Posted on 12/08/2008 9:26:18 PM PST by Neil E. Wright
1. Shiny new, high-powered deer rifle..............$ 1,200.00
2. Quality, high-powered scope........................$ 550.00
3. Bore sighting device.....................................$ 140.00
4. Hospital Visit......................$ 4,893.00
5. Forgetting to remove the bore sighting device prior to actually shooting? Disastrous
Regards
If he actually got hit in the eye, that ER visit is going to cost a lot more than $4800. Poor devil.
wow
OMG!!
http://www.amazon.com/SightMark-Laser-Sights-Cartridge-Sizes/dp/B000YQ8U1Q
http://www.opticstore.com/NcStar%20Cartridge%20Laser%20BoreSight.htm
http://www.aimshot.com/boresight.php
http://sporting-goods.pricegrabber.com/hunting-accessories/m/57264989/
Oops...
Shooting glasses - $6.00
looks like it could be made into a lamp stand.
Whoa..
Check this out!
There are several other pictures of barrels blown out like that from bore sighters. I popped a squib in an Uzi because I didn’t check the barrel after the shooter said it failed to fire. It was 100% my fault for not inspecting the barrel of a weapon before I pulled the trigger.
I really need to get this thread going as a daily again. If anyone is interested, don’t be bashful. The criteria for regular posting is not extensive knowledge, it’s passion. Remember the old line, “Private Joker is silly and ignorant, but he’s got guts.”
Guts is enough. Contact me if you want to keep the Free Republic Gun Club going. The need is obvious for the coming administration.
For the life of me, I don’t know why people bother using such devices with a bolt action rifle such as this. These pics are not the first rifle blow-up I’ve seen using a collimator.
I don’t own one of the wretched things, never have, never will.
Here’s all anyone needs to do to bore-sight a rifle to get it on target.
Put a target downrange at 50 yards. I prefer a round, black bull on a white background. Use a 25yard pistol target or a 100 yard high power target. Just make it round, black-on-white.
Go back to your bench. Set up the subject rifle on sandbags or on a rest. Pull the bolt. You read that correctly, just pull the bolt out of the rifle.
Now, get behind the rifle and sight down the bore. Look to see if you can see the target down the bore of the rifle. If you can’t, move the rifle until you can. Get the target as concentric as possible with the bore by adjusting the setting of the rifle on the sandbags or adjusting the rest holding the rifle.
When you have the rifle aimed so that the bore is concentric with the black bull of the target, carefully put your head near the stock, but not touching it (or touching it only slightly) in the manner you’d look through the riflescope while aiming. DO NOT take a grip of the rifle with your hands. See where the crosshairs are laying. If they’re not on the target, make a note of how many inches high/low and left/right they are. If you have 1 click=0.25” at 100 yards, remember that you’re going to need twice as many clicks to adjust out what you see at 50 yards.
eg, if you have a 1 click = 0.25” @100yards, you need two clicks per 0.25” at 50 yards, because 0.25” at 50 yards is 0.50” at 100 yards.
Dial out the error on the scope. Get the crosshairs right on the center of the bull, then stand back and sight down the bore again. Repeat until you get the two to agree. When you’re done, dial in about 1” of elevation gain to account for trajectory between 50 and 100 yards. Put in the bolt and send a group of three rounds downrange, and start fine-tuning the zero.
I’ve used this technique on everything from .375’s down to .17HMR’s.
I should add that the scope is a Nikon Monarch and it will doubtless render years of outstanding service. Shameless plug.
I only thought stuff like this happened in the Houston area !!!
If the guy was wearing eye protection, he got off lucky, even if his handsome good looks are a bit impaired. I suspect he was sprayed by hot gas, and vaporized aluminum, lead, and jacketing. It looks like there's a piece of metal embedded in the scope lens, but it's hard to tell if any of the gas also blew back through the bolt body.
The rifle looks like a Savage 110. It's a tribute to modern design that the bolt held, otherwise he'd be on a slab in the morgue.
I use laser bore sighters and optical collimators, but on as a check on my work. Even then, I do a quick check of the bore when I button things up. I leave that stuff at home when I head to the range with live ammo.
Indeed , that individual better be in church this week at least !
This method is the old-time tried-and-true.
Me, I never say the need for a $100 gizmo to boresight a rifle.
Set up target about 50 to 75 yards out. Brace rifle against something so it wont move. Aim at center of target and shoot, do this 2 or three times. Go look at where you hit the target and adjust sights/scope...windage/elevation accordingly then try it again. Repeat until you hit the center of target with consistency. You dont need any fancy gizmos just a little time.
Know what you are doing.
Kind of messed up that pretty new gun as well as messed up the owner.
If you have some sort of action that doesn't allow for boresighting in the manner NVDave described, put your target up at 10 yards, or as close as the range will allow and use a big target. Center your crosshairs on the bull and fire one shot. It probably didn't come close, but there are two ways you can get it very close to zeroed without firing another shot.
If you have some sort of rest, use bungee cords or have a friend hold it tightly in place with the scope still centered on the bull, (you can do this after you have shot). Then simply adjust the crosshairs until they are centered on the hole your bullet left in the target. You may want to set them a little high depending on your range. You are now roughly zeroed. If this is done right it can be very precise and can result in a near perfect zero with only one shot. You'll want to fire a group to check it and fine tune it anyway though.
