I was finally able to get my modified SKS out to the range today. I trucked out to Ft. Dix Range #14 early to take advantage of their 9:30AM opening...it's been packed out there lately. As it was, I got the last available table.
The weather was in the mid-50's, windy, but dry and sunny.
My goal was to test out the fit and function of some of the modifications I had tortured the rifle with, and to zero in the scope. Since I had fired the rifle last, I had installed a new stock with picatinny, a Murray firing pin, an Albanian bolt carrier, a receiver mounted scope mount with shell deflector, 5 round fixed mag, and a Wolff spring set. As it turned out, each of them gave me some initial cause for concern, but my biggest problem turned out to be my ammo.
Lets get the ammo problems over with, shall we. My first two shots were duds using Wolf ammo. As the firing pin didn't even dent the primers, I was seriously concerned with my modifications. I immediately checked out the firing pin, swapped out the Albanian bolt carrier for the original Yugo, and tried again. BANG. OK, what the hell, I popped the Albanian back after 20 rounds and didn't have another problem of this type for the remaining 150 shots. I have no idea what this was...I had checked the firing pin before the trip to the range and it was moving freely. The Albanian is machined to tighter specs than the Yugo carrier, but the bolt still seemed to move fine after 150 shots of dirty Wolf ammo.
However I did have several failures to fire with the Wolf ammo and about a half-dozen failures to eject. The failures to fire did dent the primers and the failures to eject went off with a dull thud...not the sharp crack of the normal shots. While the failures to fire could be a combination of hard military primers and a lighter Wolff spring set on the rifle... with my low power failures to eject, I'm inclined to blame the ammo for all these problems. The Wolf was dirty ammo and I felt obliged to give the rifle a spritz of break-free after a 100 rounds or so.
There were no problems of any kind with about 40 rounds of Federal I shot off...spread over the hour and a half I was shooting.
Over the course this time, I sighted in the scope, removed and replaced the mount to check zero, tried to get some good groups, and banged away with the rifle trying to see what loosened up.��
The mount stayed solid and returned to zero after removing and reattaching the scope...I was happy with that. The Harris bipod loosened up after about 100 rounds and needed to be tightened down...a thumbscrew. The Weaver converta-mount didn't move a bit.
Ft. Dix range 14 is only about 220 yards max distance. I set my targets up at 50 initially and moved them out to 100 yards a bit later. The wind was from behind me and was holding the range flags straight out.
Disclaimer: I couldn't get any 5 round string to shot consistently. No matter what I was doing, with what ammo, I could get three rounds to go where I wanted, and two would not cooperate.
Here is the target I used to test "return to zero" after the removal and reattachment of the scope...it's got a 1 square inch grid on it. This was at 50 yards with Wolf ammo.
I fired 2 5-round strings and removed and reattached the long scope in between them. Seven shots in an inch and a quarter...and three more rounds another inch high and low. The flyers were from the first and second group both. You can say I would have been a lot more pleased if all ten had gone into that one hole. Anyway, I think I can say the scope returns to zero after reattachment. What I can't say is that I could hit anything with it.
I had worked on the trigger and gotten it down to 8# pull. That's not saying much. The trigger pull is looooong and has at least two definite stages. The hammer on this is huge and I swear I could feel it swinging around like a 2lb sledge inside the receiver when I touched off.
Here is 100 yards with Federal Ammo. I claim that 3/5ths of my shots are sub-MOA with this rifle! I also claim that my remaining 2/5ths are MOB (Minute of Blimp). I did hit close enough to a golf ball at 50 yards to fling it into the air twice...I am a terror to small white orbs.
OK, what does this all mean.
The Wolf ammo is just for plinking. I can't trust it enough if the SHTF. It is cheap (about $50 for 500 rounds) and goes BANG about 96% of the time. It's very dirty. I feel that about 75% of it is good accurate ammo...but what do I know, I can't hit crap anyway. The Federal is fine, but at $10 for 20 rounds, it is too expensive for plinking. This will have to be the ready ammo on stripper clips.
After an initial problem with 2 FTF (which I still haven't figured out), the rifle was fine. All of my FTE were prefaced by a dull thump when the shell fired. Always Wolf. There were no feed problems with the 5 round fixed mag.The scope mount was solid, and the bipod less so...better the scope be solid. No recoil to speak of and very comfortable to shoot with the Ramline stock.
Not a sniper rifle, but I'm confident I could hit something out to 300 or 400 yards with this...at least 3/5ths of the time.
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