Harvard, MA Sept 14-15 2013

lupis42 · September 16, 2013, 09:14:18 PM

To all the shooters at this weekends Harvard Appleseed, thank you! Also, thank you to whoever arranged the "perfect for Appleseed" weather.

Your hard work, your persistence in the face of sometimes uncooperative rifles, your attentiveness to the details of both the marksmanship and the history are a big part of why I keep doing this.
We had a good crowd this weekend, and they worked through a wide assortment of rifle issues. One of our shooters, cleaning his rifle Saturday night, pulled a 20-grain lump of fouling out of the bore, and suddenly understood why his group sizes had tripled mid-AQT at the end of Saturday. Another had to conduct some last minute gunsmithing to fix a trigger-sear, others had magazines that wouldn't drop free, but all persisted, put the effort in, and showed remarkable improvement over the course of the weekend.

A hearty congratulations to our three new riflemen, Laura, Thumper, and Joe!

aim · September 18, 2013, 07:22:59 PM

A very varied and hardworking crowd showed up on a gorgeous fall weekend and kept us instructors busy. I barely had time to snap a handful of pictures - every patch that was earned, plus the 210 "special treatment". Thank you all for coming!

L. with *two* targets (213 and 235, the latter being the highest score of the weekend):

Thumper with a 214:

and J.:

...with a 210:

dcmdon · September 19, 2013, 12:41:16 AM

Thank you guys.

L, my wife greatly appreciated all of your help on Sunday in particular in getting her to her goal. She was very driven to make Rifleman.

I'll have you all know that I've tuned all of the mags to drop free and I've sanded the stock to have a 1/8" gap all around the mag. Finally, the TacSol mag quick drop is going in the gun this weekend, as soon as the cheapie knock off replacement for my 10/22 arrives. (L's gun now has the Shillen barrel, Power Custom Trigger and will soon have the tac sol mag release)

We're looking forward to coming up to Harvard for the October Appleseed.

Don

hbennett · September 19, 2013, 12:32:27 PM

Congratulations! Every one approaches this differently. After qualifying the first time, I felt I needed to ADD to the difficulty factor (bolt-gun with iron sights).. but that's me.. It took a while to re-qualifiy the hard way, but now the 10/22 is easy.

One great advantage about Appleseed is learning through experience which equipment works, which needs improvement, and which to discard. Personally, I have become a very big fan of the KISS principal.

Thanks for the compliments. Working that event was as fun for me as I hope it was for you. As an orange-hat I do miss the trigger-time. But, on the flip-side, I didn't have a rifle to clean when I got home. Plus I do get to meet, work with, and learn from, some really great Americans.

Round Trip · September 19, 2013, 10:28:48 PM

Spent 2hours at Public Library trying to post picture with no luck. Will try again.

aim · September 20, 2013, 09:43:18 AM

Our shooters worked long and hard (hard enough to get bloody blisters!). Round Trip, you must persevere and overcome

dcmdon · September 20, 2013, 10:31:07 PM

Quote from: aim on September 20, 2013, 09:43:18 AM
Our shooters worked long and hard (hard enough to get bloody blisters!). Round Trip, you must persevere and overcome

No more blisters for L. I've got that rifle and the mags tuned now so with the flick of her middle finger the mag drops out. Her thumb is still nasty looking almost a week later. Of course I lost my TacSol quick mag release lever off my 10/22 in the process, but I've replaced it with a $6 plastic one, so I'm good. If you are married then you know the saying. Happy wife, happy life. Actually I'm thrilled that she is enjoying shooting so much and want to do all i can to keep it that way. Thanks again guys. We'll see you all in Oct.

Don