Remington Mle 1907-15 Range Trip

[Bundook303]

Headed to the range today with my recently acquired Remington Berthier 1907-15 for the first time together with a box of 200 gn Prvi Partizan 8mm Lebel ball measuring .323" and a couple of three-round en-bloc clips sourced from eBay.

I have no idea if this rifle had ever been fired; it certainly didn't look like it. It came with just a few handling dings and a bolt head that needed the gentle attention of a nylon punch to rotate it free from the body in order to remove the bolt from the rifle. It seems the bolt assembly was "glued" together with what was once-upon-a-time oil.

The bore was pristine and although I hadn't previously slugged it, the muzzle measured .315/.327 (4 grooves so easy to do). In deference to the conventional wisdom regarding the reasons for the French rejection of the Remington rifles, I took the first few shots with the rifle rested and the action covered in sandbags. The fired cases showed no obvious signs of distress; no splits or excessive powder residue. Comparing fired with unfired cases indicated very little permanent deformation; maybe a more clearly defined start to the first taper half way up the case and maybe a slight nudge in the shoulder. Compared with the abusive forming my 303 cartridges suffer in some of my Lee Enfields, the Remington seemed to handle these Lebel cases pretty gently. The fired case necks were still capable of gently retaining a bullet and the fired primers looked normal. So everything felt good and I proceeded to put a few groups down range.

I thoroughly enjoyed shooting this rifle; it fed and extracted flawlessly and deposited the little steel clips on the bench with a satisfying Garandesque "ring". Now here is the issue I have with this rifle and a couple of questions to the Berthier shooters among us: As you can see from the photographs, the front sight is offset to the right and quelle surprise, it groups to the left (about 4 MoA). Why is the front sight so obviously offset on this rifle? The front sight blade seems to be pinned to the sight base which is itself dovetailed to a block on the barrel. It is difficult to see but there seems to be traces of silver solder or similar in the dovetail. Does anybody have any experience with adjusting the windage on these rifles by moving the front sight base? There is no windage adjustment on the rear sight. I would really like to shoot this rifle in my club's 200 yd service rifle match but I would rather not resort to Kentucky windage if I don't have to.

Merci!
Bundook
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