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Destination: the Harley Davidson Museum at Milwaukee, WI. Coming from Kansas City, I and several other riders would take in the National Motorcycle Museum at Anamosa, Iowa along the way to Milwaukee. There was a window of good weather for the next four days so off we went.

 The National Motorcycle Museum is located on Highway 151 on the west side of Alamosa and is chocked full of motorcycles and related memorabilia and well worth the visit. I noticed many bikes there are on loan to the museum from various collectors including other museums. Some very neat antiques there going back to bicycle prototypes and all kinds of imaginable power sources. No motorcycle museum would be complete without famous showmen and movie stars; it's all there in spades.

More to follow:

My wife and I had the opportunity to visit Alaska this past September and it was one of our best trips ever. Earlier in the year when we planned the trip, Canada was closed so the only way for us was to fly in and out via Anchorage. As part of a group, we did a seven day overland tour starting in Anchorage, traveled north to Talkeetna, then further north by railway to Denali National Park, then south by bus to Willow and Girdwood, and the last day to Whittier to cruise Prince William Sound, then finally by bus to Anchorage to fly home.
 
 
 Many stops and a good amount of free time to do things on our own as well. I'd guess my wife's favorite experience was cuddling the Alaskan sled dog puppies at Martin Buser's Happy Trails Kennel at Willow. Mine was interacting with the various locals I met along the way, many interesting characters that live here!
 
 
 The furthest north we got was Healy, which is a mining town south of Fairbanks. Healy is the site of the 49 Free State Brewery where we enjoyed an evening of food and drink.
 
 
 Got lucky on the fifth day and saw the peak of Denali from Mary Carey's coffee shop on Highway 3. The clouds really seem to stick to the peak at that high elevation.
 
 
 The coldest weather we felt was on the Prince William Sound cruise viewing glaciers entering the bay. We did manage to catch glimpses of a few orcas breaching the open water.
 
 
 The only bummer was not connecting with Gitano as he was on travels of his own when we were there. Maybe another time?
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This past August a local KC motorcycle club offered a weekend ride up to   Alantic, Iowa for a bike show and  a nearby motorcycle museum tour,   along with a festival thrown in for good measure. Having some family   roots in Iowa how could I resist?

 During the Saturday  Atlantic vintage motorcycle show I was told that   one can't go home without seeing the vintage machines being prepared for   a web-auction at Baxter Cycles located a few miles away in Marne,  Iowa.

 Some very rear and unusual stuff in this place. Walking around in the   shop a guy showed me an alloy cylinder head to an Ariel Square Four, a   fairly complex casting that channeled intake and exhaust to four   cylinders. The Ariel is a British bike going back to the early '30s.

 Then off for a late afternoon-evening relaxation and refreshments at   Danfest, a Danish community festival a few miles up the road outside   Elkhorn, Iowa.

  There a group called the Polka Police had the crowd in stitches with a   comedy act and abusing every rock song you could hold dear with a  polka  rendition. A good time had by all. Never thought I'd ever be  partying  with Vikings like this in a cornfield.

   Next day we were on the road again to the secret location of the   Kamikaze Museum, where a stash of older Japanese motorcycles were   reported to be on view and possible sale. Turns out it is mostly a   motorcycle salvage site with some of the best specimens obtained shown   in the museum.


 Fortunately, I didn't dragged anything home with me except good memories.

If anyone is interested, I developed a procedure using spent 30 caliber cases, reloading press with resizing die and bullet sizing die to swags brass collars onto the shaft heads of some arrows for reinforcement. Composite/carbon shafts that use a screw in insert behind the point often break or mushroom from hard impact hits driving the screw in insert down the shaft. A brass can reinforcement this joint and possibly prevent failure.

It’s been nearly twenty years since I had last drawn a bow. A bunch of stuff had taken my time and priorities back then – a new job, relocation, supporting children’s’ extracurricular activities, etc. But now in this phase of my life I was ready to pick back up this particular pursuit that I had laid aside and missed dearly.


   Most of my previous hunting had been with my weapon of choice, a custom 65 lb. Bighorn takedown recurve. Obviously since having twenty years of absence and age, I knew it would be difficult or unlikely that I could pull that heavy of a bow proficiently and accurately again. No matter what the path is to get back in the saddle I realized it was going to take work and patience to regain strength and muscle memory to shoot a bow again; I just didn’t know what level that I could re-attain, being now in my mid-60’s. So I started looking at options.


