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Punt comes off - CZ mini 270
Im a complete sucker for a project but its seldom I hit pure gold . ..
So some time ago I was doing a Sat am scan of the used rifles on TM and right there was a CZ 527 carbine for $700 buy now. The catch, which the seller im sure was aware of - it was in 6.8SPC aka a mini 270 and had the wrong magazine, it was never going to feed the way it was sold. Came with over 200 rounds of ammo. I hit the buy now. Committed.
After the usual shagging around these days the rifle arrived, and my first impression was "whoever put this together knew what they were doing". The whole deal was literally "as new".
Now I was already shooting a TC Contender single shot in 6.8, its dropped a few animals - works very nicely. I think it as having about the power of a 30-30 but with more useful ballistics.
Initial testing of the CZ527 was a revelation - this wee rifle had a shit hot trigger (in the unset mode to boot, I've never needed the single set). And it seemed to tend to make ragged holes at 100M, like 3 shot groups of 12-25mm. Nice.
So off it went to get chopped and threaded, the 24 in barrel just didn't suit the way the rest of the rifle handled. Came back with a 20" and a 1/2×20 can.
Next was load development. The Grendel boys seem to favour 123s and since the 6.8 is ballistically identical, thats the projectile weight I favoured - 120gn Hornardy SSTs - a projectile specifically developed for the cartridge.
Matching a powder to the 6.8 is a wee bit difficult here where we can't get the "AA" powders, its hard to get a powder with the right density and burn rate - most of the usual suspects result in compressed loads before you hit max pressure.
I tried W748 (too slow), AR2206H (also too slow) and IMR 8208.
Initial groups with the 8208 were very promising, so were worked up. More and more compression (with quite a bit of consultation to understand if that was safe) - the more I stuffed in, the better it shot, although at max compression the ES started to go "out".
So I called it quits at 2490 fps with the 120gn pills quite satisfactory from a 20" barrel. The groups 10mm to 20mm time after time at 100M.
This morning I was ROing for a few young guys sighting in rifles. Everyone got zeroed at 100M, then we moved to 200Y. I shot a group - first one I'd tried past 100 and happiness, 36mm of the hunting bipod, no rear bag.
300M gongs were next, I ran Strelok - use the 5.5moa hash it said. So I did and cleared all the gongs except the 75mm one - ya always gotta leave one for next time.
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