• Having trouble using the site?

    Contact support

  • You Should Now Be Receiving Emails!

    The email issued mentioned earlier this week is now fixed! You may also have received previous emails that were meant to be sent over the last few days - apologies, this was a one time issue and shouldn't happen again!

Why would my groups open up suddenly?

A

actionshooter

Private
Full Member
Minuteman
Nov 25, 2008
12
8
#1
I'm shooting a Bergara with Center X for NRL 22 and noticed my groups have opened up in the last 2 weeks.... Same brick, groups have always been 1 hole at 50yds and VERY close to 1 hole at 100... Nothing has changed and now the group sizes have doubled at 50 and tripled in size at 100. Checked all of the screws and the scope and everything seems fine.

I have always been in the "no need to clean" rimfire bores camp, before I went down that road, figured I would ask here. Total rounds out of the gun would probably be about 2500 total.

Thanks all
 
#4
Clean your rifle.

After years and years of cleaning after a match I tried the whole "Dont clean the barrel, just the chamber" thing.

About 1/2 way through a belly match that goes from 50-220 yards on 2-3 MOA sized targets my accuracy dropped fast. Pretty soon I couldnt hit a 2 MOA target at 50 yards. By the time I called Uncle, I couldnt hit a 6 inch target at 100 yards.

I spent some time carefully inspecting everything looking for worn/broken stuff like scope, mounts, screws and nothing.

Then I started cleaning. It took a while and I even used a brush instead of my usual VFG pellets. Once it was close I put some CLR in there for about 5 minutes and scrubbed it clean.

Accuracy came back along with my cleaning after every match or practice. It only takes 5-10 rounds to settle back in after a cleaning.

I cant control how dirty the barrel gets, but I can control how it gets.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Hopwtr, actionshooter, Williwaw and 2 others
#10
Carbon ring plays a lot with my accuracy so whenever I see it open up I clean it which I gotta do before next week match. I cleaned a CZ 453 I picked up last week and did a cleaning and was shocked at the nasty fouling in the carbon ring! I put some SK RM in it and will shoot!
 
#11
Regarding the "old timer thing" about not cleaning, it would have been not uncommon to hear that only a few decades ago from older shooters themselves. Those who shot .22LR in the first half of the 20th century would very likely have been aware of the time when cleaning .22LR bores was a necessity. Until the introduction of non-corrosive ammo in the late 1920s, shooters shot corrosive .22LR ammo that required bore cleaning to avoid damage. Once the change to non-corrosive ammo was widespread, shooters could now avoid the time-consuming demands of regular bore cleaning. "There's no need to clean the bore."

No doubt many of these shooters continued to not clean (at least not regularly) as the decades passed in the 20th century. Now that corrosive .22LR ammo is something from almost 100 years ago, few shooters will have had experience with it as it's now often associated with inexpensive foreign CF ammo. But some shooters will be able to recall old-timers telling others that there's no need to clean the bore of a .22LR.

The experience of serious competitive .22LR shooters in RFBR and ISSF (Olympic style) shooting is that cleaning regularly is the preferred approach to maintaining the best accuracy performance.
 
  • Like
Reactions: actionshooter and Big Phish
#12
Hoser said:
Clean your rifle.

After years and years of cleaning after a match I tried the whole "Dont clean the barrel, just the chamber" thing.

About 1/2 way through a belly match that goes from 50-220 yards on 2-3 MOA sized targets my accuracy dropped fast. Pretty soon I couldnt hit a 2 MOA target at 50 yards. By the time I called Uncle, I couldnt hit a 6 inch target at 100 yards.

I spent some time carefully inspecting everything looking for worn/broken stuff like scope, mounts, screws and nothing.

Then I started cleaning. It took a while and I even used a brush instead of my usual VFG pellets. Once it was close I put some CLR in there for about 5 minutes and scrubbed it clean.

Accuracy came back along with my cleaning after every match or practice. It only takes 5-10 rounds to settle back in after a cleaning.

I cant control how dirty the barrel gets, but I can control how it gets.
Click to expand...
I was a witness to this event and the head scratching that followed. I had also been toying with not cleaning, but had not gotten so far down the road. I immediately went home and cleaned everything.
 
#17
Its either you and a loss of confidence or a dirty rifle. I have had mine get dirty, mid match and cleaned it in the lane while others were shooting. My game is Feild Target, so I have that ability. A quick pull through, a couple of fowlers and on to second place, unlimited "A" class PCP. After that match, I learned to clean often. Why.... I should have had a shoot off for first place.
IMHO?? I don't have one of those!
 
#19
My wife had told me she " cleaned" her Ruger mk3.

Well the bore was nice.
Unfortunately but not surprising that she cleaned it from the muzzle and all that crap went into trigger, action extractor etc.

Eventually she had no extraction.

I hate mark 3's about 2 1/2 hours of cleaning and ready for her match.

To her credit she was probably watching me clean a revolver and figured why not.

Around the 200 round mark my 10/22 loses accuracy .
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

A
.22 group expectations? and paper target
Replies
20
Views
1K
Cz455guru
Cz455guru
N
Vertical Stringing
Replies
16
Views
1K
Snuby642
Snuby642
D
Weirdness with Lot-Tested Center-X
Replies
17
Views
903
buffalowinter
buffalowinter
B
Springfield Armory Waypoint.
Replies
0
Views
219
BRC351
B
C
Erratic performance
Replies
33
Views
1K
cliffy110
C
Top Bottom
Back
Home
Forums
Merch
Alerts