some things that have happenned this past weekend... by (Login sniper00006) Moderators

Well, where do I start?

Saturday:

I got to get out crow hunting around 4 o clock, and I saw around a hundred of crows, but I could not take a shot at them, because they were too close to the houses.... and I did not want to disturb the people living in them, I had a perfect shot at a couple of them, and one was sitting at the top of a tree less than 50 feet away from me, staring at me.

I was able to fire a shot off at two crows, one was a near-vertical shot at it, the other was at a 45-degree angle to the right of me... I missed both of them...

I was using remington field/target/hunting loads... they seem to have some range and pack a nice punch, but I was unable to hit anything with them.... and I was using my J. Stevens model 5100 side-by-side 12 gauge..... I guess I need to keep practicing with it (I bought the value pack of a hundred shells, just for the purpose, he he he...)

Overall, it was a fun day in the woods, and it made me see the fun in hunting during the winter, the beautiful landscape, the bitter winds, and the smell of wintertime... I really liked it, and I plan to go out again this coming weekend.

Sunday: I was fiddling with my Mendoza RM 2003 today, and I took it all apart to see the spring and all of the internals, and to my suprise, the spring was in PERFECT condition, just gummed up with all diferrent kinds of goop that was inside the tube....

When I took the piston out, i took a good look at the seal, and I found a good-size knick in the side of it... so I thought that that was the problem with the rifles accuracy, but it did not make sense, because it was such a small knick, and the rifle has such a big spring, I could not understand how such a small problem could have such a big impact on accuracy, but it did, somehow...

I was sitting there looking at it, when the thought dawned on me; I had two other rifles that were apart, and I had seals for both of them, one of them was my synthetic-sealed S1k, and the other was the leather-sealed B3... I chose the B3 because of the leather seal, and because of its tight fit to the tube...

The results were AMAZING, the rifle shoots really smoothe and predictable, and I had NEVER thought this was possible, its fast, and it shoots better than any spring I have ever shot! But I did not achieve this after having problems with putting the trigger back together.... the trigger assembly is the worst I have ever seen, It consists of two triggers, one is the "1st stage" and the other is the "2nd stage", and both of them have independent springs on them.... But after trying to put the triggers back in their place for two hours, I decided to just rip the "1st stage" trigger off, as well as that stupid spring that kept it from moving around freely (The springs were VERY hard to get into place, they did not rest on a pin or anything, but they had their ends inserted into some kind of guide hole that was in the sear and the trigger, and I could not get two springs into 4 guide holes with the tools I have at my fathers house, I cannot imagine how Mendoza managed to do this, because it stumped me, because the damn trigger housing is WELDED to the tube.)

Anyways, It shoots really predictable, and practically does not have any lube in it (all it has is this O ring oil designed for paintball markers, which I decided to use because it is not flammable or anything).

I did penetration tests with it, and used the QB to compare, and guess what? I was shooting 7.9 grain copperhead pellets into a bar of soap at point blank... AND THE PELLET FIRED OUT OF THE RM-2003 WAS BEAT BY 1/8 OF AN INCH!

Results:

PSP QB-78T: 2 5/8"

MENDOZA RM-2003: 2 1/2"

I also did some penetration tests with CPHPs, I used three pellets, one was a standard CPHP, one had the hollowpoint drilled out, and the other one was drilled out with slices in the sides to make it into a partician-type projectile...

the penetration tests with the CPHPs went quite well, and the partician CPHP went into the soap bar less than an inch (7/8" I think...), and the standard CPHP went in roughly 2", with little expansion, but the most amazing part of this experiment was that the drilled-out CPHP went in and expanded to .25 caliber!

I plan to experiment more with the drilled out CPHPs, because they seem promising for hunting, but the partician-style CPHPs are just for fun because they will probably have NO accuracy (Rich W. explained why they would be innacurate awhile ago in a thread, I think it was started by Allan, and he explained that the cuts would make an uneven weight distribution, and the spiral that the rifling puts on the pellet would throw its flight path out of whack.).

Well, thats all the information that I have on the tests at the moment, and here is a picture that i took when i was hunting on saturday...

http://i39.photobucket.com/albums/e169/sniper00006/huntingpictures002.jpg

http://i39.photobucket.com/albums/e169/sniper00006/huntingpictures001.jpg