When we last heard about my Grandmother’s Remington 721 in .270 Winchester (Adventures in Rifle Bedding) I had gotten as far as trying to mount the scope and discovered that the new scope would not fit in the old mount.
I ended up buying a Tasco base to mount on the receiver and some new Weaver style rings to go with it.
I actually ended up buying two sets of rings. The first set I bought were tall see-through rings. I was hoping that they would allow me to use the iron sights if I wanted to. Sadly, the opening in the rings was not low enough that I could see the iron sights and they mounted the scope too high.
So I picked up a set of mid-height rings at the gun show ($10!) and mounted up the scope.
Oh who am I kidding? It wasn’t that simple. The receiver had the two holes drilled and tapped in the front for the base, but there was no hole in the rear. So that meant that I had to drill and tap one.
Do firearms use “standard” size threads? Of course not! The screws are #6-48, not the more standard #6-32. So of course I had to buy a special tap from Brownells…
I guess I forgot to take photos of me drilling and tapping the hole, but I was careful about my setup and it turned out just fine.
I mounted the base, then mounted the scope using the rings. I think it looks great. (Other than the fact that the rifle is blued, the base is flat black, the scope is matte black, and the rings are gloss black…)
I also bought some swivels to put the sling from my Grandfather’s .30-06 on to this rifle. The .30-06 has some issues that I need to sort out, so I don’t shoot it much. But it had a nicer sling on it than the .270 did.
The reason I say the .270 is “almost” finished is because there is now a large notch in the stock on the left side of the receiver where I had to inlet it for the old scope mount. And there are four holes in the left side of the receiver that I need to plug. I thought they were #10-32, but no…
Anyway, today I took this rifle and my new .22 pistol to the range. I bought a Beretta Neos with a 4.5″ barrel at the gun show a couple of weeks ago. I wanted a .22 pistol for two reasons:
- .22 ammo is cheap, so I can shoot it a lot to become more proficient with hand guns.
- A .22 pistol has very little recoil and is not very loud, so it’s a great gun to use to introduce new shooters to the sport. (I have a plan for the spring…)
The Neos is kind of a futuristic looking gun. I like it.
We were shooting at the outside 10 yard range. It was about 26 degrees (Fahrenheit) and sunny and it felt pretty nice. The plastic grip on the Neos did not feel cold, so I was shooting it bare handed.
I put 100 rounds through it and only had one stove pipe and no misfeeds. The magazines are a little finicky to load until you figure out the trick to it, then they are pretty simple.
It was shooting a little low and left (well, the shots were going low and left, which mine seem to do quite often) but it has an adjustable rear sight, so I tweaked it in a bit. I think it’s pretty accurate and I need more practice.
I also put three magazines worth through my 1911, but then Dave pointed out that it was almost three o’clock and the range closed at four, so we packed up our pistols and took my rifle to the 25 yard range to sight it in.
We setup the target at 25 yards and I took a shot. I figured I’d be way off, but no, the first shot was about an inch low and 1/2″ to the right! Hot damn!
So I tweaked the scope a little and sent 6 more shots down the range.
It looked pretty good to me, so we picked up and moved over to the 100 yard range.
I sent another dozen shots down the range at 100 yards and tweaked the scope in a little more.
The single flyer in the upper right was me trying to hit the top of the target in the center.
I’m pretty happy with the performance of this rifle. I can’t wait until I can get back to the range and run some Optimal Charge Weight loads through it.
Today I was shooting some hand loads that were just mid-range charges: 44 grains of IMR 4064 under a 130 grain soft point jacketed bullet. Seems like they were doing alright though.
