I deepened my stock's inletting underneath the magazine well with some careful dremel work and the action seats nicely and now torques down well. I also needed to shorten the front screw slightly and remove some material from the barrel channel to improve the float.
I told the Lithgow factory about my bedding issues and they replied saying the engineers had checked and found i was right and It has been addressed.
My stock flexes at the forend and i've been meaning to use the Stock Stabilizer. I will also bed it eventually. Do you have any pictures of your bedding job.
I wasn't too happy with my scope and i was thinking it may have been the reason for my inability to tighten the groups. I had noticable parallax and the side focus ranges were way off (eg. the side focus scale said 150yd at 50m).
Yesterday i found that my ocular focus was wrong. I was compensating for the badly adjusted ocular with the side focus so the image was clear but not ideal. I also found i had the scope slightly to far forward and i wasn't getting a sharp edged circle in the view. Now that i had adjusted both correctly the Side focus is very close to the actual range and i don't detect the parallax anymore. I'm itching to get back to the range and see what difference it makes.
The picture below shows my results on a good day when i'm shooting well. The ammo is Norma 2, Eley Match and Federal 922A
- Target_27-02-15_Norma_Eley_Fed.jpg (228.45 KiB) Viewed 77118 times