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Friend Oldfart:
Yes, but it was short lived.
If Larry Brown would have stuck strictly with rimfire, there would be no ARA today, we would still be shooting BR-50.
50 bulls in 30 minutes....
It would be interesting to see what folks could do today on the BR-50 target.......
And by the way, the original BR-50 target was even more difficult, as the scoring rings were even smaller than the current ARA or later BR-50 targets.
Your friend, BC
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PS:
Last night I got to thinking about a "factory" class in ARA.
And I came to this conclusion:
There probably won't be a lot of "factory" shooters gravitate to regular ARA, cause serious benchrest shooters are born, not made.
But............................
I bet there's some ARA shooters who will gravitate to the "factory" class..........I'm most serious.
The reason I say this, is because I glanced at the proposed "factory" rules, and man they're ripe for "creative" individuals.
So I can see some of the lower tier ARA folks taking a shot at the "factory" class........
I mean, it might be better to be a big fish in a small pond, than a little fish in a big pond, as the old saying goes.
Howdy Bill,
I understand the desire to grow the sport. That’s a good idea. But like you said, “creative” individuals will have room to work.
If ignition is corrected or modified using factory parts how will one know?
Springs get replaced all the time. So if a factory spring that isn’t getting the depth desired on the firing pin hit is replaced, is that a problem? If the factory just happens to get the perfect hit is it wrong to duplicate that on another rifle using a different spring? What if one orders a couple of dozen springs from the factory and gets one like they want? It’s a factory spring, after all. What if it’s an aftermarket spring? How would one know?
If barrels are lapped, is there anything wrong with that? If one company laps their barrels and another does not, and the rifles both sell under an arbitrary price limit, it would seem logical to buy the rifle with the lapped barrels.
Are all barrels lapped the same? Nope. So if someone who knew what they were doing re-lapped a barrel there is no way anyone could know.
The idea of a “factory” rifle will quickly break down into squabbles.......
I knew of a guy years ago that would buy heavy barreled Remington 700’s and tweak them til they shot as good as they were going to, and sell them only to buy another one and do the same thing. He went through a lot of rifles and then, one day........
He ended up with a heavy barreled Remington Sendero in .308 and it was mind boggling. That thing almost shot like a benchrest rifle. I saw targets, multiple targets, and my 40X would never hang with that Sendero. The five shot groups at 200 yards measured .243, I recall that because it came out as an easily remembered caliber. The 100 yard groups were in the .011-.012 range. The furthest the guy had to shoot was 375 yards and he was getting groups in the .8 range. It was amazing. Now, here’s the kicker. The guy sold the rifle BACK to the gun dealer, and he wasn’t ABOUT to let that thing go! I did ask to get put on the list if the dealer ever sold it. And I was pretty far down the list because it was long!
The consensus from the dealer and the guy who bought the rifle was that on THAT day, everything worked together for the good at Remington ON THAT RIFLE. The next rifle probably wouldn’t begin to compare. Last I heard the guy who bought the rifle and sold it trying to duplicate its performance on other factory rifles never found its equal, or anything near it.
It goes without saying that the guy spent far more on factory rifles trying to make them shoot than he would have on a good benchrest rifle, but that was what he liked to do and it was his business.
If a factory gets EVERYTHING exactly right on ONE rifle and it becomes dominant in factory matches, it won’t take long until other people try to use the factory components and make them at least the equal of the factory components on the dominant rifle.
To me it sounds like a race to build “sporters”. And that’s about as high tech and far removed from a factory sporter as it gets.
Anyone can understand the desire to grow the sport. But if anyone thinks there will be no efforts to make factory components work together a little better than they did when leaving the factory........well, it’ll get interesting.
Take care,
Greg
