Model 14 Accuracy & Other marksmanship related crap!

[nambujim]

OK! I'm an old guy that loves and appreciates older rifles/hand guns. I grew up in a time when Junior Rifle Clubs were abundant, you actually took your rifle to school if you shot on the rifle team, and could take it on a plane with you. I always thought the latter was entertaining since it would be a chore to hi-jack a plane with a 20# single shot .22 Anschutz target rifle.

I was about 18-19 when the police department where my dad served as a Lieutenant decided to sell off their ancient old arms which included four (4) 1921 top slide Thompson sub-machine guns in blue velvet lined leather cases. The Thompson's were put on hold because of license problems but I was able to purchase two Model 14 Remington's & a Model 8 police all in .30 Remington. It was at this point in my life I strayed from being a target shooter to a true lover of "blue steel & wood".

In the years following I picked up additional Model 14's, messed with taking them apart but those two (2) from the Evanston Police Department were in need of some attention so in 1959 I was forced into giving them some basic attention but lo and behold parts were still available. It was then and there I found out that in the case of the Model 14 "all parts from Remington were NOT created equal".

With that history behind us lets get up to recent history and accuracy of these rifles. Together with a gun writer friend (the late Charlie Petty) he borrowed a bunch of my rifles in all calibers , wrote articles for several magazines, and it sort of fell on me s to do some group testing with assorted loads.

The very best results came from old loading data for factory equivalent loads for all four (4) calibers using IMR powders, 117gr RN for the .25, 150gr RN for the .30, 170 gr RN for the .32, and 200gr RN for the .35.............all Hornady because Charlie had an "in" and got the bullets either gratis or at cost.

We shot five (5) targets with each caliber, five (5) rounds per target from a benched rifle at 100 yards using a basic rest for the rifle. All four rifles were equipped with a Redfield 102 Tang Sight (great sight/hard to find now) and I chose to use vintage Lyman 17AMI front sights with an aperture insert (my target shooting background led me in that direction), the combination provided super-good sight picture.

The .30, .32, & .35 were all pretty minty 95% rifles but the .25 had a dark bore, light pitting but still had strong rifling.

We set OACL using the latest factory production ammunition we could come up with, most from the early 70's. All the brass was new R-P brass purchased from Buffalo arms which at the time was readily available and "they" sized up to .32 and down to .25 using new .30 Remington brass. New .35 Remington brass was readily available.
We used CCI primers, IMR Powder, Hornady bullets as described above, and used a factory crimp die on ALL loadings. Tom Hemphill is the one that turned me on to using the factory crimp die noting that when fed into and through the magazine the bullets had a tendency to ease back into the case.

I'll try to make the summary as short as possible. Here is the average of the groups:
,25 1.264"
.30 1.113"
.32 1.249" with .321 bullets
1.114" with .323 bullets
.35 1.161"

The .30 had three of the five groups 1" or under or MOA. In my opinion you cannot shoot these type of groups with factory open iron sights but I would think with a 4X scope you should easily be able to shoot similar groups. Keep in mind we had truly an expert doing the loading and an accomplished marksman firing the rifle.

My take on all this is that you can take all latest in 21st century technology, calibers, synthetic stocks, $1500 Bushnell or Leupold scopes, tripods/bipods, and whatever but you won't do much better. The "key" for accuracy/function with the Model 14 is the loading of the ammunition.

One footnote here is that we made up all sorts of other loadings/bullets with horrible results. My very favorite awful load was in the .35 Remington where we loaded some 158gr RN hard cast lead bullets, at 100 yards the groups sort of looked like you fired a load of buckshot. While the 158's were awful at 100 yards the were far better at 50.

For info!

Jim Peterson
Charlotte, NC