Victory!

Yesterday I went to the local "Tri County Gun Club" and shot my first competitive rifle match.  200 yard sihouettes with black powder single shot cartridge rifles.  I had set up my sights per the book at 100 yards to be on at 200 and sure enough, they came out about right.  I needed a little fiddle faddling, but within 20 minutes of the 1 hour practice session I was dialed in.

As you can see from the picture below, I had a built in excuse if I did poorly.

The flag would whip from forwards to backwards, right to left.  Randomness was the code for the day.

The really good guys were shooting perfect 10s, while I would struggle to hit 3, eventually improving to 6 on the "hog".  Not that I'm complaining.  The rifle has come a long way in a month and I have great expectations that it will improve further still.  The group was very friendly and had tons of advice.   I think they were glad to see a new face in the crowd.

To answer your impertinent question: yes, there was only one person in my grouping.  Just like little league softball, to participate is to win.

Another day at the range.

A day at the range can't be all bad can it?  No, not all bad, just some.  It turns out my home cast 405 grain hollow base bullets that were supposed to be the cat's meow were pretty useless.  I haven't 100% given up hope, but they don't seem too promising.  The load with 60 grains of 777 shot a whopping 24 high  X 11 wide.  The load with 65 grains shot worse at 22 high x 24 wide.  The only ray of sunshine in all this is the fact that the 2 groups vary by quite a bit due to the load.  There's the potential I could find a "sweet spot" somewhere.  There was one keyhole, which distresses me because I'm accosomed to either all or none.  It is interesting that I could hear it.  Quite a buzz. 

One thing I've been muddling over is the fact that the 777 is slightly peppier than black powder, so I use a tad less to correct.  A typical load is 70 grains BP, where I use 60 of 777.  Because of this, I'm not getting as much compression as most people recommend.  I don't know that they don't just want "all that will fit" or if it really matters, but I think my next step is a load of real black powder so I can get some compression of the powder.

When I came home, what do I find on my doorstep but the bullets I ordered from Mt. Baldy.  this was horrible timing in 2 ways.  First, I couldn't try their 405 grain hollowbase bullets, and second, I couldn't shoot my 500 grain rounds because I need them for a competition Sunday and I had no bullets to reload. 

When I crack the boxes, I do find that the Mt. Baldy bullets are slightly different than mine.  Take a look.

The one on the left is Mt Baldy, the one on the right is mine (Lee mold).  The base of the baldy is bigger diameter and rounded in a sort of parabola shape.  I think it will deform to the bore much easier.  Alloy is supposed to be 20:1, same as mine.
Here's a side shot:

Again, Mt. Baldy on the left.  The Baldy's are sized, so that gives it a different appearance to the lands.  They're pretty similar otherwise.  You may wonder how I get them to stand up like that.  Sunday is the first day of spring, the Vernal Equinox.  Fresh eggs and bullets are easy to balance on that day.  In fact, if you leave some loose on a table Saturday night, some will be standing on Sunday morning.  Try it.

So what was good about the day?  Two things.  
First, my aperture sight and globe front that I got From Dixie Gun Works is awesome.  Everything is clear and steady and visible.  Two thumbs up. 
Second, I seem to have gotten my sabots working a lot better.  If you remember last time I shot them with a smokeless load of 12gr SR4759 and they were weak and all over the target.  They also left a lot of powder unburned.  I transitioned into 30 gr 777.  With the black powder substitute I could just press the sabot clear into the case and not crimp it.  It holds quite firm in a sized case.  The pattern was 5 wide by 3.25 high for 10 rounds.  This is pretty much equivalent to my best 500gr lead bullet round.  I tried a load with 40 grains 777.  It was similar at 4 wide x 5 high.  It is looking interesting anyway.  The bore had a bit more fouling, but that's to be expected with the light bullet and load.

What does a bell shaped curve look like?

Well, like this I guess.  It is a little lopsided, but you get the idea.
The first thing you'll notice is that the column on the right, where it has the number 11 written, has 12 bullets in it.  Lead poisoning affects math ability.

I decided to throw some bullets up on the triple beam to see what sort of consistency I was getting.  It turns out my "500 grain" bullets run from 519 to 532 grains.  I bought these lubed, so I'm including lube weight in this measure.  This is over 2% variation, which seems like it could matter.  Sorting brings me to about .35%, which I can't imagine is noticeable.  Testing will tell the tale.   I had expected that the ordeal of weighing each bullet would turn me off of this project, but when you're just trying to sort into a 2 grain range it goes fairly quickly.

The first handloads.

Every step of the way requires a fiddle and adjustment.  Right out of the box I find my decapper won’t work because I don’t want to resize the cases and the die does these two steps at once.  I get a new decap only die and it works like a charm.  Why not resize?   It isn’t necessary if I always use the same rifle, may be more accurate, and may make the little press last longer.

After decap, I drill out the flash hole to .096 as the Wolfe book says is a MUST.  Then I clean, dry and recap with magnum primers. 

Now to pick my loads.  I have 2 types of lead bullets.  One is 405 grains, the other 500 grains.  Both are copies of the original bullets for this gun, except the 405 is a flat base where the original was a hollow base.  I have sourced some hollow base bullets and they should be here any day.  I do a smokeless and a black powder load for each at about 60 grains equivalent.  I have some copper jacketed sabots too.  These are 200 grains, which is a bit off the mark, except I’ve seen loads that use 220 grain pistol bullets for practice rounds, so I figure I’ll give it a shot. 

Time to head back to the range.

A day at the range is fun, but I always feel like I'm just wasting ammo and time if I'm not trying to improve something, even if it is just me.  This day I had 10 rounds each of 5 different loads, plus some duplicates of loads I thought had promise.  The surprising thing was how really bad the bad loads were.  One of the loads was measureably better than any purchased ammo, but some of them made gigantic patterns and went through the paper sideways.


