Bora99 at the NTSA

[Dangermouse]

The last two days I have been shooting the Bora at the National Target Shotgun Association National Championships at Bisley.

This is only the second time out for the Bora and as such it is still being shot in and I did not wish to add to the other threads running. At the end of play today I figure it has probably had around 250 shells through it, still not many in the scheme of things.

Friday 01st was a Experimental 100 yard shoot on Short Siberia. 2 sighters, convertible, followed by 15 to count. We could shoot any position, any sights and any support. Most opted for prone to begin with but a couple moved to sitting for personal comfort reasons. The target on this occasion, and only this occasion, was a short range F Class target. Thankfully anywhere else on the board was scoring a 1, which allowed people to accumulate points. People were surprised at how little the slug dropped at that distance, many believing that it was only a foot or so. As a result people were getting in the black and I was able to score a 26. As it turns out knocked of second spot by only a 0.1 of a mark by the only person to hit the V Bull on the day. I happened to be marking that target and can say that the hole the slug made was not much smaller than the V Bull itself.
Next time out we will use a target with a larger scoring area and have plans to also try 200 yards and some of us are game for 300 yards!

Considering that I was using a set of £10 air soft Mag pull flip up sights that had only just been forced on to the rail, I was pleased.

Saturday and we were on Butt Zero for an early start.
The courses of fire for the day were:
Timed & Precision 30 Rounds of Slug,
Timed & Precision Lite 18 Rounds of Slug,
Multi Target 24 Rounds of Slug
Embassy Cup 24 Rounds of Slug
And a snooker fun shoot which had 12 targets using birdshot.

For those familiar with target shotgun events you may notice the T&P Lite event. Again another experimental shoot that everyone responded well to. Shot at 15 yards on 3 different targets it was a quick and fun shoot that we will do again but probably move back to 20 yards as the scores were all high.

For this competition I was using 1oz Lellier & Bellot Special Slug Sport at 67.5mm (£68.00 from range office)
I found the gun was feeding these well with only one fail to load. The cartridge just did not go into the chamber. I am finding that with this gun there is no point trying to clear the jam. You need to dump the mag and either load again or insert a fresh magazine. Trying to clear a jam just creates more mess as more shells are stripped from the magazine.

The magazine came in handy with the Embassy cup stage. At each distance you shoot 4 then re load with another 4 and change position. So standing to prone. Standing to Siting and then Standing to kneeling. This is done in a short time frame. It is common to see people get the last round in after the re load just as the targets turn. luckily for us this stage saw the only rain of the day, thankfully not enough to see anyone getting muddy from the contact with the ground. My magazines saw me finish each stage easily within time and it was nice to be the first to change position for once. Shame I did not use this time to aim!

With the last half hour of the day I hit the "Snooker" fun shoot. This was made up of a row of red plates with a row of colour plates behind. A red plate had to be shot first then a colour. If you missed a colour then you had to return to a red before engaging another colour. Simples?
I had two attempts before realising that my shot was just not knocking over that stubborn pink, which was leaning towards us. For the first time ever I changed chokes from my door breacher thing to a full choke. This required a bit more accuracy but at least the pink was going to fall. Or so was the plan, you have to hit it first!
This was the only stage of the day that I was getting feed issues. Not sure if it was the "High Pheasant" 2.mm 32 gram 67mm cartridge's or something else. This is one of the first guns and has only the one piston ring thing.

I have still not replaced the plastic feed ramp which I managed to damage before firing a shot, playing with the gun when I first got it. I guess 90% of owners probably do the same. Until that is replaced I will always be paranoid that it is the reason for any miss feed.
I have noticed, however I have not really played with this, that the gun does not like the magazine being loaded when the bolt is shut. This appears to cause miss feeds straight off.
On two occasions the last round bolt hold open failed to engage which was confusing. I will have a good look when I clean it a see if there is any damage to report.
Also on two occasions, once yesterday and once today, once with slug once with birdshot, I had light strikes. The first I was not convinced that a shell had actually been chambered the second definitely had. I will check the firing pin when I clean it but I suspect that this has more to do with how wet I was running the gun this time out.
The first time out I had been working on the mag well with a file to assist with the magazine changes. I had thoroughly cleaned the gun before taking it out and had forgotten to oil it again. It was seriously dry which led to some failures. This time out I went the other extreme and the thing was more likely to catch fire. Perhaps there was too much oil getting in the way? I will try half way next time and se how that works.

Sounds like there is trouble with this gun? Hey it is still being ran in and more importantly I am still getting use to it. It is not a tube gun or pump gun, it is a magazine gun and that brings it's own set of problems that I need to learn about and devise coping measures for. I strongly believe that on any given course of fire this gun has the ability to win first place if I do what is required.

Most importantly, this gun is fun to shoot. The trigger on this one is great, the recoil is not an issue and it looks great!

I am aware that the NTSA is not to everyone's taste, please don't post anti NTSA posts.
I had a great two days shooting with a great bunch of guys and girls. Everyone did everything that needed doing and the ranges all ran smoothly. Here is a link to the NTSA web site, come and have a go if you like the sounds of what you have read.

DM

http://targetshotgun.org.uk/

[StangGT]

Good write up, thanks for sharing! This is something I hope to get into in the next 12 months!

[Dangermouse]

A quick follow up after having the gun apart and the chance to play with some dummy rounds.

The firing pin is not broken, not that I really thought that it was.

Very evident this time of cleaning was all the metal shavings on the Breach Lock, and to a lesser extent the upper receiver. Black Stuff mentioned the breach lock rubbing on the upper receiver in his extensive report. I do not know if this rubbing is causing any of the malfunctions that I have been experiencing?
On this occasion I did not strip the upper and lower receiver, if on the next time of cleaning I find that there is still more metal being shaved off I will have to and set to work with a file. My Breach block already looks nicely rounded with no sharp edges.

