Ultralight Mountaineer First Look
This is a sweet feeling, sweet handling, sweet rifle. It comes to the shoulder quite nicely. The rifle sent me weighs 6.3 pound, not the advertised 6 pound, but i expected such, and was not disappointed. Trigger was 3½ pound, but was readily adjusted to the 1½ pound it is now. Couldn't do a three foot drop, but did do a two foot drop to concrete, and the trigger didn't fail; it is real real nice.
First time out i found the Harvester short black sabot to be too tight, so switched to crush rib sabot. Crush rib sabot worked, but whilst loading, the bore felt very rough, and uneven. Did 50 passes using J-B, and that smoothed the bore nicely; also allowed using the Harvester short black sabot.
Started shooting with the included open sights, and they worked good even for old eyes. However, the Quick Release Knight Rifle Detent Screw came apart whilst shooting. Somehow, luckily, none of the part were lost, because i was unable to purchase a replacement. Happily i was able to put it back together. ☺ Mounted a scope, and it worked good, but i couldn't enjoy cleaning the plug threads with the scope in the way, so it was replaced with a Williams FP receiver sight, which will be on the rifle when we go hunting.
The rifle came with excess head space, and that made me sad. Primers had to be measured, and the longest W209 chosen, so to have them be easily removed with little blow by. It was tricky installing a 0.005" shim in the plug, because the shims, tools, and breech plug were all magnetic. The shim didn't want to stay in place; it seemed to have a mind of it's own, and jumped all over. With the shim now installed, the spent primers fall right out of the bolt; there is zero blow by, the bolt stays clean. The primers can be taken from the box randomly, without measuring.
The brazed vent in this breech plug seems to be a way more durable than the brazed vent in the previous Mountaineer breech plug. Flash hole is now 0.032" after 75 shots.
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