Posted: 6/30/2026 8:17:12 PM EDT
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I acquired a 1941 Winchester Model 52B with a heavy target barrel a few weeks ago. It was in very nice condition and had a Lyman 48 rear sight and a Lyman 77 front sight. The rear sight needed some work and cleaned up well, but it was still less than the rifle really needed to shine. Consequently after a couple weeks I decided to order a Malcolm scope for it. I really would have preferred the 8x31mm format of their Gen 2 sniper scope. The 8x magnification is fine for 50-100 yards and the exit pupil is comparatively large at 3.9mm, producing a brighter image in overcast conditions. The zero backlash competition mounts are much better than the original Gen 1 mounts, but the scope itself still seems to suffer from reported issues with poorly cut threads and of course the awkward have-to-remove-the-sunshade to adjust the parallax issue. The 20x was the other option with a slightly larger 41mm objective but none the less a much smaller 2.0mm exit pupil, which is going to start giving dimmer grainier images as light levels decrease. But the scope has a much easier to adjust parallax adjustment and has some other improvements over the older 8x design. Price wise with the spring, both scopes cost the same. So I ordered the 20X and it arrived three days early just in time for the weekend.     I brought a variety of standard velocity and match ammo with me and started with mid grade SK Std plus. It doesn't break the bank and I've found it shoots well in most precision .22LR rifles. Most rifles like it, so it's a good benchmark, but some rifles still don't shoot well with it. Bore sighting went well, adjusting the rifle on the front rest and rear bag so that a corner of each bull on the A-25-5 was visible in the bore and then adjusting the crosshairs to the "1" near the center of the target. The first round was 6" high and about an inch left. Holding the rifle in place while adjusting the knobs to move the crosshairs to the bullet hole had the second round in the ball park with a minor correction to land in the 10 ring. In this case, the rifle didn't really like SK Match. The group was ok but not stellar - all in or touching the 10 ring but skillfully avoiding the X ring entirely while scattering to opposite sides of the X-ring.  Now confession time. This is the first precision rifle shooting I have done in two years, following sudden heart failure caused by a virus, three weeks of actively dying while losing 40 pounds of muscle mass and then getting a transplant 6 weeks post initial ER visit. I was out of the hospital 7 days later but facing 6 months of serious suck in recovery and another year of prgor4essively lesser suck before finally getting back to normal. The upside is that I'm still here, and just the co-pays on $2.7 million in first year medical bills makes an $1100 Model 52B and $850 scope look cheap. But, here I was shooting a new to me rifle and a new to me scope, wondering how much of the meh group was the rifle, the scope...or me. I played around some more with SK Std Plus with no improvement and moved on to RWS Target Rifle. The RWS groups were better but not still not stellar.  I tried CCI SV which generally shoots surprisingly well and often shoots better in rifles that don't like SK Std Plus. It did, and in fact shot about as well as the RWS.  At this point I figured I needed to work with the rifle a bit. I checked the torque on the action screws and set them to 15 inch pounds, and also snugged the tapered shank crossbolt in the fore end to 7 inch pounds. I stayed with CCI standard plus and got better results. I increased to 8 and then 9 inch pounds and finally got accuracy that I was satisfied with. Interestingly the CCI SV group scores a 50-4x compared to the RWS 50-5x. I'm going to continue testing with CCI SV as I have about 9000 rounds of it on hand.   I'll see how well it returns to zero when remounted next trip. I also want to put it on my 1937 Model 52A to see how it does with the scope, and see how much difference there is in the point of impact. I could see it bouncing between the two if the changes in zero are consistent within a click or two. ---- My initial impression of the rifle is that it shoots well, and shoots well with cheap CCI SV. I'm also have good initial impressions of the scope. It was an overcast day that increasingly heavy during the range time before raining just as I was packing to leave. Despite the overcast light the image was bright and sharp enough for accurate shooting. The reticle is sharp and the view is clear across the field of view (only about 2' at 50 yards thanks to the 20x magnification). The parallax adjustment is straight forward. I found adjusting the parallax ring to 50 yards and then moving it to "7", zeroed out the parallax error and left everything in sharp focus. We'll see of the "7" past the 100 mark works at 100 yards as well next range trip. There is a degree or so of rotation around the pope rib between the guides, but it consistently rests with the right side of the rib against the mount and doesn't seem to present any accuracy or crosshair leveling issues. I retained the mounting blocks on the rifle as the 1/2" blocks that came with the scope are about 1/4" too high. The scope itself is easy to mount, first sliding it om the longer rear block and then onto the shorter front block, and then centering each mount on each block by feel before tightening the locking screw. Once adjusted to keep some tension on the system the spring takes care of itself. The knobs are positive feeling and can be adjusted to reset to graduations to zero once you've zeroed the scope to the rifle. That proved to be true of the vertical adjustment knob, but the horizontal knob doesn't want to pull out when the knob is loosened. There appears to be something stuck between the knob and shaft, tumbling media or perhaps just a piece of brown paper. It's a tomorrow problem. ---- It only has a 3/4" tube, but with external adjustments there's no erector tube inside taking up space, so I don't think it's giving up any light transmission compared to a 1" tube with similar sized objective lens and the same magnification. But...it and the small objective lens to limit field of view. The field of view is 4' at 100 yards, and that compares to 7' for a Nightforce NX8 2.5-20x50mm at 20x. But they are entirely different horses for different courses. The Malcolm 20X vintage target scope looks right on a 1941 Model 52B, and as a paper punching target scope doesn't need a larger field of view. The adjustments seem to be an honest 1/4 MOA and appear to be backlash free and repeatable. I'll do both tall target and box testing next week to test for accuracy, consistency and squareness of the adjustments. ----- In summary, so far, aside from the horizonal adjustment knob not disengaging to reset, I'm impressed with the scope. It appears to have better optics than vintage scopes, with mice adjustments, decent quality and a satisfying vintage look and finish. The rifle itself compares very well similar period target rifles, and still shoots very well compared to the later second tier target rifles I have like the Anschutz 64 or Remington 540X. |