...continued...
Shooting at the "dinger" at 130 yards was an eye-opener. First of all the ball-and-post sight insert I have installed looks so tiny when looking down the barrel. But when confronted with a 14" gong at 130 yards, it's hard to pick a spot because the ball appears really large, and the dinger small at that distance. Right out of the box I found I had to hold quite high, and my success rate was much higher shooting the big Postells. Not sure why? Anyway, there was an 8 inch dinger off to the left side that I had to try my luck with. Held high and let fly, and...DING!! It was swinging in the breeze merrily! I just had to try again, so I slid another Postell in and had at it. This time the big Postell hit one of the bolts attaching the dinger to the chains and drove it clear through the dinger, leaving the steel plate to flop about wildly on one chain. Ooops.
It was a durn good shot, though!...I thought of Josey Wales shooting the barge rope with his scoped Sharps at umpty-hundred yards and thought, "Nuh uh". I doubt if I could do that again if I tried!
So far, I've neglected to get either a blow tube or a range rod to clean between shots, and as the day wore on and the shots accumulated, hits on the dinger began to decline more and more for both me and my son. I chalked it up to either "shooter fatigue" or barrel fouling. Both may have played a factor, but when I cleaned it last night, I started out by running a bronze bore brush down the barrel (from the breech end) with a paper towel perched under the muzzle. The amount of soot that came out of the muzzle with each pass was utterly astounding! It took maybe ten passes before I appeared to have most of it out, and wound up with several tablespoons of residue, at which point I started in with cleaning patches and ended up with a squeaky-clean barrel after a number of those. What I learned from that is this; either use a blow tube or a range rod after every shot or two, or you WILL end up with a fouled barrel, and it may well affect the accuracy. I don't see how it couldn't! And I thought I was done buying stuff for a while...
Anyway, it appears on the surface that the 535gr Postell is the bullet of choice. I have the mould, and if I can't buy them pre-cast (out of stock at last check) I will have to start casting them myself, eventually. It also appears that my previous observations to self that swabbing after every shot was overkill, was misdirected. Since 130 yards is the max dinger distance on that particular range, next time out I will try to adjust the vernier sight to center-punch the big dinger at that distance, and consider changing the front sight card as well so as not to partially obscure the target.
This was a learning experience, as usual...and a fun one at that!
