|
The Ruger No. 1 In An Old But Classic Caliber By Dr. George E. Dvorchak Jr. Circa 1949 to the present, this 51-year-old company does not need corporate Viagra (that would be nice if all it took to invigorate a company was to swallow a pill) to continue with success because of their policy of marketing quality, innovative, and trend-setting firearms. Their energy is today what it was years ago. Success stories for Ruger long guns would surely include the 10/22. Another, and what I have become interested in, is their falling-block rifle, which goes back to 1966. When introduced, the rifle made Ruger the first firearms manufacturer to produce a modern single-shot center-fire rifle, one that is as modern today as when I was just graduating from high school, which was too long ago. Anyway, since I have for years looked upon the No. 1 as a classic, it would only be fitting to choose a time-honored caliber such as the .270 Winchester as the cartridge fitting for such a rifle. The other reason for desiring a .27 caliber single-shot rifle is its multipurpose capacity. When loaded with the heavier bullets available, the .270 makes a good long-range deer and pronghorn caliber. With 90- or 100-grain bullets, ones that can leave the muzzle accurately at 3,500 fps, the .270 is excellent for reaching out and dropping pint-size varmints like woodchucks. The negative side of using bigger calibers for a varmint gun is recoil. After firing about 80 rounds I was slightly bothered at the shoulder because all my shooting over a chronograph was done from a bench. At the end of that session I thought about sending the rifle to Ken Kelly at Mag-Na-Port. After porting, or the installation of their Mag-Na-Brake, most any rifle or handgun quickly becomes a pussy cat. For deer hunting you don’t need a recoil-reducing device on a .27 caliber. But if you plan to do a lot of varmint shooting, this would indeed be a worthy addition to the No. 1 or any firearm where a lot of shots will be taken in one day. I have ports, brakes, and arrestors on handguns and rifles for that very reason, and they work!
Safety and Unloading: A second safety feature concerns easy visual inspection. When the lever is pulled down and forward, the breech block is lowered into the opening in the receiver, exposing the chamber end of the barrel. Now you can look in to see if a cartridge is present or simply glance down the barrel to check for any obstructions. When crawling around in fields it’s possible to bump the muzzle into the ground. Before loading a cartridge it is always a good idea to look through to visually inspect the barrel. With a single-shot, this is easy to do. Another visual indication that the rifle is cocked is a cocking indicator of sorts located to the front of the trigger in the opening on the lever just behind where the lever pivot pin is inserted. When the internal hammer is cocked, its spur protrudes into this hole. Looking at it or rubbing your finger over it will demonstrate if the rifle is indeed cocked. On the mechanical side, the safety latch can be moved rearward to the safe position (which now exposes the word SAFE) only when the hammer has been cocked. This maneuver blocks the movement of the sear, slightly retracting the hammer. When the safety is pulled backward, there is a click that, no matter how I do it, is still audible. There is some re-sistance as well just before the “click” sound. This resistance is because the hammer is being slightly retracted. According to many guides with whom I have hunted, the click from moving a safety off prior to firing can and does startle game. On this rifle, if you slowly push the safety forward for firing, you will not produce any sound. When loading and then engaging the safety, sound is made but usually that is not at a critical moment. If you thought you put the safety on but then discover that you didn’t, you likely did not pull it back far enough. In a way, the click that is heard when engaging the safety is kind of an audible safety feature. If you did not hear it, it was not put on! As is evident, there are several safety features built into this rifle if you know what to look for, feel for, or listen for ... besides the obvious feature of a manual safety being either on or off.
