I finally got out to the range today to put some the rounds through the Cadet, notably the 310 rounds I loaded with The Guru. I decided to shoot 5 rounds at 25m, 50m and 100m each, just to get it on paper, see how it was shooting and see how bad I was shooting.......
I was pleasantly surprised by it's accuracy at 25m. It managed this 2.5" group which, considering how poor my open sight shooting is and the relative randomness of the load, was quite ok.
50m was less promising and I haven't even bothered measuring this since it is so spread out. The 2 shots on the insignia at the top left are, however, touching and the 2 round about the 3-ring are also very close. So perhaps this poor result reflects my inexperience with open sights and poor consistency across shots.
Stretching the rifle's legs it turned in this 3.5" group @100m, which if you ask me is pretty solid, all things considered.
There are a couple of factors here. Firstly, I think the sights were set at 50yds, which explains why the shots printed almost off the bottom of the paper. Why they strung up in an odd curve like that is less easy to explain. The bbl was fairly warm by then but I still don't believe it was hot enough for the fore end to push it about. Again, it's probably me. But the drift to the left was because of a cross wind. I actually contemplated winding the windage adjustment over a notch but I couldn't work out which way it should go to centre it so I left it right on the middle line and hoped for the best.
With some load development, a .314" bullet (these were .315") and some practise I reckon I could squeeze this sucker to ~2" groups @100m. Probably not much less because of my open sight inexperience, because the trigger isn't really light, because the bore is old and rifling quite shallow, and because finessing a round like this with cast pills is quite finnicky. All of the rounds were a tight fit too, both chambering them and getting them out. They did come out, but it required considerable firmness and they flicked across the firing point when they were extracted. The Guru reckons the .314" bullet will lessen that tightness a bit. Frankly, if it remained that tight I wouldn't be too concerned but it might cause issues in a comp.
Ultimately the aim is to get it accurate enough for Cadet competition, which is almost identical to Service Rifle but shot over 50yds, 75yds and 100yds instead of 100yds, 200yds, and 300yds. And realistically I should be able to shoot service rifle with it too, although the "mad minute" 10 round rapid fire section would be challenging to say the least.
The Guru told me he once took his Cadet to a service rifle shoot. He's actually a current and past State and National Champion in different sections of service rifle and he primarily uses P14s and SMLEs. Anyhow, the other shooters with their SMLE No1 MkIII*s, No4 MkIs and Swedish Mausers, etc laughed pretty hard when he pulled it out. He smiled and took the ribbing in good humour and then proceeded to wipe the floor with them using the Cadet. Now, the bullet moves so slow you can fire the rifle, go and make a coffee and come back before it hits the target but that doesn't matter. It certainly has the sights to manage it and the target is big enough.