All this 'torque' malarky.....

demonloop

Decided to see for myself today about this torque setting on smallbore rifles.

After a fair bit of testing have a look at what I found. These two targets were typical and happened to be beside each other so I only photo'd these two.

One on left has my rifle bedding screws set at 6.5Nm, the one on the right the screws were at 5Nm.

Just shows what a difference this makes. EDIT - 5 shot groups by the way.



Check out this ten shot group, shot with Lapua Midas M, makes it almost worth the £8.50 stg a box........

well not really, the Lapua Standard Club produced a group only slightly bigger, and Master M was very nearly as good as the Midas M on average.

Sparks

demonloop wrote:

Decided to see for myself today about this torque setting on smallbore rifles.
After a fair bit of testing have a look at what I found. These two targets were typical and happened to be beside each other so I only photo'd these two.

You think that's bad, I was playing about doing some very rudimentary batch testing of air rifle pellets last night. Last time I ever try to save a euro buying Match instead of Finale Match. Will scan in the card later tonight and post it, but the group for Match is twice the size of Finale.

Check out this ten shot group, shot with Lapua Midas M, makes it almost worth the £8.50 stg a box........

Not for 25 yards it doesn't! You could shoot that kind of group with Winchester T22 at that range to be honest. I've seen possibles shot regularly with the stuff in a 20-year-old club rifle by one of our old hands (old here being a relative term ) at that range. You're just too close in for the variations from manufacturing imperfections to make much of a difference unless the round is *truly* bad, and there's nothing to say that won't happen to the more expensive rounds at that - I've had an eley tenex round go through a target sideways at 25 yards in Rathdrum.

Save your money, buy reasonable ammo instead of top-of-the-line, and train more at 25 yards. Then, when you're going to 50m where it actually does count, get batch-tested ammo. It's the only way to be sure that that 9 was your fault and not the rifle/ammo system's.

ps. Batch testing by manufacturer is useless for smallbore, you have to go by batch number. In air pellets, we can go by size (4.48/4.49/4.50/4.51/4.52 mm) and manufacturer/brand, but it's not the same game for smallbore, it's far more critical.

Sparks

By the way, well done for doing the experiment. If you want to really learn this stuff, you pretty much have to do it yourself first!

demonloop

All agreed Sparks, 25m is way to close for trying different ammo brands, just as January is way to cold for 50m shooting!

Cometh the summer, cometh some proper testing; and now I know what torque to be shooting with!!

Im averaging about 98/99 with Lapua Master @ 25yrds

With CCI I cant break 95... though I have shot tonnes with T22

So even at 25yrds, ammo will play a factor, and my rifle is club rifle.

demonloop

original_psycho wrote:

Im averaging about 98/99 with Lapua Master @ 25yrds

With CCI I cant break 95... though I have shot tonnes with T22

So even at 25yrds, ammo will play a factor, and my rifle is club rifle.

My rifle seems to love everything Lapua can throw at it, when I put anything by Eley into it (except Tenex I admit) it shoots rubbish, I'd be better taking Eley Club, Standard etc and throwing them at the card!

Wouldn't be a Walther would it?

I shot with thirty rounds of Eley (think it was tennex) and couldnt hit the bull, followed straight away with 20 rounds of master and hit 15 bulls!!

though this was at 50m

Sparks

original_psycho wrote:

Im averaging about 98/99 with Lapua Master @ 25yrds
With CCI I cant break 95... though I have shot tonnes with T22
So even at 25yrds, ammo will play a factor, and my rifle is club rifle.

Sounds more like you need to torque the nut behind the butt to me

demonloop

original_psycho wrote:

Wouldn't be a Walther would it?

I shot with thirty rounds of Eley (think it was tennex) and couldnt hit the bull, followed straight away with 20 rounds of master and hit 15 bulls!!

though this was at 50m

No its an Anschutz but I know a fella who has a Walther with the same personality as yours; it hates Eley!

Sparks

demonloop wrote:

No its an Anschutz but I know a fella who has a Walther with the same personality as yours; it hates Eley!

Saw a recent batch testing that was done with Eley and then with RWS R50 & R100 a week later (same barrel obviously). And after that, I'd never again touch Eley except for 25yd shooting (nice clean hole, means that the gauge is used less, means an extra point or two picked up along the way hopefully ). The groups were all ragged and large, with fliers that were seperate of the main group. Contrast the RWS stuff, which was nice and even - the groups were regular, and just varied in size. I've no doubt that some ammo will match one barrel better than another; but I don't think any ammo that produces fliers outside the main group in batch testing ought to be trusted for competition or training.

demonloop

Sparks whats your opinion on RWS v Lapua? I've not tried RWS yet. Is the 50 or the 100 the (supposedly) higher quality rounds?

Sparks

Not had the chance to compare the two DL. Been shooting lapua for a few years now though, switched from Eley a long while back. When I go back to smallbore seriously, I'll do some rough comparisons and then go batch test, but from what I've seen from others, I'd be tempted to lean towards RWS.