M91/30 Sniper

[Patrick Chadwick]

Ivan the Terrible is still awesome after 70 years:

Attachment 42994

The white spot is 2 cm in diameter.
Ivan's sub-MOA intrinsic accuracy plus my PWF is still only just over 1 MOA (center to center). Rifle and ammo are pretty well perfect, the shooter less so. If we can manage this in competition, we'll beat a lot (most?) of the modern plastic stuff.

And before someone asks - yes it was with the original PU scope. At 100 meters. Off a sandsack. And the range scale drum reads a whisker over 1(00). And no, I have not zeroed it, I haven't got the courage (or foolishness?) to fiddle with such a good setup.

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[vintage hunter]

Not bad Patrick but I don't see but 4 holes. Did you miss once or is 4 shot groups a German thing?

[Patrick Chadwick]

Not bad Patrick but I don't see but 4 holes.

I had tried it out with a modern short scope on a repro mount beforehand - the results were not as good. Then I decided that if I was going to participate in a competition where I had no chance of a place anyway, I would rather shoot "all-original" and at least show the black plastic merchants that the old equipment can still produce respectable results. Refitted the original mount + PU, but range rules required shooters to prove that the setup is reliably on target at 50 meters before endangering the target trolley wires at 100 meters.

In other words, I simply ran out of ammo!

But the results encourage me to have a serious ammo-production session before next Saturday. That will be the last chance to practise before the competition on the 25th. The placing of the tip of the blade of the scope reticule on the white dot is tricky, as one is not sure exactly where the tip is. So I am trying an aim whereby the spot is obscured to the point that it is about to disappear. If I can achieve a consistent "about to disappear", then the results are as shown. A big "if" to hold throughout a competition target.

[WarPig1976]

Nice shooting, Has the trigger group been polished.?

[Patrick Chadwick]

Has the trigger group been polished.?

No, it still has the original (felt) mile-long creep until the shot breaks somewhen. The only alteration has been to take off the PU scope and mounting*, replace with a modern scope on a new mounting, discover that the result wasn't so hot, and ruefully put the PU+mounting back again! It is one of those rare rifles where I am afraid that changing anything will make it worse, so the urge to "improve" must be resisted.

*whereby I was very careful to loosen only one of the vertical clamping screws on the mounting - the bottom one - in order to be able to replace the PU without losing the height setting.

[vintage hunter]

I trust you restaked the screw after you got done fiddling. If not it can and most probably will work loose after a few shots resulting in vertical stringing. That would surely cause a cussing fit if it happened during a match.

[Patrick Chadwick]

I trust you restaked the screw after you got done fiddling. If not it can and most probably will work loose after a few shots resulting in vertical stringing.

Your trust is unfortunately misplaced But I do have very good screwdrivers!

[Raupleminze]

Nice shooting!

[Patrick Chadwick]

Since the Hornady #3130s have reached the status of financial "unobtanium" over here, I tried some Sierra 180 gn ProHunter bullets. They are a very good replacement for the (also rare) 174gn original flat-base Enfield bullets.

Attachment 43300

And this time, it's a genuine 5-shot group. 100 meters, not 100 yards. So the touching 1" group is well within 1 MOA. That's obviously about as good as I'm going to get with the PU scope, but it should be good enough that I do not come last next weekend against the black-plastic high-tech shooting machines.

BTW, not wishing to be too historically hidebound, I tried one of these .223" shooting machines as well. Awesomely good!

More after the competition!

[fn111557]

SWEET !
Nice shooting Patrick. BEST of LUCK to you at the competition. Go show them that good old fashioned “Wood & Steel” can still get the job done!