Calibers:
Reflections on the 100-yard Data: A few days later I went back to the range carrying 17 boxes of various .270 ammo and six different handloads I put together with 90- and 100-grain bullets. After setting up my Oehler 35-P chronograph, I numbered targets and placed them on the target board at 100 yards. Then I grabbed the first box of ammo, numbered to correspond with the target, and then placed that number on the paper from the chronograph. The review had begun! After each shot I, along with a few spectators, watched the chronograph print the velocities. Once the factory ammo was gone I had to go downrange and set up my third round of targets. Then I proceeded to shoot the various handloads, using lighter bullets than the factory loads. With the first handload fired, a comment was made when the chronograph printed 3,500 fps from a 90-grain round. One man said he watched the shots print on target through my Simmons 20x Presidential spotting scope and then looked at the chronograph readout, which showed these velocities were 300 to 500 fps faster than the 130-grain loads. He thought the faster bullets should print a lot higher on the target. Intuitively, this makes sense! In reality, though, the lighter and faster bullets were lower, at least 3 to 4 inches on average below the heavier and slower bullets. To explain this phenomena, I will repeat what Randy Smith, director of marketing at Freedom Arms, said weeks earlier. We were discussing where heavy versus light bullets would print on targets out of revolvers. He said heavier bullets are moving slower and, because of more recoil, will print higher. I have noticed this with different weight bullets in the .454 Casull, which was the explanation I gave to the onlooker at the range. After glancing at my data for the .270, one can see that a pattern emerged concerning bullet weight and velocity. In a conversation I had with Allan Jones from Blount/Speer while writing this, he agreed with what Randy had said about handguns. But he added that he would not have expected such dramatic differences in this rifle. So I decided to briefly touch on the topic because of the comment that day when I began shooting light, fast bullets. Because of where I was hitting with heavy loads, he said I should pick a spot under the target to aim at because the bullets would print high and I probably would be off paper. In reality, it was just the opposite that happened! Basically, then, here is the explanation for those who sight in with one bullet weight and then try a different weight bullet. You may not find holes in the paper because the heavier/slower bullet may be higher and the lighter/faster one lower. A heavier bullet usually means more recoil and less velocity (the bullet therefore stays in the barrel longer as the muzzle rises from recoil) so the shots print higher. With a lighter bullet that is faster, there is less barrel time and less recoil, which also translates into less muzzle rise, so the bullets usually print lower. In my experience (much of it with handguns), though, other factors including the type of firearm, bullet, and bedding (barrel vibration) are all variations that can influence data. It also is worth noting that the type of support or rest you shoot from is a factor. Firing off of sandbags from a bench can cause a different grouping than if the same ammo were fired offhand. Again, this all has to do with barrel vibration, rotation (muzzle rise or jump), and recoil. In summary, if sighted in for a 100-yard zero with a 130-grain bullet going at 3,000 fps, expect your group to drop 3 to 4 inches at 100 yards when you switch to a 90-grain bullet traveling at, say, 3,500 fps. When going up to a 140- to 150-grain bullet traveling at 2,800 fps, you still could be zeroed, or you can drop an inch or two or print 1 to 3 inches high ... which is more likely. Anyway, as you varmint hunters know, you cannot take anything for granted.
200 Yards: Repeating this procedure, I again fired three shots but with Federal Premium ammo loaded with a Nosler Ballistic Tip 130-grain bullet. It had a muzzle velocity of 3,081 fps, and at 100 yards my three-shot group also measured 1 inch. It too was 2 inches high as well as 2.25 inches to the right of the center of the target. At 200 yards my three-shot group measured about 4.5 inches, centered on the target.
The Bausch & Lomb Elite 4200 with their new RainGuard: At about that time, when I was cold and only a little wet, I said to fellow writer Butch DiGiacobbe that this was a perfect day for Chris’s demonstration of why their new lens coating technology is a breakthrough ... and ultimately may be the future for hunting optics. After Chris’s talk Butch and I were outside getting wet along with the other equipment that was on a table with some of the new B&L scopes. These high quality optical products were even more drenched than we were. Seeing is believing. What was remarkable was that all the other high quality scopes had condensation formed on the outside lens to the point where they basically were useless if you didn’t wipe them immediately before looking through them. Once wiped, they were satisfactory since today’s scopes are well-sealed to protect the inside. However, even though the B&L scope was as drenched as the others, the RainGuard lens coating allowed you to see, although not perfectly, your target. For years, rifle scopes have been waterproofed and nitrogen filled to prevent fogging on the interior of the scope, but it’s the exterior of the scope that gets ravaged directly by the elements. Through the use of technology and some sound reasoning, RainGuard was developed by B&L to address the outside element threats of rain, snow, or fog to the exposed optical surfaces. Best of all, the process works! It’s in the coatings. To get an accurate reading of how this all works, I got the following information from the senior research and development engineer at B&L, Dr. Bill Cross. He said that optical systems use a series of lenses to focus and orient light from an object. As this light moves through a scope or binocular, it crosses what the optical engineer refers to as air-to-glass surfaces. It is at these surfaces that as much as 4 percent of the incoming light can be reflected back to the source. What was quite remarkable to me was that a typical riflescope has at least 12 air-to-glass surfaces, which translates into the fact that less than 60 percent of the total light entering the riflescope will leave the eyepiece. It is here that coatings come into play — to eliminate this loss, anti-reflective (AR) coatings are used. According to Bill, cold objects like scope lenses attract moisture on their surfaces and ultimately become fogged. Since this cannot be prevented, it at least can be counteracted by making the drops of water that will form on the lens very small so that light is scattered much less. Therefore, it is more likely that the target will be visible in the scope. To put this theory into a product, the engineers at Bausch & Lomb developed a permanent hydroscopic (or water repellent) multilayer AR coating called Rain-Guard. Hunters now have the benefit of the 4200 scope so equipped. I expect other scopes in the B&L line, including handgun scopes, will follow. At least I hope they will! A quality rifle with quality optics, fed just the right ammo for tight groups, is a combination for success. I was quite impressed with this rifle, and in the process of reviewing it I found a home for a new, high-tech scope. It takes a long time for quality to be outdated so I expect that this equipment will continue to be popular well into the 21st century. |