96 Back in Action

The "new" '96 rifle is finally cleaned up and made it out to the range. The whole thing was packed in very old grease. I had high hopes, however, when I got the grease out of the barrel, it had lots of jacket fouling in there. Spent several days with Bore Shine turning patches blue. It isn't completely clean yet. The first ten or so inches of the bore is pretty frosty, but the crown is crisp.

I put togehter a mild load based on what shoots well in my Winchester 95, 38.5 gr. of AA2495 and a 180 gr. MatchKing. The results at 100 yards are attached. The target is a 50 yard N-SSA with 4 inch black. For zero load development, I'm very happy.

Next project will be cleaning the stock and steaming out a couple dents.

I hope that my "new" '96 shoots as well. Am ready to take it out & test fire.

Once you get the fouling out of that bore be sure to slug it, could be that a simple matter of using bullets made for the .303 British or 7.62 Russians would shrink that group dramatically. All my Krags have .310 bores and a .308 bullet, especially a boat tail, just isn't going to give you the best accuracy.

I saw your post about that and pulled a couple slugs out of the backstop to check. They showed bore contact all the way around, just like an M-1. I think I got lucky. I'll keep checking as the rest of the fouling comes out.