Yesterday Quick Range Trip

Got a call from a couple of friends of mine wanting to go to the range.

Got my work done and we met up at the range.

For handguns we worked on shooting the plate rack with a timer, which they had not done before. I shot my Masada from a holster, and shot my IMI Jericho, and they shot their firearms from low ready.

Lots of fun. I got to try out a H&K Elite 9mm which has just an awesome trigger and overall feel as its a big hand cannon with negligible recoil as a result. I also got to shoot his Beretta 92X again, his Sig 365XL, and Canik TP9SFx. Yes he has some nice handguns.

The Sig 365 is impressive. A very thin grip for 12 rounds that almost feels like a single stack. Very nice and thin, but still able to knock the set of plates down in under 6 seconds with it when shooting it for the first time. First time I shot a Sig 365 and I may have to look into one of those.

The Canik TP9SFx was a definite sleeper hit - the trigger on it is out of this world good, its essentially their version of the Walther Q4 and the trigger was simply awesome right out of the box. He had an RMR mounted on it making knocking down plates a piece of cake.

Then off to the rifle range.

I shot my 6.5 Creeedmoor and the 3.5lb trigger proved a worthy improvement.

I then got to shoot his Begara bolt-action rifle in 6.5 which offered some very impressive accuracy and had a bolt like butter. Very impressed with that rifle - it's a .4 MOA rifle which is pretty darn nice.

I also shot his FN SCAR 20. With a good scope, I was regularly shooting groups at 100 yards with the bullet holes touching each other, not a fluke but repeatable, which is kinda crazy. He had some 155 grain hand-loads for it and they simply shot amazingly well. The harmonics coming off the SCAR are interesting - it's quite the ringing sound after each and every shot. That's an amazing and accurate rifle.

He also had a AR15 he had built up as a DMR rifle and tested some loads he made with it - consistently under .5 MOA with 77gr Berger bullets he loaded which was not bad at all. Yep, he's got some nice stuff.

That's another 100 trouble-free rounds through the Masada and 50 through the Jericho. A good time with friends for a short range trip.

New 6.5 Creedmoor Rifle Makes Its First Appearance

I finally got a scope for my 6.5 Creedmoor rifle and took it to the range.

It's been a long time coming together, and I'm an absolute beginner to the scoped rifle game.

Now with a mounted Vortex Viper PST 5-25x, it is a beaut to shoot.

I got a good deal on the scope from a friend as he wanted to transition all his stuff to MRAD rather than MOA. To say he's a serious long-distance rifle shooter would be an understatement.

We mounted and bore-sighted the scope and then took it to his local 100-yard range to get a zero on it.

The zeroing began, and our boresighting resulted it being rather off to the left. Eventually I got it sighted in, and was then happily hitting a Shoot-N-C center:

After the bullseye shooting, I then did a nice three-shot group:

After that, a two-shot group that I was rather happy with using up the remainder of the ammo.

The scope is amazing. Bullet holes 100 yards away are as clear as day in it, and adjustments for zeroing are quick and easy. Vortex makes a very nice product.

I was shooting with the stock trigger I had put on it that gave a 6.5 pound pull when my friend measured it after we had finished shooting. He decided that 6.5 lbs was not proper for such a rifle, so when we were done, he added to the deal and threw on a Geissele two-stage flat trigger with a really beautiful, consistent, 3.5 pound pull which should make shooting it accurately a lot easier and that made the deal even better.

So I now have my entry gun into serious rifle shooting.

The 6.5 Creedmoor is a very accurate and easy to shoot cartridge and with the new trigger and the quite fantastic scope, I should be able to learn to shoot it well. I still need to pickup a bi-pod and then I'll be set to begin learning longer range rifle shooting.

Do Your Rifles Suffer From Dryness?

I haven't been getting out to the range much lately as I've been busy rebuilding my office and such.

I opened my lesser-used collectible rifle locker and saw most of the rifles in it looked like this:

They had a strange white powdery like substance stuck to them. It wiped off with a dry  cloth easily enough but it was quite strange that it had suddenly shown up. Perhaps it's a weird mold of some kind, or something leaching out of the stocks?

Thanks to Murphy's Law's recommendation, I got some Rig Universal Grease and a cotton cloth and then commenced to wiping down the metal and wood with a light film of RIG.

Now the rifles look like this and no longer suffer from dryness, just lack of use, which certainly needs to be remedied. They now look much better, have a gleaming appearance, and should be much better protected now.

So far only that one gun safe had the problem, but I'm going to go through and carefully clean and grease every firearm in the collection as a preventative measure.

A big thumbs up for Rig Universal Grease, it's absolutely excellent stuff for preserving your firearms.