Range Report 04JUN2023: Zeroing the Smith Carbine

I took a friend of mine who is visiting from outside the USA to the range today to introduce him to the Snider since he just bought one himself, and didn’t get to do a lot of shooting myself, mostly plinking with a revolver.  What I did get to do, however, was to file down the new front sight on my Smith Carbine in order to zero it.

In the first of the three pictures below, you will see a bunch of shots which represent three-to-five-round groups.  They look like one big group, but they aren’t—the groups are gradually creeping up the paper as my friend was watching them through the target scope, and we were filing the front sight down after each group

Figure One:  First adjustments.

In the second picture, you will see more groups (only three rounds each this time) closing in, plus a few flyers from my friend who wanted to give it a go but who had never fired a Smith before—but, as you can see, the majority of rounds are now very close to the center in elevation (albeit off to the right).

Figure Two: Second adjustments.

In the third photograph, you will see my 10-round group after the final adjustment to the front sight post.  The group does not count the flyer way out to the right edge of the target as this was caused by me slipping my grip and thus does not represent what the weapon was actually doing, but there are still ten rounds in the group that were counted.  Here I was aiming off to allow for the windage error seen in the previous two pictures.  It’s hard to make it out, but the small cluster of hits just to the right and below the bull is actually four hits on the same spot, with three of them in the same hole.

As can be seen, this final group gave a String Test result of 2.1 in./rd.  That is a fantastic result.  For comparison, the black disk on the target is 3 inches in diameter.

Figure Three:  Aiming off to adjust fire.

All shooting was done from a seated supported position using a full sight.  The cartridges are Eras Gone Smith Bullets greased with the government recipe of tallow and beeswax sized to .515 inches loaded over 35 grains of Schuetzen 3F powder.

To see how I load ammunition for the Smith Carbine, go to:  https://historicalshooting.blogspot.com/2020/12/ammunition-for-smith-carbine.html

The String Test should be used by all shooters to judge and track the accuracy of their shooting as it is far more valuable than group size.  To learn more about the String test and how (and why) to use it, go to:  https://historicalshooting.blogspot.com/2020/12/the-string-test-measure-for-historical.html