Tubs wrote:Some interesting observations and a few questions too:
1. Front end of the rifle liked to lift on firing and send shots wild, holding the fore-end seemed to fix that
2. I fired off aprox 100 shots, all contained 4.5 gn of trailboss; 158 JHP, 158 Berrys Copper Washed, 125 Lead Round Flat Nose; very quiet! The Berrys seemed the most accurate. If Im going to hunt I guess Ill need to pick one and stick with it so I dont have to go nuts recentring my scope for each projectile type. There were massive variances between projectile types. Is this an idiosyncrasy of lever guns because I havent experienced it with bolt actions before. Nowhere near the accuracy of my 22 or 223. If I can punch all 10's at 50 on my 223 what would be considered normal performance for a 357 lever?
4. The trigger is neither good nor bad. It is heavy, could do with accurising (or would this be a waste of time)?
Maybe spending some time on one projectile type is necessary.
Any tips? I am a bit dissapointed - expected to at least hit the 10 ring a few times
If the rifle is jumping on firing it's probably resting on something that doesn't have enough "give" in it, best to rest it on your hand or arm if you don't have a bag.
Copper "wash" is a virtually useless coating used on .22LR bullets, I can't think of any other bullets using the technique. The Berry's is a true copper-plated bullet, the copper layer is far thicker than a "wash" but not quite as thick as a true swaged jacket.
Yes, different bullet weights and designs can shoot very differently, in all calibres, including .22LR.
The old-school lever-action designs do not have the inherent accuracy abilities of securely-locked-breech rifles, which is further exacerbated by the tube magazine and associated feed system, and the fact that the magazine and forend are fixed securely to the barrel. When the magazine spring is fully compressed, a few pounds of spring force is trying to push the muzzle upwards, which reduces as the magazine empties. Likewise, the weight of a dozen heavy rounds hanging under the barrel tries to bend it downward, with this weight both reducing with each shot, and moving rearward as well. Add to these effects the fact that every time you grip the rifle by the forend, you are applying force to the barrel, a force that is difficult to keep consistent with each shot. It is possible to modify some designs to fully-float the barrel by rigidly attaching the magazine tube and forend to the receiver only, with no contact with the barrel at all. But you still have to deal with the point of balance of the rifle moving further rearward with each shot. The "relaxed" accuracy is actually part of the charm of shooting these old designs I think
The triggers are all heavy, I think all of my levers will happily hang their entire weight on the trigger scale without firing.
As I don't shoot any competition, I have no idea what "shooting tens", or a "ten ring" means in actual group sizes
I have four centrefire and two .22LR lever-action rifles, all old-school designs. The rimfires shoot very well, far better than I'd expected, not a long way short of what my bolt-action .22LR's are capable of, and much better than the centrefires. I think this is simply due to the significantly lower forces that .22LR puts through the entire firearm and shooter - 40gn bullets on 1gn of powder compared to as much as 170gn bullets on 30gn+ of powder (in the .30-30), or 265gn bullets in the .44Mag, despite velocities not being hugely dissimilar to the .22LR (we've had 1600fps+ .22LR ammo for forty years). A fairly standard .357 Magnum 158gn round weighs five-times as much, has four times the bullet mass, and fifteen times the powder charge of a .22LR - an enormous difference.
I initially put in a lot of work trying to get the centrefires even close to the accuracy levels I was used to, but I eventually realised that even if I could achieve 1MoA at 100m, it wouldn't really be necessary for the purpose of the rifles anyway. It's probably easier to get a .223 to shoot .25MoA than to get a .357 lever to shoot 1MoA
If I can _consistently_ put five-rounds into 50mm at 50m, and 100mm at 100m, without optics, I'm pretty happy with that. With a scope, I would shrink those to 40mm and 75mm and still be happy.
If I were trying to win competitions I can see myself trying to tighten those up, but that's partly why I have zero interest in competition shooting