John Loh produces some of the most beautifully-machined shooting hardware on the planet. The Loh pedestal from JJ Industries is truly the “Rolls-Royce” of conventional (non-joystick) front rests. This editor has tried all the premium joystick (co-axial) rests, and numerous windage-top conventional rests. The Loh has the smoothest, steadiest horizontal tracking of any rest I’ve ever tried. F-classers who prefer to “hold-off” rather than dial clicks for windage changes will absolutely love the Loh. The vertical controls are extremely precise and allow you to make very minute movements of the cross-hairs with none of the “notchiness” or jumping you’ll find with some other models.
Sinclair International now offers the Loh front rest for $879.95. Sinclair says: “The windage control system is built directly onto the baseplate so the entire top, post, and handwheel assembly moves as one complete unit. If you are looking for a premium made front rest that functions smoothly and is rock solid, then look no further.” Here are key features of the Loh rest:
– Weighing 17.7 lbs., the Loh is rock solid, with a very low center of gravity
– Full 100″ of windage travel at 100 yards
– A 3″-wide filled Edgewood front bag is included
– Large bubble level installed in easy-to-view position
– Large-diameter fluted mariner wheel for major elevation changes
– Solid brass speed screw
– All stainless hardware
– Durable black satin finish
Share the post "John Loh Front Rest Now Offered by Sinclair Int'l"
Available for under $200.00 including front bag, the Caldwell Fire Control front rest is a remarkable value. It makes the co-axial, joystick design more affordable than ever. We used the Fire Control front rest when testing our Ultimate Varminter 20 Practical AR. Once we removed some sand from the tri-lobe front bag, the rest worked quite well. The Fire Control rest is currently on sale at MidwayUSA for $179.99, item 956104.
While most Fire Control owners are happy with the product, many have wanted to replace the tri-lobe front bag with a more conventional front bag from Protektor or Edgewood. This isn’t as easy as it looks because the width of the Fire Control top is too narrow for most standard 3″-wide front bags. On a “special order” basis, Protektor has crafted some narrower leather front bags that fit pretty well, but some shooters have decided to “upgrade” the entire front assembly.
Forum member Doug M., aka “DrJeckyl”, has come up with an elegant solution that allows a Sinclair Int’l RT-3 Rest Top to be fitted to the Fire Control Rest. Doug notes: “The Caldwell Fire Control is a nice rest for the money, but it comes up short in the rest top department. The Sinclair RT-3 fits perfect with minor modifications.” Shown below are the main components:
To adapt the Sinclair RT-3, Doug merely had to drill a couple holes in the RT-3 baseplate, and adapt a spacer to get the height correct: “The Caldwell factory top has a raised mounting portion so a 1/8″ piece of stock will be needed as a spacer to the flat-bottom RT-3. The spacer needs to be cut to the same length as the movable portion on the rest. And you should plan the mounting accordingly so the left thumbscrew clears the vertical height column at full left position (there is a cutaway in the rest under the thumbscrew that allows for easy access to the screw).” We have labeled the photo with dimensions, but Doug cautions you should measure your own original plate to insure the drill locations are correct for your unit.
Below you’ll see the completed installation, with the RT-3 installed on the Fire Control rest. Doug says it works very well. For more information on this Fire Control rest top conversion, with Doug’s measurments for the hole-spacing and his specs on the fasteners, go to the original thread in our Shooter’s Forum.
The F-Class Nationals are coming up soon. The Fifth Annual F-Class Championship will be hosted Sept. 30 – Oct. 4 in Lodi, Wisconsin (Winnequah Gun Club). Over 140 shooters are expected to attend. The Course of Fire at the F-Class Nationals requires shooting at multiple distances. That means you’ve got to carry your rifle and rest back and forth to various shooting positions. With rifles that top 20 pounds, it’s no fun to haul a super-heavy front rest around. Butch Lambert has come up with a solution — a special light-weight front rest.
