New Rifle

I took the Savage 110 out today to sight it in and play with it a little. Fifty rounds of ammo later, I've learned a couple of things.

First of all, when you break a stock, disconnect everything, remount a new stock, then re-mount everything, you've got to start over with load development. The loads that worked in that rifle before, with the plastic stock, no longer work with that rifle and a wooden stock. Something's changed. Everything has changed. I had two loads that worked reasonably well in that particular rifle and now those two loads turn in accuracy that is only so-so. I've got to do load development all over again. That's not a problem, because that means I've got to do some more shooting.

I took the chronograph to run the loads across it. One of those loads features a 168 grain soft point bullet and Reloder 22 Powder. I'm pushing that bullet at 2778 fps, with an ES of 37 and a Sd of 10.7. The numbers show that I'm not over-driving the bullet. The load duplicates factory ammo, and I've got plenty of data (over 20 shots) for good Sd numbers. It's a good load, and before the accident, would turn in accuracy at almost MOA in this rifle. Not anymore. I'm getting groups on the average of about 3". Oh, I could kill a deer with it. It's just not as accurate as I'd like it. I'll have to find another load, which means going through the drill. It might be as easy as tweaking the powder up or down a grain or so.

Such is the reloader's task.

I took the .45-70 Handi-Rifle to the range also, and ran some numbers with the chronograph. I'm pushing a soft-lead 405 grain bullet at an average 1275 fps. The recoil is exciting with that load and I didn't know if I was going to be able to finish the string of fire. I'm through with that rifle till next deer season. It'll do what I want it to do.

It's time to start the work week. Graduation tonight for a lot of area high schools. Mine included. PawPaw will be working till it's over.