I shot my No.4(T) scopeless and was underwhelmed
On Sunday I attended a scheduled regional milsurp matches. Looking at the rules, the gun locker and the ammunition locker, I decided to shoot a No.4. There were "a few" good ones to choose from.
The rifle with the best pedigree and provenance is off limits. So, it was a never-fired (by me) BSA T without the scope, and a 1945 LB 'Regulated by Fulton' service rifle A. The particular scope came with the purchase 20-plus years ago. It had never been inspected and I heeded wise advice not to chance destroying the antique sticky gums, greases and resins shooting a sustained course of fire where the only prize was match experience. But that protectiveness didn't include shooting the rifle it arrived with.
I had never fired this No.4(T) because of the scope. It left the house a month ago for an inspection and repair as required trip to Warren Wheatfield. The basic rifle as a T ought to be a more capable rifle than even the one 'Regulated by Fulton'. For those who don't know, Fulton's shop at Bisley was where masterful inspection and tuning turned pretty good Service Rifle A rifles into match and aggregate winners. This one came from my father's house. He of course had decades of high level provincial and national competition, with several trips to Bisley and other lesser important tilts like the Olympics, World Championships, Commonwealth Games and Camp Perry. He would not have kept a bad rifle willingly, but it probably also fired a ton of DAQ and DIZ Mk7Z ball and there are no guarantees he left any bullseyes in the barrel. Therefore, the Fulton LB came out of the locker to join the T as the number two choice.
So, thinking about the T my mind wandered to several factors, like consistency at the manufacturing plant, sorting out a good rifle from the run of the mill for candidacy to become a T, H&H's exacting and relentless inspections with many off ramps for down selection, not to mention its rather pampered postwar life led me to the conclusion it would have shot just that much better. I was wrong.
Three things arose during my zeroing practice the weekend before. The front sight, the elevation knob and the magazine made me turn my thinking inwards at the rifle and not outwards to the match. When test zeroing with known good 1950 DAQ Mk 7Z, I found the front sight was hitting about 4" offline of my hold. That is fixable. I have small automotive windshield wiper arm tool with the other range tools. It fits over the sight ears and in quarter-turn of 'feels about right' increments I moved the element into alignment. I was expecting a tensioning screw on the base, and had my reverse screwdriver at hand. Not required. The element moved with enough resistance but smoothly. I thought it was de rigeur that every good T rifle had the tensioning screw.
The next issue was the graduations on the sight and the ball bearing elevation knob detent on the installed machined backsight. It is correct for a T with no battle sight. Interestingly, it doesn't have the extra clearance radius underneath which Peter Laidler describes so thoughtfully. Hmmm? This rifle may not have had a well-trained armorer’s care in its preparation before issue to the troops. Could it have been used by a less than warlike regiment, corps or school? For my purposes, I want the knob to stay where I leave it. The ball didn't give me that peace of mind. Instead, I put a short piece of adhesive tape across the top bar to avoid accidentally touching or turning the knob. I have other sights. If I have a much better one, I'll replicate the battle sight by grinding it off, and marking a year or an 'R' to avoid later accusations of forging a back sight. When I finished zeroing, the rounds were hitting point of aim on the black face, but the increment indicator was already up several clicks.
At the match I wound it up more increments to get into the scoring rings. Even when sighting in at 200, the group was at 500 which didn't correspond to the distance. When I'm tuning the back sight, I will replace the front sight element with a lower one to raise the group at a neutral 200 yd setting.
Finally, I was unsatisfied with the magazine. For a magazine fed repeating rifle it should strip the top round off easily. Not so. The nose of the bullet always pressed against the front of the box without slipping off the front feed corner lip and pointing towards the chamber. Consistently I had to flick the round over with my multi tool for magazine feeding. That was not satisfactory, so for the rapids and snaps I single loaded out of my hat. As a rule, I do not remove No.4 magazines, and this was the same magazine from the previous owner.
Although I did not win any single matches, I was consistently good enough to win the iron sights aggregate with the No.4(T), shooting under the match conditions and rules. My prize is a nice association medal and a pound of coffee beans from a sponsor. But I hammered in a lot of tightly grouped 3s and 4s that really should have been 5s. Time to tune up a few replaceable parts, that don't alter the rifle. Then back to the range and next year. And yes, these are embarrassing problems to have!