Lambert Crafts Light-weight Front Rest
At the request of Larry Bartholome, current member and former captain of the U.S. F-Class team, Butch Lambert of Shadetree Engineering & Accuracy (S.E.A.), has designed and fabricated a lightweight yet stable front rest prototype. Larry wanted a unit that was less burdensome to haul between firing lines than the typical cast-iron or “heavy metal” front pedestal. (That’s Larry with his spectacular “Captain America” Shehane red, white, and blue MBR Tracker stock.)
Other than the steel center hub, the rest is built from aircraft-grade 6061 T-6 aluminum, which can be TIG-welded and hard-anodized. To keep weight down, the three horizontal legs are hollow tubes with flutes or slots milled top and bottom. Butch sent us these photos of the new rest, noting: “It weighs 2.25 lbs without the top. I set one of our unfinished rest tops on it. I moved the back leg to the front to get it out of the way. Larry is ‘wrong handed’, so I made it left-handed. I hope to get it TIG-welded together next week and plated. It is definitely easy to lug around, but I prefer something heavier for benchrest shooting. For F-Class, under a 22-lb rifle, Larry believes it should work well.”
Share the post "Portable Front Rest for F-Class Shooters"
Butch Lambert of ShadeTree Engineering just sent us these “Spy Photos” of his latest creation, a 6.5-lb, low-profile front rest designed for F-Class competition. The rest features wide, stable legs, large, easy-to-adjust screw knobs, and Butch’s JoyStick Rest top that adjusts windage and elevation with a single control.
Butch tells us: “This is my latest rest assembly, a new product designed for F-Class. It weighs 6.5 pounds with the Edgewood bag and heavy sand. It has a needle thrust-bearing under the mariner wheel. Please note, the photos do NOT show the finished leg screws. On the bottom of each leg, the leg screws will ride on a 2″-diameter discs with tungsten armor-piercing bullets on the tips.”
For more info, visit the ShadeTree website, or call Butch at (972) 524-2247, from 9am to 5pm Central Time.
Share the post "New F-Class Front Rest from Butch Lambert"
Now through 12/31, MidwayUSA has the Rock BR Competition Rifle Front Shooting Rest on sale for $139.99, marked down from $169.99 (item 348661). By now you’ve certainly see a few of these units at a range. They are far from the ultimate front rest system, but they do a surprisingly good job. The unit weighs 15.5 lbs and has a 15″ footprint, so it is plenty stable. Be aware that the front 3-lobe bag is rather thin, and, when adjusting windage, the head rotates rather than tracks straight from side to side. Some folks buy the rest and later upgrade the top with a Hoehn, Sinclair, or ShadeTree Engineering unit. But you should read the User Reviews. Most purchasers are quite happy with the unit “as is”. It’s a very good value for the money and much better than many rests you see at informal club-level matches.
If you plan to replace the top, you can also just buy the Rock BR 1000 base for $70.99 (item 532194), a great value. The BR 1000 base is very heavy, with an 18″ footproot, so it is stable and sturdy. NOTE: the rest has a 1 3/8″ diameter ram hole, while most custom rest tops have a 1″-diameter ram shaft. Accordingly, you may have to sleeve the base, OR fit a fatter ram to the rest top that you purchase. Butch Lambert of ShadeTree Engineering has done a few of these conversions, using the Rock base with his JoyStick top, and the combined system works quite well.
Share the post "Rock BR Competition Front Rest on Sale"
Sinclair Int’l has a new product that can make your front rest more secure, and easier to level on a bench. The Sinclair Superfeet, item 04-190, are 2″-diameter stainless disks with a layer of neoprene on the bottom side. The top dimple holds the rest foot point with no wobble, and the neoprene underside is secure on bench surfaces of concrete, wood or glaze-coated concrete. Your rest won’t shift or slide when you push the rifle forward. Sinclair tells us “With the Superfeet, you don’t need to hammer the rest screws into the bench top. And most shooters find that their speedscrews or elevation cams work better with Superfeet”. Sinclair’s Superfeet come in a set of three for $19.95.
