April 18th- The Waiting Game

April 18^th – The Waiting Game….

So…if you have ever hired a contractor, or in the case of many of you, sent your guns to a gunsmith for repair you know what waiting is all about.

As you can see from my past blogs this Remington project has been moving along at a fairly steady clip….until now.

Before I can go any further though, I have to wait for the bases and rings to arrive from my vendor.  Until they get here all I can do is stare at this thing and admire how far we have come.

 The original firearm, out of the box and looking as plastic as ever.  Crappy action feel, a trigger that feels like it takes to hands to pull it, and a barreled action that bounces around in the stock when fired.

 Everything broken down and the stock in the trash where it belongs.

 Then rifle mounted in the new walnut stock, the lugs lapped, the barrel free floating, the receiver pillar and glass bedded, and the trigger pull reduced to a 2.5lb pull.

See…the bases and rings are going to hold the scope in place.  Until they arrive my "tester scope" will continue to sit in the gun closet. 

I’ll go into detail on what bases and rings are and how they are installed on the next blog entry, but suffice to say that for my purposes I need them, because I need to put a scope on this rifle.  See, the whole purpose of the rifle is to be “super accurate”.  At a hundred yards the only way to check for that level of accuracy is with a high power scope.

You may notice that the rifle already has iron sites attached to it, and may be wondering why I need a scope in the first place.

Glad you asked.

The iron sites are there for four reasons:

1)    They came with the gun so we consider them “bonus”.  Most modern sporting rifles do not have iron sights from the factory and they need to be installed by a gunsmith if you really want them.  Most shooters could care less, so they are rarely present on a modern sporting arm.

2)    They look kinda cool.  Again….bonus!

3)    They serve as a “backup”…..See a scope is only as good as the environment it finds itself in.   In really severe fog or rain a scope is basically worthless.  You’re target needs to be at least 25 yards away for the scope to function properly and have a focus that is relatively clear.  If the fog is so thick that you only have 20 yards of visibility, your hunt is done for the day.  An Iron sight has no such limitation,…so just remove the scope and rings in camp and hunt to your hearts delight….(in miserable foggy conditions).

4)     Wounded dangerous game.  This is the worst of the worst.  You’re out hunting dangerous game and you ended up wounding the animal.  Now aside from feeling like crap that you wounded an animal, you potentially put an innocent bystander in danger.  Dangerous game that is wounded could care less who the shooter was…all it know is that it is pissed and in pain and will extract revenge on whoever comes along.  So…it is your responsibility to get in there and finish the job,…even though doing so puts you in jeopardy as well.  The last thing you want in this scenario is a scope that won’t focus because you are too close.  So, before you go after the critter you better take the scope off and switch to iron sights.

So….we will wait for a little while longer for the bases and rings to arrive.  

Once they arrive and the scope is mounted, it will be time to head out to the range to check the performance of the rifle and make sure everything is functioning properly.

I suppose I could start working on the finishing of the stock, but that would make little sense if I have mechanical problems with the firearm itself.  Once the gun is determined to shoot well then it will be time to clean up the stock and apply the finish.

Hopefully I’ll be blogging about the next process soon!

Sitting in Aliso Viejo CA, waiting for the UPS man to show up!