All was not lost, however. When I bought the rifle, it came with about 90 cases made from Lapua 7.62x54R cases. These were trimmed a little bit short, but work OK. I loaded up 25 of these cases with the lead bullets. I made a dummy round to check these would chamber and they did. Off to the range again. I didn’t know if the rifle would shoot high or low, so a shot with a six o’clock hold and it didn’t hit the target. Another couple or three sighting shots with different hold points revealed the rifle was shooting very high. The final aiming point to get the rounds in the black was aiming at the top of the grass on the mantlet at the bottom of the target frame. A few strays, but most went in to the black. The stray shots are down to my eyes, as they occasionally took industrial action and refused to focus properly. The aiming point, a line of grass, wasn’t the best for accurate shooting. However, I am pleased with the result. The rifle will shoot OK with lead bullets. I will move to 200 yards next time. Hopefully, I will have an aiming point on the target at this range.
I now have 25 Berdan primed cases that don’t fit the chamber with a bullet in them. I suppose it is because the military brass is a bit thicker down the case where the neck was formed. I presume the necks could be reamed but I don’t have a neck reamer. I will leave them for another day.
The rifle came with 10 original Kynoch rounds. These are 244 grains and the bullets measure 0.323 in front of the case.
Regards
Peter.