Defense Articles

The sport of NRA High Power Rifle is all about distance and it’s true in more ways than one. On a regulation or full-length course, we’ll fire four events at 200, 300 and 600 yards. We shoot from three positions: standing, sitting and prone. Each event needs a different rifle setup, but we can’t use but one rifle to go “across the course.” Compromises are unavoidable.

However! The preponderance of NRA High Power Rifle competition doesn’t take place at 2/3/6. It’s done all around this country on “reduced” courses, and the majority are 100-yard. A very good while ago NRA recognized the issue and established reduced course provisions. Not every shooting community could afford their folks a full-length course. In my area there is one a little more than two hours away and another closer to four. The rest are overnight trips. I’m lucky, compared to many. There are areas with no reasonable access to 600-yard ranges.
I’m not snobbish over reduced-course shooting. I enjoy it and it’s not easier, not at all. The targets are scaled proportionally to their big brothers. Reduced courses are good training because environmental conditions are effectively removed from the usual High Power equation. The shooter can focus on shooting. I also have a choice of reduced course matches most any weekend of the year within an hour of home.

Now comes the problem the rifle here solved. If my “local track” is 100-yard courses, why am I shooting a full-length course rifle on them? That’s sort of like using a jackhammer to drive tacks. And the tack-driving part suffers.
I used to just lighten the bullet and also shoot a lighter load for reduced-course shooting. I think those are wise things. There’s no need to shoot an 80-grain bullet at 2,800 feet per second at rock-chunking distance. Also, such combinations won’t usually work too well on target. Long bullets and fast twist barrels don’t often shoot really small groups up close. Lightweight bullets with fast-twist barrels may perform poorly, too.

Reduced course targets are small. Some days they seem very small. The 100-yard reduced “600-yard” target has a .75″ X-ring and 1.75″ 10-ring. Right, most rifles will group smaller than that, but then there’s wiggle factor. Shooting a 20-shot group under 2″ prone with iron sights takes a pretty good hold. I have heard way too many “cuzzins” say they can shoot a lot better than that at 100 yards. They (rarely) come out, but have yet (ever) to come back.

I’d had an idea for years to build a rifle just for these events, and I finally did it. This reduced-course rifle is my daily driver. Stood to reason it ought to be made up the best way it could be. My idea was not only to adjust obvious specs to maximize performance at short range, but also to take full advantage of the opportunities these changes presented for improving my relationship with the rifle. “Take full advantage” is such music to my ears. I can smell gold-plated plastic through 3′ of concrete.

I first picked a builder, and I chose Gary Eliseo. Gary is a High Master ranked NRA High Power Rifle shooter and a thoroughly competent machinist. These two criteria are the “rules” for a project such as this. Your gunsmith really needs to be a machinist–someone capable of producing parts and unafraid of metal removal. I know it’s not necessary for a builder to be a hard-holder to make a great gun, but in this project it was productive to be able to discuss solutions to some of the problems I wanted to work around. If a builder doesn’t understand what I’m telling him is a problem, he’s going to leave the solution to me or,–worse–not really understand what I want well enough to help me attain it. The customer is not always right, but he needs to be happy, and that’s the point.

I had a few main ideas we needed to make work. Since the rifle didn’t need a long barrel I wanted to use the weight loss to add and move weight where and when I wanted it. I envisioned the most fit-tunable AR-15 I could have. I am a big believer in making a rifle fit the shooter. My rear sight mounting would give me the head position I shoot best with. I wanted a rear sight with extra-fine graduations to help better center groups. I wanted it bristling with trickery if only for the whole tailgate thing. Oh, yeah, and I wanted it to shoot teeny, tiny groups. This last goes first.

Make It Shoot

I wanted the smallest groups I could get from an AR-15 at 100 yards. Being fully aware that an AR-15 is not a Benchrest rifle, I still wanted to borrow and apply what I could from “them” to get what I wanted. Notice the capital “B” meaning the sport, not the shooting platform. Their game is group size. Teensy, weensy group sizes. Those who use 22-caliber tend to shoot 52-grain bullets through a 1:14″ twist barrel. They also tend to choose a 22″ barrel. Well, me too then.

