Thread: Getting an old 8mm to shoot

Originally Posted by 2post

How come Puffin knows more about my rifle than me?

Because it goes to the range five time more often with me than you perhaps ?

That is one hellava turn around, paid to play around with it a bit you now have a great shooter.

worst thing with doing all those things, even though it was good to do them, you cant be sure just which one was the worst or if it was a little of all of them

I really like your posts Puffin, success story aside.

Factual, considered and accurate.

More please.

Edit: your mate can also clearly shoot.

Originally Posted by csmiffy

worst thing with doing all those things, even though it was good to do them, you cant be sure just which one was the worst or if it was a little of all of them

The most of the improvements were been done one at a time and sighted in afterwards as it is first and foremost a hunting gun. The biggest improvement was stabilising and bedding the stock then the timney trigger. We found the other changes helped me shoot better as the gun tended to move a lot between shots and was sensitive to placement in the rest. As Puffin said I let him play and only went to the range once he had experimented with loads and projectiles.��

Originally Posted by Puffin

Several years back I purchased an 8mm for a mate to replace his beloved SMLE – claiming the performance by design would be a vast improvement. It was a sporterised Czech military small-ring mauser in a Ramline plastic stock, with the original 2-stage trigger retained, and the barrel re-chambered for 8mm-06. The bolt handle had been turned down for a scope. It cames with some RCBS dies dated 1973. I suspected it had been through the Collings’ workshop in Karori all those years ago, and the stock replaced more recently.

Later I loaded up a few rounds for my mate to shoot some groups at the range, adjusting the charge weight in grain increments, measuring muzzle velocities while we looked for variations in group size. To my untrained eye the bore looked rough in places so expectations were not high. The thin profile barrel, now free-floating, made it difficult to stop the rifle jumping around. Below is a sample of what was achieved at 100m, 8-10cm groups.

Despite this in the following years, three deer were taken with 1 shot each by keeping distances inside 120 metres – which was fortunate as I felt responsible for foisting a rifle on my mate that was so far proving to be a poor performer accuracy-wise.


Attachment 45348

Lately an interest in shooting longer ranges with this rifle (on a tight budget) has meant looking into the options of either getting a new barrel or trying to improve on what we had – to see if we could get the old girl to shoot. With this aim the following steps were taken:

- bedded the action,
- filled the forend to stiffen it and opened out the barrel channel clearances,
- swapped out the trigger for a timney (also added a M70-style 3-position safety),
- re-aligned the scope bases,
- re-crowned & fitted a muzzle-forward DPT suppressor to dampen barrel whip as well as tame noise & recoil,
- fireformed new 30-06 Norma brass,
- trialled 3 projectiles before settling on the 175gr Sierra in front of 55.0gr of 2208,
- optimised bullet jump: 0.3mm
- removed the lead tips to get the COAL back down to magazine length,
- kept the loaded run-out inside 2 thou
- one-off thorough clean of the bore with grey scotchbrite & ammonia to remove rust, rough areas, years of layered fouling,
- used printed range targets correctly sized for the scope.

Below, the first three shots fired by my mate at 100m following the accurising work.

Attachment 45349

He then took 4 more at 200m, calling the upper shot as high (without being able to see the POIs through the scope), remaining 3-shot group = 20mm.

Attachment 45350

We ran out of time for further shooting, and while I don’t think 3-shot groups reveal that much, we are thinking from this that shots on reds could now be stretched out a bit further should the opportunity arise. A small success story I thought I'd share.

Impressive