Over-rated Crown

sikadog

Well-Known Member
I have just read a very interesting article on longrangehunting.com called Over-rated crown by Alan Marshall.

He starts off by recrowning a 308 then shoots it, and then in stages he takes a chisel,a punch, a grinder and then a Dremmel to the crown and between each butchery he shoots another group and it makes no differance to the accuracy and no he cannot explain why.

But it makes a good read.
 
that is great!

rifle-crown-003.jpg
 
I've cracked it - that is actually an 'after' picture from a number of 'gunsmiths' who claim to do recrowning...:D

It is an interesting read. There is only one immutable law for rifles - nothing is certain!

'We' partly make a rod for our own back in that we are all guilty of frequently talking in terms of absolutes. Often those actual absolutes are fair enough - but really have a three volume set of caveats that should be read at the same time.

With most things regards getting rifles to shoot well, we should think in terms of improving the chance of 'X' resulting in more consistent performance/ accuracy/ sex appeal etc etc etc.

I dont think I'll resort to the Dremmel to shift those stubborn bits of fouling at the muzzle anytime soon though....:D
 
I've shot a lot of Deer with mine but never found any reason to shoot a nail, however, if I see one misbehaving I might shoot one then
:D

I think it might have been a typo. Maybe should have read snails. Probably allowed under AOLQ
 
A worn muzzle will screw with accuracy more than a bad crown. My Savage had wear so bad that I could drop a 53 grain, .224 bullet into the bore about half it's length. Hacksaw and hand-cut crown took it from 1.5" groups to .3" groups. Crowns matter.~Muir
 
I think it might have been a typo. Maybe should have read snails. Probably allowed under AOLQ

But do you need S5 authority to use the appropriate nails (i.e. ring-nails) for quarry-shooting? I imagine target-shooters would be fine with smooth nails for their discipline.
 
'We' partly make a rod for our own back in that we are all guilty of frequently talking in terms of absolutes.

I think in many cases a lot of the problem is that most people I see reporting "facts" about shooting are actually commenting on events which were not statistically significant.

In this case not only did he not shoot enough rounds to tell us anything but he didn't actually determine which aspect of the crown was important for accuracy and so he didn't constrain any of his variables but rather just hacked at the crown changing random aspects of it. Maybe it is the Young's Modulus of the steel of a crown that is important to accuracy rather than it having a few bits of damage?

In the end this chap wasted his time testing nothing specific to a level that was statistically insignificant.
 
For what its worth I had a .22 hornet shortened and screwcut by a local engineering firm. The result was 3" groups at 25 yards, couldn't even get it on the paper at 100. Took it to Richard Pope and he just 'touched' the crown with guided cutter. By hand!
To this day it shoots cloverleafs at 100.
 
For what its worth I had a .22 hornet shortened and screwcut by a local engineering firm. The result was 3" groups at 25 yards, couldn't even get it on the paper at 100. Took it to Richard Pope and he just 'touched' the crown with guided cutter. By hand!
To this day it shoots cloverleafs at 100.

just proves a point,

if you have no idea what your doing.

leave it alone.

bob.

Engineers are not gun smiths, but some gunsmiths are engineers.

bob.
 
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