Five-shot groups from today. Bench rest, 50 yards, ammunition Lapua Center-X. Groups fired left to right, top row, second row. The first upper left was fired after cleaning the bore and then things tightened up as shown. Not bad, I would say, for a rifle that was purchased used in the mid-1970s.





(If you saw my earlier, now-deleted post, I should have searched before asking, and when I did I found what I wanted at EGW Guns.)

Oh, yeah: the gun itself.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: sigfreund,

Nice shooting sir! Those model 52s were fine rifles...our club has some with diopter sights and they're really impressive at 50 feet. I've never had a chance to try them further out than that.

Very nice!

I had a 52 on more-or-less permanent load from a friend. He bought it for his wife but she didn't like the weight of it. We shot a 50' indoor league for one season, but those matches were on Friday nights and Friday was my 'kick back and relax with a pizza and a movie after a hard week' night, so I only did it the one year. I returned the rifle to my friend when I moved away a few months ago. We would occasionally take it and his Anschutz out and shoot them at 50 yards, that was fun and challenging (also good practice for Highpower or F-Class matches). They are great rifles though, for sure.

I shot a 52 in outdoor prone matches many years ago. But my real passion then was working toward Freepistol tryouts

Beautiful classic you have. They will shoot with the best rifles of today no problem

What a beautiful and accurate rifle. I love wood and metal.

We had a lovely Model 52D in our base club, with the original diopter sights - all that is allowed in modern day prone shooting in the UK NSRA and ISSF shooting.

Many a noob cut their shooting teeth on it over the years - and since I would get posted back there every few years, it was around for about twenty years TMK.

Last time I shot it, it was as fine a shooter as ever, and in first class condition, too, thanks to caring club management. When they wanted to buy a couple of new Anschutz rifles, I offered to buy it for a reasonable price, commensurate with what a dealer would have wanted, at that time, around £250. Then I got sent to Northern Ireland on TDY for four months. When I came back and called in at the club to get the rifle, the new secretary was there doing some bookkeeping. She advised me they'd given it, and four other older BSA Martinis, to the gun scrappers for a WHOLE £25. I nearly brained her with a chair right there.

quote:

Originally posted by tacfoley:
She advised me they'd given it, and four other older BSA Martinis, to the gun scrappers for a WHOLE £25.

That's enough to bring tears to my eyes.

Howdy, are we seeing a Lyman Super Target Spot atop your rifle? I look at the 52s often on line. You would not believe the 40X set up I purchased many years back for a meeger $225.00. I took the 40X over the many 52s available at that time. Had my share of heavy targets to include 2 Anschutz, US M12 HRA x 2, various medium weight Remington targets, one NIB from Uncle Sam sales program. Also had one fine 1922 M2.

My rifle as pictured has a Redfield 3200 20× scope with fine crosshairs and central dot reticle.

I am, however, about to put a modern scope on the rifle that has a side knob for focus/parallax adjustment. The Redfield is great for competition shooting at fixed known distances, but one of the things I like to do is shoot reactive targets at different ranges (as I did today with a 77/22), and using the adjustable objective lens is not convenient.

All those vintage 22 LR target rifles are so appealing, and just one of many reasons why I wish I had known then what I know now.

many moons ago, a friend built up a nice 10/22 rifle,
it shot very well, great trigger, etc etc,

this was in the early 90's or maybe earlier

I have picked up a pre A 52 and a 16x Unertl,

and despite his fancy 10/22 and scope, and a few other friends 10/22 and scopes that Pre A 52 and Unertl ate them for lunch,

only issue I had and the one time they beat me was when we were using irons on my 52 (they kept the scopes) and it was a buff paper, red target,, I got whooped, but switching to a black on buff target and they lost again,


I ended up with several 52's an a Rem 37, (and 75's , 513's and a few others) as well as more of those long vintage scopes,

love um

quote:

Originally posted by lyman:
but switching to a black on buff target and they lost again

Yes. I go on and on about proper targets being necessary for best accuracy and precision. With magnified optical sights that’s something that makes the best sight picture possible with the sights’ reticles, and that’s almost never a big, black bull’s-eye.

