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October 15th, 2014
Hornady has just announced its new-for-2015 products — new ammo, new reloading equipment, new brass, and new shooting accessories. This is a big roll-out, with a slew of new products, including some very interesting reloading tools. CLICK HERE to See ALL NEW 2015 Hornady Products.
VIDEO PREVIEW: Hornady 2015 New Products Overview
New Hornady Rifle Ammunition
New rifle ammo to be introduced in 2015 includes: 17 Win Super Mag Rimfire (with 20gr VMax), Full Boar series with GMX bullets, .243 Win Superformance with 75gr V-Max, and .338 Lapua Magnum with 285gr A-Max. It appears that Hornady may also be expanding its Custom Int’l line of hunting ammo.
New Hornady Reloading Products
For 2015, Hornady is releasing a host of new reloading tools and accessories. Among the new reloading items this year are: Multi-Purpose Lock-N-Load® Quick Change Hand Tool (photo below), Lock-N-Load® Neck Turn Tool with power adapter (photo below), Lock-N-Load® Sonic Cleaner 7L, and Lock-N-Load® AP™ Primer Pocket Swage Tool (for Hornady L-N-L progressive press):
New Hornady Cartridge Brass — 15 New Varieties
This should make hand-loaders happy. Hornady will release 15 new types of Hornady-brand cartridge brass. Varminters should be happy with the new 22 Hornet, 220 Swift, and 6mm Rem offerings.
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Rifle Brass
22 Hornet SKU 8602
220 Swift SKU 8615
6mm Rem SKU 8622
7mm-08 Rem SKU 8646
7x65R SKU 8641
300 Rem Ultra Mag SKU 87624
30-378 Weatherby SKU 8658
8×57 JRS SKU 8644
500-416 Nitro Express SKU 86877 |
Pistol Brass
380 Auto SKU 8710
9X18 Makarov SKU 8725
9MM Luger SKU 8720
38 Special SKU 8730
357 Mag SKU 8740
40 S&W SKU 8742 |
October 15th, 2014
 Accuracy International (AI) is perhaps the most noted manufacturer of bolt-action sniper rifles in the Western world. AI was founded in the 1980s by Dave Caig, Malcolm Cooper, and Dave Walls, three competitive rifle shooters. The company took its name from Cooper’s shop: Accuracy International Shooting Sports. The first project was a smallbore target rifle for civilians. Then the trio decided to build a 7.62×51 sniper rifle, inspired by a UK Ministry of Defense (MoD) competition to replace the venerable L42A1. (That old, wood-stocked design had proven unsatisfactory in the 1982 Falkland Islands conflict.)
Working in a garage workshop, Walls and his partners combined their knowledge of target shooting with input from active military personnel to create the first AI sniper rifle, the L96A1. This ground-breaking design won the MoD contract and immediately proved successful in the field. In an interview with The Telegraph, Walls explained: “The company’s early success was based on not just the what the founders knew from target shooting but also what they learnt from the users, the military users. They went out and they sought inputs from those users, and based on that they designed their very first sniper rifle, and it was very successful.”
Today, “At a discreet location on the outskirts of Portsmouth”, Accuracy International continues to make rugged, versatile, and ultra-accurate sniper rifles for military, law enforcement, and private use. A team from The Telegraph visited the Accuracy International facility in England earlier this year. The video below shows AI’s facilities and the products AI produces:
Watch Accuracy International Video:
Profile of Accuracy International in The Firearm Blog
If you want to learn more about Accuracy International, you’ll find an excellent company history in The Firearm Blog (TFB). Writer Miles Vining visited AI’s Portsmouth facility and toured the factory. His in-depth TFB article provides some fascinating insights. For example, Vining recounts that struggles AI went through before reaching its current success:
“The company wasn’t an immediate success in the beginning. After winning the British Army contract and the MoD realizing the gun was constructed in a garage, Accuracy International had to subcontract many of its parts out to various companies around the UK. In 2000, after over 15 years of production, the company only had two CNC machines, one of which didn’t even work and the other one was making front sight posts…. During the 1990s Accuracy International was surviving on contract to contract, barely making ends meet.”
