my prize rifle

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gunlaker
Posts: 2764
Joined: Tue Jun 23, 2009 6:16 pm

my prize rifle

Post by gunlaker »

I've posted pictures of this rifle back when I won it at Robert Garibay's match a few years back. When I won the rifle everyone had me convinced to go with an 1877 and when I placed the order on the way back that's what I did. After a while I gave it some more thought and decided to stick with the 1874's that have worked so incredibly well for me in the past. I ended up changing to an 1874 in .45-70 with a 1:18 twist 30" heavy octagonal barrel. Upgraded wood and finish but I went with a plain schnabel to make the balance better for offhand with the scope attached. I didn't have Shiloh in 45-70 for silhouette and figured I should correct that.

I shot it off and on but never quite got it shooting as well as my main silhouette rifle. That's a tough rifle to beat. It's one of the two most accurate black powder cartridge rifles I own. I long suspected that my problem was that the forearm needed to be relieved where it touches the action as the rifle would shoot well and then start making flyers. I was really hesitant to sand the forearm down but finally gave in.

A normal person would have tested with the previous best load but I guess I'm not normal. I decided to try something fresh. A BACO 460535M5 which I bought for another rifle I've since sold. I loaded up some cartridges, unweighed charges and unweighed bullets and went straight to the 300 yard target to see what would happen. The flyers are gone :-). I shot 3 sighters ( off the paper ) and guesstimated my way into the 10 ring to shoot 10 for score. The next 3 allowed me to tune my sight settings, there are 4 sight changes on this target. ( those are the 10,10,& 9 ring shots on the right ), then got serious and started paying attention to the wind flags and the next 7 went into 2.1". Total score 99-4x in a light fishtailing breeze maybe 2-5 mph.

Thanks to everyone at Shiloh for the rifle, and especially Lucinda, and to Robert for putting on that match. I'm in your debt.

Chris.

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