   I drug out my Jennings Arrowstar compound bow out of its case. While being a premium compound in its day, it is a dinosaur by modern comparisons. This particular model was configured in a 25% let off with 70 lb. peak weight and shot with the standard three finger release. In excess of being six pounds carrying weight and of stout construction I would not hesitate in using it as a club if the need arose. My options in respect to this bow could be to back off the limb bolts and bring the peak pulling weight down to approximately 55 lbs., but this would result in becoming relatively inefficient to fling arrows and it was just too darn heavy (in my opinion) to lug around.


  I contacted a friend of mine that was a dealer for Bear Archery and got re-educated on the current compound bow technology. Wow, now days, it is not enough to acquire a bow to go hunting, it’s a bow plus a mechanical release, plus a sight mechanism plus a unique arrow rest. And don’t forget the carbon arrows. I love tinkering with gadgets, but this was just too many new gizmos for me. I know the archery industry is trying to make these bows look as good as they are fast, but they still look too much like a robot that ate a couple of Ferris wheels.
  Back to more simple options. My draw length is 29 inches. The energy put into the arrow is a function of the stroke and the force imparted by the string into the arrow, and the force is derived from the energy one puts into the bow limbs by pulling the string. For a traditional stick and string bow, if one had to make due with a given peak force input (weight of draw in lbs.), could one compensate by increasing the stroke (draw length)?


  Yes, but I found out with conditions. By practicing and repetition I can extend my standard three finger draw length to 30 inches and get accustomed to a new draw anchor point. However, depending on the type of traditional bow, including both longbow and recurves, that additional draw length is not the same. I only have one longbow and the draw weight increases dramatically beyond industry standard 28 inches. For me, longbows that “stack” at longer draws is a no-go. Depending on the particular recurve design and construction, some can “stack” and some not. I have a 52 inch Red Wing Hunter recurve that is a short snappy fast shooter but hits the wall at 28 inches of draw. On the other hand I have a couple of Bear recurves that pull past 28 inches to 30 inches with moderate effort, increasing in force by approximately 3 lbs/inch.


  Another factor is bow limb construction. I picked up a 58 inch recurve that has bamboo core wood with back and belly fiberglass, warranted draw to 32 inches. My experience is that it pulls well to 30 inches and can go further but the draw weight starts to increase significantly beyond 30 inches.


(58 inch Bodnik recurve - bamboo limbs, 30 inch draw)


  So to sum up my progress to date, I have been able to work up to drawing approximately 55 lbs at 30 inches of draw using a 58 inch Bodnik recurve bow rated 50 lbs @28 inches. From a physical perspective with a three finger draw my best extended draw is 30 inches. Would it be possible to extend the draw further still?


See my next upcoming chapter on Horsebows and thumb draw.

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Some time back I acquired through an importer a Husqvarna sporter in 8mm Mauser. A post war large ring Mauser commercial sporter; I believe it appears to be a Model 640.
   

  Markings on the rifle are minimal; Husqvarna Vapenfabriks AB Kal 8mm on the barrel and the Husqvarna crown / Sweden on the receiver ring. Swept bolt handle, no finger cut in the receiver or stripper clip cutout. Barrel has the simple v-notch sights adjustable for three elevations. For the money I thought it was a good investment for the receiver and bolt regardless of what the barrel or stock wear might turn out to be.
   
  Finally I got around getting it to the bench for cleaning and inspection. Metal is in excellent condition, headspace is in spec, chamber and throat  look good, rifling sharp all the way to the muzzle crown. I felt a little resistance with the cleaning swabs near the muzzle but with more cleaning that disappeared. The barrel rifling is Euro specification with .323 groove diameter, .311 bore diameter, four grooves, 600 mm (23.6 inches) long. The barrel looks like a keeper, I might as well shoot it as-is. The trigger is the standard Mauser type and breaks cleanly.
   
  The stock is stained beechwood and shows numerous small dimple impact marks, suggesting rough handling or being transported in a vehicle in an unsecured manner. The stock is inletted cleanly for the barreled action but there is nothing other than wood itself for supporting the recoil lug. Luckily there are no cracks in the tang despite the weakness in the recoil lug area. (With that noted I would not fire this rifle without beefing up the recoil lug area with some steel bed or other epoxy glass product.) The other thing I noticed was that the stock has a "cast" from the grip to the buttplate. I knew this was common to shotguns but new to me for rifles. For a right hand shooter the buttplate is slightly offset to the right of the stock centerline, and fortunately for me that is what this stock has. This is to allow one's face and eyes to be better positioned over the sights, or that is the theory as I understand it.





 
Anyway, to get this rifle to the range to shoot I'll need to rework this stock to prevent it from splitting the tang under fire. While I'm at it, I'll probably do a full glass bed, reinforce the tang area and clean up the stock exterior ding marks and refinish. Or throw the barreled action into a synthetic stock while the day hours remain long and work the wood next winter.
   
  Suggestions for a synthetic stock that won't break the bank?

Rummaging through my small stash of power I found some yellowish residue on the bottom of a 1 lb container of AA4350.  Took it outside the workshop and opened the lid and the most vile acidic vapor wafted out. Mechanically the powder looked fine but I made fertilizer of it anyway. The all plastic container had been 3/4 full with a tight lid so I am not sure what made it go bad. It wasn't obvious of any holes in the thin plastic but it was definitely leaking. If left alone it could have been worse, much akin to an acid battery leaking. Lesson learned, plastic containers don't guarantee long shelf life nor prevention of leakage should that powder degrade over that of the metal containers.



I just need to more ambitiously burn my power!

Several years ago I picked bought a 7.35 caliber Carcano M38 Short Rifle to compliment another 6.5 Carcano I had, also in that same M38 Short Rifle configuration. The 7.35 is of Terni manufacture 1939 and stamped SA, reportedly exported to Finland during the war. The metal finish is good and the beech wood stock is stained to a walnut finish.  It is a rather odd small rifle, but easy to handle, and the relatively small cartridge (7.35X51) looked interesting from ballistics standpoint.
   


  The 7.35 is a .300 inch bullet diameter to which I procured a number of 128 grain Hornady bullets, reloading dies, and a number of cases resized from 6.5mm Carcano and 257 Roberts brass.
   
  My initial attempt in reloading and shooting this rifle using H4896 and 4064 resulted in really poor scattergun results. At the time more pressing matters deserved my attention so I set the gun back into the safe for further investigation for a future time. I figured that it had some serious defect that would likely take some serious work to overcome.
   
  Fast forward to today to the point I essentially tore the rifle down and re-evaluated the brass and the re-loading information for 7.35. My basic resource for reloading and shooting the 7.35 was the Dave Emary Paper found here:  http://personal.stevens.edu/~gliberat/carcano/
   
  First I did some major cleaning of the barrel and got through all the layers of copper/carbon/copper.  From the teardown of the rifle I found the rifle lands in the bore were in good shape but showed some edge wear or "rounding out the grooves". The chamber was cut with some amount of freebore; I supposed to allow for seating out bullets, debris, or safely from over-pressure, but combined with what I suspect is additional throat wear exacerbates the amount of bullet jump into the lands. By my reckoning the 128 grain Hornady jumps a full caliber before engraving into the rifling. Since the remainder of the barrel looked good and a .291" pin gauge fit tightly at the muzzle, I decided to try some further work to see if the rifle would shoot.  Next was a check on the stock fit up and I found that the bayonet lug and wood were putting a high upward and lateral force on the barrel. Some minor wood work and shaping relieved this and I also polished the muzzle crown for a square clean edge.
   
  Using QL version 3.9 and taking into account the issue of dealing with bullet "jump", I biased the QL queries for faster powders to slam the bullet into engaging the rifling as quickly and squarely as possible but also fill the cartridge as much as possible for reliable and consistent ignition characteristics. The P-max for this cartridge in QL is about 48,000 psi. A promising candidate in Alliant AR-Comp showed 2,700 fps for the 21 inch barreled rifle, 40 grains filling the cartridge 93%, but alas, my local suppliers had none of the AR-Comp in stock. My 2nd choice was IMR 4198 that QL indicated would push the 128 bullets to 2,600+ fps, and I started with 33 grains and a COL of 2.800". Range results were fair but resulted in smoked cases that needed more pressure. Next I tried 34 grains IMR 4198 that filled the cases to 85% and they sealed acceptably staying within the realm of 48,000 psi. The 34 grain load of IMR 4198 worked well given the condition of this rifle and my limited ability to shoot open sights, these being 200m V-notched sights. At a 100yd target my results were averaging consistent groups of 5 inches. That's not bad considering I started at minute of barn accuracy.



Overall the 7.35Carcano is a gun that "works" but is quirky in regard to the .300" bullets, the 200 meter V-notched battle sights, and the 6 round clip loading. A fun rifle to take to a military shoot for show and history but will never be my "go to" weapon of choice.

