Today I went to the public 100 yard range.
Nice concrete shooting benches, little or no wind (1 MPH according to weather.com) 60 degrees and sunny.
Mounted a 4-12x scope on my DD 18" S2W 1:7 CL CMV CHF barrel with Osprey gas system upper (not free floated).
Windham Weaponry lower.
Hung it on an el cheapo Sportsman's Guide bench rest.
Took 30 rounds of Wolf WPA to get it on paper (typical $hit, couldn't even tell where the rounds were hitting for the first 20 shots...)
Then I turned my attention to a fresh target with 10 rounds of Federal XM193F.
3.3 inch group.
Didn't really notice at this point the barrel is HOT.
Another target, 10 rounds of Hornady TAP 75 grain (the best commercial ammo I could find, still looking for the Black Hills 77 grain).
2.3 inches, WTF?
Moved the WW upper home to its lower, now shooting the WW HBC as purchased (except for the 4-12x scope).
CMV CL 16" 1:9 twist.
20 rounds of Wolf WPA to get it on paper.
Then I noticed the guy 2 benches down spitting cases at my feet, funny looking AR brass with a big hole at the business end.
Went to investigate.
Ran a few rounds through his 6.8 SPC, BS'ed for a little bit.
Back to the WW, which has cooled a bunch, although the sun didn't let it cool down fully... phosphated barrels absorb a lot of heat from the sun. Still, much cooler than the DD was, no doubt.
10 rounds of XM193F and a fresh target, 2.09 inch group. Not bad for ball ammo, I suspect.
Then I loaded up 10 rounds of the TAP. Now when I say loaded up, I mean 3 rounds each in 3 mags plus 1 round in one mag. State law at the public range.
Start with the single round.
Shoot.
Looked for the hole with 60x spotting scope. Nothing.
Inserted a 3 round mag. 3 more shots disappear without a trace.
No holes through the backing or the wooden frame.
At $1/round, I decided not to shoot anymore of the TAP with the WW on this day.
I thought the 1:9 twist would be okay with 75 grain, apparently not.
Or maybe something else is going on, maybe the cheap a$$ scope I was using broke.. but I didn't think to test it with Wolf to see if it lost it's zero, as I had to split.
In retrospect I should have taken 5 minutes to verify proper function.
I know my methodology is not perfect, but I really expected the DD barrel to do better.
Thoughts?
Joe