After finishing work, I had a brief time to shoot in a snow-globe this afternoon!
Typical of my other CVA experiences, this rifle shoots where you point it. IMO, their traditionals are no-frills, get the job done firearms.
Now, don't get excited as all shots are only at 25 yds(actually 30 due to a fallen tree ) with a 3" bull.
Started at 55 gr T7 just to see where it was, that's 1&2, off a rest. 5" low.
These are primitive sights & I did not want to make any adjustment just yet so I either maintained the same 6:00 hold or used a holdover for the later shots.
Funny thing, starting w/ #3 I just felt the urge to shoot offhand, so I did for the rest of my shots! Both 3&4 confirmed the first two.
5&6 were w/ 75 gr and 2.5 in holdover. 7-11 I held at the top of the paper(5in) w/ 7-8 I dropped back to 55 gr, 9-11 were 80 gr.
Patches looked great & I reused two for shots 10 & 11.
It's a fun gun to shoot though there are a few problems. First, I'm unsure if the nipple was stock as it seemed to bind a bit and I had to remove & reinstall it a few times in an effort to sort out a more irritating issue, to wit, it seemed the hammer was not striking the cap hard enough and almost every shot required 3 or 4, sometimes 6 trigger pulls to snap the cap-the T7 ignited nicely.*
* I always tap the barrel to get a bit in the bolster w/ CVAs.
The questions for the CVA minded among us:
How do I increase the force hammer strike? Or do I? This does not have a coil spring.
I compared the CVA, TC, and Lyman nipples and it seems all 3 are different to the point that it would be unlikely someone would confuse them; I'm wondering if the one which came with was, for some reason, a musket cap? In any event, if the bolster threads were buggered, can a new one be had?
My bet is the nipple. Some times the nipples are to fat " no im not complaining" and it takes a couple hammer drops to set it off. I always use some sand paper and thin them down so the cap almost slips freely over it.
MD,
was hoping to ear from you!
actually it was both fat and tall so I did shape it a bit, nothing radical. Tall meaning w/ a cap the hammer was not able to strike on center.
I also scavenged a nipple from a Jukar pistol ( CVA kit) which surprised me as a #11. Both exhibited the same no bang symptom even after re-shaping. Caps, btw, I've been using w/out incident in my other rifles.
I do wonder about the threads in the bolster though it would seem a stainless nipple would be softer than the steel.
Hmmmm. Check the lock screws, Just finger tighten them. I had a mountain rifle "CVA" that was sensitive to this and if you over tightened them, they would slow the hammer down and not fire. Very easy to try out and see.
www.trackofthewolf.com sells the replacement bolsters. You could even go the over sized nipple route and re-tap it.
No snow today; instead it was a fine Spring day! I had to shoot the CVA again and I wore a t-shirt.
I did not want to file the front sight yesterday but last night I came upon a formula from coyotejoe on GBO:
The formula is radius devided by distance times correction.
Measure you sight radius from face of front sight to face of rear, that is "radius". Divide that by the "distance" to the target in inches and multiply by the desired correction. If we say your sight radius is 30" and you're shooting at 25 yards (900 inches) and you want to come up 6" then it would be 30 divided by 900 equals .0333, times 6 equals .1999" to file off front sight.
Shot 1 confirmed the 5" low, then I filed .017" off the front sight using my feeler gauges as measurement.
Shots 2 & 3 to confirm that it did raise POI w/ 6:00 bull.
#4 was offhand, 5-7 off a rest.
I wish my GPR shot like this!!
The CVA manual pdf gives zeroing info per barrel length; I couldn't recall if the 26" barrel was 0 or 2" low @ 25yds so I stopped there. I'd say it's shooting purty nice though.
After cleaning/lubing the lock the caps snapped a bit better but I found that the trigger must be pulled, not squeezed, to do so reliably.
Plainsman range report-