A major turn-around came with the creation of AI’s Arctic Warfare rifle for the 1993 Swedish trials. As chambered in .338 Lapua Magnum, this AW rifle proved to be a game-changer that “carried the company through the 1990s”. In 2005 the enterprise did go through a re-organization with Tom Irwin and Dave Walls taking over as sole Directors. Since then, AI has been going strong for the past decade. It now produces almost all components in-house, with 30 CNC machines, 70 employees in the UK, and two large-scale manufacturing plants.
October 15th, 2014
50 years ago today, October 15, 1964, Gary Anderson (now CMP Director Emeritus) celebrated his Gold Medal victory at the Tokyo Olympics. Gary earned Olympic Gold for winning the 300m rifle event. A few days later, Gary’s team-mate, Lones Wigger, won a gold medal for the USA in 50m rifle competition.
Photos from CMP Archives. Follow the CMP on Facebook.
October 14th, 2014
ELEY Limited, the English producer of high-quality rimfire ammunition, has been acquired by LDC in a £42 million deal. LDC is a well-established private equity firm specializing in management buy-outs, equity release (cash out), development (DevCap) and acquisition finance transactions.
Eley Will Expand Production and Launch a New Ammo Product
With the LDC take-over, Eley ammo production will increase, thanks to fresh capital expenditures by LDC. In exciting news for shooters, “a new round will be launched” according to Andrew Lane, Managing Director of Eley/LDC. This new ammo product is a big mystery. We can’t speculate whether this is a completely new rimfire cartridge, or simply another variant of .22 LR or other popular rimfire round. (Might Eley be producing 17 HMR in the future?) Along with the expanded production, Eley plans to open a new test facility for “the strategically important Scandinavian market-place.” We presume that will be located in Norway or Sweden, but no location has been revealed as yet.
Andrew Lane explained the benefits of the LDC deal: “While Eley’s growth has been strong over the past few years, IMI is now focused on specialist flow control activities. In LDC we have found an investor that has similarly ambitious targets and who fully buys into our business plan and development strategy.”
In the competitive arena, Eley has been extremely successful in recent years. Notably, all Gold medalists at the recent 2014 World Championships in Spain shot Eley ammo, and current Number 1-ranked shooters are using ELEY ammunition.
ELEY has grown in recent years and it now has 122 employees, mainly in operations, manufacturing and distribution. Eley was founded in 1826 by the Eley Brothers and moved to the Birmingham area after World War I. A division of Nobel Explosives, it eventually became a subsidiary of ICI in 1926. It later formed part of the IMI metals division that was separated from ICI in 1977. Following this deal with LDC, it is once again an independent company.
Story tip by EdLongrange. We welcome reader submissions.
October 14th, 2014
When we recently ran a story about Dennis Santiago’s new snakeskin Eliseo Tubegun, folks asked us if this kind of rifle can be competitive in F-Class competition. Here’s a detailed answer to that question by G. Salazar, who runs the Riflemans Journal Website.
A while back, G. Salazar published a three-part article on Shooting The Tubegun in F-Class. Links for all three segments are found below. The article covers some of the hardware German engineered to adapt his tubegun for long-range F-Class shooting with scope. If you’re an F-Classer, or just a fan of tubeguns, you should read German’s article, in all its parts.
READ Tubegun in F-Class Part 1
READ Tubegun in F-Class Part 2
READ Tubegun in F-Class Part 3
In the intro to his multi-part F-Class Tubegun article, German explains:
Salazar: The tubegun has truly changed the face of High Power shooting over the past five years or so. Specifically, the CSS (Gary Eliseo) tubeguns, which are made for a broad variety of actions and configurable to single-shot or repeater, have truly helped the sport to grow. That’s not just idle talk, the two principal factors that made the tubegun so important to our growth are the ease of transition for AR15 shooters moving into a bolt-action rifle and the absolutely ridiculous length of time it currently takes to get a stock from the conventional stock makers. My last conventional stock took well over two years from order to delivery (plain fiberglass). One of my friends has now been waiting four years for a simple wood stock for a smallbore rifle. By contrast, tubeguns, which are largely CNC machined, are delivered in a reasonably short time — weeks or a couple of months at most.
