Well Monday was such a good day I decided to try it again today, (we are going to a Winter Storm Warning) tonight so it might be last chance this week. Friday, through the weekend, we are being grandparents, while mom and dad go to an adult only super bowl party at the cabin.
This morning it was 22* with a little breeze that was chilling - but head to the pit. The Deary area received a bit of snow Tuesday evening but not enough to keep me out of the pit.
No real purpose in the trip - other than I had tried a different method of wrapping the breech plug with tape. I ended up putting a double wrap of tape on the nose of the plug - hoping to get a better front seal on the breech plug. When I put the tape in the rifle, both sets of threads were cleaned very well. As I was turning the plug in I could feel that it was not going in as smoothly as normal. I was even afraid that I might be tearing the tape. When I checked the installation by checking the white flower at the bottom of the barrel - it was there and it should be sealed. The other thing, a forum member has asked about using a Torque wrench to set the plug. I torqued it to 50" #'s. Today when I got home I removed the plug with the Torque wrench it did require more Torque - it broke right at 60" #'s. So now that experiment is completed, I will likely not use a Torque wrench for this project any longer. I will return to my previous method of 'feel'.
After all of this - it was really a good shoot. I was able to shoot 3 different bullets. The first bullet was the Lehigh/Bloodline .458x275 gr. DOA, same bullet that I used on Monday. I set 8 birds to shoot and the first seven shots really did the job. On the 8th shot I changed to a Lehigh .458x305 gr. (45-70 bullet). This bullet is the bullet that I use for elk hunting. When switching to the 305 I also change sabots and go to a HPH-24 sabot to get a tighter grip on the bullet and bore. If you look closely at the bullet you will see there isn't any knurling on the bullet to lock it into sabot.
The 8th shot a Buffalo bullet - the 305 - found it mark also and dusted the bird.
Next I wanted to try some Lehigh 40x215 CF's in a 1/28 twist 50 cal ML. I set up 4 additional Clay Pigeons on the rock wall for this last bit of shooting. The 215's were loaded into a MMP 40x50 Blue sabot and they went down the barrel fairly easily after they passed through the crown.
All four bullets found their mark... Loaded up and came back to civilization...
Here are a couple of composite pictures of the shooting trip.
