Handirifle.
like the idea of what you've done to the latch, curious to see how it holds up
Yah, it supposed to hold down
You could not speak of accuracy at the initional load testing. Shots were all over the place and not just up and down. Groups if you can call it that were generated by excessive clearances in several places. Now from what I can tell the lateral dispersion is in the range of very good for a barrel with poor chamber, throat and bore dimensions. Still the vertical dispersion up to 4.5" was something else.
Consider that each one thou movement or slide of the latch will produce a vertical eror of 1.3" at 100 yrds and .0035 slide or movement in the latch will give you 4.5" vertical or more depending on where the peak presure coincides. A fast powder will perhaps give you less movement. So the most obvious place to look is the latch.
The minimum head space of 3 thou is also important, nothing can stick out past the face of the breech not even a primer. Uniform primer pocket depth is imortant to a Handi rifle. If it sticks out it will prevent the latch from 100% engagement. There goes a one or two inch flyer.
The latch must engage 100% and stay put,no question about that. Of course the less fuzz the rifle makes the better it will shoot. The 25-06, 270, 280 and the 30-06 make a lot fuzz. These rifles should be put together with a lot more care and limited clearances by the factory.
My hand loads were fashioned to approximate factory loads, but I think I will reduce the loads to about the 257 Roberts, Velocity meens nothing without accuracy and 3" more drop at 300 yards is equally banal.
As I reported before, as new the latch engaged only less than 1/16". This would have opened the rifle about every shot. Crappy quality control! dangerous if the empty case flys into your eye. I said all that in my two previous posts. The latch is the bad boy.
I really like the thumb release it is very convienient, right by the hammer extension. It works well left and right handed. No complaints here. Fred M.