Regards the gun not feeding a full magazine when the bolt is closed. I have just had a play with 2 dummy shells in the magazine, so the spring was not fully under tension. No issues at all with these dummy shells. I will dig out more dummy shells and check again with a full mag when I have more time.

I walked away from shooting on Saturday really not sure what the left hand charging handle was for. Having given it some thought and trying to create a miss fed shell with the dummy rounds, I can see that it should be possible to pull the left hand cocking leaver to the rear, tilt gun to the right and shake it lose.Then let if fly forward loading the next shell. It is working with my dummies but I need to practice practice practice so that it becomes second nature during a shoot. The only issue being in comps like timed and precision where you load with the required number of rounds. Ejecting one like this will leave you short, on those shoots it would be best to change magazine, which wold be entertaining for those watching, but very doable if your head was in the right place.
Need to see if this also works for a stove pipe although my first reaction is always just to flick them away,

DM






Breach lock Black stuff

[Blackstuff]

Nice write up :goodjob:

I presume you were doing this with the Duffys? We did a shoot up in Crocketford where they were experimenting on us (oo er) for the timings etc for this comp a few weeks back, just never got around to putting the video on Youtube (something i'm really slacking off with )

The shavings will defintely be caused by the breech lock, i only noticed when mine had a good 1000rds through it and then read a thread on the Saiga12 forum about what caused it. By that time i think most of the damage ahd already been done, but smoothing off the edge did seem to stop it immediately/from getting any worse.

7/10 i can clear jams (FTF) simply by whacking the back of the main charging handle (using it like a forward assist on an AR-15), 2/10 by racking the action then the 1/10 requires the magazine to be withdrawn, which is a ball ache for PSG (it cost me at least 2nd place at Wedgnock the other week ) but it would be a competition killer for TSG So my drill now for a FTF is 1/ Smack charging handle 2/Rack action 3/Remove mag and rack action then re-insert mag.

'Foward assist' method shown here at 1:45 and complete mag removal forced by double feeds at 0:47 and 2:00



N.B. As per my last post the FTF's seem to have been caused by me being a dumbass and putting the magazine spring in back to front. I'm going to be doing some 50m slug practice (hopefully) this week and i'm going to use that mag to see if the mag spring was the problem.

N.B. I'd previous made the same mistake (putting the mag spring in the wrong way) but that time it manifested itself by making it quite difficult to get a full mag in on a closed bolt, have you checked your springs ....

[Dangermouse]

Love the video, thanks. Yes the Dufy's were at Bisley.

Regards the magazine spring
I wouldn't b that daft - would I?
I did have one of the 10 round mags apart to compare it to the 5 rounds mag, I wonder if I managed to put it away back to front. I will have to have a look.
One of the problems I identified on the range was that 6 black magazines all look the same. When you throw one to the side after a malfunction it is difficult to remember which one it was after the shoot. So when I returned home the first thing I did was number each one for future reference. It might even prevent anyone from walking away with one of mine and vice versa.
Not that there were any others out at the weekend, making me the only "open" shooter!

It's all great fun,

DM

[Blackstuff]

Love the video, thanks. Yes the Dufy's were at Bisley.

Regards the magazine spring
I wouldn't b that daft - would I?
I did have one of the 10 round mags apart to compare it to the 5 rounds mag, I wonder if I managed to put it away back to front. I will have to have a look.
One of the problems I identified on the range was that 6 black magazines all look the same. When you throw one to the side after a malfunction it is difficult to remember which one it was after the shoot. So when I returned home the first thing I did was number each one for future reference. It might even prevent anyone from walking away with one of mine and vice versa.
Not that there were any others out at the weekend, making me the only "open" shooter!

It's all great fun,

DM

Yep that took me 3 malfunctions to work out too :roll: :lol: I think it might be time to break out one of those label making machines you always got as a present as a kid for Christmas!

[38Super]

I'm using nail varnish to mark my mags. Not my own I hasten to add. In a house full of girls there is always a plentiful supply as long as they don't find out what I'm using it for.

Blackstuff - I'd love to know what kind of malfunctions you're getting that need a wack on the bolt handle?

I'm up to about 250 rounds through my Bora with one failure to cycle with a full mag (10+1 start) and more worryingly 1 stovepipe. The empty case was wedged above the round being fed. Not enough oil I think (slow cycling?) may have been the cause.

[Blackstuff]

Blackstuff - I'd love to know what kind of malfunctions you're getting that need a wack on the bolt handle?

I'm up to about 250 rounds through my Bora with one failure to cycle with a full mag (10+1 start) and more worryingly 1 stovepipe. The empty case was wedged above the round being fed. Not enough oil I think (slow cycling?) may have been the cause.

Simple, the bolt not properly closing because a variety of causes - in the example shown in the video above it was because the mag spring was in the wrong way around and there was too much tension for the bolt to strip a cartridge. Also when i first put the side charging handle forend on the gun the poorly matched new drive block was rubbing on the guide rod enough to slow the bolt down enough not to be able to pull a cartridge off a full mag. I've also noticed (although this seems common for this mechanism gas operated shotgun) that the gas piston dumps carbon onto the guide road and recoil spring which i'd imagine would slow the action down over time if you weren't cleaning it.

[38Super]

Thanks Mark. I'm just a bit surprised as the bolt not closing is one area where I have not had any problems with mine. It's more likely to take my fingers off if I'm not careful.
I know what you mean about the carbon build up on the guide rod though and there is already some signs of wear by the drive block on the underside of the guide rod.

Rob

[Chuck]

good post DM and good video Blackstuff.