Concidering the 7.62 posts recently

Geoff, I feel the authorities (read ROF Enfield) must have known about ammunition quality concerns, whilst Major Reynolds was retired he still had connections with Enfield Lock and Radway Green through his articles in the shooting press.

The question is, did they bother to do anything about it given it was deemed good enough for "government work" at that time? 

I don’t think the accuracy issue was fictitious or a farce.  It was real.  It’s the reason for the accuracy issue that has been clouded, and perhaps even known, but not brought to the light until it was too late for the L8.   I believe it was because of the poor quality of the 7.62 service ammunition being made at that time.  My guess is that 7.62 service ammunition was being made on worn out WWII ammunition loading machinery, both in Canada and in the UK.  And perhaps with little attention or concern for accuracy.

The UK NRA and Canadian DCRA did document the struggle to get the 7.62 conversions to group “at least as well as the .303” and it went on for numerous years with numerous attempts to correct vertical stringing at the short ranges (out to 300 yds) and to some lesser extent the mid ranges (500 - 600 yds).  Long ranges (800 to 1000 yds) did not suffer from this because of the positive compensation features of the No. 4 action that Reynolds has described. 

Why it took so long to fully recognize the root cause was poor ammunition, I don’t know.  Several of us here on this forum, and others on other forums, have demonstrated excellent accuracy out of our 7.62 conversions at short ranges, and indeed at all ranges out to 1000 yards, with rifles fitted with standard service weight barrels (not the L39/L42 heavy and longer barrel). I can only conclude that NRA and DCRA shooters at the time were not reloading, mainly because ammunition was supplied at service rifle matches, and military ammunition was likely  “passed under the table” to members to use in practice, so they had no need to reload. 

The Canadian 7.62 ball ammunition I have from that period strings groups pretty bad, 3 to 5 MOA, it’s a crap shoot literally, a decent group forms, then the 8th, 9th, or even 10th shot goes high, or goes low.  When I pulled the bullets from a sample of 40 rounds, I weighed individual case powder charges and the max - min was 3 grains!!! No wonder it strung groups vertically!  The dumped powder was re-metered thru my reading measure and the 147 gr Service bullet reseated in the case shot very well, under 2 MOA.

By 1969, right after the development of the 4 lb 7,62 barrel, a light seemed to have gone off and it was recognized that “something needed to be done” about ammunition quality for purposes of target rifle shooting.  No kidding….

I have a notebook from my Dad’s late shooting friend, a very good DCRA competitive shooter, that documents the testing and modifications he made to the forend bedding of his DCRA 7,62 (which I now have) in the mid 1960’s.  In his final iteration, out of frustration, he fully bedded the barrel in the forend, from chamber reinforce all the way to the muzzle!  The rifle shoots exceptionally well with hand loads.  Shoots crappy with service ammunition though…

So, we can conclude that the poor quality of 7.62 service ammunition played a role in the development of the L39/L42 (and commercial variants) and the adoption of the Target Rifle (TR) class for UK NRA competitive shooting.