Hi Sako Lovers!
As I said in my introduction on the New Members Forum, last year I bought a second hand P94s Hunter. I did this because I am partial to Sakos in general, and because I had read all sorts of good reports about the accuracy of the P94s and how they had been popular with Benchresters in the 90s. Guess I was thinking a bit retro. I had in mind using it for friendly club level sporter class Benchrest competition. The basic rules are: standard factory barrel, standard factory stock, max 6x scope, max weight 3.515kg ( 7 lbs 12 Oz). Based on all the good reports I thought it may have a chance of being competitive, but though it has shown glimmers of hope, so far it has not approached that level.
As a baseline, with all shooting at 50m, so far I have tried:
10 different types of ammo, mostly mid to high end target types.
10 different rest positions on the fore-end.
5 different action screw torque settings from 2 Nm to 3.4Nm.
Average group size over 42 groups at the moment is 0.658" with a SD of 0.177.
The best average group size with a single ammo type with more than 5 groups on record is 0.56” for R50SC which is unfortunately reported to be going out of availability.
Now I am going to offer some somewhat random thought bubbles and observations and we shall see where that leads us.
Observation 1
I was looking at the crown through a loupe the other day as one of the prime suspects needing checking. It seemed OK. During the process I discovered a rather neat trick. If you put something white down the barrel just past the area you want to inspect, then light will be reflected back up toward you giving better contrast. In this case I put a cotton bud about 20mm down from the crown. On inspecting the bore I noticed 5 small bumps just down from the muzzle. See photo.
My initial thinking on this includes:
Observation 2 will be about the trigger and is coming next.
Regards
B.
As I said in my introduction on the New Members Forum, last year I bought a second hand P94s Hunter. I did this because I am partial to Sakos in general, and because I had read all sorts of good reports about the accuracy of the P94s and how they had been popular with Benchresters in the 90s. Guess I was thinking a bit retro. I had in mind using it for friendly club level sporter class Benchrest competition. The basic rules are: standard factory barrel, standard factory stock, max 6x scope, max weight 3.515kg ( 7 lbs 12 Oz). Based on all the good reports I thought it may have a chance of being competitive, but though it has shown glimmers of hope, so far it has not approached that level.
As a baseline, with all shooting at 50m, so far I have tried:
10 different types of ammo, mostly mid to high end target types.
10 different rest positions on the fore-end.
5 different action screw torque settings from 2 Nm to 3.4Nm.
Average group size over 42 groups at the moment is 0.658" with a SD of 0.177.
The best average group size with a single ammo type with more than 5 groups on record is 0.56” for R50SC which is unfortunately reported to be going out of availability.
Now I am going to offer some somewhat random thought bubbles and observations and we shall see where that leads us.
Observation 1
I was looking at the crown through a loupe the other day as one of the prime suspects needing checking. It seemed OK. During the process I discovered a rather neat trick. If you put something white down the barrel just past the area you want to inspect, then light will be reflected back up toward you giving better contrast. In this case I put a cotton bud about 20mm down from the crown. On inspecting the bore I noticed 5 small bumps just down from the muzzle. See photo.
My initial thinking on this includes:
- Given the rules require a factory barrel, I can’t cut and re-crown the barrel to remove them.
- Lapping them out would enlarge the rest of the muzzle enough to be a challenge to accuracy.
- I could try to buy a second hand factory barrel, but the chances of buying a really good one second hand would be low.
Observation 2 will be about the trigger and is coming next.
Regards
B.