So you bought a new “less than MOA” rifle

You can get 80% of the way there with a shooter of average skill with average equipment. Realizing that last 20% gets expensive

Nature Boy said:

You can get 80% of the way there with a shooter of average skill with average equipment. Realizing that last 20% gets expensive

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Amen!

Phaedrus/69 said:

I ditched that piece of junk decades ago. Now I have an AR and a Bren 805.

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Too bad. That's how smoking deals happen. Among other things, I've bought a few high-end collectible cars from people who haven't had a clue how to fix them and just called them pieces of junk instead.

I don’t think so. Most $100 mosin will shoot 1-2” @100 yards, even the counterbored ones with WWII surplus ball.

While the mosins are like $300 nowadays, I think you get my point.

JMHO but you don't teach a new driver in a Corvette. You don't teach a new pilot in an F-22. Can you? sure, but it will be a long time before they can realize the benefits of the expensive hardware and you can learn all the basics just as well in a Civic, or a Cessna 172, or with a 10/22.

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Agreed. But teaching a new driver in a $500 ‘78 Civic with ten degrees of slop in the steering, a vacuum leak, a sandblasted windshield, and bias-ply tires is going to make it harder for that driver to get good feedback from good technique than if he/she were driving a Civic with crisp steering, crystal-clear glass, new tires, and linear throttle and brake response. The car with fewer foibles gets in the way less.

(The F-22 vs trainer argument falls down a bit because the F-22 has vastly higher performance and complexity than any trainer, rather than simply better visibility or more linear controls. A high-end rifle with match ammo and good glass has essentially the same velocity and ballistics as the cheapest same-caliber rifle with the cheapest scope in Walmart, but just fits better, lets the user see better, and inserts less random error into each shot.)

My first centerfire rifle was a 188-series Mini-14 Ranch Rifle with a $30 Simmons 3-9 scope. The best 100-yard group that rifle ever shot was 5.5” at 100 yards, from a rest with match ammo. I applied all the skills I knew and thought the problem was me. Then a fellow shooter at the range one day let me try out his high-end .17 HMR with good glass, and I shot a sub-1” group at 100 yards...and realized the problem was my rifle, not me. That doesn’t mean my skills were all that great, but simply that the rifle I was using was holding me back from developing those skills further.

Can't believe this thread is still going. Been sitting, reading and at times scratching my head.

Varminterror said:

So I can absolutely support, for most people, you really can BUY an appreciable improvement in precision

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I work the line every year at a Boy Scout Rifle Merit badge clinic. Most boys never shot but can muddle through and complete the badge. Sometimes we get a kid who really struggles I always bring several Rem and Win target rifles with me. Lo and behold all of the sudden they can shoot. A little better equipment goes a long way.

For many that have been at this a while, they shoot well enough see its the gear and not them.

The avg shooter, maybe not.

I suck compared to how I used to be. Had exceptional vision and fine pitch motor skills, knowledge and practiced.

Was nothing great, but no slouch.

And I repeatedly outshoot guys at my club w decent stuff. Lots of people shoot good stuff, but dont shoot it well.

Many are content to just make noise.
And honestly, if they are having fun w less than decent shooting....more power to em.

Getting serious and obsessing can take the fun out of stuff

Good gear should allow one to work on improving themselves

But then when they arrive most will want to take it to the next level.

Guitars, cars, guns......it always gets expensive LOL

hq said:

Too bad. That's how smoking deals happen. Among other things, I've bought a few high-end collectible cars from people who haven't had a clue how to fix them and just called them pieces of junk instead.

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Sorry to say no 'smoking deal' was had; I got my money out of it. The guy I sold it to wasn't a good enough shot that it mattered to him. He had shot it when I owned it and knew what he was getting, and I unloaded a subpar gun. We were both happy.

Phaedrus/69 said:

Sorry to say no 'smoking deal' was had; I got my money out of it. The guy I sold it to wasn't a good enough shot that it mattered to him. He had shot it when I owned it and knew what he was getting, and I unloaded a subpar gun. We were both happy.

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That sounds a lot like the guy who sold me my (later confirmed matching numbers '71 454/425 LS-6) "piece of junk" Corvette for $29k. He also got his money out of it, allright. Both were happy to the point of being ecstatic, too. No harm, no foul.

Yep. I was glad to be rid of that junker and he was glad to have it. Sounds like your 'Vette; not the one I'd have chosen (never liked that Gen body style) but a classic. You got a pretty good deal if the condition was good (depending on how long ago that was, natch). Ah, the ol' Rat! I kind of miss the Big Block days! Modern cars are 1000% better than they were in the Golden Age of Muscle but style-wise it's hard to match the old classic Chevy's.

