My personal start to finish instructions for shooting good groups with your handi rifle. I’m going to cover all the things I do with my handis from bringing the rifle home to cleaning up after the range.
CLEANING UP THE NEW RIFLE
When you first get your rifle you must clean up all the packing grease and oils put on it to protect it by NEF. I like to start with the receiver . Remover the barrel and stocks before cleaning the receiver. Punch out the pins that hold the trigger guard in place and pull it out . Then take a can of WD-40 and flush out the inside of the receiver . NEF has a bad habit of leaving all kinds of stuff inside the receiver . Flush receiver with WD-40 until everything comes out clear. Set off to the side and let it dry . Moving on to the barrel. Clean the barrel just as you always would after a day at the range. I take a cleaning rod with a patch and a little bit of hoppies #9 (or whatever solvent I have on hand) run it up and down the barrel , changing patches as needed , continue until patches come out clean. Then move onto a bore brush dunked in solvent , give it a few passes then go back to patches until the patches come out clean, fallow it up with dry patches until bore is dry. Make sure to clean form the chamber and not the muzzle to less the chance of hurting the crown. Then remove the scope base . Clean all oil under the base, clean up the base screws with a tooth brush and then clean the screw holes (a little WD-40 fallowed by a lighter will make this go a lot faster). After everything is dry (again a lighter makes this a lot faster) put a little lock tight or super glue on each hole and remount the scope base, make sure the screws are evenly tightened . Now that all this is done the receiver should be dry now. Go back over it with a cloth or patch to make sure everything is dry and all oil (WD-40) is gone. Pay careful attention to the barrel latch , because even with just a little oil on the latch will screw up your shot groups. After everything is dry and there is no more oil left put the trigger guard back on and put the rifle back together.
MODIFICATIONS
Barrel lapping and trigger job are like the two most used modifications done to a handi . Why?? Because the trigger sucks and the barrels look like a pipe with a few threads in it.
After looking down a few barrels both new and used all of them have ruff spots on them . Now I’m not a believer in barrel brake in , those ruff spots only come off one of two ways, polish them off or shoot them out. Being that I’m not worried about barrel life on a handi I polish my barrels using JB bore paste . Two or so hours of polishing with JB should be equal to about 200-300 rounds down the tube so its not like you just killed your barrel by polishing it and you saved a lot of money by not shooting 200+ rounds trying to burn off all your ruff spots.
Trigger job . This might be the most important thing you can do for your handi. I like to get my triggers down to about 2 lbs . still safe for hunting but light enough to use on a bench. If you decide to do it yourself use the instructions on here but just remember that you can always take more metal off but you can’t put it back on.
Recoil balance
Recoil balance is how the rifle recoils by the way its balanced . Most handi are front heavy due to the bull barrel and not having much weight in the butt. Try to balance your rifle by placing lead in the butt stock if you need to drill out holes above and below the hole for the bolt and fill all three with lead shot depending on how front heavy your rifle is. If a rifle is not recoil balanced when the rifle fires and recoils the muzzle will go up or down depending on how the balance is , causing vertical stringing, you want your rifle to recoil straight back.
Scope mounting and scope choice
Choosing your scope and mounting it can also make or brake your shot groups. Great rule of thumb is “ you can’t hit what you can’t see“ buy enough scope , I’m a fan of scope in the 24-36 max power range. But I’d rather have a low power scope that holds it zero then a high power piece of trash that can’t hit anything. It is not uncommon for me to spend just as much or more money on a scope then I do my handis. A good hint is watch eBay a used luepold or weaver or Nikon can be had for just a little more then a new BAS tasco and all those others.
Mounting and testing your scope
After you pick your scope mounting and testing are the next items on your list. I like to use burris z ring . I’ve never had them slip and there no need for lapping them . Take your handi to the range and hang a plum line on your target stand ( I do this at 50 yards but range shouldn’t matter that much) . Then I take my rifle and place it into a gun vise , making sure it level . Then look through your scope and make sure your radical lines up with the plum line on your target. When it does, very carefully tighten your scope ring screws evenly. Tighten down to the factory spec , then double check to make sure you radical is still in line with your plum line on your target.
