Get me Some Camo Jammies

Depending on the breaks, I may be able to take my new .308 rifle to the range tomorrow. Then I begin the unbelievable process of breaking in the barrel. The manufacturer recommends cleaning the barrel after every round for the first 25 shots. Then you have to clean it after every 10 rounds until you get to a hundred. That wouldn’t be so bad if they recommended a Boresnake, but they don’t. They recommend a cleaning rod, a jag, and patches.

Here is what one of their people says on their forum:

For “break in” cleaning – you will need to use several patches of copper solvent, not just oil, to properly remove the copper fouling. Then use your regular gun oil, fire, and repeat. I do single rounds for a while, then go to 3 round group, clean, 3 round group, clean…until I am happy.

I’m not even sure I own a rifle-length cleaning rod. I think I have one in the garage. And I didn’t know what a jag was until five minutes ago. Time to visit Bass Pro, I guess.

He doesn’t say anything about a brush. How can you remove copper without a brush? Is that even possible?

I didn’t do this with my Savage. I wonder if I was supposed to. I don’t know if a normal rod will fit in a .17-caliber barrel.

Patches don’t impress me much. I know they worked great for George Washington’s army, but this is 2010. They don’t provide much friction, they hold very little stuff, and they leave junk in the barrel unless you use a pile of them. I would think a well-aimed can of Breakfree or Bore Scrubber would be much better, since it would carry the crap out of the gun instead of just smearing it around. I would be inclined to use a Boresnake, follow it with spray, and then use patches just to see if the barrel was clean. But I am no expert.

For the guns I own now, I use the following stuff: Hornady One Shot, Powder Blast, a Sonicare toothbrush, Q-tips, paper towels, and a Boresnake. Sometimes I use brake part cleaner, taking care to keep it off plastic, wood, and paint. I think I’m getting good results. I never see anything in the barrels when I sight down them.

I really like the bipod I used yesterday. It’s a Rock Mount something or other, I think. I should look at the package. The legs are nice and long, so you don’t have to be a yoga instructor to get behind the scope. I can’t understand why anyone makes rests or bipods that don’t hold the gun up where you can sight through the scope. I’m sure there is a reason, but I am not familiar with it.

I’ll want a bipod for the .308, but I don’t know what kind to get. FAB makes one that collapses into a foregrip, but a foregrip on a 10-pound rifle unsuited for close-quarters work seems silly. The bipod I have is great, but it will not attach to a rail.

Hold it. I won’t have a rail on the bottom of my new gun. I just checked. It’s a swivel. That will work.

I have a Caldwell rest, but I don’t like it. It’s very low, and it weighs a ton, and it takes up half of my shooting box. It has occurred to me that I have the technology to make a new screw for it. The big screw that supports the bag. If it were longer, the rest would be useful. But I prefer bipods. I can’t get used to the idea of shooting from a ridiculous sled type of thing; it seems like it’s one step away from clamping the rifle in a vise and walking away and firing the gun with a remote.

A bipod requires some amount of skill, and unlike a rest, it’s something you would actually find useful in the field. I know people like heavy rests for zeroing rifles, but it appears that I should be able to get sub-MOA performance with a decent bipod, and that’s good enough for me. That’s all I ever wanted. Besides, wouldn’t a giant Frankenrest move the zero anyway? I’d have to re-zero it with the bipod later.

Yesterday I noticed that the guy next to me was also shooting .17 HMR, and he was using what appeared to be a Savage in a target stock, and he had a giant sled thing that must have weighed fifty pounds. I am surprised it didn’t have a built-in seat and an end table for his beer. He was shooting about 9 MOA. Again, I am no gun expert, but here is what common sense tells me: if you shoot that badly with a rest doing all the work, you need to dump the rest, learn to shoot without it, and then try again. He is clearly doing something wrong, and the rest is probably discouraging him from trying to learn what the problem is.

Maybe he has a medical problem that makes a sled necessary to reduce recoil. I wonder.

I hope I am not going to make sled fans angry by writing this. I know there are people who shoot from those things every time they go to the range. I know a guy who shoots a .45 ACP carbine from one, so the reason is not always related to sighting in the gun. I’m sure these guys like the results, and they are not anxious to admit the machinery is doing most of the work, or that they can’t shoot without them. But these things were never intended to be crutches. Were they? Surely not. Far as I know, you’re only supposed to use them to get your rifle and scope acquainted.

From the results I got yesterday, I think I should be able to do something like .75-MOA, shooting the Savage from a bipod. I believe I should be able to put most of a 50-shot box into a group that big at 100 yards. I have to get my scope moved forward, and I have to work on my grip and my trigger pull and my breath control, but I think this is where I’m going to end up. God willing, of course. If that’s true, a complicated rest seems pointless.

It’s very satisfying, seeing it come together. I don’t get much of a thrill out of shooting all over the target, unless I’m playing around with iron sights. I love having a gun that will do exactly what I tell it to do, when I do everything right. This takes the gun out of the equation and allows me to see my own problems more clearly, and that means I learn more and shoot better. This is why I wanted the .308. If a gun will put 50 rounds into a hole the size of a quarter, it will tell me every time I make a mistake. An inaccurate gun will always make me guess. In a situation like that, I may guess wrong and make “corrections” that actually make me shoot worse.

I have one other complaint about the Savage. The cheek weld is pretty much nonexistent. Hard to believe, from a $10 plastic stock. Maybe moving the scope will fix this. If not, I think I should look for a solution. Given the cheapness of the gun and the fantastic as-is accuracy, I am not highly motivated to get a new stock. Maybe there is a product I can screw onto it.