That was in the 90's but still approximately a quarter or one fifth of their auction hammer prices at the time, regardless of condition. I love to bargain hunt for all kinds of items some people think of as junk and let go for too good prices to pass. I love it when people get frustrated, give up on trying to make something work and sell stuff just to get rid of it without even really trying to do something about it.

To keep things gun related, I paid $300 for my Mini, mint, w/ a very decent quality scope, mags and accessories. It probably had less than a box of rounds through it, never carried hunting or in the woods. The usual problems were present out of the box, couldn't hit a barn door with it and hard primer surplus ammo wouldn't fire. One long afternoon later the barrel had been hand-lapped, gas block barrel channel trued, bolt face deburred for correct firing pin protrusion and the rifle put back together with a lbs-in torque wrench. Presto; 1.5"@100yd all day long without even a hint of stringing, groups opening up or misfires. It just works. Well enough for me to put a spare Zeiss scope on it.

Ergonomics are close enough to 10/22 I've used for decades and Deerfield I've hunted deer with, so it feels like an extension of my hands whenever a shot must be taken quickly and accurately. Most of my race guns from the 80's and 90's are admittedly AR:s but in this context I kind of prefer the dare-to-be-different -factor. There's no difference in practical functionality.

That's just one example among many, but a good one at that, because it must be one of the most hated rifles for reasons that are incredibly trivial to fix with basic amateur gunsmithing experience.

hq said:

That's just one example among many, but a good one at that, because it must be one of the most hated rifles for reasons that are incredibly trivial to fix with basic amateur gunsmithing experience.

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Well, no gunsmith I could find was willing to move the manual safety and convert it use different magazines, at least at a reasonable price. Nor fix the clunky ergos, make it run reliably and replace the garbage wood it shipped with. And that's charitably allowing that so many thing should require fixing on a brand new-in-the-box rifle. And this was before the Ranch rifle came along back when you had to have the thing drilled and tapped like it was still 1920. The pathetic accuracy of my Mini wasn't even in the top three things I most disliked about it. To fix them all would have hardly been trivial and maybe impossible- and certainly not economically feasible. But you do you. There's a reason there's more than one rifle, one pistol and one shotgun on the market.

Still, if it's genuinely 'one of the most hated rifles' then the reputation was well earned.

Phaedrus/69 said:

Well, no gunsmith I could find was willing to move the manual safety and convert it use different magazines, at least at a reasonable price. Nor fix the clunky ergos, make it run reliably and replace the garbage wood it shipped with.

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If the whole rifle was this far from your personal preferences as far as its basic design and accessories are concerned, why did you buy one? Not that it's any of my business and it's quite apparent what the actual problem is in this case, but out of morbid curiosity...

mcb said:

you don't teach a new driver in a Corvette. You don't teach a new pilot in an F-22. Can you? sure, but it will be a long time before they can realize the benefits of the expensive hardware and you can learn all the basics just as well in a Civic, or a Cessna 172, or with a 10/22.

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This analogy isn’t apt. A high horsepower Corvette is more difficult to drive than a compact car. A fighter jet is more difficult to pilot than a Super Cub. Alternatively, high precision firearms are EASIER to shoot well than a lesser rifle.

Of course, the new shooter may not realize the full potential of the rifle, but they will much more quickly realize THEIR potential because custom rifles are customized to remove many of the common roadblocks present in factory rifles.

hq said:

If the whole rifle was this far from your personal preferences as far as its basic design and accessories are concerned, why did you buy one? Not that it's any of my business and it's quite apparent what the actual problem is in this case, but out of morbid curiosity...

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A fair question! I really wanted an AR and couldn't afford one. Back in those days it was the opposite of where we are today; ARs were very expensive and AKs and Mini's were budget rifles. As a younger guy back then I had never owned any semi auto rifle except for rimfires (what we now call FUDD guns were just guns back in those days). I simply lacked the experience with semi auto rifles to see how bad a design the Mini was until I got significant time on one.

There seems to be a notion today that people are born full fledged experts on stuff. That's not the case! Judgement comes from experience, which often comes from bad judgement. Like Edison, I found thousands of ways to do things that didn't work!

Lastly, (again, forgive me for getting so elaborate but I don't know how old/young you are) the internet that we have today was not a thing back then. You couldn't just hop on the gun forums and read thousands of posts about a firearm you're interested in. You relied on 1) your buddies that were "experts" and 2) gun writers. Luckily the average gun writer back in those days was arguably a lot better than the ones working today. Still a youngster wanting to research a new gun didn't have the plethora of options we all enjoy today. If THR had existed back then it would have saved me a ton of cash (well, or cost me a ton of cash).

Sitting here in the cool house after a hot humid tactical match re-reading this thread. Was there a question or just a statement ?
I saw mediocre shooters today shooting good equipment mediocre. Saw good shooters shooting midline equipment well. Add time a magazine changes and all bets are off.