Once you get to the range make sure you do a box test on your scope. If a scope can not track or hold zero it is worthless.
Personal readiness
Make sure you are ready to shoot. Learning your rifle is needed long before you even thing about going to a range. Spend some time (the more the better) with a snap cap and a washer. Get into the prone have somebody place the washer on the top of the barrel at the muzzle and see how many time you can pull the hammer back and fire with out letting the washer fall .
An other thing on personal readiness . Start running !!!! Your heart rate and breathing are the two thing that will hinder you the most , both can be fixed my running, try to make it 2 miles three times a week more if you feel like it. Now I’m no doctor and I’m not one to talk but I know for a fact that drinking and smoking will put a hurt on your groups. I don’t know what alcohol and cigarettes do to you I just know that after a long Friday night of going out I don’t shoot for crap the next day. I know for a fact when I’ve had too much I can see my hands shake and that can’t be good for shooting.
Ammo and hand loading
One thing most people mess up on is that , its hard to shoot match grade groups without using match grade ammo. If your not set up to reload (then you should be) there are plenty of ammo choices out there to pick from. Federal gold match, combined technology , black hills and a few others , just don’t go out and expect to shoot bug hole groups with wolf and military surplus . Now if you are set up to reload take it to the next level . Get meticulous with your reloading .
Bullets : use match grade bullet that have a good reputation for good accuracy. Any of the burgers , noslers CT bullets , nosler competition bullets, sierra match kings , hornady A-max’s to name a few favorites. But no matter what bullet never just assume that the bullet has no flaws . Always weigh each bullet and sort them if they differ , also put your caliber on them and make sure they are all the same length.
Brass: use quality brass . I use lapua and nosler only when I’m loading for accuracy. Always sort your brass by weight , some people sort by volume but I never go that far but if you feel like it , it can’t hurt. Check your neck thickness if they differ then turn your necks . Put your caliber on each piece of brass and make sure they are the same , if not do a little trimming, make sure you chamfer after trimming to get rid of all the burs .clean out your primer pockets every time you load . Just a little bit of residue left over can make your primer stick out too far and not light the same as the others (give you vertical stringing).
Powder : weigh your powder down to the tenth of a grain. Trickle out each and every load to make sure your consistent in how much you put in.
Primers : buy a lee auto prime , it the best priming tool I’ve ever used . It makes it to easy to insure that all primers are seated completely in the primer pocket. Oh and by the way never mix primer lot numbers , even primers very from lot to lot .
Loading: this is where the money come in to play. Get a good press and dies. Being concentric is the name of the game . I like forster dies and presses their free floating style makes runout a thing of the past. If you don’t have a runout gage get one.
Shooting free recoil
Shooting free recoil is simply not holding the rifle while you fire it . Place you rifle snugly in the bags or rest to where it on target and fire it with touching anything but the trigger. Now being that handis aren’t rail guns the due tend to recoil a little so you’ll have to place your shoulder on the butt stock enough to take up the recoil but not enough to move the rifle
After range clean up.
I’m a fan of shooting dirty barrels . None of my handis likes being shot with a clean barrel . So after a range all I do is a old fashion clean up. I take a patch stick it in my mouth and chew on it for a bit (note : make sure to take your dip out first) and swab my barrel with it . I keep doing it until it comes out clean. Now if I’m not going to use the rifle for a while I clean it just as I do when I first got the rifle and put a light coat of lube on it after to keep away rust. I do wipe down my receiver use a paint brush and a dry patch just to make sure there is no build up of oil or solvents .
thats just a worm and fuzzy on the way i shoot my handis if you want me to explain more about anything just let me know. hope this helps somebody
