Well... after several months of waiting I finally received my Proof Research 10/22 Carbon Fiber 16.1 inch barrel a couple of days ago and installed it today. The most aggravating thing is that given the high cost of the barrel, Proof doesn't provide a thread protector with it. Nor can they (currently) point you to an online vendor that can supply one that matches their odd thread length of .476 inches. I used a .450 stainless thread protector that I purchased from FJ Feddersen and had to add a couple of rubber washers to it.
Mounting the barrel required freezing the barrel and heating the receiver. It was still a very tight fit. Even with the anti-seize that I added, I suspect that this barrel won't be coming out of the Kidd receiver any time soon... if ever.
So the main question I'm sure everyone has is, "How does it shoot?" From the initial tests, I'd say great. Except that I had some very strange cold bore shots. I'll need to do a lot of testing to see exactly what's going on. To give you an example, I had one 100 yard cold bore drop about 5 inches below the rest of the group. That's very odd out of this rifle. Today had some wind that made it a bit difficult to get a good idea of the 10/22's new potential at range. For a short time the wind died down to a few MPH with little gusts and I was able to shoot this 10-round group at 100 yards with SK Rifle Match:
1.43 MOA at 100 yards is not too shabby. With no wind (or possibly in the hands of someone that can read the wind better than I), it's very likely that this rifle is now 1 MOA capable to 100 yards. I need to get out and spend some more time shooting it to investigate the cold bore issue and to really stretch the range out.
Mounting the barrel required freezing the barrel and heating the receiver. It was still a very tight fit. Even with the anti-seize that I added, I suspect that this barrel won't be coming out of the Kidd receiver any time soon... if ever.
So the main question I'm sure everyone has is, "How does it shoot?" From the initial tests, I'd say great. Except that I had some very strange cold bore shots. I'll need to do a lot of testing to see exactly what's going on. To give you an example, I had one 100 yard cold bore drop about 5 inches below the rest of the group. That's very odd out of this rifle. Today had some wind that made it a bit difficult to get a good idea of the 10/22's new potential at range. For a short time the wind died down to a few MPH with little gusts and I was able to shoot this 10-round group at 100 yards with SK Rifle Match:
1.43 MOA at 100 yards is not too shabby. With no wind (or possibly in the hands of someone that can read the wind better than I), it's very likely that this rifle is now 1 MOA capable to 100 yards. I need to get out and spend some more time shooting it to investigate the cold bore issue and to really stretch the range out.
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