The loser was anything with a 405 grain flat base.  The pattern was either narrow and tall (like 12 inches tall) or completely shotgunned allover the place.  Black powder, smokeless, it didn't matter.


The winner was a 500 grain flat base with 60 grains by volume of 777 blackpowder replica.  It shot 6 inches wide and 5 inches high at 100 yards.  I was using a blade front sight with an aperture rear, so I think I can make some of that go away with my aiming.

The "interesting" round was the sabot.  These rounds were very lightly loaded to mimic the "gallery" round from the Wolf book.  I almost laughed out loud at how soft and quiet it was.  I was using smokeless powder (12 gr SR4759) and it left a lot unburned in the bore.  The group was 13 high by 15 wide, which is awful, but all the rounds went through straight.  I found a spent sabot and it looked like it took the rifling.  I think it may be time to play with stepping up the load on these.

Here's a photo of a new sabot/bullet and the spent sabot.

My next step is to get my hands on those hollow base 405 grain bullets.  They seem to be more elusive than I thought.  I also need to mount a globe sight on the front so I can get that nice "circle in a circle in a circle" picture. 

Fiddle and fuss with sights.

About a week ago I went out to the local range and watched a black powder rifle competition.  Everyone was using what looked like a falling block action, but a trapdoor will fit right in.  I got to shoot one and I was very impressed with the sight picture from the aperture (peep) sight.  So, naturally, I felt I needed to spend money.
One of my concerns is that I don't want to modify the rifle in any permanent way.  The photo below is my solution.

The brass plate attaches to 2 screws that hold the action together.  It wraps up and around the stock without actually touching.  There are still a few swirl marks to polish out, but it is looking pretty good even so.

Above is the plate at the halfway point.  It is a 1/4" backing plate to a commercial doorknob mount.  I had to work around a few screw holes to get it to fit.

This shows the right hand side.  The plate is a bit higher than I'd like.  I'm sure a better craftsman could do a better job.  Next step is a trip to the range for some testing.

Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics.

I’ll be using this project as an excuse to start learning and applying statistical methods.  I’ve had a bit of exposure in school, but lack much real life experience, so the methods aren’t really at my fingertips.  Riflery is a prime place to use statistics as every practice session can become a data gathering exercise.  As I go through this, I’ll make every attempt to speak in English instead if Math, and go step by step.  I assume most shooters have no real statistical expertise.

I had always believed that the quote used as a title of this section was a Mark Twain line.  It turns out that not only did he not originate it, but he attributed it to someone who didn’t say it at all.  With fact checking like that, no wonder he hides behind a pseudonym.  The only information historians have been able to dig up is that it originated somewhere in the late 1800s.  I’m taking it upon myself to assume the origination date was 1877, the same year my trapdoor rifle was made.  I may be wrong, but there is a statistical possibility that I’m correct.  Ha!

OK, why statistics?  The whole idea is to use a little math to tell us something that isn’t obvious just by looking.  For instance, look at the 2 target groups that were posted previously.  They both look pretty similar.  By measuring the overall spread of the groups or measuring the smallest circle that will hold each group, we can tell that one is somewhat smaller than the other.  The question is, are the two groups so different that one ammo is better than the other, or are the two essentially the same and it was just raw luck that one group was a tad smaller?

Most basic statistical tests compare one set of values to another to see if the averages of each group are different.  Unfortunately, on a rifle, I can adjust the average to anywhere I want.  The two groups we’re looking at were centered over 12 inches apart, but with a tweak of the sights I could have put them right on top of each other.  The  feature I’m interested in is size of the group, or to say it another way, the distance of each shot from the center of the group.  The number for the average distance from each shot to the center of the group is the Standard Deviation.  If you check it out in a formula, there is some trickery to make it all come out positive and a small correction for the fact that the group is a small sample of all the shots using that ammo, but still, that’s the gist of it.  So now, we can calculate the Standard Deviations for the 2 groups and compare them.  I am splitting the measurements up into horizontal (X) and vertical (Y), so we’ll have 2 comparisons.

Horizontal:

Stand. Dev for Remington 300Gr X=2.03

Stand. Dev for Ultramax 405 Gr X=1.76

Vertical:

Stand. Dev for Remington 300Gr Y=1.75

Stand. Dev for Ultramax 405 Gr Y=1.97

You can struggle through these calculations by hand with a text book, but I recommend a spreadsheet program like Excel.  It has all the statistical formulae programmed in, but it won’t tell you when you should or shouldn’t use them.

So how do we compare these numbers?  The plan is to take the “F ratio,” which is just squaring the standard deviations and dividing one by the other.  For the numbers above:

F horizontal= 2.03 X 2.03 / (1.75 X 1.75) =1.32

F Vertical= 1.97 X 1.97 / (1.76 X 1.76) = 1.26

Then we check out a chart of how likely it is to get these numbers.  Again, I’m going long hand by checking a table, but Excel can do it all automatically with the “Ftest” function.  On the table, I get 2.25 and 2.17.  Since both of these are larger than our 1.3ish numbers we have no real certainty that the ammo is any different and any group differences were likely just chance.

So what now?  Well, we can try some other ammo.  If we think there is really a difference between the two we can redo the test with an attempt to reduce variation from other things.  For instance, if a better sight and a smoothed trigger can give me tighter groups, then maybe a retest of the ammo will be able to show a real variation.  Also, an increase in sample size, say 50 rounds of each instead of 20, will make it mathematically easier to show a difference, if one exists.  Common sense wise, I’m shooting an 8” when I should be shooting 3” or so.  I don’t think chasing this small difference is worth my effort right now.