Tight group vs time between shots ?

[ACES&8S]

Twenty five years of reloading , a good size gun collection , my own shooting range & I
still feel like a rookie at so much of this stuff.
I have tons of questions to ask here & I will try to stagger them along & not be every
other person that speaks.
So here is one, I have 2 rifles that are fussy to say the least , with similar symptoms like
the one I will pick on.
A 1903a3 Springfield dated 1943 , with a Smith Corona receiver , a 24" Remington
tapered barrel installed in 1948 for competition , a Jagger trigger. Now all the stuff was
supposed to have been done for military competition per what I found out with serial #
search back in 2000 which matches the description of the rifle but years later I tried to
find the same info & I can't find it in detail like before. I know I printed it off but can't find it.
Sorry for babbling , here goes , this rifle literally kills any cheap scope put on it so it's a Leupold
now.
Couldn't shoot a good group with it at all with 30-06 reloads or factory ammo.
3 years this went on until once by accident I shot it about 10 minutes apart & they touched
at 100 yards. And ever since then I have done the same with it & it is unbelievable with
several loads but if I hurry the shots they fly wide!
I have done this with a 'few' other rifles that my buddies have & it worked on what I call
a whip barrel or tapered barrel only.
Can anyone tell what causes this ?

 

[BigBore44]

What kind of groups are you talking about if you fire them in quick succession? And how many rounds before the group opens up?

 

[imashooter]

What are you calling "hurrying" your shots, time wise?

 

[Art Eatman]

I've never had a rifle that was that sensitive to heat.

Time between shots? I guess that most of the time when meddling around on my front-porch bench rest, I single-load. So, however long it takes to halfway slowly remove the empty case, put it in the box, take out the next round and chamber it. Then, get back into position and acquire the sight picture.

Just guessing, then, maybe up to a minute? Deliberately not in a hurry, but I don't take "all day".

 

[ACES&8S]

What kind of groups are you talking about if you fire them in quick succession? And how many rounds before the group opens up?

Without waiting between shots it will be 2 & a half inches at 100 yards. To relate to how quick it opens compare it to a slow fire group,
slow fire averages .9" to 1.11" at steady shooting without waiting the first shot is on target then the second shot is 1.5" or more away
sometimes even more.
I am a very good trigger operator & confident in the scope.
What do you have in mind?

 

[ACES&8S]

What are you calling "hurrying" your shots, time wise?

Hurrying I like fire the 1st round work the action look thru scope at impact , call what we see = the spotter & myself, announce
the next shot & send it.

 

[ACES&8S]

I've never had a rifle that was that sensitive to heat.

Time between shots? I guess that most of the time when meddling around on my front-porch bench rest, I single-load. So, however long it takes to halfway slowly remove the empty case, put it in the box, take out the next round and chamber it. Then, get back into position and acquire the sight picture.

Just guessing, then, maybe up to a minute? Deliberately not in a hurry, but I don't take "all day".

Mine is about the same amount of time except I usually load about 3 rounds then me & the spotter talk about
what we see on impact.

 

[ACES&8S]

My usual way of shooting for groups is to fire from a clean barrel first at the same target to dirty
the barrel then run 3 more at a steady rate as accurately as possible. The 3 usually doesn't take
more than 2 minutes tops.Then let the barrel cool a few minutes & run a wipe thru it. But this
1903 is the exception of them all.

 

[BigBore44]

Well I’m with Art on this one. I’ve never seen or heard of a barrel susceptible to heat that quickly. Sub MOA with a 1903 is stellar. Have you allowed anyone else to test the weapon?

 

[taliv]

don't take this as an insult, but i'd put money on the problem being the trigger puller. i see this a lot. to deal with it in my own shooting, when i'm shooting on paper, i will frequently dry fire twice between each live round.

your rifle is a difficult rifle to shoot accurately. it's a horrible cartridge to try to shoot groups with. it wasn't designed for that. at all. i honestly wouldn't spend a great deal of time trying to chase tiny groups with it any more than i would take a dump truck to a drag strip or haul logs in a sports car

 

[ontarget]

Only the first shot from a cold barrel counts anyways right? If you are basically taking all cold barrel shots and getting awesome groups that shows that you and your rifle are CONSISTENT. That's what matters. That is unless you are shooting a rapid fire relay in competition.

 

[Art Eatman]

Gigglesnort! taliv, I gotta disagree with you, for anecdotal family experience. My father sporterized two Springfields in the late 1940s. Both were 5-shot sub-MOA rifles. My Ol' Pet Weatherby '06 was sub-MOA after I did a minor amount of tweaking, for some 30 years and close to 4,000 rounds through it. Last group I shot before I retired it was three shots in 0.4 MOA.

But I'll take luck over skill, any day.

 

[ACES&8S]

I'm going to try something, in the next few days I will get our best 2 shooters to shoot this rifle without
telling them the results I have had.
Then I will post the results here.

 

[Ru4real]

The faster you can shoot a good group the better everything (rifle, ammo, conditions, shooter) is working together.

Other than shooting for practice or competition, I cannot think of another situation where necessary delay between shots is a good thing. Hunting or defense, totally NO. Even in competition it may not be a good thing e.g. waiting for a calm and then sending several down range quickly before the wind gusts again.

 

[taliv]

Gigglesnort! taliv, I gotta disagree with you, for anecdotal family experience. My father sporterized two Springfields in the late 1940s. Both were 5-shot sub-MOA rifles. My Ol' Pet Weatherby '06 was sub-MOA after I did a minor amount of tweaking, for some 30 years and close to 4,000 rounds through it. Last group I shot before I retired it was three shots in 0.4 MOA.

But I'll take luck over skill, any day.

definitely not saying it can't be done. just that it wasn't designed for that. wasn't manufactured like that. and imagine how well you and your father would do with something with less recoil and a better stock and trigger

 

[Moparnut]

My usual way of shooting for groups is to fire from a clean barrel first at the same target to dirty
the barrel then run 3 more at a steady rate as accurately as possible. The 3 usually doesn't take
more than 2 minutes tops.Then let the barrel cool a few minutes & run a wipe thru it. But this
1903 is the exception of them all.

A friend of mine always suggested to shoot "fouling shots" before sight in. Take a shot and then sight in and don't run anything down the barrel. I wonder if running a wipe in between your three shot string, is changing something.

 

[ACES&8S]

The faster you can shoot a good group the better everything (rifle, ammo, conditions, shooter) is working together.

Other than shooting for practice or competition, I cannot think of another situation where necessary delay between shots is a good thing. Hunting or defense, totally NO. Even in competition it may not be a good thing e.g. waiting for a calm and then sending several down range quickly before the wind gusts again.

I agree & if the rifle is really built for competition it would be worthless & for hunting one shot one kill better apply.
I'm hoping there is some factor causing it that can be fixed & make it reliable like the others.
I know it isn't me or the ammo or the mechanics.
Thanks for your input.

 

[d2wing]

Some rifles do walk shots when heated. It can be caused by a fitting problem metal to the stock or something or the way the barrel reacts to heat. But it could be a number of other things like the crown or some other flaw. Yours sounds a little extreme. Unless it is a minor fitting problem I don't think it is worth chasing because of the age of the rifle. It is never going to compare to a good quality modern rifle.

 

[Art Eatman]

The only thing I can think of that would have cold-barrel shots = good and warm-barrel shots = bad would be some sort of problem in the bedding. A minor temperature increase in the steel somehow creates unusually high pressure on it from the stock.

But that's just a guess.

From what I've seen most often when there's some sort of forearm pressure problem is a fairly straight line of shot holes away from the point of aim. A line, more than a cluster.

 

[ACES&8S]

The only thing I can think of that would have cold-barrel shots = good and warm-barrel shots = bad would be some sort of problem in the bedding. A minor temperature increase in the steel somehow creates unusually high pressure on it from the stock.

But that's just a guess.

From what I've seen most often when there's some sort of forearm pressure problem is a fairly straight line of shot holes away from the point of aim. A line, more than a cluster.

Not far from what I first thought. Back about 2004 we had tried all we could & dismantled the rifle & of course I
already knew it was a glass bedded barrel. So being about out of options I removed the glass bedding & floated
the barrel which really helped the slow fire accuracy but the standard fire still suffers like before. I even tried a
trick I saw on the net about placing a plastic tab between the barrel & the stock at the farthest limit of the stock
and adjust it's thickness for pressure. It didn't work.
Thanks for the good thinking.

 

[ontarget]

What about the mating surfaces between barrel and receiver? Not sure how that rifle mates up but I have heard one surface not being square to the other and the resulting tightest spot expands first when heated causing POI to shift. I'm no math genius but a couple thousandths at the receiver would be quite a big shift at 100 yards.

 

[ACES&8S]

What about the mating surfaces between barrel and receiver? Not sure how that rifle mates up but I have heard one surface not being square to the other and the resulting tightest spot expands first when heated causing POI to shift. I'm no math genius but a couple thousandths at the receiver would be quite a big shift at 100 yards.

Thanks for that idea.
I will give it a look see after we run it this week.
At this point anything is an option but your idea is on the likely scale.

 

[Ru4real]

Your comment ....this gun kills cheap scopes....got me thinking.

Maybe you have air space behind the recoil lug. A simple test would be to add shims, layers of masking tape would work, until the action won't fit into the stock anymore. If it were my gun, one layer of tape would be too much room.

 

[SamT1]

Your comment ....this gun kills cheap scopes....got me thinking.

Maybe you have air space behind the recoil lug. A simple test would be to add shims, layers of masking tape would work, until the action won't fit into the stock anymore. If it were my gun, one layer of tape would be too much room.

I like that idea. I’d also look at the stock fit around the barrel. I had a rem 700 .270 that shot 5” groups. I’d get frustrated and put it up. Get it out a few months later and it wouldn’t even be on target. After I grew up I floated the barrel, it had one side that was pushing on the barrel very bad. Like the stock was sorta twisted. As it heated up it pushed more and more. I guess as the weather changed POI changed too. The gun instantly went from 3-5moa to sub moa, best load I have is under .5moa (Sierra 90gr Varminters, the death penalty for a prairie dog town) but most any hand load hunting ammo is .75 moa.

 

[desidog]

I've never had a rifle that was that sensitive to heat.

Art, I thought you'd have owned a skinny Mini back in the day.

Mine had a cold barrel zero, and if you kept shooting a whole mag, you could watch the POI walk... up and to the right consistently. When it was good and hot it would be about 2.5" over and about 6" up at 100.