Bought the rifle I wanted in late January. The shut down occurred shortly afterward. Finding dies, brass, powder, primers and bullets was hit and miss, and took a while. As is almost always the case, nothing is ever available locally, and the world's shut down caused the local gun store to close. The Hornady 55-grain FMJ was the only bullet I could find. A few weeks after I bought my rifle, my local friend and occasional shooting pard bought a new Howa mini-action .223, but couldn't shoot it for several months till he paid $100 for a set of Lee dies and I gave him a supply of the 55-grainers.Uh, you got a new gun and you got shoot it even though it wasn't with what you wanted?
Roger that.Bought the rifle I wanted in late January. The shut down occurred shortly afterward. Finding dies, brass, powder, primers and bullets was hit and miss, and took a while. As is almost always the case, nothing is ever available locally, and the world's shut down caused the local gun store to close. The Hornady 55-grain FMJ was the only bullet I could find. A few weeks after I bought my rifle, my local friend and occasional shooting pard bought a new Howa mini-action .223, but couldn't shoot it for several months till he paid $100 for a set of Lee dies and I gave him a supply of the 55-grainers.
It wasn't till this year that I was able to find the spiffy Hornady 68 and Sierra 69-grain match bullets.
So, yeah, it was two years of shooting the rifle without quality bullets. But, when AR shooters couldn't find any ammunition, I was enjoying shooting my new rifle.
Once upon a time, before I even owned a .223, the squad guns all became AR's. I fumbled the controls trying to run one at qualifications. Having owned an 870 since childhood, I used to demo the 5 clay pigeon trick at qualifications. The range master would ask me to show what an old pump gun could do. Anyway, with the hand writing, (printed with crayon, not cursive with a quill), on the wall, I thought it behooved me to attempt some familiarity with the dreaded black rifle. 5 gallon buckets of brass accumulated, Weidner's had a big ass box of 6,000 Hornady FMJ's on sale for peanuts. 748 was acquired, and of course those itty bitty hard primers. So in one of those lucky confluences in space and time, I had all the components and no rifle.Roger that.
I acquired a Browning 348 lever gun about that same time. Getting componentry has been quite an adventure, and continues to be that way. That one of the most common USA calibers had components that were made of unobtainium says loads about the state of our supply chain and suppliers that service this hobby venue. Any venue this politicized is bound to be a clusterBLANK of epic proportions.
"Politics--humanity's ball and chain." (Edward Abbey)
Where I'm from that is a perfectly balanced sentence.Phew. Perhaps Jeff, Lynn, Ian, Bret, or another wordsmith can clean up that long-winded sentence.
All I'm lacking, then, is the accent?Where I'm from that is a perfectly balanced sentence.
In the last month before coming down to the lower 48 I ended up with 5 new boxes of Winchester 348 for about a buck each. With that my stock is about all I’ll ever need.Hey CZ93... We ordered a box of .348 from Starline 10 days ago. Arrived 4 days later in ILL-nois.
Strike while the "brass" is hot. You can easily sell the excess....
I'm learning more. My next move is to have the check remover from one of the molds I have. It's bound to make the bullet shorted and weight less. Should be interesting..Did some shooting with my Savage 340 /30WCF today at 50 yards:
Pretty much my usual load for the 165 NOE Ranch Dog...Today it was 6.2 grains American Select with the NOE 165 Gas check base sans the check because it was powder coated with my usual Smoke's Clear PC Load coming in at just subsonic ( the way I like them).
The insanity well; every bullet was weighed to .1 grain, every load was weighed to 6.2 grain ( +/ - 0 grain): twenty five of the cases were weighed to .1 grain...then the rest varied!
The top two targets were shot with 10 round each of the .1 variance cases! The center target was shot with 5 of the .1 variance cases but the other 5 were random! The bottom targets were shot with all random weights of brass!
The top targets were my first 20 shots ( which are not usually my best) So I think it was an interesting experiment!
The best thing I got out of it is I got my rifle trigger discipline back after one year of only shooting pistol!
Oh yes,
The lower left target has 11 shots and the lower right has 9 shots! Had a mild senior moment!
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