He should be ready to open shop in about 10 years
My 14 YO nephew has been showing a lot of interest in longrange shooting ssince he was about 8 years old. I had him ringing steel at 1K by the time he was 10. He decided since he just turned 14 he was ready to start shooting f-class. I think maybe he heard me lamenting how much I was going to miss it and thought it was a good way to keep me involved. To that end he asked if he could build himself a FTR rifle. I said what the heck and started looking in corners and drawers finding some parts. Here is what I came up with, a pheonix remington clone with a PTG bolt, some seekins DBM a kreiger 7 twist barrel, a jewell BR trigger, and an old black A3 I picked up on a forum somewhere.
He has had me pretty busy helping him build his rifle for the last few days. I taught him how to use the lathe under close supervision. He learned how to indicate in a barrel, turned the barrel shank (I threaded it) he predrilled the barrel, he bored it and he ran the reamer in. I gave him a little help headspacing it and I polished the barrel for him to match the action. He milled the pillar tops and drilled and cut them in the lathe. He milled the old bedding out of the stock and help me inlet the seekins DBM (which was not actually a good idea, but it does not look terrible). Tonight we screwed the pillars on the action and slathered everything up with some devcon steel bed. I will screw it all together tomorrow so we can get to working up a load for the first match this Saturday....praying the rain will hold off a bit.
I should have taken pics but did not think about it until it was almost too late. Here he is right after he dropped the barreled action into the bedding material. I participated very little in the bedding process as I was busy helping a buddy with a rifle we are building. I will post some pics of the finished gun and some groups maybe tomorrow. He chambered it in 223 and I rethroated it .130 deeper than sammi. I think he has the tang cocked up a tad but not a bad first effort IMO. I bet the darn thing will actually drillem at 600, we will see.
I actually thought I posted this a week ago, but am kinda out of it at times. When I went to update the thread I realized that I had not posted this or it had been removed. Here is what I thought I originally posted and an update from a few days ago and todays update. If I double posted I am sorry.
We finished up last night other than mixing a little dye with some epoxy to clean up where the loading port and some other inletting was done. It was after dark when we finished. He brought some glow sticks down and made me sight the rifle in at 100 yards. Then he decided that he would go staple a glow stick to the 800 yard target. I dialed up 18 MOA and sent three. I forgot to account for the extended case length and the bullet coating. All three shots hit the target in the lower right, but all were sifeways. I went back loaded 3 with 26grs of vv550 behind the 90 bergers and all was good, round holes but some verticle. I seated them ten deeper went down a half thousanth in neck tension and fored 3 more, a little better. I went up to 26.5 and sent three that landed within 1/2 MOA of each other. I then dialed it to the POI and let the boy send a dozen or so down range. He did not do too bad, but my target was already pretty much shot to hell so no pics. He is gone to church tonight so I have been plaing with some of my toys today. I will get him a proper target up at 600 tomorrow and let him fireform the rest of his brass for the match, and remember to take some pics.
I worked up to find max this morning, did not have far to go, popped a primer at 28grs
Fast forward to today for the local midrange prone match.
WHEW, been busy getting this kid ready to shoot. He did well with what he had but I handicapped him with the glass. I bought this scope at a bargain on one of the forums about 2 years ago, never mounted because of IORs reputation of recoil breakages, and most of the stuff I shoot has recoil. This gun was just slapped together out of stuff I had laying around in just a few days, so we did okay. He lost a bunch of points in one match because he kept dialing from the bullet hole to the x ring instead of from the x to the spotter. He got it figured out after he walked his shots off the paper, but corrected well from the error. He made me proud finishing in the middle of the pack even using a broken scope. Did I mention there are some pretty good shooters at our local match. One of the guys in the pics below is on the us f-class team, one is a champion shotgun shooter, and three are members of longrange hunting, all are tough competition. I am not going to name them as I did not get permission to name them, they were just in the background. So here are the crappy cell phone pics of the kid at the match, the gun, and the gun with a group he shot with the replacement scope. I lost track but think that was 27 rounds at 100 yards. Wind got him a few times, but not too shabby for a 14 year old. We both got a good sunburn. He suggested I add something with some SPF to the shooting bag.
