Shuggy

Quick question, how well does a 6mm BR feed and eject in an AX?

I have read a few research papers on this subject and I kind of think that you are 'both right'. The papers stated that small arms barrel damage is caused by thermal stress cracking, which forms along the exposed grain boundaries. There is a reason why a lot of military small arms use hammer forged barrels with chrome lining. Mind you, having seen the accuracy tests on the LMT Sharpshooter rifle after 10,000 rounds, I sometimes think that we overthink the effects of fire cracking on stainless barrels, as long of course that the cartridge is not an 'over bore' design.

Wipe Out Patch Out - wet patch, soak for 15 minutes and then nylon brush to shift the carbon. Then wet patch, followed by two dry and repeat until satisfied. I have some Accelerator too for the days that I am in a hurry. Then a single wet patch of Balistol for storage, followed by dry patches to ready for shooting. Why? Because it's what my local gunshop had in stock.

I’ve just read this thread through for the first time and I am hugely impressed by the ingenuity on display. I don’t want to teach granny to suck eggs, but as someone with an explosives engineering background, I just wanted to make a few points about safety. You read ‘salts’, but I read ‘molten oxidising agents’. It’s really very important that everything is kept meticulously clean. You should really try to avoid any form of carbon, oils or wax on the cases or apparatus. Absolutely nothing made from Aluminium near the mix and for God’s sake, keep any ammonia based cleaning solvents well away! There! I feel much better now. I hope that this is helpful.

That’s very kind of you BD. But at present my AI only gets used on the range, so never wears a sling. However, that nice Mr McKillop is currently building me a lighter rifle, which may well get out into the field one day. So I will gratefully take one off your hands if it turns up.

Well, for me it’s just a simple way of knowing my elevation settings for each 100 yard range, without having to mess about with my phone or having to find a bit of paper. And if I want to get really fancy, I suppose that I might have one card for cold and one for hot. For a 1000 yards in the UK, that might be worth, say 0.5 of a mil of elevation differnce?

Very neat!

Choices are good: we should end up with workable solutions from 65p to £100. But some people will always want the ‘reassuringly expensive’ option!

This - from Ant Supplies at £12. Ant seems to supply mainly cheap Chinese stuff, so I will report back on quality when it arrives.

I played around with it just like that and ultimately decided that I preferred it on the rifle. Bear in mind that I shoot exclusively on ranges, rather than hunting or PRL style events. Therefore stuff on the rifle doesn’t bother me very much. The absolutely simplest version would be to punch a hole in one of the blank ID cards and tie it onto the rifle with paracord - cost about 65 pence. However, DaveT’s response got me thinking about camera fittings, so I have a few more bits arriving which should replace the existing cable lash up. I reckon that I may be able to build something just as good as the Ulfhednar or Hawk Hill, for about half the cost. I will post again if it all works.

With all my normal ranges closed, attention naturally turns to tweaking and updating kit. For some time I have wanted a rifle mounted DOPE card holder to allow me to quickly see my ballistic data. I never find using a ballistic app on my phone that great, especially with gloves in the cold and wet. I had looked at all the fancy folding machined ones, such as those from Ulfhednar, MK Machining, or Hawk Hill Custom, but you are looking at £90 for the Ulfhednar, or $90-120 for the US ones, plus the usual postage, VAT and fees. A bit of Google-Fu found a robust ID card holder/card wallet with a metal clip made by ‘GOVO’ - £14.99 off Amazon. This has a clear plastic face for the front card and room to hold 4 extra cards behind. I also obtained some blank PVC ID cards for 64 pence each. You can use a dry wipe marker, but personally I prefer an old fashioned chinagraph (grease pencil) which works well in the wet and wipes off easily with a rag. To fix the card to the rifle I wanted to use a flexible joint so that I could tweak the position and fold it flat when not in use. A cable or wire was the obvious choice. This needs to be flexible, but not so bendy that it sags or gets knocked out of position easily; and with a soft plastic coating to protect my scope. I had some PVC coated 2-core copper mains cable that was left behind by an electrician after he redid my fuse box, which proved to have the ideal balance of stiffness, flexibility and surface finish. So what do you think? It’s definitely not as pretty as the fancy machined versions, but I think that it will do the job nicely; and at a far lower cost too.

I believe that’s a Sako TRG mount.

Era-Tac are also good. These are the ‘tactical’ brand for Recknagel in Germany. These also allow you to fit accessories such as bubble levels, picatinny rails, or red dot direct mounts.

There is some really good guidance in this document. I believe that the associations had a hand in developing the guidance. https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/915934/25072019_Firearms_Security_Manual_2019.pdf

You basically need to find an external or internal load bearing wall. Some big anchor bolts and you are there.

I have an Armalon PC9, bought way back when with pistol compensation money. It’s a quality bit of kit, which I shall never sell. But I am not sure if Peter is still making them. In terms of AR15 pattern carbines, I see that Calibre Innovations is advertising a 9mm straight pull.

Well, you are not wrong. I have to say that looks extremely nice. How does the price compare?

The Janus Armaments arca rail arrived today from Sporting Services and got fitted to the AX308 after work. Overall impressions are very good. Machining appears spot on and the Cerakote is nice and even. Fit to the AX rail and RRS clamp is rock solid. If I was going to be super picky, the olive green isn’t an exact match for the AI sage green (which I believe is a proprietary blend of Cerakote). However this is a really minor point as you really cannot tell from any distance. Also, it would have been nice if they had included some Keyslot fasteners; I had to use 3 from the long Picatinny rail that comes with the rifle. Overall, really pleased and nice to see another British product. I now need to decide if I am going to swap out the superb Phoenix bipod for my Atlas fitted with an Arcalock clamp.

I would have thought that this is pretty straightforward. As long as the Section 5 RFD had the authority to ‘manufacture’ a Section 5 firearm, then that is exactly what they would be doing by converting a Section 1 LBP.

Personally, I think that’s great. This means that we now have 3 UK choices for Arca rifle rails: Janus Armaments, Precision Rifle Systems and now your friend as well.

I think that many of the gunsmiths on here have developed methods for getting the BR case to feed, but most seem to involve converted AICS magazines. You don’t mention what model of rifle you have, but some floorplate designs apparently feed the BR better, e.g. Tikka 595. Of course, the easiest route is to get a controlled round feed action such as the ones from Zermatt. Or just pick the 6XC!

I gather that many benchrest shooters still prefer to measure their charges by volume, using a Harrell’s measure or similar, rather than weighing each charge.

Are these the same as the ‘Janus Armaments’ arca rails that are being sold by Sporting Services? I have just ordered one for my AX308.

No, I remember that 5% rule too! I am sure that your load is fine. Whatever happens with low charge breech explosions, it is most unlikely to be a ‘detonation’ (shock front faster than the speed of sound in the material). It’s likely to be pressure spikes associated with burning front reflections and refractions. Highly doped, fast burning double based propellants such as Bullseye or Viht N310 can be made to detonate, but will require a bit of special encouragement to do so (happy memories of an explosives engineer!).