Notwithstanding the foregoing, the tubegun would never have attained its present success if it weren’t for one simple fact — they are brutally accurate. I have three CSS tubeguns, one chambered in .308 and two in .30-06 and they are my favorite prone rifles due to their accuracy and great ergonomics. Those factors are just as appealing to an F-Class competitor as to a prone shooter, and indeed, the tubegun is making solid inroads into F-Class. READ MORE…
READ MORE of Part 1, The Tubegun in F-Class
October 14th, 2014
Here’s the deal of the month if you’re looking for a medium-magnification scope for hunting or gun games. The Vortex Razor HD 5-20x50mm Scope is now just $1349.00 at EuroOptic.com. These popular optics previously retailed for $1999.95. But EuroOptic purchased ALL the remaining inventory of these Vortex scopes and is blowing them out at below wholesale prices. With this special inventory reduction sale, you can save $650.00 on a very high-quality scope.
Vortex Razor HD 5-20x50mm Scope Buy Out Sale!
After buying ALL the remaining Vortex Razor HD inventory, EuroOptic is offering huge savings — $650 off the riflescopes shown above. Originally priced at $1999.95, these scopes are now being sold for just $1349.00! Supplies are limited. Call 570-368-3920 to order.
Sale tip by EdLongrange. We welcome reader submissions.
October 13th, 2014
by Philip Mahin, Sierra Bullets Ballistic Technician
This article first appeared in the Sierra Bullets Blog
The ANSI / SAAMI group, short for “American National Standard Institute” and “Sporting Arms and Ammunition Manufacturers’ Institute”, have made available some time back the voluntary industry performance standards for pressure and velocity of centerfire rifle sporting ammunition for the use of commercial manufacturers. [These standards for] individual cartridges [include] the velocity on the basis of the nominal mean velocity from each, the maximum average pressure (MAP) for each, and cartridge and chamber drawings with dimensions included. The cartridge drawings can be seen by searching the internet and using the phrase ‘308 SAAMI’ will get you the .308 Winchester in PDF form. What I really wanted to discuss today was the differences between the two accepted methods of obtaining pressure listings. The Pounds per Square Inch (PSI) and the older Copper Units of Pressure (CUP) version can both be found in the PDF pamphlet.
Image by ModernArms, Creative Common License.
 CUP Pressure Measurement
The CUP system uses a copper crush cylinder which is compressed by a piston fitted to a piston hole into the chamber of the test barrel. Pressure generated by the burning propellant causes the piston to move and compress the copper cylinder. This will give it a specific measurable size that can be compared to a set standard. At right is a photo of a case that was used in this method and you can see the ring left by the piston hole.
PSI Pressure Measurement
What the book lists as the preferred method is the PSI (pounds per square inch or, more accurately, pound-force per square inch) version using a piezoelectric transducer system with the transducer flush mounted in the chamber of the test barrel. Pressure developed by the burning propellant pushes on the transducer through the case wall causing it to deflect and make a measurable electric charge.
Q: Is there a standardized correlation or mathematical conversion ratio between CUP and PSI values?
Mahin: As far as I can tell (and anyone else can tell me) … there is no [standard conversion ratio or] correlation between them. An example of this is the .223 Remington cartridge that lists a MAP of 52,000 CUP / 55,000 PSI but a .308 Winchester lists a 52,000 CUP / 62,000 PSI and a 30-30 lists a 38,000 CUP / 42,000 PSI. It leaves me scratching my head also but it is what it is. The two different methods will show up in listed powder data[.]
So the question on most of your minds is what does my favorite pet load give for pressure? The truth is the only way to know for sure is to get the specialized equipment and test your own components but this is going to be way out of reach for the average shooter, myself included. The reality is that as long as you are using printed data and working up from a safe start load within it, you should be under the listed MAP and have no reason for concern. Being specific in your components and going to the load data representing the bullet from a specific cartridge will help get you safe accuracy. [With a .308 Winchester] if you are to use the 1% rule and work up [from a starting load] in 0.4 grain increments, you should be able to find an accuracy load that will suit your needs without seeing pressure signs doing it. This is a key to component longevity and is the same thing we advise [via our customer service lines] every day. Till next time, be safe and enjoy your shooting.