For those of you shooting .308s with barrels on the short side, try a reload of RL-10X.  I developed a pretty accurate load using RL-10X pushing a 130 grain Speer HP.  In my case  I hit a max load on accuracy well before reaching any signs of excessive pressure.

Another load that is a great plinker is using 90 grain Hornady XTPs with the "Load" or 13 grains of Red Dot.

I became fascinated with the number of 80's vintage Japanese motorcycles that are available for cheap and the performance opportunities in stripping these bikes down, tinkering, etc., aka, Cafe Racer. Essentially, there are no "rules"; anything goes. Most of the Japanese bikes of this era have little collectible value, at least to me anyway, so let the fun begin!

'82 Yamaha 750 Virago, a cruiser bike made to compete in the Harley-chopper market. A heavy shaft driven affair, two valve heads, ergonomically terrible handlebars. Torquey V-Twin, marginal brakes.



When I glass bead blasted the heads and tank, I found the tank had grinding marks and a couple of dings but I was not ready to paint.  In that condition the tank is subject to flash rusting so I cold-blued it until such time I could get on with painting.  Surprisingly, the Japanese steel does not take easily to cold blue so over the course of repeat applications I ended up with a random mottled finish of black/blue/gray that turned out rather interesting. Finished it with a light wiping of of oil and it is good to go.

After stripping off a bunch of unnecessary parts (and weight) I modified quite a few components but the engine is basically unchanged except for new rings, cams, relapped the valves, and replaced the original carbs to Mikuni's. I was shocked to find the original cylinder bores miked to be within original factory specs on the rebuild so I simply re-honed the bores for the new rings.

The bike is back into pieces as I am powdercoating the various parts but attached are some photos when I last had it up and running.

Merry Christmas - Everyone!

For anybody suffering from this, consider my experience and see if it helps.

A while back I had acid reflux so bad I was constantly chewing roll-aids and couldn't sleep flat at night; eventually had to go to acid-reducer meds like you see advertised to get on top of it.

Then the wife convinced me to go in with her to do the South Beach diet to shed a few pounds. Now I'm not a diet fad kinda of guy but the "eat unlimited meat" part of it sounded intriguing.

So I went cold-turkey on the no sugar, no carbos, just meat and cheese for however long it was, then started in cycling in veggies and then some limited breads. It worked over a course of a number of weeks that I did lose some weight and my desire for sugar and carbohydrates greatly diminshed. So much in fact that now I can't stand the taste of some candies and high sugar foods.

So while getting through this phase of diet "re-adustment", I realized my acid reflux was gone. Dropped the meds completely and its still gone.

The only things that bring back a touch of reflux is drinking more than a glass of wine, gorging on pizza or eating a lot of potatoes. So as long as I limit the sugars and carbos, my esophagus is happy.

Nels

I haven't frequented the forum much as I've been mulling over a career "opportunity" that will take me to Kansas City. But the decision's been made so KC here I come:COOLdude:. Got a zillion things to get done involving moving a household and finding a permanent place to live so I'll be lucky just to get online read about ya'alls adventures until some time after May.

I'm gonna miss living in New Mexico but I'll be danged to have the worst luck drawing hunting permits. Goose eggs on oryx and antelope over a 12 year period. Maybe better next year luck as an out-of-stater.

Nels

In evaluating powders for my Kurz wildcat I've been using Hodgdon's BL-C(2) that generally comes in the top tier in my QL paper-cranks.  Another double-based ball powder that is right up there for several bullet weights is AA2520.  Wow, locally AA2520 is quite a bit cheaper per pound than BL-C(2).

Anybody use AA2520?  Experience? Is it really THE powder for 308Win?

Nels

Quite some time ago I embarked on a quest to wildcat an 8mm "Kurz" following the lines of what the Germans did with developing the 8x33 Kurz from the 8x57. My idea was to come up with something more powerful than the 8x33 but still fit the standard .473 case head/bolt configuration. With that parameter in mind I didn't want to necessarily design something so unique that I have to invest in manufacturing custom dies, particularly if the performance results turned out to be only so-so.

My design criteria were:
·.473 case head (rim)
·52,000 psi chamber pressure
·Push bullet weights from 125 to 195 grains
·Large enough case to not be pressure sensitive to minor changes in charge weights
·Feed reasonably in a short bolt action rifle
·Caliber length case neck

My solution was to use 284 Win brass that enables the use of a .473 rim but a fatter .500 case head diameter. I fitted that 284 brass into a cut down 8mm Rem Mag full length die to obtain the 8mm neck (.320 length) and 25 degree shoulder. The 284 case head diameter of .500 comes to rest almost half of the length of what would have been the original die before chopping it down.

