Range Report--2 Underwoods

I took the twins to the range last weekend and thought I'd share the results of a 50-yard sight-in for each. I ran 30 rounds through each off the bench, measured to the center of the group from the point of aim. Both resulted in about a 4" group at 50 yards, and impacted high, which I expected. The ammo was a mixed-bag. I was trying to use up several partial boxes, so there was no consistency to the ammo.
Both are 1943 Underwoods, from the same serial number block. One is factory-original as near as I can tell, with all early features, and the other is a classic post-war rebuild, with all late features.

Factory-Original: Center of group was 3" above the point-of-aim, and 12" to the right. No horizontal sight adjustment possible, and I used the "150 Yard" aperture on the sight.

Post-War Rebuild: Center of group was 3" above the point of aim, and pretty much spot-on horizontally after the first few rounds. I had to adjust the sight pretty far to the right to move the point of impact to be above the point of aim, and used the lowest/150-yard setting vertically.

I managed to delete the photos of the targets, but overall--not too too bad. Not target rifles by any means, but fun to shoot. Except for the horrible-to-the-right impact of the first one, they were remarkably consistent, to the point that the brass was scattered in a pretty consistent pattern as well.
As a contrast, I also fired my pre-war "Mauser" .22 training rifle, and managed about a 1" diameter group at 50 yards pretty much right on the point of aim.

It's all fun and good. I'll keep working with the post-war rebuild for practice and accuracy. I really really do not like "aiming off" at all, so don't plan on shooting the factory-original too much!!!

Thanks for posting. Both my carbines shoot right and the rear sight has to be left. Pretty far. It's annoying, but I'm finding out might be somewhat of a regular thing.

Gotta love accurate .22's.

Mine shoots about 8 inches right at 50 yds also

Do many of the Underwoods shoot like that or what?

I would love to figure out what causes this and get it corrected, its annoying as hell.
My others shoot dead on, but they are not Underwoods either

Well it appears this is a common phenomenon, my NPM shoots ~6 inches right at 100 yards

Interesting--I have fired other carbines as well, and they have all shot pretty far to the right as well. I know that the rifle is a fairly "unbalanced" design, meaning that there is more metal/weight involved in recoil to the right of the centerline of the bore which affects the recoil.

After each shot, the rifles were pointing about a foot or two to the right of where they had been aimed...................

Next time I take them to the range, I'll make sure to take better notes and to NOT delete the photos.

By coincedence, I shot two Underwoods yesterday also, one with a rear flip, the other also being(type 2 milled) adjustable. Interestingly enough, both guns had about the same accuracy from the first shot to the last. I made some adjustments with the milled one, but the difference was almost non existent. I did better with point of aim adjustments, but it was only slight better to be honest. I wasn't shooting at the distances you guys were though. The to the right issue with me was only a couple of inches away at best.

I have targeted 4 carbines Underwood, Quality Hardware, Inland, & IBM. The Quality is orig. flip sight, and the IBM is a salvaged receiver, repro flip and repro folding stock. None of them required rear sight to be far from dead center. When I set up the IBM, which has a new commercial barrel, I centered the rear as close as I could and took it to the range (25 yds on sight adjustment target followed by 100 yds.). Right and left were dead on.

My bottom line is: apparently not all carbines shoot to one side.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by us019255

apparently not all carbines shoot to one side.

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Agreed--once I adjusted the rear sight on the rebuild, it hit pretty much right where I expected.

Yeah, but it's evident by this thread alone, that quite a few of them do. If you just looked at this thread a lone, I'd call it a majority. Though I doubt that is indicative of the issue in totality.

If you take a carbine and hold it away from your body and look over the sights about 1' over where you would be when sighting, on most carbines, not much lines up. Most barrels are cocked off to one side or the other, even the handguard is off somewhat. That is why you'll have the sight off to one side. Consider that many barrels were bent and saved by arbor press and lead hammer, and index marks were off by a lot. All of these manufacturing errors the result of pushing the limits of production and farming out many parts. The M1 rifle had the same issues but had a dovetail mounted front sight to get around the issues.
The companies who weren't in the gun business were no different than Winchester and some made a better gun simply by attention to detail. Imagine if you were NPM and trying your best to build a quality carbine and a batch of junk barrels from Buffalo, Marlin, or Rockola showed up and you absolutely had to use them. "Good enough" describes a lot of carbines.