Unpredictable accuracy

[sr sawyer]

Thought about cuttin'  my ears off one time, for another reason, but got over her.

[Tommyt]

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did you say something

[Ladobe]

I have owned many of them and started with them close to as far back as Ladobe did but yes I have abandoned them. I've had a huge amount of experience with them hunting, plinking and target shooting both in formal registered matches and in informal money matches.

I just sold them all and walked away. I have the experience to talk about them but it's sure all a few years old now.

Don't know Bill... must be my confidence in my tools I guess.   In 41 years of seriously using Contenders I have never had the problems many of you have related to once experience taught me early on what the necessary steps were to make Contenders a viable tool for my big game and long range predator and varmint hunting, and for the competitive match shooting I did.   For my uses that means to correctly do many steps to get it on line... tune the frame and trigger, fit and headspace each barrel to a dedicated frame, fit the forend that will be used, mount the scope (or after market sights), lap the barrel or get it shot-in and work up to find/fine tune the handloads it prefers.  In my opinion with any firearm its consistency that matters, and probably more so with a Contender than other action types because of its relatively slow lock time.   Consistency in everything... how you set up the Contender; the ammo, its prep, components and orientation; the mechanics of your shooting technique, holds, sight picture and follow through, etc, etc, etc.   The extra effort in consistency helps take some of the human factor out of your shooting.   Very often it's the human factor and not the equipment that is the root of many troubles experienced with the Contenders.

Those two frames I bought from you Bill are just as good of shooters as all my other Contender frames.  Both were tuned right after I got them though.

[kiddekop]

I had a few of my Contender barrels out today and they just wouldn't shoot well. These are proven loads in barrels that have shown excellent accuracy in the past. In one case the groups were more like patterns. Others had shown groups double what I expect from them. To prove that it wasn't just me, I had a friend who has proven to be an excellent shot with a Contender try as well. He had the same results.

All the screws were torqued to the same specs as usual, scope mounts tight, same cleaning procedure as usual, and the rest was solid. The only thing I could think of was that the forend was somehow causing the problem. It's a Pachmyr forend with the hanger, so I'm not sure what I can do to help it. Are there any suggestions?

What was the ambient air temperature when you fired your weapon?

[Graybeard]

You'll get no argument from me on that Ladobe but I just never bought as many frames as barrels and switched them around fairly regularly. Even in my competition days I switched between one favored frame and two barrels when changing from Small Bore Hunter Pistol to Hunter Pistol matches. It worked fine really and seldom did I need to make more than a couple clicks adjustment after changing barrels.

Later after dropping out of competion I switched even more and just never was happy with them as a switch barrel system like TC touts them to be not really.

I did shoot some wonderful groups with them tho and for the most part they did what was asked of them. I just got tired of them. I came to ask myself when hunting if I really believed I was handgun hunting when I had a firearm that weighted as much as some of my rifles and was almost as long as some of the shorter barrel rifles. Eventually I answered that question with a NO it's not to me handgun hunting or not the kind of experience I want to call handgun hunting.

So I sold them all and when handgun hunting now it's with an iron sighted revolver for the most part. I'll stick a scope on an FA some times but it doesn't stay there long when I do.

[jjodell]

Since this all happened with several different barrels I would tend to look at weather conditions or a frame problem as mentioned in previous replies. I would tend to suspect weather conditions more than anything due to the problem showing up all at once. If the pin holes were getting out of round it would be a slow progressive sort of thing. A cracked frame could cause a sudden change in accuracy but would be fairly obvious and I am sure you would checked for that.

Just my.02 worth 

[Dezynco]

I have 4 different barrels, one G2 frame.  My dad has 3 "old style" frames and "umpteen" barrels.  I never (nor does he) give any thought to hinge pin orientation, sight adjustments, "winter" vs "summer" loads, etc.  We even borrow barrels from each other and never give it much thought as to which frame the barrel was on originally.  Generally, all of the barrel and frame combo's are capable of MOA accuracy, assuming that some homework has been done at the reloading bench.  My 14" 30-30 barrel isn't picky at all, just cram whatever into the chamber and shoot.

The TC system works well for me, usually capable of better accuracy than I am.  Maybe if I were big into competition, I would keep one barrel and frame together, maybe even do some tuning on that one setup.  But for the most part, it's sounds like too much trouble for a very minor gain in accuracy.

I'm with Ladobe, "consistency" is the most important.  From the loading bench to the sandbag, to the woods.

[chiefs50]

I think that Lone Star  and Steve P may have a good point about the weather conditions. The loads were all worked up at about 50 degand raining, and it was an unusually cold and dry, for around here, at 30deg that morning.


Andrew

A 20 degree change in temperature is going to have little to no effect on accuracy.  I'd suggest you go out and try it again.

Mike