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  1. #1
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    Accuracy Testing Procedure

    When you're testing out your rifle for accuracy, what method do you normally employ?

    For example, with a cold barrel fire five rounds and then wait 5-10 minutes and fire five more. Or do you take a shot a minute? Get the barrel warm, then fire your group?

    I personally prefer judging accuracy off of a 10 round group, however it obviously can't be done in a rush. At the same time it is good to know how much your groups will open up after the barrel starts getting warm after repetitive fire.

  2. #2
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    Quote Originally Posted by GreaseMonkeySRT View Post
    When you're testing out your rifle for accuracy, what method do you normally employ?

    For example, with a cold barrel fire five rounds and then wait 5-10 minutes and fire five more. Or do you take a shot a minute? Get the barrel warm, then fire your group?

    I personally prefer judging accuracy off of a 10 round group, however it obviously can't be done in a rush. At the same time it is good to know how much your groups will open up after the barrel starts getting warm after repetitive fire.
    It sort of depends on what I am looking for (such as cold-bore hunting accuracy) or finite 5 shot smallest group accuracy.

    I am presently trying to fine tune a precision rifle, looking for best (repeatable) groups with different loadings & different bullets.

    For what I am presently doing I start with a clean bore gun with the gun/ ammo that has sat in the ambient temperature for a few minutes to even out to existing ambient temps.

    And, for what I am presently doing I use a 9 dot target (3 dots for cold bore & 6 dots for score), dots are red 3/8" rings on a white background (my floating dot just centers up in the 3/8" ring at 25 power.

    I always shoot the first (cold-bore) dots in the same order so I can set my cold bore dial-off or hold-off for cold bore 1st, 2nd, & 3rd shot.

    On the remaining 6 dots I shoot a 6x5 target set. 5 rounds each at each of the 6 dots (time between shots depends on what I plan on shooting after best accuracy is found & possibly gun barrel type/configuration). I am a stickler for whatever I do on the first 6 dot target that I continue to do that on all the following targets.

    After I shoot a 6x5 (5 shots each at 6 dots) I then measure every group for overall size, note fliers, flier direction, etc. The close fliers tell me as much as anything about what is happening accuracy wise.

    I then look for best group, worst group, then average them all & come up with an overall average accuracy (the only group data that I respect is a full 6x5 as that tells the story. Anybody with just about any gun can get lucky & shoot a good group with a poor gun if they cherry pick the group to brag about. Show me a 6x5 as THAT tells the truth about the gun, ammo, shooter.

    One last thing that I (usually) do is to crank about 1 mil on the turret so the shots hit high of POA. On a good shooting gun if I shoot POI to POA it shoots the target dot out (or part of it out) so I lose my perfect center hold (or lose my floating dot in the strange odd shaped dark center hole).

    On a windy day like today it could be a l-o-n-g time between shots until ALL my wind flags go limp. This morning I never got all 8 to go limp at the same time so shooting was just for fun & for practicing wind hold-off, nothing usable for best accuracy today.
    Last edited by slingshot77; 04-15-2019 at 05:57 PM.

  3. #3
    MGO Member Ol` Joe's Avatar
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    Initial testing is done slowly in an attempt to keep the barrel cool and see how things are working. Once I have a final load I believe is going to produce I change to a more rapid pace.
    I normally start right off with a 5 rd group shot in a fairly short period to give an idea of what I can expect in the field if I am testing a hunting rifle. I then let the gun cool down for about 10 minutes and, shoot as long as the barrel does not get hot enough that I can not hold it with my bare hand for 20-30 seconds at a point about 4”-6” in front of the chamber. If it starts getting too hot I either slow down or quit for another 10 minutes. I try to shoot in the mornings before the wind picks up and mirage is at its lowest. I also always pick a spot my rifle and ammo are well shaded. Never let the sun hit your ammo or the box it is stored in. When letting it cool set it vertically with the bolt opened to allow air to “chimney through it if possible. It will make a difference in how quickly it cools.

    Varmint or target rifles get shot much the same unless they are going to be shot in timed matches where I try to keep my rhythm at about the same cadence as I will be shooting it for score. If a barrel is going to walk I would rather find it in practice then when I am shooting a match. I also tend to keep round count between cleanings to no more then 50 rds . If possible 25-30 rounds is better yet. I like to have a couple foulers, but I don’t want a dirty or coppered bore.
    I also trade or rebarrel rifles that show a tendency to walk, or throw the 1st shot well out of the group. Nothing frustrates me more then a nice .5” grouping of the last 4 shots from a 5 shot group that the 1st rd opened to 1.5” or more.

    Days when I am just sending a few down range in practice or chrono’ing loads, I tend to shoot quite slow. It may take a hour to shoot 10-15 rd. However, I always have a 22lr with me to give me something to shoot between groups. I might shoot 50 rds of rimfire for every 10-20 rd of center fire when ever I am at the range. This holds for handguns too.
    "Saepe errans, numquam dubitans --Frequently in error, never in doubt".

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  4. #4
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    I talked to some guys at the range that were working out to 1,000 yds... Their starting point, .2g variations in powder and chronograph. According to them, std dev would drop on one powder level. Then they would take that level, and do variation at -0.1, -0.05, 0.0, +0.05, +0.10. Would again chronograph each of those loads, but would also do three shot checks on accuracy. They would let the rifle cool for a period of time, but I don't recall for how long. The final powder load, would be accuracy checked on a cold rifle and scope dialed in as necessary.

    I looked at all that and said screw it, I'm loading for fun shooting

  5. #5
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    Fire 3, then 2 minutes between any more shots.

  6. #6
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    The vast majority of the time I'm working with the goal of best accuracy load for low round count shooting. That's generally applied to hunting situations. I'm paying particular attention to clean barrel and cold barrel shots. For that I usually keep track of clean barrel POI and then try and keep shot groups between three and five shots making sure the barrel isn't warming up much. I'm typically not going to shoot a pile of different stuff on one outing for that kind of work. Historically, a lot of my work has been with slug guns and muzzleloaders. Keeping a shotgun slug barrel relatively clean and cool is pretty important for determining accuracy of a load. Clean barrel vs. fouled on a muzzleloader can be a big factor. I got to the point where I always fired some primers or a small powder charge to dirty a muzzleloader and then swab it before even worrying about where first shot was going to go for hunting or shooting groups for load development. For rifles, handguns, and anyting rimfire I generally try to keep the barrel reasonably cool between groups and shoot 5 shot groups. I'm rarely trying to develop accuracy for conditions where I'm shooting a lot of rounds and heating the barrel up a lot. I do a partial clean between change ammunition types with rimfires and then fire several shots before shooting for groups. I watch for the POI to adjust a little and shots to start grouping tighter before shooting serious groups. That's been my practice for a long time due to the routine practice of firing sighting shots in preparation for small bore matches.

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