 




Pictured are the cut down 8mm Rem Mag Trim die, FL die and seating die. Loaded cartridges are with the 150 grain Hornady bullets at OAL of 2.600. My case necks turned out a bit short due to my learning experience in sizing and fire-forming but more on that later.



Cartridge specs:
·.473 rim, .500 diameter case head
·.488 diameter shoulder
·25 degree shoulder
·.320 neck length
·Max COL 1.891
·58 grains water capacity

More pics and experiences to come on case sizing and forming. I should mention the test rifle chambered for this round is a short action barrel-nut Savage with a Shilen 10 twist 24 inch barrel. More on that too later.

Nels

I recently acquired a custom mould for the 8x57 Mausers that is a gas-checked sihouette style, single lube groove, and weighs in at 196 grains.  Fits my military Mauser throats snug and I like having the lube groove captured within the case neck. Very similar to the RCBS sihouette design.

Loaded a set of twenty up with a fairly brisk charge to push 'em fast, faster than I would expect good accuracy at but thought it worth experimenting since these pills fit the throat so well.

After printing ten on paper at 100 yds I was disappointed with a 9 inch scattergun group. My luck at pulling cast boolits from loaded cartridges has been dismal, often ending up with damaging the boolits beyond re-use so I decided to "unload" the remaining ten rounds by sending them down range at a 12 inch steel gong at 220 yds.

Lo and behold I nailed that steel gong ten out ten times.

Could this be a case where the boolit is taking some time going down range to stablize, hence, "going to sleep"?

The lube I use is Lars Carnauba Red which is fairly stiff but not sure if that could be a factor or not. My next thought is to back off on the charge slightly and see what happens.

Nels

While cleaning up the shop one day I gathered up a number of gas checks I peeled off of some 8mm reject cast boolits. I never throw something like that away and thought about some 8mm plain based 150 grain plinkers I cast the previous week in Lyman #2 air-cooled. They were off a mould I bought in a Cast Boolits group buy.

They fit my Mausers and shoot well over a light charge of Unique but are limited to just plinker speed.

For a lark, I took the gas checks, put 'em reversed on the punch, plain-based boolit on top w/ lube and ran the ram up through my Lee sizing die at .325.  Then I seated the boolits into 8x57 brass with the same GC reversed fasion and seated the boolit only partially down the case neck to retain the GC in the case neck and not dropped into the case body. Kind of tricky to handle the boolit and gas check this way; definitely bell the case to help get things started.  This was done over a charge of 25.1 grains of AA5744.

For my next range trip I drug along a Yugo M24/47 that is my cast lead test bed. With my other shooting done I got it out and chucked several of the reversed CGs loads into it.  Really didn't expect much.

Lol and behold, I printed some pretty good groups with that combination!  Bad thing was they printed about a foot higher on the target then I expected at 100  yds. My guess the velocity is humming right along but wouldn't dare putting these over a chrony because of the loose gas checks.  On the other hand I didn't find a single gas check on the ground between the muzzle and the target afterward.

To make sure this isn't a fluke I plan to load up a few more of these and re-adjust my POA and see if I can get a good print into the bull.  Pics  to follow.

Nels

I drew a Aoudad (or Barbary Sheep) either *** tag in SE New Mexico for the month of February.  Got away on three separate weekends and found the primary challenge is just to find the durn things. Didn't fill the tag, but it was good to get out during the "cooped up" time of the year and hiked many a hill and canyon trying to learn something about those owl-dads. There is plenty of country you can wear your boots out around the Guadalupes mountains and easily get away from it all.

Walking off a hill one evening I came face to face with a sheep that popped out of a nearby ravine and after staring at each other for a few seconds I reached for my rifle off my back as she spun back across the ravine.  I ran uphill at an angle to get a drop on her and about the time I was putting the crosshairs on her back I heard a bleat at my feet.  My target had a lamb that was curious what I was up to and obviously wasn't old enough to know better. Couldn't been more than a few days old as it was all legs.  I fumbled around trying to get the camera out of my pack and about the time I got it ready the little feller had wandered up the hill bleating for mommy.

I jacked the exposure up because of the dim light. I promply vamoosed it out of there so it and momma could reconnect before it got too late.

