Forum shooting challenge: The under 500 500

[Ultimitsu]

You wrote all that when 1/4moa is completely irrelevant? Note the difference below.

I do not quite understand your reply. My point is that there is only quite limited amount work you can do to improve a rifle. Much of what could have been negatively affecting a rifle's accuracy cannot be fixed by a user (or even a gun smith). It has nothing to do with 1/4 MOA. You can easily have a 4 MOA gun which, after bedding, re-crowning and load development, still does 3 MOA.

Again, you seem to have drifted off topic. No one says you can't shoot your own 1MOA rifle. Just not in this contest. It appears you are simply not a contender. Rocky was a contender.

My point was simply that doing a lot of load development and reloading for an inaccurate 500 dollar rifle makes little sense.

The point of this challenge is essentially to prove that a cheap rifle can still shoot well, is it not? My point is that if it cost 10 hours of time and $200 of ammo to develop the right load just to make the old 500 dollar rifle to shoot 1 MOA, and from there to maintain 1 MOA you will always have to reload, then it becomes an expensive rifle (totally fine if the goal was to make this particular old rifle shoot for sentimental or nostalgia values). A brand new 1300 rifle that shoots factory ammo 1 MOA arguably makes better economic sense.

If a person did not already start with an accurate rifle that only cost 500 from some distant past, there are only three ways to succeed this challenge:

1. bargain ruthlessly and shamelessly, pay 500 dollars for a rifle with known accuracy that simply is worth more.

2. draw of luck, keep buying 500 dollar rifles until you hit one that is actually quite accurate and sold by an unsuspecting owner - which can happen with estate sales.

3. buy an average 500 dollar rifle and then spend a lot of time rework every part of the rifle: rework the trigger, true the action, lap the barrel, adjust head space (on top of re-crowning, bedding, load developments). Basically the sort of work usually only gunsmith can do properly. In my view unless luck is on your side even with all that work done you may not get a 1 MOA gun.

I have read a lot of accurazing stories and commentary in RimfireCentral about people's journey in accurasing their rifles. The general consensus is pretty much that the time and money spent improving a low end rifle is just not worth it. The only accurazing step that will give you some guaranteed gain (for a low end rifle) is barrel upgrade.