October 13th, 2014
Story based on report by Lars Dalseide for NRABlog.com
I first met Anette Wachter four years ago at the NRA’s National Long Range High Power Rifle Championship in Camp Perry, Ohio. A statuesque brunette, Wachter easily stood out in the crowd. I just so happened to be a big fan of her twitter feed as well. After a quick exchange of pleasantries, we talked about shooting, life in Washington, and how she could get more involved.
Since then she has become very involved. Her 30 Cal Gal blog has become a favorite of male and female shooters alike. Due to her diligence, she was also about to earn a spot on the U.S. National Palma Travel Rifle Team. And recently, Wachter lent her voice and views to the battle for gun rights in the state of Washington.
by AccurateShooter.com
Anette Wachter, aka “30 Cal Gal”, Helps Lead Fight Against I-594
Below is a video Anette made opposing I-594, a Washington State initiative on the November ballot. This law could have drastic consequences for Washington state firearms owners. Visit www.VoteNo594.com for more information and to learn how you can help defeat this gun control initiative.
The provisions of I-594 are explained in detail on the NRA-ILA website. Here are the key reasons Washington gun owners should oppose this proposed legislation:
October 12th, 2014
Here’s a cleverly-designed new product that adds versatility to any rifle with a front sling swivel stud. This new Stud Rail Adapter (SRA) allows you to mount a Picatinny Rail on a sling swivel stud. With the SRA in place, you can attach any accessories that clamp to a Pic rail, such as lights, lasers, pistol grips, or rail-affixed tactical bipods. And look carefully — the SRA’s designers included a sling swivel at the inboard end of the unit. That way you can mount Picatinny-rail accessories and still use your carry sling.
Sold by Harrisbipods.com, the SRA Stud Rail Adapter retails for $47.85. NOTE: HarrisBipods.com is a web retailer. This is NOT Harris Engineering, the manufacturer of Harris bipods. HarrisBipods.com does sell the full line of Harris bipods and most Harris accessories. However, as far as we can tell the SRA is NOT made by Harris Engineering.
Comment: We think this adapter is a useful invention, particularly for those who might want to mount a light to a varmint rifle. Most hunting rifles have a front sling swivel stud and there is now a very wide selection of Picatinny-rail-mounted accessories.
Product tip from EdLongrange. We welcome reader submissions.
October 12th, 2014
The USA F-Class National Championships will be held October 28 – November 2, 2014 in Phoenix, AZ. Many top competitors are out practicing, perfecting their technique and their loads. Here’s a photo from our friend Paul Phillips, a member of the World Championship F-TR Team USA. Paul enjoyed the colorful fall foliage at his Michigan home range: “It was a great day to practice for the Nationals. My load and rifle are shooting great. Now I need to load 300 rounds with my recipe.”
CLICK IMAGE for Desktop Wallpaper-Worthy Full-Screen Version
Under Two Inches at 500 Yards
To be competitive at the Nationals, one needs a tack-driving rifle and an ultra-accurate load. Shown below is one of Paul Phillips’s load development targets at 500 yards. The total 5-shot group size is under two inches. Impressive. That’s with 200gr Bergers, Varget powder, and large primer Lapua brass. Paul tell us: “At the upcoming Nationals we will be competing at 1000 yards. The X-Ring is 5 inches at 1000 (equivalent to 2.5 inches at 500). We strive to be all in the X-Ring. However, wind is the big obstacle. A gust of wind can move you 1-2 feet away.”
Paul Phillips at Raton in 2013
F-Class National Championship
The 2014 National F-Class Shooting Championship will be held in Phoenix, Arizona at the Ben Avery Shooting Facility. Preparations are well underway to host competitors from around the world. One of the largest events of its kind in USA, the NRA-sanctioned F-Class Nationals will be hosted by the Desert Sharpshooters Rifle Club.
CLICK HERE for 2014 F-Class Nationals Program and Entry Form.
The F-Class National Championship is a multi-day match with all shooting at 1000 yards. There will be a mix of individual and four-person team matches. The competition consists of two different Divisions: F- Open and F-TR (Target Rifle). Each Division is made up of five different Categories: High Master, Master, Expert, Sharpshooter and Marksman.
Entry Deadline: The deadline for entries is 6:00 PM Monday, 20 October 2014. Entries after this time are considered late entries and may be accepted to fill vacancies on existing relays only. An additional $20.00 will be charged for late entries, above the normal $200.00 Entry Fee.
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