That kind got me thinking about why the state puts a hunt for either *** in February if thats when they are dropping lambs???  Both ***es have horns and they are hard to tell apart at long distance.:undecided:

Lots of country to glass.


and

and


Saw quite a few mule deer and one day a golden eagle shredding a deer carcass. Those birds are very big or Ol' John would say muy grande.
 
One day I parked the Jeep near a rock cliff and when I returned in the evening I heard what I thought were birds chirping at me from the rock cliff wall, then a few rocks came tumbling down.  Too dark to see but I kept moving closer to make out what it could possibly be.  More chirping down at me as what ever it was moving up the cliff towards the top.  Finally silhouetted against the sky popped up six sheep heads.  Looking like ugly girls with pigtails they milled about chirping their disgust down at me from that rock cliff.

Maybe next year ladies.

Nels

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Recently I picked up a barrel blank in 6.5mm in #2 contour, 24 inch length at a really good price, the only drawback being it's a 10 twist. 10 twist is on the slow side for the 6.5, the 120's or 129's bullets might be the limit for what I can stablize. In comparison, my other 6.5s vary from 7.8 to 9 twist.

Nevertheless, I snapped it up and started the quest for a viable 6.5 cartridge. Even read the entire "6.5 the perfect caliber" thread sticky above. whew.

I ended up narrowing the choices to four, two that are long action candidates and two that can go short action. I set the pressure ceiling at 52,000 psi for the actions I might use and did load comparisons using Quickload. I also tried to keep the same powder across all four for consistency but one fell outside the range for reasonable compressibility due to its smaller volume but the substitute powder is close 'nuff to give a reasonable comparison. I selected the 129 grain Hornady from the "6.5 perfect caliber" thread that the "sweetspot" bullet is approximately 130 grains. Got some interesting results and I'll share them below:

52,000 PSI Chamber pressure, 24 inch barrel, 10 twist, 129 grain bullet seated to base of neck, QL calculations.

6.5x55 AI Swede 62g H2O volume 52.7g RL-22 2931 fps
6.5x55 Swede 57g H2O volume 49.8g C RL-22 2895 fps
6.5 Creedmoor 53.5 g H2O volume 48.2g C RL-22 2881 fps
6.5x47 Lapua 48g H2O volume 40.7g C H4350 2824 fps

Despite what the gunrags say, when you put 'em on level footing (pressure) and the same bullet, the 'ol Swede is hard to beat. However the Creedmoor and Lapua slip into short actions, and the Creedmoor is right on the heels of the Swede with lessor volume and powder. The AI Swede is 36 fps faster than the Swede but costs almost 3 grains to get that. In terms of efficiency the Lapua gets the most velocity for the given amount of powder. Funny thing, the Lapua case capacity is almost the same as the 6.5 Carcano.

This exercise didn't give me what I wanted as I really don't need another 6.5x55.:undecided: The Lapua looks the most interesting to me right now being twist limited by the barrel for heavy bullets and it has a longer neck than the Creedmoor.

Nels

Curious if anyone has actually tried one of these holographic sights that gets the "dot" down to 1 MOA?  I've looked at a Burris that's technically not holographic but a light emitting diode against a open lens, light and compact, but is a 4 MOA dot.  I believe both have long eye relief.

I'm getting to the point that some iron sights are really getting tough on my eyes.  If the technology can get these dots down to 1MOA and get 'em smaller to the size of the Burris, I could see this making a slick forward mounted scout rifle system.

Nels

Gitano's thread on "barrel bursting" and discussion of stepped Mauser barrels got me thinking about an observation on OBT (optimum barrel timing).

With sporter barrels I've had pretty good luck using QL to calculate bullet residence in the barrel against the barrel timing nodes.  Often I have to get precise with the cartridge measured capacity and bullet weights/dimensions and like I said, come up with some accurate loads in short order.

However, with the stepped Mauser barrels (600mm) that I have in both 8mm and 7.62 NATO, the OBT predictions appear to be inconsistent.  This is with "new" stepped barrels that have good throats.  I also crunched QL numbers on some pet loads provided by some other k98 shooters, and they too fly in the face of what OBT predicts.

Most recently I've been playing with the 130g Speer HP in the 7.62/308, two powders, different burn speeds but each capable of pushing the Speer to near 3000 fps.  Neither combo is "happy" at the predicted OBT.  And yes, I have checked the tightness of the action screws.

My next trial is to stagger the charges and do the ladder routine.  I'm confident this Speer should shoot well, just gotta find where.  My theory is the barrel steps are reflecting portions of the waves transmitted within the barrel steel altering the predicted node timing or perhaps making them less critical.

Thoughts?