The Sinclair design is similar to the Match Superfeet created by Dave Dohrmann. Dave’s Match Superfeet are also 2″-diameter stainless disks with neoprene on the bottom. But Dave’s Match Superfeet also have spring attachments, which connect the feet to the rest. This makes it easier to pick up the entire rest and reposition it. The spring attachments also ensure that the system is completely legal in IR 50/50, NBRSA and IBS Competition. A set with 3 discs and 3 spring retainers is $29.95, while a set with 3 discs and 2 retainers is $27.95. Contact Dave at (864) 884-0155 or via email dbugholes [at] aol [dot] com to order his Match Superfeet.
At the request of Larry Bartholome, current member and former captain of the U.S. F-Class team, Butch Lambert of Shadetree Engineering & Accuracy (S.E.A.), has designed and fabricated a lightweight yet stable front rest prototype. Larry wanted a unit that was less burdensome to haul between firing lines than the typical cast-iron or “heavy metal” front pedestal. If all goes well, the new aluminum Lambert design will replace the rest shown in the photo below. (That’s Larry with his spectacular “Captain America” Shehane red, white, and blue MBR Tracker stock.)
Other than the steel center hub, the rest is built from aircraft-grade 6061 T-6 aluminum, which can be TIG-welded and hard-anodized. To keep weight down, the three horizontal legs are hollow tubes with flutes or slots milled top and bottom. Butch sent us these photos of the new rest, noting: “It weighs 2.25 lbs without the top. I set one of our unfinished rest tops on it. I moved the back leg to the front to get it out of the way. Larry is ‘wrong handed’, so I made it left-handed. I hope to get it TIG-welded together next week and plated. It is definitely easy to lug around, but I do consider it too light for benchrest shooting. For F-Class, under a 22-lb rifle, Larry believes it should work well.”
Share the post "New Lightweight Front Rest for F-Class"
Premium front pedestal rests for “pure” Benchrest competition keep getting bigger and heavier. The Farley Co-Ax, SEB Rest, and John Loh rest are impressively massive. That’s a good thing when you need maximum stability, but varminters and field shooters may be willing to sacrifice a little stability for a handier, more portable front rest.
There are a variety of relatively inexpensive light-weight front rests on the market, such as the Shooters Ridge Steady Point , but frankly, their controls leave much to be desired, and the rest tops tend to be flimsy or wobbly. On this writer’s personal “high-mileage” old-model blue Midway rest, the rest top had to be epoxied to the elevation post to eliminate annoying wobble.
Sinclair Int’l has a new front rest that offers high-quality controls and stout construction in a light-weight (6-pound) format. The components are strong and rust-resistant: machined billet aluminum body, stainless steel mariner handwheel, stainless steel center post, and stainless steel leg screws. The legs are low and straight–this is good when you want to place conventional sandbags on the legs for extra stability. Sandbags lay nice and flat when draped over the legs of the rest.
Sinclair tells us: “We have had numerous requests to produce a high-quality lightweight shooting rest for shooters needing more portability. Varmint shooters, hunters, and F-Class shooters have all been asking for a quality-built lightweight rest. Our latest Sinclair rifle rest weighs under 6 lbs. with top and filled bag. Our larger Sinclair rests weigh over 17 lbs. in comparison. We also had customers asking us for a more economical rest with the same Sinclair quality we put into all of our rests.” The Sinclair lightweight front rest costs $119.00 with basic top, or $147.00 with either multi-purpose top (shown in photo), or RT-3 top (for sporter fore-ends.)
Share the post "NEW Sinclair Light-weight Front Rest"
It’s St. Patrick’s Day, so we bring you something green at a very lucky price. For just $139.99, MidwayUSA is offering its Caldwell Rock BR Competition front rest (item 348661), complete with fitted hard case for transport. That’s a heck of a deal.