On the other hand, with iron sights nothing is better than a high contrast target that is sized for the best match with the sight’s features. Long ago when I shot 50-foot smallbore competition (with the rifle pictured), I found that three circles worked best: the rear sight aperture, the front sight aperture, and the bull’s-eye target that appeared just slightly smaller than the front aperture. That combination coupled with young eyes and a young, strong body in the prone position often made it possible to shoot a five-shot group that wasn’t much bigger than a single .22 caliber hole.

My current target 22 stable has a 40X, Walther KKM, Martini, and two Anschutz 1413. I don't shoot them much these days. I have a idea to fit the 1413 actions into a spare 40x stock I have. Then the huge Olympic stocks could be sold.

Here's one of the 1413

Beautiful!

The Win. 52 is a beautiful rifle. Even more so with the long tube scopes on them. I have several, from a standard weight barrel, to several heavy barrels to a true bull barrel.
I believe the difference between the heavy and bull barrels is almost 1 pound. If I recall, the heavy barrel rifle, without sights, is about 11 pounds. The bull is about 12.

Beautiful rifle and some nice shooting!

An OLD thread.

We’re (finally) due to get some snow over the next several days, but I managed to get to the range this morning to rezero the Winchester after deciding to put the original Redfield 3200 back on it. It was then time to shoot a drill that I hadn’t fired in several months, shooting from 50 yards with the same rest setup as pictured in the first post; ammunition Lapua Center-X.

I call this drill the Hunt and Peck. I use a random number generator to assign the numbers to the targets, and the object is to hit them in numerical order. I start off the scope, with bolt open. On a start signal, find the appropriate target, close the bolt, and fire the shot. I also use a shot timer to record the time with the goal being as fast as possible with best accuracy. The purpose of the drill is to become faster at identifying the proper target and accurately engaging it. The goal to find and engage the target as quickly as possible adds to the challenge. My average time for each of the 25 targets was about 9.6 seconds.

how do you like that 3200?


I have an assortment of unertl's lyman's, a fecker and Davis Spot shot (think litschert, after he passed)

recently picked up a 3200 and have not had time to get to the range with it,

nor the big funky Balvar I picked up either,

I put the 3200 back on the rifle mainly because I had it, it was what I used it for a long time, and also “vintage” and all that.

When I bought the scope in the 1970s it was state of the technology for what “target” rifles were used for: smallbore competition at fixed distances. It could be focused for precise distances, it tracked well with positive adjustment clicks that would be the envy of some scopes today, and had a fine crosshair reticle for precise aiming. Mine has a reticle with central crosshair dot which was an advantage as well.

Although it may seem strange that a 20× scope could be used for 50 foot (16.7 yard) indoor competition, it was actually very suitable for the purpose. The 50 foot targets I shot at were very small, and precise aiming was a benefit.

Today, though? Adjusting the focus distance with the objective ring is not nearly as easy as using a side focus/parallax adjustment that permits seeing what the image is doing during the process. The threads of the 3200 focus adjustment are very fine and it often takes a lot of turning to see any difference. Now that I have mine set for 50 yards, I will probably never change it again.

The difficulty I was having was probably partially due to the scope’s age and because it had been a long time since I did anything with the focus setting. One annoyance while trying to get it set yesterday was that the tightening (front) ring actually came off because I loosened it too much. I thought, okay, the tightening ring is off, I’ll leave it off until I have the focus set and then put it back on. When I did, though, the focus was way off again. Grrr!

The other disadvantage as compared with a good modern scope is its very tight eye box. That doesn’t matter for the type of use it was intended for, but limits other applications. One of my drills is to engage small steel targets at unknown distances and with that rifle I’ll have to go back to a different scope with a calibrated reticle and easy parallax adjustment.

It’s neat to use the 3200 for the type of shooting I was doing yesterday at a single array of targets set at one 50 yard distance, but beyond that, not so much. And as a single shot the rifle itself is usable for only certain types of shooting. If I decide to see what the rifle and ammunition (and I) can do at longer ranges, a different scope will go back on the gun.

Fine piece of equipment Sig! Hope to shoot mine again soon. I plan to use it with the peep sights, 25 and 50 yards.