A “CHEAP” Benchrest Rifle

Ten Years of Tweaking the 6mm PPC

- John Barsness

These are some of the preliminary test targets shot in 2011. Despite the rifle not being made on a “real” benchrest action, and using a variable scope, they showed potential.

Instead of using “real” benchrest loading tools, John used Redding Competition dies in a Redding T7 press, and turned the necks on his old Forster case trimmer.

After 50 weight-sorted Norma cases were uniformed, they were fireformed in the rifle before serious accuracy testing began.

An article about a benchrest rifle obviously involves accuracy, but a few shooters insist the word “accuracy” is misused. Instead, they claim the correct word is “precision,” a rifle’s ability to group bullets close to each other – while “accuracy” means hitting the intended target.

Wind flags help in all test shooting, whether working up 6mm PPC ammunition or big-game loads. While “real” flags like the BRTs (left) work best, even a piece of flagging tape on a stick (like this one below, on a prairie dog shoot) can provide useful information.

I don’t know where this notion originated, but Noah Webster published his first dictionary in 1828, based on “common use” – what most Americans mean by a word. Most shooters use accuracy when discussing small groups, an example of “common use,” and today’s major English dictionaries back up such common shooters. Both a recent Webster’s unabridged and the British Oxford Dictionary of the English Language list “accuracy” as a synonym for “precision,” and “precision” as a synonym for “accuracy.”