Phaedrus/69 said:

Lastly, (again, forgive me for getting so elaborate but I don't know how old/young you are) the internet that we have today was not a thing back then. You couldn't just hop on the gun forums and read thousands of posts about a firearm you're interested in.

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Actually you could. I've been online since 1987 and usenet was a pretty good tool back in the day, in some regards better than many web-based discussion forums today but that was way before the infamous September that never ended. The days of AIX, SunOS and using GNUS as reader interface. Even some modem-based BBS:s were useful in early to mid 80's.

Then again, magazine reviews seemed to be more in-depth too. I may be a bit biased as I susbscribed to a bunch of them, from G&A to SoF and pretty much everything between.

Not counting impulse purchases - buying machine guns was so simple and cheap back then - I've always done quite a bit of research before parting with my money, and as a result the only guns I've ever sold are my late 80's Colt Gold Cup IPSC race gun when I started my military service in 1990 and needed the cash, and Atchisson USAS-12 because someone really wanted it and made a stupid-money offer a few years ago.

Everything else I still have. A bit of a hoarding syndrome, possibly. I also love home gunsmithing, ironing out possible flaws in manufacturing tolerances or simply improving upon what the factory beancounters have deemed sufficient. Not to mention constant effort to improve the weakest link in the chain, the one between the buttstock and hunting boots, and having a metric crapload of fun doing it.

hq said:

Actually you could. I've been online since 1987 and usenet was a pretty good tool back in the day, in some regards better than many web-based discussion forums today but that was way before the infamous September that never ended. The days of AIX, SunOS and using GNUS as reader interface. Even some modem-based BBS:s were useful in early to mid 80's.

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You misunderstand or misrepresent the state of the web in the United States back then. I see you're in Finland; I dunno if you were in Finland in the '80s but you must not have been in South Dakota in the 80's! In my little hamlet we didn't even have cable, much less internet. Have you ever been to rural South Dakota? It's kind of like the United States but on a 20 year delay. And let's be honest- what content did you have '87? THR didn't exist. The oldest forum I am a member of is coming up on 18 years old now. There were forums before that of course but none of the ones I frequent now existed in 2000. So let's be totally honest now and admit that in 1987 there was not a large and robust gun community online to rival what we have now! So no, back when I bought the Mini-14 there was no access to the internet in my part of the country/planet. I was pretty heavily involved in computers from the mid-80's up to about 2000 then a pretty committed enthusiast on and off after so I can state pretty authoritatively what resources we had where I lived.

Of course, when I was in High School machine guns were legal! But I never owned one myself. Many of the shooting ranges in my state had them to rent since they had a fair amount before Reagan signed the Hughes Act banning new ones.

At any rate, although my Mini-14 was a total piece of junk it doesn't bother me that you like yours. And I guess I will proffer my personal apology that I didn't create the internet and bring gun forums to SD a decade before that became a thing.

Phaedrus/69 said:

You misunderstand or misrepresent the state of the web in the United States back then. I see you're in Finland; I dunno if you were in Finland in the '80s but you must not have been in South Dakota in the 80's! In my little hamlet we didn't even have cable, much less internet. Have you ever been to rural South Dakota? It's kind of like the United States but on a 20 year delay. And let's be honest- what content did you have '87?

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I travel around the US pretty regularly, usually either coast or Wisconsin/Illinois. Never been to South Dakota, would love to, though. There's a chance I'll be relocating at least temporarily to Indiana for a R&D project some time after corona restrictions are lifted so you never know...

As far as history of Internet discussion is concerned, there were no common "boards" or "forums" prior to mid-90's web age. There was Usenet (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usenet); everyone who wanted to discuss used the same platform and databases, worldwide. The rec.guns -group was one of the goldmines. I have no idea how many people - university students and staff, military and government personnel - posted on Usenet gun groups but at the time there were hundreds if not thousands posters active at any given time.

As a 70's and 80's radio amateur / packet radio / telecom geek I may have been an early adopter but when the university provided Internet access in late 80's, it was an easy transition from modems and BBS:s.

All in all, information has been out there much, much longer than most people can imagine. Back then everything was self-moderated and nothing was cencored. All this was just a bit more challenging (or nigh on impossible) for an average joe to access until you could buy Internet access from early 90's on and eventually use a web browser as an interface. Email software like Windows Mail and Mozilla Thunderbird still have Usenet newsgroup functionality as a standard feature, for those who want to go old school and skip web-based forums altogether. Google also provides a web interface to Usenet groups as a public service.

Ok. This is veering far, FAR from guns & practical accuracy this thread is supposed to be all about. Let's conclude this by noting that sometimes polishing a turd can reveal a pretty fantastic little gun underneath.

