In this issue: Weapon cleaning Rifle cleaning Lactic acid question Rifle cleaning / best peice of equipment Rifle cleaning / best peice of equipment Best piece of equipment Inexpensive jacket ********************************************************* REF: Weapon cleaning. The weapon should be cleaned after every competitive day. The powders now in use are not as corresive as the black powers of the past years but the shooter still has to deal with wax build up in the chamber and barrel areas. This effects the weapon in the carring out of its intended function of accomplishing precision accuracy. A $5000.00 investment will not mean much if it does not perform as designed. One note of warning, be careful of the metal or plastic cleaning rod you force down the barrel, as it will scuff and wear the inside of the barrel which will inturn distroy the barrel and weapons ability to perform precision and accurate shots. And, As the ED noted the shooter will have the opportunity for inspecting the working parts of the weapon. Safety first. Good Shooting Chet Skinner, Coach and Instructor ********************************************************* I have met those who never clean their rifle, and others who do so after every shoot. This applies to full-bore shooters as well as small-bore, although never is perhaps too strong a word. There are some who do not during the course of the NRA Imperial Meeting (but I cannot recall names here). My experience is that both categories shoot well, so there is either something or nothing in both points of view perhaps. I look forward to hearing other viewpoints on this subject -- Tony Clayton ********************************************************* > Coaching note: > > · Question: Why does “lactic acid” disrupt the shooting position ? These are interesting questions and answers but can someone please translate into plain English? [Ed. note - basically, the longer you go without breathing, the worse you'll be off over time.] ******************************************************* My 2 cents-worth: I think that one should clean after every tournament. There is a lot of junk left behind that may not affect accuracy in the short term but that, left uncleaned, does increase wear. One has less frosting on the bottom of the barrel bore if the barrel is cleaned before it is put back in its case at the end of a day's shooting. In all cases (clean bore, dirty bore) one needs to fire some conditioning shots prior to making sight corrections at the begining of a tournament. In a long tournament, it there is a natural pause somewhere in the middle to last third, I run a few dry patches down the bore. A clean rifle is a happy rifle. > I would like to hear from the rifle shooters and coaches what you consider > your most important piece of equipment. In this case, my definition of > "most important" is that which increased your performance after you got it. > > Aside from new guns, examples could be filters, riser blocks, custom jacket, > boots, etc. I'm curious to know what you think has helped your performance > the most equipment-wise as this will help me prioritize spending for my= > team. I have found that the first item one should have (after a rifle, coat, sling and attachment that fits, glove, etc.) is a variable iris in the rear sight. Whether one has young eyes or old eyes, having, and using, such an iris allows one to adjust for changing illumination and for changes to one's eyes over the course of a tournament. One must have practiced making the adjustments suit the conditions for this to be valuable. In second place, I place having two or three front sight apertures and having practiced knowing which one is best for which conditions. A tie for first place is having a level on the front sight when the rules allow and one is to fire at distances over 50 m. ******************************************************* 1) Rifle cleaning for Dixon Boyles: If I'm just training or attending league shoots, I'll clean my rifle every 300 rounds or so. But I will not go to an important match with a dirty barrel, even if there are only 50 rounds through it since the last cleaning. I know that my rifle shoots real well when clean, and I don't want to have any excuses when the score counts. In that respect, the cleaning is probably more for my mental performance than for the rifle accuracy. 2) My most important piece of equipment, without doubt, is my Knobloch shooting glasses frame. Before I bought it, I had problems with my lenses fogging, with distortion from looking through the corner of the lens, with the glasses slipping on my face when I sweat. I was rushing shots, trying to get the round off before the bull disappeared. And there was the added frustration of knowing that most of the other shooters did not have these problems. The Knobloch frames eliminated all of these problems. It might seem that a prescription lens is a "too personal" piece of equipment to purchase for team use, but it's really not. The frame should last forever, and the team member who uses it for any given year will only have to buy the lens. (Extra lens holders are available from the manufacturer, so more than one shooter could use the frame. But not at the same time, of course!) I bought a new lens from a discount optical store just this month. It cost $24.50 -- CHEAP considering the benefits I get. [Ed. note - I bought 2 frames for the team last year just for this purpose.] ************************************************** re most important piece(s) of equipment for 3P free rifle 50 and 300 mtrs: 1st place: Thune custom jacket and pants 2nd place: 3 S&N butt plates, one set up for each position and torqued down very hard so the settings do not slip/change 3rd place: a Gehman receiver mounted spirit level: can be fine tuned without breaking position 4th place: concentric barrel weights (not generally in vogue but much undervalued) *************************************************** In your document on how to start up in Olympic shooting you might want to add Marksmans house (AKA Korean) jackets. The guy who sells Mouche also sells them. The leather jacket is about $300 and is custom fitted. My late coach said that they are almost equal to Mouche in all respects (though he did like Mouche better) and the Custom Leather jackets seem to be made to be somewhat loose (which is why he recomended Korean). [Ed. note - It appears you can once again get Marksman House / Korean clothing. When I talked to Troy Baker (the distributor) last year, he said they were under import ban. This contibutor said she and several others have gotten them within the last year. Many collegiate shooters use these.] *************************************************** End of UIT Mailing List #10 Michael Ray - Systems Engineer Rose-Hulman Inst. of Tech. Rifle Coach The Olympic Shooting Page - http://www.geocities.com/Colosseum/1190/ Michael Ray - Systems Engineer Rose-Hulman Inst. of Tech. Rifle Coach The Olympic Shooting Page - http://www.geocities.com/Colosseum/1190/