My 14 YO nephew has been showing a lot of interest in longrange shooting ssince he was about 8 years old. I had him ringing steel at 1K by the time he was 10. He decided since he just turned 14 he was ready to start shooting f-class. I think maybe he heard me lamenting how much I was going to miss it and thought it was a good way to keep me involved. To that end he asked if he could build himself a FTR rifle. I said what the heck and started looking in corners and drawers finding some parts. Here is what I came up with, a pheonix remington clone with a PTG bolt, some seekins DBM a kreiger 7 twist barrel, a jewell BR trigger, and an old black A3 I picked up on a forum somewhere.
He has had me pretty busy helping him build his rifle for the last few days. I taught him how to use the lathe under close supervision. He learned how to indicate in a barrel, turned the barrel shank (I threaded it) he predrilled the barrel, he bored it and he ran the reamer in. I gave him a little help headspacing it and I polished the barrel for him to match the action. He milled the pillar tops and drilled and cut them in the lathe. He milled the old bedding out of the stock and help me inlet the seekins DBM (which was not actually a good idea, but it does not look terrible). Tonight we screwed the pillars on the action and slathered everything up with some devcon steel bed. I will screw it all together tomorrow so we can get to working up a load for the first match this Saturday....praying the rain will hold off a bit.
I should have taken pics but did not think about it until it was almost too late. Here he is right after he dropped the barreled action into the bedding material. I participated very little in the bedding process as I was busy helping a buddy with a rifle we are building. I will post some pics of the finished gun and some groups maybe tomorrow. He chambered it in 223 and I rethroated it .130 deeper than sammi. I think he has the tang cocked up a tad but not a bad first effort IMO. I bet the darn thing will actually drillem at 600, we will see.
I actually thought I posted this a week ago, but am kinda out of it at times. When I went to update the thread I realized that I had not posted this or it had been removed. Here is what I thought I originally posted and an update from a few days ago and todays update. If I double posted I am sorry.
We finished up last night other than mixing a little dye with some epoxy to clean up where the loading port and some other inletting was done. It was after dark when we finished. He brought some glow sticks down and made me sight the rifle in at 100 yards. Then he decided that he would go staple a glow stick to the 800 yard target. I dialed up 18 MOA and sent three. I forgot to account for the extended case length and the bullet coating. All three shots hit the target in the lower right, but all were sifeways. I went back loaded 3 with 26grs of vv550 behind the 90 bergers and all was good, round holes but some verticle. I seated them ten deeper went down a half thousanth in neck tension and fored 3 more, a little better. I went up to 26.5 and sent three that landed within 1/2 MOA of each other. I then dialed it to the POI and let the boy send a dozen or so down range. He did not do too bad, but my target was already pretty much shot to hell so no pics. He is gone to church tonight so I have been plaing with some of my toys today. I will get him a proper target up at 600 tomorrow and let him fireform the rest of his brass for the match, and remember to take some pics.
I worked up to find max this morning, did not have far to go, popped a primer at 28grs
Fast forward to today for the local midrange prone match.
WHEW, been busy getting this kid ready to shoot. He did well with what he had but I handicapped him with the glass. I bought this scope at a bargain on one of the forums about 2 years ago, never mounted because of IORs reputation of recoil breakages, and most of the stuff I shoot has recoil. This gun was just slapped together out of stuff I had laying around in just a few days, so we did okay. He lost a bunch of points in one match because he kept dialing from the bullet hole to the x ring instead of from the x to the spotter. He got it figured out after he walked his shots off the paper, but corrected well from the error. He made me proud finishing in the middle of the pack even using a broken scope. Did I mention there are some pretty good shooters at our local match. One of the guys in the pics below is on the us f-class team, one is a champion shotgun shooter, and three are members of longrange hunting, all are tough competition. I am not going to name them as I did not get permission to name them, they were just in the background. So here are the crappy cell phone pics of the kid at the match, the gun, and the gun with a group he shot with the replacement scope. I lost track but think that was 27 rounds at 100 yards. Wind got him a few times, but not too shabby for a 14 year old. We both got a good sunburn. He suggested I add something with some SPF to the shooting bag.