I was taught FORTRAN and COBOL when I was young and later studied IT (focused on INFOSEC) but quickly decided it wasn't for me. I became a chef, btw, but I'm pretty familiar with the history of the technology (still have some 5.25" floppies in a box and I could probably still program a Sysco router if I had too). SD is pretty nice in a lot of ways, especially if you like to fish or hunt for deer, ducks or pheasants.

To bring this back to guns, my dad ran a sports club and had an FFL and a license to mfg ammo. We usually had 80 or so private guns at home plus limited store stock. I got a BB gun when most kids got their first Tonka Truck and my first .22 shortly after. In nearly 50 years being involved with guns and shooting from just plinking up to bowling pin shooting, ISPC and silhoutte shooting, I can say I learned the most from just trying stuff and making a ton of mistakes. If you try hundreds of guns per years some of them won't click for you. The Mini-14 just didn't work for me but obviously, like the SKS and the Mosin it still has a certain cult following. Different strokes and all.

What? 5.25"? The fancy miniaturized modern stuff? No 8" floppies or open/cased 2311/2314 disk packs? Unfortunately I used up all my 29MB stacks as 14" metal targets in mid 90's, still have a bunch of their plastic casings as "BIT ERROR FREE" cake domes though, complete with inserting/locking handles.

It seems like you've had quite a selection of guns to choose from. Sounds great. It took me the better part of two decades to get there, as a kid I could only dream of shooting anything but my dad's hunting rifles/shotguns and, on special occasions, his trusty .32ACP pocket pistol he had had since WWI. OTOH, they were quality guns like Sako bolt action and CZ/BRNO rimfire, which gave an inherent appreciation for accuracy. And curiosity of what will happen when you add timing to the equation, steering me towards then-"new" IPSC.

Hunting came along in mid 80's, which eventually changed my perception of practical accuracy quite a bit. Bench rest is bench rest and a rail gun is a rail gun, but venison from a running deer, offhand, at moderate distance is dinner. More often than not I can't be bothered to feed mosquitoes by sitting in a well-supported treestand and track deer instead, which rarely results in more than maybe a 150yd shot, standing, from sticks across a field. More commonly an offhand shot at 30-50 yards when a deer has bolted and presents a window of opportunity.

Most hunting areas are densely wooded and even though I've taken some long shots, they're not common enough to justify lugging a 400yd-capable semi auto in moving hunts. Treestand, absolutely, and I love my (tweaked, naturally) R-25 for that, but that's a relatively small percentage of hunting.

As far as practise is concerned, a bunch of bricks of .22 through a suppressed 10/22 every year seems to maintain some level of confidence. Now that surplus 7.62x39 is still cheap, the Mini seems to get quite a bit more range time than most of my other centerfire rifles.

Hookeye said:

Getting serious and obsessing can take the fun out of stuff

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It certainly can, Ollie!

hq said:

What? 5.25"? The fancy miniaturized modern stuff? No 8" floppies or open/cased 2311/2314 disk packs? Unfortunately I used up all my 29MB stacks as 14" metal targets in mid 90's, still have a bunch of their plastic casings as "BIT ERROR FREE" cake domes though, complete with inserting/locking handles.

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Most of my own ancient hardware collection only goes back to 2000 or so. Yeah, I'm a packrat but eventually you get to where there's no way to reuse stuff! The lab still had the LP-record size ones handing on the wall. That reminds me, I have 250 MB hard drives and 15 year old memory sticks that probably could go in the trash.

My favorite EBR right now is my Bren 805. The AR is great and I won't get rid of mine but my ideal carbine would maybe be the HK 433 if it was to ever land in the US. I would like to see them build them here in the US plant. Of course the Bren 806/Bren 2 came out only a couple years after I got my 805!

My next EBR/carbine will probably be a PWS Mod1 in .300 AAC or .223 Wylde. Made right across the border in ID. I'm itching to SBR one now that eforms are down to a month or so. Maybe SBR my Scorpion. But it won't be a 1 MOA gun either.

Phaedrus/69 said:

My favorite EBR right now is my Bren 805.

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Mine is Sako M92S. My issued service rifle was RK62 and it's a good idea to synchronize mags, caliber and accessories just in case. Otherwise I'd probably pick one of the M16:s, M4:s or XM:s but 5.56/.223 isn't a service round around here. The best part of EBR philosophy is that you only really need one when you think about it.

Unsurprisingly, the Sako is mechanically capable of approximately 1.5" accuracy at 150m/164yd, with optics from the bench. Back in the day I shot qualifying groups of around 2"/150m/10rds with irons, which isn't likely to happen anymore as my eyes seem to have run out of warranty lately.