Monday afternoon I get a call. Martha Bellisle. 4x World, 6x US Gold medal Masters champion. Her Annie 1827 Fortner has turned into a "minute of Pringles lid" POS after a bedding job performed by XXXX.
She interviews me to see if LRI is where she wants it fixed. The caveat to this is that this weekend is a training match in preparation for Worlds in Austria next week. One thing to understand here is that if we can't do this, then the whole thing falls apart. Traveling abroad with firearms is not a trivial thing. Host countries require a long list of documents submitted well in advance of ever boarding a plane. A replacement rifle "sub'd in" won't work as customs will lock that thing up on the spot. It's hard enough to get by when you do have everything in order.
So, we are on a very strict timeline and stuff has to work otherwise its all a wash.
After a few minutes we get things sorted and Tuesday afternoon her rifle arrives via Fed Ex. Tear into it and the issues become pretty self-explanatory. It's a mess. We tear into it and machine the malignancy away. Following morning its bedded and I oven cure the resin for half a day. Pop it out around lunchtime and we get it back in the machine and cleaned up. Get up early this morning and get the final assembly out of the way. Then it's off to the range. Her ammunition was put in the freezer the day it arrived and I cold soaked the gun in the back of my truck on the way to the range (half an hour away, when I left this am it was 28* outside.
International winter biathlon is shot at 50m. I set up with irons and tested at 100. With tired 50-year-old eyeballs I was rewarded with a plot that held a 1/3rd minute for elevation (no shit!) and spread around a minute left to right. -That might be cause for concern except that this particular range complex has a big break in the tree line 30 yards from the backstops. A full value wind will blow right across there and screw with you. 15 years of shooting there has proven this to me.
Still, not convinced so I raced back to the shop and tore the place apart looking for a scope base that'll adapt an Annie 11mm rail to a STENAG rail. I couldn't find it so I had to make one from scratch. Not a big deal, just annoying as I know I have(had?) one once upon a time ago...
Get that done. Going back to the range isn't going to play with the timeline (today was "gotta ship it day") so I go to the tunnel. 50 yards. Not 50meters, but the additional 11 feet isn't going to amount to much inside such a controlled environment.
If anyone has ever been curious as to what a bedding job can do for a gun, here are the photos/video. The smallest 5x shot I produced was 8.3mm. The largest was 12mm. When I worked for Anschutz the understanding was that it takes a 12mm gun to get on the podium at the Olympics. It takes a 10mm rifle to win gold. The hardest hitting rifle I've ever built shot 9.6 with Sheri Gallagher behind it in 2003 at the Junior Olympic tryouts at the OTC in CoS. Now, that is described as a 50 shot string. I only shot this biathlon rifle 25 times so the margin of error is a bit bigger. Still, a 10mm average is nothing to sneer at and its certainly good enough for a target that only has to be "hit" and ranges between 1.8 and 4.5 inches in diameter.
For comparison, International 3P is shot on a one size target with the 10-ring roughly the size of a #2 pencil eraser.
Once I had the data, I got back to the shop, sent her photos, and we had it boxed and delivered to UPS for early am delivery tomorrow.
The point of this is not to toot a horn although it probably sounds like it to some. It is nothing short of rewarding to me as a gun plumber/business owner to be in the position (finally) to help a person like this with total confidence and ability. It's taken 27 years in this game to get to that level where there was no guessing, no speculation. Just a problem to solve and a tight schedule to get it handled. For me that is something very cool to be able to do and we are grateful for the opportunity and the experience.
Martha is a wonderful lady to talk to and we wish her all the success in her effort. She's certainly worked for it.
I'll shut up now.
Before: A short vid that reviews the bulk of what was going on.
After:
Stock work:
As delivered:
After we did our thing:
She interviews me to see if LRI is where she wants it fixed. The caveat to this is that this weekend is a training match in preparation for Worlds in Austria next week. One thing to understand here is that if we can't do this, then the whole thing falls apart. Traveling abroad with firearms is not a trivial thing. Host countries require a long list of documents submitted well in advance of ever boarding a plane. A replacement rifle "sub'd in" won't work as customs will lock that thing up on the spot. It's hard enough to get by when you do have everything in order.
So, we are on a very strict timeline and stuff has to work otherwise its all a wash.
After a few minutes we get things sorted and Tuesday afternoon her rifle arrives via Fed Ex. Tear into it and the issues become pretty self-explanatory. It's a mess. We tear into it and machine the malignancy away. Following morning its bedded and I oven cure the resin for half a day. Pop it out around lunchtime and we get it back in the machine and cleaned up. Get up early this morning and get the final assembly out of the way. Then it's off to the range. Her ammunition was put in the freezer the day it arrived and I cold soaked the gun in the back of my truck on the way to the range (half an hour away, when I left this am it was 28* outside.
International winter biathlon is shot at 50m. I set up with irons and tested at 100. With tired 50-year-old eyeballs I was rewarded with a plot that held a 1/3rd minute for elevation (no shit!) and spread around a minute left to right. -That might be cause for concern except that this particular range complex has a big break in the tree line 30 yards from the backstops. A full value wind will blow right across there and screw with you. 15 years of shooting there has proven this to me.
Still, not convinced so I raced back to the shop and tore the place apart looking for a scope base that'll adapt an Annie 11mm rail to a STENAG rail. I couldn't find it so I had to make one from scratch. Not a big deal, just annoying as I know I have(had?) one once upon a time ago...
Get that done. Going back to the range isn't going to play with the timeline (today was "gotta ship it day") so I go to the tunnel. 50 yards. Not 50meters, but the additional 11 feet isn't going to amount to much inside such a controlled environment.
If anyone has ever been curious as to what a bedding job can do for a gun, here are the photos/video. The smallest 5x shot I produced was 8.3mm. The largest was 12mm. When I worked for Anschutz the understanding was that it takes a 12mm gun to get on the podium at the Olympics. It takes a 10mm rifle to win gold. The hardest hitting rifle I've ever built shot 9.6 with Sheri Gallagher behind it in 2003 at the Junior Olympic tryouts at the OTC in CoS. Now, that is described as a 50 shot string. I only shot this biathlon rifle 25 times so the margin of error is a bit bigger. Still, a 10mm average is nothing to sneer at and its certainly good enough for a target that only has to be "hit" and ranges between 1.8 and 4.5 inches in diameter.
For comparison, International 3P is shot on a one size target with the 10-ring roughly the size of a #2 pencil eraser.
Once I had the data, I got back to the shop, sent her photos, and we had it boxed and delivered to UPS for early am delivery tomorrow.
The point of this is not to toot a horn although it probably sounds like it to some. It is nothing short of rewarding to me as a gun plumber/business owner to be in the position (finally) to help a person like this with total confidence and ability. It's taken 27 years in this game to get to that level where there was no guessing, no speculation. Just a problem to solve and a tight schedule to get it handled. For me that is something very cool to be able to do and we are grateful for the opportunity and the experience.
Martha is a wonderful lady to talk to and we wish her all the success in her effort. She's certainly worked for it.
I'll shut up now.
Before: A short vid that reviews the bulk of what was going on.
After:
Stock work:
As delivered:
After we did our thing:
Last edited:
