POS Tikka or Finely Tuned Instrument
Son brought his brand new Tikka T3X Elite Stainless Fluted and Threaded 243 down for a weekend hunt. With a scope and rings to be fitted and sighted in, by Dad of course. Not to mention a few rds of ammo to be loaded for it. Might as well bring the Ruger 10/22 to be cleaned and have a new scope set up also. Yes Dad! He arrives late Thursday night. I cook his Friday breakfast, run him to his NP office then spend the day faffing around making 20 rounds up in 100gn SP, putting rings and scopes on, stripping and cleaning the Ruger as I go and and bore sighting the Tikka. I put a venison pot roast on in the middle of it all. Wife is overnighting in Auckland Thursday for work. Picking her up from late plane Friday night. So at 4 I collect son from office and we head 50min out to the range. Weather has turned to custard, Auckland and East Coast in the gun and already tipping down here. Not looking good for a Saturday in the hills at Whangamomoana. We had hoped for fallow at Patea but our guide with the permission turned out to be unavailable. NZDA friends advised goats in DOC country off the road to the Bridge to Somewhere a sure thing. Ahhh, ok...Back to sighting in. Arrive at range, only 47m but good for setting up and a covered stand with table to rest rifle on. Target stapled up, out comes the fancy Tikka, on goes the first round. Effing bolt won't close! Now I load for a number of calibres including two 243s, my own Zastava M70 and my SILs Howa 1500 Never an issue. These rounds are the same as I shoot in the Zastava and which I took my recent red with. We tried half the rounds. No go. Silly me. In my haste I had not put any factory rounds in the Lockbox. At 5.30 I txt Dave at Magnum Sports, helpful fella that he is. Any ideas Dave? What are we missing on this fancy piece of bling? Dave comes back pretty quick. "Rifle has faulty headspace, or, has very tight chamber. Try a factory round" Yeah, ok then.
So we put the Tikka back in the bag consoling ourselves that the range is on the way to Whangamomoana so we can get up early if we can sort the issue. The Ruger we get easily on to paper and get it zeroed without fuss. Along the way we try several different breeds of subsonic. Son comes with a box each of Ely and Fiocchi. I brought Winchester and Aguila and CCI. We start with the Winchester and it goes pretty good, as it did when I tested the rifle on pickup. The Ely jammed every 3-4 shots. The Aguila was single shot only, but most accurate. The new colour CCI jammed about 3 times, the Winchester once early then not at all. We counted that a success.
Txts were coming thru that Auckland was getting very wet and plane delayed. So home to delicious venison and try to sort the Tikka. I had new PPU factory, old 1980s PMC factory and a box of someone else's Hornady VTX reloads. The bolt refused to close on the PPU, closed most easily, almost loose, on the reloads and fine on the old PMC . None of the tight ones had projectiles engaging the lands so out with the calipers. Turned out the critical dimension was the case length. My reloads were all gauged to 2.0435". The PPU to 2.046". The PMC to 2.0375" and the "other" reloads to 2.037" Go figure? Why the hell make a chamber that sensitive?
I took a stone to the pin in my Lee Length gauge and carefully ground it down. I was a bit too careful. I was aiming at 2.039" with the idea that all my brass at that length would present no issues in any of the three rifles. The first 3 of 30 loaded up were fine. Of the rest, all done with the same setup in the same batch, 4 were too tight to close the bolt when loaded. Bloody hell!
The plane came in 45min late but at least it came. A bit late getting to bed after mandatory family catchups.
At the range in the morning I taught my son the one shot method of zeroing. Well two shots really, the second being a confirmation shot. He pulled the trigger on both. The first was 4" left and 5" high. I made the adjustments and the confirmation shot was dead centre and about 3/4" high at 47.5m. Perfect! For the avoidance of doubt I had him shoot a group of three. Not super tight but two close and centre, one a tad high. Fine for hunting. Just to prove the point I debagged the Zastava and printed a 3 hole group, two overlapping 50%, the third slightly off to the side, all a tad to the left of centre.
On the way to Whangamomoana the rain stopped and the sun came out. The sign on the gate said Road Closed, not suitable for vehicles, not maintained by Council Yada Yada. Fresh tracks declared this did not apply to 4wd hunting wagons, correct? It being a bloody long walk through the private owned land to DOC'ville we decided we would drive carefully and bail at the first elevated pulse passage. Of course we pushed one too far. Just to get to that nice grassy turnaround ya know. So after a 3 hour walk of 6.5km into DOC forest reserve, passing up several easy shots on the way there and back because we were on the wrong side of the fence, we get back in the hot sun to the 2019 Prado with the flash new Michelin AT Extra tires and head home. One small matter on the way is going to cost me a new front bumper. Its called sliding into a hole while trying not to fall 300ft down a slip face into a river. I successfully negotiated it with wheels on a thin semi hard centre between two deep mud and water filled ruts on drivers side with off wheels on equally thin grass shoulder above slip going in. Coming out I had a very very clear view of the river below me and suspect I automatically flinched an inch too far left. "FLOOR IT" my son yelled as we slid into a ginormous fucking hole, no doubt envisaging a 5km trudge out and having to empty a couple of wallets to get a tow. The tires and howling diesel did me proud. At the Whangamomoana Pub we were admiring the new thick splashed mud livery of my no-longer-a-Remuera-tractor Prado when son says " oh shit" pointing to the bottom left of the front bumper. "I wondered what that big 'thump' was". On the way home I did my best to come up with a way to blame it on a tight chamber in a Tikka. But a I could think of was, "Shit happens"
So, no goat, a good walk, a solved reloading puzzle and a new destination for my rifle equipped eMTB. Not to mention wife safely home and her wonderful smoked fish pie for Saturday dinner.
The jury is still out on the Tikka however...
