How could I trap the rifle securely?

[RJW NZ]

I'm back on an old subject that I failed to solve a year or two ago, and would like some ideas on; I'm playing around with accurizing an enfield or two and would like to make a rifle mount that I could set up on a bench top, ie rifle range bench, that would hold the rifle securely and accurately so I could fire it and take out the human part of the equation, namely my very average shooting ability.
Has anyone tried this, and or come up with a suitable way to trap the rifle, without damage, without movement under recoil, and so the gun can be reloaded and fired in the exact same position?
Has it been done at the war time factories, and how did they do it?:

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[Jim K]

What you are describing is a rifle machine rest. There are several available commercially, but I don't know if you can get them in NZ. Do a Google search on "machine rest rifle" for some info.

I have seen several home made ones, made from both steel and wood, that served pretty well. As you say, the idea is to remove the human factor as much as possible, but more importantly to keep everything consistent from shot to shot. I do not recommend trying to stop recoil, as the rifle will not perform consistently unless allowed to recoil in something approaching the normal manner.

In truth, a good bench and a good shooting position will be about as good as a machine rest, and the results will be closer to what will be expected from the rifle in normal use. One thing to avoid is resting the forearm or the butt stock directly on a bench or a solid object, since the rifle will vibrate with the shot and "bounce" off the solid support in a different way each time.

Jim

[ireload2]

You just can't bolt the rifle down unless you have a huge platform.
Take a look at the benchrest rail gun equipment. The rails allow the barreled action to be clamped in place and permit it to recoil.
If your accurizing includes mounting a scope a good scope will be more cost effective.

However the rail gun shooters use both rails and high quality high magnification scopes.

Uni rest and others

[Parashooter]

[ralfus]

Just find a friend that is a much better shot than you and have him shoot them. It wont eliminate all the human factor, but a good shooter with proper rests should be able to shoot an enfield to nearly its abilities.

[Peter Laidler]

We have got an Enfield rest at work. It does JUST what you need

[Amatikulu]

Peter, any chance of a machine drawing of the rest.

[Strangely Brown]

This one belongs to LERA.

[Thunderbox]

This one belongs to LERA.

We ought to have a range day with that; get everyone to test their rifle.

We'd soon get to the bottom of: "its the wind/ its the ammo/ the markers are stupid/ my rifle needs a new barrel/ etc"......

[Amatikulu]

Strangely Brown,

that is a very interesting contraption. I may have to see what the machine shop can do based on the picture