Finally got out to the range this morning to get my Knight Rolling Block sighted in and play with a few loads. The range was surprisingly crowded. I ended up waiting on a 100 yard stall, so I only had a enough time to get sighted in and shoot some groups with just 2 of the different bullets I had brought with me. Those two gave me a real nice idea of the potential of this rifle. I'll get back to the range here shortly and tweak a few things and put a few other different bullets through it. I really like shooting this rifle. It's well balanced and handles well, even with the scope mounted. Loading a primer into the holder/extractor was easy with the scope in place and when the action was opened, the extractor would pop the spent primer out of the action. It was nice to not have to pull the primer out of the breach plug with the fingers.
Here are the stats. The rifle is a Knight rolling block in .50 caliber. It's topped off with a Bushnell Elite 3200 3-9x40 with the firefly recticle using a set of Knight bases and rings. The two bullets I used today were a Barnes 250 gr. Expander and a 385 gr. Great Plains conical. The primers were Winchester 777 primers. The 3 shot groupswere fired with no swabbing in-between shots. Thenthe rifle was cleaned for the next group. All shooting was done off sand bags.
I started with the 385 gr.Great Plains and 80 grains of FFG 777.The rifle had been bore sighted, so I started tweaking things and shooting groups at 50 yards. Surprisingly, this bullettook a bit of force to getstarted, but went down the barrel nice and easy after it got past the muzzle. Here are the final 3 targets I shot with the 385 GP while tweaking the cross hairs.
Unfortunately, I didn't have time to shoot the 385 gr. GPat 100 yards, but 50 yard groups were pretty good.
Next, I moved the targets back to 100 yards and changed over to the 250 gr. Barnes Expanders and 110 grains of FFFG 777. These Barnes bullets were packaged for Traditions and came with a red sabot that I hadn't seen before. I was pleasently surprised at how easily they loaded. Recoil with this load wasn't bad at all. Accuracy turned out to be good as well. The groups overall averagedaround 1.5".Here are 2 of the best groups of the morning. These were 2 of the last 3 groups I shot and I was really buckling down and concentrating on the shot.
I really like this load and it'll probably be my hunting load for the up coming season. I'll be revisiting this bullet and tweaking the powder charge a bit in the near future.
The other bullets I have to test are a 250 gr. bonded shockwave, 300 gr. Barnes expander (with the black sabot), and a 410 gr. Great Plains conical. They'll get put through the rifle on my next visit to the range. I'll give report on how these do when I'm done.
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WOW! Got yourself a shooter there. Your 100 yard groups are 1/2 the size I'm getting with my Mustang. I'm looking forward to seeing you100 yard groups with the 410 GP.
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Very nice shooting there Chris. That rifle has my interest as I always liked rolling block rifles..
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I can easily see you getting 1 1/4- 1 1/2" groups @ 100 with the great plains bullets. They are hard to start but go down easy once its in the barrel.
If I had the time to play with the charge a bit today, I believe I could have shot some decent 100 yardgroups with that 385 gr. GP conical. The 410 gr GP was what I was shooting last year as a hunting bullet with 90 gr of FFG 777. It was shooting around 1 3/4" at 100 yards out of my Optima. I'm real curious as to how it'll shoot out of the KRB. The rifle obviously likes the 250 gr Expander with a hot charge. I'm guessing it'll probably do well with the 250 gr. shockwaves as well,but I can see it has potential as a conical shooter. At least with the 385 gr. GP.
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"Government big enough to supply everything you need is big enough to take everything you have."...Thomas Jefferson
Chris, How was the clean up? The gun looks like it could get blow back on the extractor/ rolling block the would be a pain to clean...anyway awesome shooting!
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No, not to the side. On the rolling blocks, the part that seals the breech rolls backward on a pin. You can then load or put a 209 primer onto the breech and roll the black forward sealing it back up. Then when the hammer falls forward into the block, it fires the rifle and basically locks the action up again. This kind of action is very simple and very strong.
Remington used to make rolling block rifles in a 45/70 government caliber. When I was young we deer hunted with a person that had an old Remington Rolling Block. I think that is where my fasicination started with them because the guy could knock a deer down at some hard to believe distances, using a vernier peep sight on it.
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"Life should NOT be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in an attractive and well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways, a total wreck, screaming Yahoo, with a big smile on your face."
I finally saw one of these today at Sportsmans Warehouse. Really liked the look of it, but it seemed kinda busy. What I mean is all the "stuff" you had to do to open it, reload it, get the hammer set, etc. And I could see a lot of potential for messing up a reload in the cold, with gloves or in a hurry. The primer could easily fall somewhere it isn't suppose to be. (I do realize this can happen in other designs as well, but this rifle makes it easier to do IMO). Especially in a real hunting situation. And these reasons were enough for me to be a bit concerned.
I did like the rest of the rifle, as Chris W. says above, it handled nice and was balanced. I did like the fact that the entire trigger assembly does come out easy for possible adjustment and cleaning. And I'm sure it is accurate. I was hoping this would be the rifle I was looking for, but as I was looking at it, an "old timer" who shoots MLs pointed out the primer reloading and trigger (and trigger tab) challenges that could present itself while in the field.
I was kinda disappointed honestly... my hopes were dashed a bit as my concerns grew. Practice can help a lot, I know, but in a heated moment where the big bull is still standing at 75 yards after the first shot... which one of the 6-8 reloading steps am I going to forget or screw up. So now I'm back to looking for a simpler design. But that's just me. YMMV. ;-)
Chris, How was the clean up? The gun looks like it could get blow back on the extractor/ rolling block the would be a pain to clean
Clean up was a breeze. The trigger and action assembly drops out the bottom as one unit. I just took some brake cleaner and blew it out clean as a whistle. I then sprayed it with some Rem oil.
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I finally saw one of these today at Sportsmans Warehouse. Really liked the look of it, but it seemed kinda busy. What I mean is all the "stuff" you had to do to open it, reload it, get the hammer set, etc. And I could see a lot of potential for messing up a reload in the cold, with gloves or in a hurry. The primer could easily fall somewhere it isn't suppose to be. (I do realize this can happen in other designs as well, but this rifle makes it easier to do IMO). Especially in a real hunting situation. And these reasons were enough for me to be a bit concerned.
I did like the rest of the rifle, as Chris W. says above, it handled nice and was balanced. I did like the fact that the entire trigger assembly does come out easy for possible adjustment and cleaning. And I'm sure it is accurate. I was hoping this would be the rifle I was looking for, but as I was looking at it, an "old timer" who shoots MLs pointed out the primer reloading and trigger (and trigger tab) challenges that could present itself while in the field.
I was kinda disappointed honestly... my hopes were dashed a bit as my concerns grew. Practice can help a lot, I know, but in a heated moment where the big bull is still standing at 75 yards after the first shot... which one of the 6-8 reloading steps am I going to forget or screw up. So now I'm back to looking for a simpler design. But that's just me. YMMV. ;-)
Personally, I don't think the reloading steps are much busier than other muzzleloaders I've shot. Overall, I foundreloading to be fairly quick. Pull the hammer back, pull the block back, pour powder, seat bullet, insert primer, close block, flip hammer safety forward and fire. Only one more step in comparison withmy CVA optima. The only thing I can see having to get use to is flipping the pivoting hammer saftey forward before the shot. Inserting the primer into the block action wasdone easily today, but I wasn't wearinggloves either.It might be and issue with really bulky gloves. I'm not sure what trigger and trigger tab challengesyou're referring to?
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KRB7 Range Report.