We’ve used these 15.5-lb rests and they are solid and functional, though many owners eventually upgrade the rather thin 3-lobe front sandbag (3″ width standard). Caldwell BR rests adjust windage by rotation of the rest top rather than linear tracking. Also available is a heavier (24-lb) “1000-yard” Rock front rest for $169.99 (item 627414). For a limited time, both units now come with a free “Rest Nest” case ($39 value) shown below. Be sure to use promo code BRNEST when ordering to get your free case. Offer expires 3/31/07.
Share the post "Front Rest and FREE Carry Case from MidwayUSA"
Dave Dohrmann has a clever new product for Benchrest and F-Class competitors. His “Match Superfeet” consist of stainless disks with neoprene (wetsuit material) on the bottom. The disks are spring-loaded, so they self-adjust to uneven surfaces. Superfeet are legal for IR 50/50, NBRSA, and IBS BR Competition, as well as NRA F-Class. These provide solid grip on wood and concrete benches, and eliminate problems with cratered benchtops. Superfeet easily attach to all popular front rests; no modification is required to height adjustment screws. The Standard Set (2 Superfeet w/spring retainers and 1 without) costs $27.95, while the 3 Spring Set (3 Superfeet w/spring retainers) costs $29.95. To order, call Dave at (864) 884-0155 or send email to dbugholes[at]aol.com.
To shoot tight groups and high scores from the bench, or in prone F-Open competition, a quality front rest is essential. And a good rest is also very valuable when zeroing rifles, testing loads, and shooting varmints from a portable bench. Today’s Saturday video showcase includes multiple video reviews of some of the best front rests on the market — great products from SEB, Rodzilla, 21st Century, Lenzi, and Sinclair Int’l. In addition, the lead-off video from F-Class John covers some of the less expensive rests as well as SEB Joy-Pod coaxial bipods.
Review of Many Popular Front Rests from $250 to $2200
If you are shopping for a front rest, definitely watch this comprehensive 42-minute video from start to finish. This is probably the most informative video about premium shooting rests available on YouTube. Top F-Class shooter and video-maker F-Class John covers a wide selection of front rests, with some observations about coaxial bipods as well. John covers the impressive new SEB NEO-X, the easy-to-transport SEB Mini-X, the excellent Rodzilla Rest, the innovative 21st Century Hybrid Rest, the sleek Italian Lenzi Rest. And at the end of the video John reviews the very affordable Caldwell Fire Control Rest ($249.99 on Amazon), explaining how it can be a decent choice for shooters on a limited budget.
NEW SEB NEO-X — Set-Up in the Field
Still in its final prototype stage, the innovative SEB NEO-X raises the bar for transportable coaxial front rests. An innovative design with hinged legs allows the 20-lb NEO-X to be transported in a small case. Once the legs are extended however, the NEO-X has proven to be very stable. And this new coaxial rest offers very precise, easy-to-use controls. A swivel head speeds up deployment, as the allows you to quickly align the rest top to the target. Users have confirmed the NEO-X works great and is very stable. In the video above ace F-Class shooter Erik Cortina (below) shows how to quickly deploy the NEO-X in the field.
Rodzilla T-Rex — High Quality, Big Footprint, Advanced Features
The impressive Rodzilla T-Rex front rest offers outstanding stability with smooth, precise performance. Designer/builder Rod Brakhage (the Rod in Rodzilla) started from the ground up to create a user-friendly, match-ready, modular front rest on the market. The T-Rex weighs just over 21 pounds, and the T-Rex has a large footprint, rivaling the largest rests on the market. That provides exceptional stability, even with heavy-recoiling rifles.
The T-Rex boasts an adjustable joystick that extends from 15.5″ to 21″ in length. With this adjustability, no matter what your stock length or design, you can find a comfortable position without having to stretch uncomfortably. Rodzilla delivers the T-Rex in a custom-designed hard carry case that fits it perfectly and still has room for additional feet and accessories. The T-Rex can be ordered with excellent Sand Feet.