If you don't have any way to keep your rifle steady, then you want to figure out the horizontal and vertical distance between the bull and the bullet hole and figure out the number of clicks necessary for your correction. With a good scope and accurate calculations, this will get you close to zeroed. With a cheap scope, you'll have to repeat this several times. Cheap scopes hardly ever have accurate click adjustments. The adjustments are usually larger than advertised, so if a cheap scope claims to have 1/4" clicks at 100 yards, they're usually 1/2". You won't know until you start making adjustments and seeing what happens, but if you see that your adjustments are overcorrecting, just reduce the number of clicks accordingly.
I just bust out laughing at work! Thanks for the laugh.
The actual person whose rifle barrel exploded was unharmed and posted the aftermath pictures the same day on a shooter's board.
Looks like something the National Endowment For The Arts would pay someone $500,000 for.
Guns can be fun in the right hands.
Correct you are. If I am not mistaken this is the second post to FR. The first time this circulated was several years ago. No matter, the guy was fortunate.
I was involved in an incident of a 175mm round prematurely detonating in the tube of a gun (not a howitzer) in Vietnam. The crew survived, but with ear problems and minor cuts from shrapnel. The lot of fuses that had been put in the round had a manufacturing defect. I wish I had some pictures, it looked similar to this, just with a barrel that was 31 feet long. (I was a mechanic and had a new tube installed and the gun was firing again within 48 hours. Support maintenance flew out to inspect the cradle and recoil system, but there was nothing wrong with it)
I bet their kids were born dizzy.
Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that the man actually holding the boresight device fragment in his hand in the first picture was the actual shooter.
Somewhat similar for a 57mm recoiless rifle :-).
Tried but true method.
The last time I bought a scoped rifle - the gun shop guys did the basic zero with their collimator. Fast and had me on paper when I went to the range.
Thankfully, that guy is ok.
For the life of me, I cannot see any reason to bore sight a bolt rifle or AR any way OTHER than the way you described. It’s the distilled essense of KISS, it’s fast, it works, it needs no gizmos, and can even be done in the field.
As soon as I saw the pictures I thought of Eaker.
Figured I had to be too late by now to ping him.
Holy crap....
Did the fuse detonate as a result of the acceleration shock, ie, was the round on its way out of the tube when it went off?
Was this a M107 SPG?
Not with that rifle anyway.
Nah. A friend of mine blew up an Argentine Mauser. He decided the powder he'd been dumping out of the IMI blanks he was pulling the wooden bullets out of looked a lot like BLC-2, so he decided to whip up a couple of 'light' loads...
He got off very lucky. The rifle was toast (the hunter safety crew up here use it as an example of what NOT to do when reloading). He got a couple of small pieces of brass in the forehead and some concussion bruising to his hand when the foregrip splintered.
Shoot once, adjust the scope to put the crosshairs on the hole. Lather, rinse, repeat. You should be pretty much on within three shots.
You forgot to mention you have to reverse the adjustments on the scope. Boresighting brings the crosshairs to the impact. Sighting in by firing brings the impact to the crosshairs.
It gets even more confusing when using a dental mirror on a closed receiver like a Garand.
The better boresights use a modified cartridge.
Great advice for a bolt rifle. However, how do you propose accomplishing that feat on a BLR, Models 94, 36, 71 or Rem semi-auto? There are others that I did not mention for time’s sake.
I’m a gunsmith and use the exact laser boresighter pictured. The failure of that shooter to follow proper gun safety procedure was the cause of that flowering barrel. Calling the inanimate object a “wretched thing” is kinda like blaming the spoon for Rosie O’Donuts yard wide backside.
I believe the shooter in that case was okay and think that someone hyped up the story with the addition of the emergency patient on the litter.
I’ll keep that in mind, thanks. I have a .308 I picked up used and haven’t taken out to the range yet.
would seem to alleviate *some* of the backpressure if an ijudt forgets to remove it...still WOW...
Well, speaking for myself, I don’t put scopes on lever guns, so that hasn’t been a problem, and all other rifles which are not bolt guns (Contender, AR-15, falling block) all seem to allow me access in one way or another. I can hit most anything I want to out to 200 yards with the iron sights on a BLR and once I owned a BLR, I never brought the Win94 out of the cabinet again.
The only rifle where it might one day be an issue for me is a M1A.
I think such widgets are just a distraction. It is so easy to sight in a scope either by direct bore sighting, or by starting on paper at 25 yards, that I’m really at a loss why they sell so well. I’d rather put that $140 into a new trigger group or into better glassware... or a chrony... or (insert any one of a zillion other shooting expenditures)
I reckoned that would be pretty obvious...
Lots of folks put glass on levers because their eyes are weaker than they were when they were young.
There’s an easy explanation for why use a laser boresighter: I can boresight a rifle in my shop in less that 5 minutes. Not one round of ammo expended. It’s a no-brainer for me.
I agree on the BLR. It’s ten times the firearm than a 94.
For you, it is a money-making tool. You’re charging for your time and the more high-dollar work you can get done in a set period of time, the better. So for you, I understand the use of it.
For the average joe... I just don’t see how it is the best use of money or even a good use of money. Most shooters would benefit a lot more from putting the money into ammo and shooting more.
fwiw-
That's the way I was taught to do it.
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