Zloty Stok ZS5 Fg

[martinibelgian]

Tested tody 2 things at the same time: the recently purchsed polish powder as mentioned above, and my 45-70 rifle after fault diagnosis and correction. I know, never change 2 or more variables, but in this case...

The rifle is my trusty old Greener GP in 45-70, hich recently has been giving me fits - it would shoot a few shots in a nice, tight group, and then start 'walking' its shots horizontally. Which is why I did a complete takedown and reassemby, during which I found that the barrel takedown screw was pretty loose. Loose as in being able to tighten/loosen it with my fingers .

So after a complete cleaning and reassembly, off to the range with some new loads with the Zloty Stok Fg powder - quite a bit cheaper here than Swiss: Swiss sells at 85€/kg, whereas this powder costs 63.5€.

Before shooting the 45-70 match rifle, I tried it with a 577-450 Martini-Henry, blowtubing only - not good... No even able to keep my shots in the black of the ISSF 25m Pistol target at 75 meters. of course, military rifle prohibits cleaning between shots, and the stuff does seem to burn rather dirty.

Next was the Greener 45-70: this rifle has a Ron Snover .462 Metford segmental rifling barrel, and Rex Holbrook peep sights. I kinda 'forced' on the load, squeezing in 72grs of powder behind a 520gr 30:1 groove-dia. (.458) PP RN bullet, which obviously was seated pretty deeply in the WW case. Primer was blue box WLR.
Wiping between shots, a wet bore pig with wet VFG felts front and back, pushed by a dry patch, followed by another 2 dry felts pushed by a dry patch. Results were pretty encouraging: The 1st shot from a cold, clean barrel hit the X-ring. Shot 2 and 3 went into the 9-ring at 6 o'clock. A slight sight adjustment brought te next 5 shots in the 10-ring, except for 1 shot that I badly pulled into the white...

Another try with 75grs of (well-compressed) powder also put 5 shots into the X-ring - so yes, pretty happy to have an alternative to swiss for this rifle. I still have to try it at longer ranges obviously, but this already is pretty promising...

Best wishes from Belgium,
Gert

[BFD]

I had the loose barrel syndrome too. The barrel unscrewed in the middle of a match actually. Once I figured out the problem I glued it in place with red loctite and it suddenly became my most accurate rifle.

I'm curious how you tightened up your rifle. Did you glue it or just snug it back up to the receiver and hope it holds?

[martinibelgian]

The barrel threads were already loctited (blue loctite), so I just snugged down the takedown screw - which apparently did the trick. But it just might be a good idea to redo the loctiting of the barrel in the receiver...

The Greener GP has a split receiver, with a takedown screw that 'squeezes' the lower, split front receiver ring to exert some lateral pressure on the barrel. The takedown barrel has an indexing lug to make sure it always indexes correctly.

This rifle has lots of things wrong with it (like a .462 barrel with a standard dia. 45-70 chamber), but in spite of that it can still be quite accurate. Contrary to military Martini's, it is a real b*st*rd to take down and reassemble. My 1st BP match rifle, and the one I took to the SA 2006 match in 2006.

[martinibelgian]

Here the pics of the targets shot:

This one was the 1st one, 1st shot directly in the X-ring - but 2 next ones were the low 9's (logical, she tends to shoot high with a cold, clean bore)
I gave the sights an extra minute, and then proceeded to put the next shots in the 10-ring - except for that white one, a nasty pulled shot... load was 71.3 grains of powder, 520gr 30:1 RN PP groove-dia.bullet.


This was a heavier load, about 73grs, all the rest the same. Shot to the same POI, although I do believe it was just a cat's hair more to the right. Could have been my position too, after all, I had to go and change targets.

Top target 10 shots, bottom 5. Still al while before I can test at longer ranges, unfortunately.