21st Century Hybrid-X Front Rest
Lateral Control Arm, Vertical Elevation Knob
The innovative 21st Century Hybrid-X front rest offers the “best of both worlds”. It allows precise lateral movement (for wind holds) with no elevation change. The entire center section of the rest rotates as one unit for fast, perfect horizontal alignment to target. Then adjust vertical precisely with the rotary knob on the outboard end of the control rod. Our Daily Bulletin Hybrid-X article has a full description with multiple photos of this unique rest. See additional Hybrid-X Video.
Sinclair Int’l Competition Front Rest — Sturdy and Stable Design
The Sinclair Int’l Competition Rest is a classic heavy and very stable rest that works great on the bench. Weighing 30+ pounds, with a 1″-thick steel base, this rest has a very low center of gravity and is ultra-stable. Currently priced at $699.99, the Sinclair Competition Rest is less than half the cost of the more exotic front rests.
Horizontal (windage) movement is controlled with a large rear knob which uses dual sets of twin tapered roller bearings for a non-binding windage operation. Nearly four feet of windage adjustment is offered at 100 yards. Elevation changes are made with the large wheel. With its mass and low COG, this Sinclair Rest is very stable. And because of its ability to hold elevation shot to shot, this rest has been popular with long-range benchrest competitors who often shoot quick strings of 5 or 10 shots.
SEB Mini-X and SEB Mini — Transportable Joystick Tripod Rests
The original SEB Mini was an innovative collapsible tripod rest with a coaxial top. On its introduction the SEB Mini became immediately popular with varminters, F-TR shooters, and anyone who wanted an affordable, easy-to-transport front rest that offered easy, precise and rapid adjustment of windage and elevation with the Joystick. Building on the success of the original SEB Mini, the new SEB Mini-X offers an improved head design, and new adjustable “ankle” units on all three legs. This makes it easier to level the Mini-X on uneven ground. The Mini-X has proven very successful in competition, winning major F-Open matches. Folding into a very compact package, it is easy to transport in airline luggage. Yet it offers a very stable shooting platform with precise, effortless joystick control of elevation and windage.
Share the post "Saturday at the Movies: State-of-the-Art Front Shooting Rests"
Our friend Sebastian “SEB” Lambang, creator of the great SEB Coaxial Rests, Joystick Bipods (“JoyPods”), and SEB MINI Coaxial tripod rests, is working on a new front bag design. He has released photos of his new, prototype front bag system for the top-of-the-line NEO Rest.
Seb notes: “We are experimenting with a new bag for our SEB NEO rest, particularly for F-Open Class with the heavy 22-lb rifles. This new bag is sewn down the middle, slick enough for the purpose, and made from a much tougher material. The bottom/horizontal bag has two separate compartments on the left and right sides to prevent sand migration. For the production version I think I will use black instead of silver.”
Do you like the new design? Do you have any suggestions on how it could be enhanced? Seb is looking to get shooters’ feedback on this new bag design. You can post comments on Seb’s Facebook page.
New F-Class and Benchrest Front Bags for SEB MINI
Seb will also be offering a new similar bag for his excellent (and very popular) SEB MINI tripod front rest. There will be a sewn-in-middle F-Class version (see right below), as well as a flat-top, conventional bag for registered benchrest matches. Due to differences in the equipment rules, Seb notes: “The sewn-in-middle front bag can be used for F-CLASS matches. However, be sure to not use the F-CLASS bag (sewn down in the middle) for official Benchrest matches.”
COMMENT: The advantage to the Stitched-in-Middle front bag design is that the bag will never develop a hump in the middle that can cause your stock to rock a little (or sit at a slight tilt). If you are not shooting in restricted competition, Seb’s new bag design could prove beneficial — providing a more optimal front support. We don’t have the dimensions of Seb’s center-sewn front bags, but we suspect a version might fit other brands of front rests, such as Sinclair or Bald Eagle (Grizzly).
Share the post "New Front Bags for SEB NEO and MINI Rests — Input Wanted"
It’s St. Patrick’s Day, so we bring you something green at a very lucky price. For just $139.99, 
The 
