Thread: 3 identical factory rifles

Will they all kill deer?

Originally Posted by Bol Tackshin

Will they all kill deer?

I think thats what I'd like to know too, albeit establishing if they are "minute of rabbit" has merit
!

It might be worth testing them out at 300m too. That could show differences in stability / accuracy / usability potential that make no difference at short range.

I presume these are work rifles. The shooter and role they are allocated to will make a difference to long term condition of the tool. Im thinking of checking performance every thousand rounds or so.

Scopes and mounts need to be standardised across them for testing of course.

Originally Posted by Tentman

I think thats what I'd like to know too, albeit establishing if they are "minute of rabbit" has merit
!

Now you're going to kill a massive sample size of deer as well

Sounds like a full time job so you had better hurry up and retire

Are you going to use the same mounts and scope on all 3 ?

I still haven't decided exactly what to do . ...

But the first candidate showed up for its initial interview, which I have to say was extremely promising. A look down the tube showed nothing unusual and quite clean looking but a few felt plugs pulled a bit of "soft" carbon out. An inexpensive scope was mounted and off to the range for a bit of "on the job" evaluation!

At 100M a rough zero was established and a few 5 shot groups followed to get a feel (oops are ya allowed to feel job candidates these days) for it handling and trigger. Fiocchi 60 gn ballistic tip went into a very nice little cluster, then some old 77 TMKs followed, not quite as good but remember, we are not drawing any conclusions yet!

Next up were 10 rounds of my standard varmint load, bulk Hornardy 55s over 8208. A quite nice group eventually. . . fired 5 from the mag and then single fed, with the barrel hot enough for mirage to be an issue for the last 3 rounds (there was very little wind). I measured it at ES 1.36 MOA and MR 0.46 MOA. Not too shabby at all. Pic coming but yup, it's hired!

The rifle did have one issue common to Howa's. A previous owner had replaced the activator and trigger springs with lighter ones. The trigger was breaking at 1.0lb on my lyman scale but had the dreaded actuator safety engaging if the bolt was run at a decent speed, this makes the trigger very heavy and grity.

I feel it's essential you can run the bolt fast and hard in a hunting rifle, so I pulled it apart but the adjustment screw couldn't apply enough pressure to get the trigger above 1.5 lbs. The previous owner had supplied the original springs so I refitted the second stage spring (leaving the lighter first stage one in) and adjusted things till running the bolt hard didn't effect the trigger. That resulted in a very nice crisp let-off at 3.0 lbs (1.35 kgs) and I can shoot well with that.

I put 10 rounds of Fed blue box 223 through a howa mini yesterday. It sucked

Interesting that it climbed...

Ignore the numbers it's just how I tagged them when marking the target in the app. It scattered randomly

Dang, cause that was candidate A's task for tomorrow . . . .

Let's see if yours does any better

I'm quite invested and interested in this thread.

Originally Posted by gimp

I put 10 rounds of Fed blue box 223 through a howa mini yesterday. It sucked

That's worse than my shitty Franchi and shitty loads..........and YOU can shoot!

Originally Posted by Tentman

So I have the opportunity to have 3 Howa Mini 223s here, all with 20' light barrels. I'd like to shoot them as a set and establish just how they shoot with various ammos. I'll use groups of at least 10 shots at 100M and using a variety of factory ammo and reloads. I'd like to explore a few things like barrel heating (fast groups versus slow ones), accuracy and one rifle will have a variety of tuning tweaks etc.

I'm interested in ideas on what sort of tests would interest people. I'm not a scientist so although I'd like to minimize variables, the results might not be that useful, just sayin!

Well first you need to start a thread asking for everyones input and then question EVERYTHING!