Using Front Rests

[ovenpaa]

I have recently picked up a Farley Coaxial to shoot F Open with this year. I struck lucky as it was just a chance conversation with a shooter who was retiring and it had never been used and was mega cheap so I was happy

I have extended the screws on the feet for more elevation and added some disks of around 2" diameter to the bottom of the feet to stop it sinking into the ground, currently I have about 3/4" of thread sticking out of the bottom of the pads which I have ground to blunt points to allow it to bed into the ground. So in theory it should be quite fixed in it's position.

At the front I use the factory bag and at the back I use a SEB bag, both are currently filled with normal sand as I am yet to find a local stockist of something heavier.

Shooting with a front rest is very alien to me and I seem to have some niggling problems, I find the rifle 'slumps' after a while and despite always returning the fore end to the stop and everything being locked up I have to raise or lower the tower slightly. Also I am not sure how tight the adjusting nuts on the joystick movement should be and cannot find anything on the correct tension, I did mail the company a couple of times but have yet to receive a reply so I guess my mails were deemed to be spam!

Can someone give me some pointers on shooting with a front rest and the correct tension for joystick rests?

[Actionclear]

The slump you mention, is the rifle settling on the front bag. You can help settle the rifle by sliding it backwards and forewards a couple of times in the bags. Another problem is the target not going back into the exact same position after marking.

My front rest is half the standard Caldwell, half a home built. No knobs, so can't help there.

[ovenpaa]

I am off to prod my front bag. One thing I should also do is make a former the same size as my stock fore end to keep the shape of the front bag when it is not being used.

[The Gun Pimp]

Hi Ovenpaa,

The Farley is a fine rest for F Class - it's a bit more robust than the SEB.

Setting the tension - this is a matter of personal taste - some like the tension tight enough to support the rifle but this can make the movement a bit jerky. This is not too much of a problem in F Class as you have plenty of time between shots. In benchrest, with 5 shots in 15 seconds - you need a slick set-up. My handle feels like stirring cream - but I need to hold it when I shoot.

Front bag - don't pack it too tight so it feels like concrete - you should be able to deform it slightly with your finger. It should not grip the rifle - just hold it tight enough to eliminate any side to side slop.

Back bag - pack it with heavy sand - do the ears first. Try www.johnwinter.co.uk for heavy sand. As well as Zircon, they also do Chromite - almost as heavy but half the cost. They will post it - in a 56lb bag! (John Winter is in Sowerby Bridge West Yorkshire)

Cheers
Vince

[ovenpaa]

I can deform the front bag but it rises up in the middle so I will take a bit out and build a former to help it keep it's shape. I assume I should only be using normal sand in the front?

Do you have any views on the PTFE type tapes you can get for the areas that slide on the bags or the use of silicon sprays? I am still using sand from a sandbag I purloined in Denmark. Is Chromite expensive?. I assume 56lbs will do a few bags so maybe I can find some local shooters who want to share the cost.

[Actionclear]

I use a very fine granite in my bags. You want a sand that "sticks" together, and doesn't roll over the top of each other.

This is why normal sand is not suitable.

What about builders sand. It's a better step in the right direction than normal sand. Probably easier for you to get your hands on.

[The Gun Pimp]

Ovenpaa,

The PTFE tape is a great idea - and we now have a UK supplier. Use it on the fore-end and the butt.

The use of heavy sand is merely to make the back-bag more stable by making it heavier - there is no benefit in using it in the front bag - the extra weight would be negligible compared to the weight of the rest.

When you make your front bag former, you can use it with a hammer to flatten the bag so that it is 'level across'.

Cheers
Vince

[ovenpaa]

Thanks for the info Vince, do you have contact details for the PTFE supplier? I did check eBlag and found a seller in HK but did not progress it any further as he wanted me to buy 25m of the stuff...

I will certainly make a former, it is somewhere handy to attach a bubble as well. I have been thinking some on this and I notice the front bag seems to bulge up slightly in the middle which means the fore end could rock slightly, removing some sand will also help but is it also worth relieving the middle 50% of the fore end for say 150mm, what I mean is machine a slight channel say 10mm deep so that the rifle tracks on the edges only, so something like 20mm of bearing surface followed by 35mm of relieved surface followed by 20mm of bearing surface when taken as a cross section from left to right, so it assumes a top hat section. I would chamfer the edges going in to the well so it looked something like this:

[woody_rod]

Actionclear's rifle has an alum plate with a channel down the middle as you suggest. The reason I did it is the same reason you mentioned with the bag having a hump in the middle.

[ovenpaa]

I cannot think of any reasons why it would have any adverse difference, it should reduce friction under recoil so may aid tracking and should not affect stability as it still has significant bearing surfaces at the extremities and it would remove the potential rocking issues as well.

Did Actionclear notice the difference?