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The Technical Rifleman
The official Gun Digest blog of Wayne van Zwoll, covering all things rifles, optics, ammunition and ballistics.
Bullet Ballistics 101: Pressure, Velocity & Distance
Bullet Ballistics: Pressure When a primer spits fire into the powder charge and burning commences, gases form, increasing pressure inside the case and (because pressure produces heat), accelerating the burn. On a bullet ballistics graph, you’ll see a pressure peak after a short horizontal line showing the delay between primer detonation and powder ignition. [...]
Is It Possible to Overdo Gun Drills?
Practice. It’s the way to get good at just about anything. Gun drills can even help you get good at doing the wrong thing. Lones Wigger, the most decorated Olympic rifleman ever, once told me he practiced gun drills up to four hours a day for the U.S. Army Marksmanship Training Unit. “More [...]
Big Game Hunting Bullets that Disintegrate?
Percentage of retained weight may appear the reigning measure of expanding bullet performance in game, but the last deer I’ve shot fell to thin-jacketed hunting bullets of ordinary construction. And in Missouri, Dynamic Research Technologies (DRT) is making big game hunting bullets designed to, well, disintegrate into tiny particles. “We’ve found they kill [...]
How to Use Rifle Bipods, Tripods
The animals you hunt live amid an abundance of rock, trees, hillocks and other rifle rests. Alas, there’s never a rock or a limb where you need it, when you have little time to fire. That’s why Cro Magnon man invented a rest for his spear…Well, perhaps the bipod doesn’t go that far [...]
Handloads: Will Your Gun Blow Up?
Firearms come apart when gas pressures from burning powder can’t leave soon enough. Time matters. Pressures can’t build to dangerous levels if you don’t give them time. On the other hand, you must give pressures time to build to useful levels. The bullet is an obstruction. Its resistance (friction and mass), plus barrel length [...]
The Evolution of Marksmanship
One shot does not a marksman make. Neither does it demonstrate accuracy. A single hole, in an animal or a paper target, shows only that you fired the rifle. It takes more to achieve true marksmanship. During the iron-sight stage of a smallbore match years ago, I settled into prone and accidentally brushed the [...]
How Handloading Affects Headspace
Headspace, measured from the bolt face to the cartridge stop in the chamber, is set during barrel chambering and installation. The barrel nut on Savage 110 rifles is a clever way to make headspacing easier and cheaper. British SMLE rifles have replaceable bolt heads that varied slightly in length, for a quick field fix [...]
Headspace 101: What Happens Inside Your Rifle’s Chamber
Headspace is one of the most critical measures in your rifle. A quick definition: the distance from the face of the locked bolt to a datum line or shoulder in the chamber that arrests the forward movement of the cartridge. The term originated when all cartridges had protruding rims, so the measure was initially [...]
The Remington Model 700 Turns 50: The Evolution of an American Classic
You may already have been reminded that this is the 50th anniversary year of Remington’s Model 700 rifle. While its ancestry dates to the 19th century, the Remington 700 really emerged from the 721/722 series, rifles that appeared in 1948. Developed by Merle “Mike” Walker and Homer Young, the 721/722 descended from the Remington [...]
Tips for Custom Rifle Scopes
Custom rifles have served American shooters since flintlocks were fashioned on home forges. Then each rifle differed from the next. For the most part, rifle-scopes have been mass-produced. While scopes appeared on rifles more than 150 years ago and were even used by Civil War snipers, they didn’t take the hunting field by storm. [...]
