New Rifle

So, my new rifle has arrived, and over the course of a couple of sessions of tweaking and dry-firing, I've got it set up now. While it's a fairly complicated beasty, I've kept everything simple enough for the time being, and to be honest, having spent a good session with it today, I don't reckon I'll be making any major changes. I'll just throw up a few comments, since there aren't many people blogging about this stuff and I figure a few first impressions might be valuable for people. I'll detail the rifle first and then talk about it.

Anschutz selected 1913 barrel and action
Anschutz 1918 Precise stock
Centra Duo Glass foresight (larger size as I intend using a tube in future)
Centra 10-50 left hand rearsight
Gehmann 565 rear iris with colour filters, polariser and iris
System Gemini Aktiv Free Rifle buttplate
Anschutz 4765 buttplate (to be used for standing and kneeling)

I've only a few remarks really.

First thing I noticed is the fore-end, being so much narrower than my old wooden stock, puts more pressure on the hand. This will take a while to get used to. However, not being as broad, it sits flatter, and I have significantly less cant as a result. This is something I'm quite pleased about, as I'd like to keep my cant absolutely minimal. The extra pressure will just be a case of learning to deal with it. On the whole I'm quite happy with this.

The second point is that the Centra 10-50 is an absolutely marvellous rearsight. Since the iris hangs suspended from the cross bar, there's no rearsight body impeding your view of the wind flags. Since I've got a personal dislike of the tiny rearsight units which are currently emerging, since I think they allow too much light at the eye, this is great. The cross bar shelters the eye somewhat, while still allowing a complete view of all flags. I can thoroughly recommend this bit of kit. It's also significantly smaller than one might imagine from catalogue photos. It's certainly much smaller and much lower in profile than any of the various rifle manufacturers' proprietary rearsights, and smaller and lower profile than the majority of the rest of the market too.

One more point is that the System Gemini buttplate does not come with a carrier and adaptor for the Precise stock, as this has thicker pins than the older Anschutz aluminium stock. I'm hoping they change this policy, and I'll certainly be investing one, as I can't for the life of me figure out how to attach it to the Precise carrier as HPS suggest. I also wanted the plug and play buttplate setup to save changeover time from prone to standing. This is my only real gripe about the setup. I had no intention of using the 4765 buttplate for prone, as I just do not like it much as a unit having had one before, but until I can figure out how to attach the Gemini, that's what I'm going to be obliged to do. Something of a pain, but I'll spend some more time with the dismantled buttplates and see what I can come up with.

So, having achieved a decent setup, and spent some time dry-firing to get the feel for the rifle, position and trigger (which is sufficiently good from the factory that I'm not going to play with it for a while), it's time for some live fire. Hopefully I'll get two sessions in at the range this weekend and I'll have something to report back. For now though, I'm off for a 5k run. Munich has put serious drive behind me to make a go for the world cup there next June. I'll post an update about the trip later on or whenever I find time.