I chose a Krieger barrel for this rifle, and I choose Krieger barrels for all my rifles, when/if I can. I got a stainless steel 1:14″ twist, 4-groove. Krieger barrels are cut-rifled. There are pros and cons to any rifling process I won’t debate here, but one point is using a single-point cutter makes it possible to rifle a barrel after it’s been contoured, as was this barrel. When barrel diameter is altered on the outside, it also changes on the inside. AR-15 barrels by necessity have steps cut into them, and these are usually square-shouldered and significant.

Union forces invested in as many as 20 varieties of carbines with the Sharps breachloader being the dominant arm. The system, patented by Christian Sharps in the late 1840s, became standard military issue by 1855 with rifles and carbines spread across the continent. Ninety to 100,000 of the carbines were produced for use in the War of Secession. Simple, muzzleloading carbines played a prominent role and were the official Confederate cavalry arm at the beginning and toward the end of hostilities.

Carbine designs varied considerably ranging from muzzleloaders to metallic cartridge repeaters and included a number of intermediate systems already obsolescent at the beginning of the war. I obtained current replicas of two major types from Dixie Gunworks. The S.C. Robinson Carbine made by Pedersoli, is the Confederate version of the Sharps breachloader. The Richmond, Virginia, company produced about 5,000 of these to augment the Sharps captured or obtained by other means. My other sample arm is the Pietta-made Smith Carbine. Designed in the late 1850s, it ranked 4th among carbines used during the conflict.
This one has the usual high standard of fit, function and finish I have come to expect of Pedersoli Arms. Like the original, it weighs in at eight pounds. Overall length is 39″ with a barrel length of just less than 22″. It is the more recent of two such arms currently in stock at Dixie Gun Works.

The S.C. Robinson Carbine

This variation includes production changes to meet historic specifications acceptable to the North-South Skirmish Association. The original Sharps employed a sliding gas check in the chamber intended to recoil backward during firing and prevent gas from escaping the breach. In practice, the gas check did not work particularly well and just made the weapon harder to clean.

The Dixie/Pedersoli replica eliminates the gas check depending upon a breach plate loading closely against the chamber. As with the originals, some gas does escape the action during firing. It is not an important issue so long as the shooter has eye protection and is careful not to allow loose powder to accumulate in the bottom of the action. (A number of historic Sharps and Robinsons have splintered fore-ends due to accumulated powder in the lever recess being ignited by leakage from the breach.)

The breach mechanism is a lever-actuated sliding block accepting the traditional ammunition–bullet and powder enclosed in combustible linen or paper cartridge and ignited by musket cap. To fire the arm, the soldier placed the hammer at half cock, pulled the lever down to open the action. He then inserted the cartridge and closed the action to shear the back of the cartridge, capped the arm, and brought the hammer to full cock to fire.

The original Sharps came equipped with a spool mechanism to advance roll caps with each function of the hammer. The Confederate copies eliminated this in favor of the simple musket cap. The expected rate of fire was 10 shots per minute–three times that of the standard infantry rifled musket. The carbine was not dependent upon manufactured cartridges and could be loaded with loose bullet and powder. This was a very important feature given the realities of Civil War supply lines.

Sharpshooter

To attain the rank of “Sharp Shooter,” the Union soldier had to put 10 rounds into a 10″ circle at 200 yards from a rest and demonstrate the same accuracy offhand at half the distance. N/SSA shooters routinely shoot at hanging tiles so sized offhand at 100 yards. I found the S.C. Robinson very nicely balanced for offhand shooting and managed a 7″ cluster on a silhouette at 75 yards. The open, fixed sights are highly visible and regulated very well for this range. The load–80 grains of GOEX FFg and 395-grain .544″ bullet –churns out about the same energy as some of the currently popular 50-caliber hunting revolver rounds but recoil is unobjectionable.

I had used the Dixie Sharps Cartridge Kit to roll authentic looking combustible cartridges using white household glue to affix the bullets. The instructions with the cartridge kit presuppose loading the bullet separately and creating a powder-only cartridge tube. My gluing in bullets probably explains why some of the nitrated paper didn’t catch and remained smoldering in the barrel and chamber. To avoid explosion, I ran a patch through the barrel after each shot and avoided any attempt at rapid fire. I found I could fire a maximum of five rounds between cleanings before the action became hard to work. Wiping the breach mechanism with a solvent-moistened rag every couple of shots was sufficient to allow sustained shooting. A more seasoned Sharps Shooter using Pedersoli metallic cartridge cases would be able to achieve the specified 10 shots per minute.