Pictured is my subjected Taipan. I picked up one of those 700mm barrels shortly after they came out a year or two ago and, for me anyway, the thing was mostly a non-starter. It drove me bat$hit crazy with shooting dead on one day and then being 2 inches off the next. Rinse & repeat. I couldn't trust it for reliability. Plus - honestly - it just looked kinda dumb - it was just so damned long. ( lol ) Readers digest - I shelved it, went back to a near OEM gun with the just shy of 550 mm OEM barrel and 23g H&N slugs that this barrel loves and it was a friggin laser again. It stayed like that until this past November / December. I decided that I wanted to play with that "cursed" barrel and see if I could do anything with it. I contacted a friend of mine who has a machine shop and gave him a few bucks to cut 100mm off of it - he faced it, threaded it and re-crowned it - so now it's a 600mm barrel - and possibly unchoked. ( I'm guessing we cut enough off to get rid of the choke . . .? )
Anyway - pushing slugs through it - .216's seemed a little too loose. .217's a little snug. I grabbed a box of .2165's from NSA that showed up today and I just gave them a quick test out in the back yard. It wasn't windy today - but not warm either - 23* F. I only had 30-45 minutes or so of daylight left to play with too as I just got home from work. I didn't chrony it - not really enough time, plus again, cold. The last time I played with it a few weeks ago with the .217's it was doing pretty good in the 9teen's (910-920 fps). I had to speed it up on the hammer spring adjuster - maybe a third of a turn - just little 1/8" turns doing 3 shot groups to see how they were grouping at 30 yards. When they tightened up at 30 yards I moved out to another target I have on a tree as far as I can go in my back yard which is at 63 yards. I'm ~guessing~ they're shooting in the 920's . . . 'ish fps. I think they're showing promise - at 63 yards they / I was able to hold to under 3/4" - would have been less had that last shot - the one off the the left not been "the flyer".
Colder weather = slower flying projectiles?
From an efficiency point of view - I started with a 230 bar fill ( my tank is getting low and I can't fill to 250 now anyway ) and I still got three full mags out of it ( 30 shots ). Referencing 23* cold again though - I probably "lost air" due to the cold - in warmer weather I might have been able to get a 4th mag?
I'm really looking forward to the weather finally breaking, hopefully warmer temps so I can test this thing further and hopefully get it dialed in. I have a carbon fiber tube coming in that I plan on slipping over the barrel - don't know if it'll "do anything" to aid in accuracy - but at the very least it'll look kinda cool. ( lol ) And yes - I have a ripped piece of t-shirt duct taped in place over the moderator and in between the air tube to try and minimize "whip" or any flexing movement. It's an experiment - lol - if I can get it going then I'll worry about getting it to look cooler - right now I don't care what it looks like - I just want it to shoot.
Anyway - pushing slugs through it - .216's seemed a little too loose. .217's a little snug. I grabbed a box of .2165's from NSA that showed up today and I just gave them a quick test out in the back yard. It wasn't windy today - but not warm either - 23* F. I only had 30-45 minutes or so of daylight left to play with too as I just got home from work. I didn't chrony it - not really enough time, plus again, cold. The last time I played with it a few weeks ago with the .217's it was doing pretty good in the 9teen's (910-920 fps). I had to speed it up on the hammer spring adjuster - maybe a third of a turn - just little 1/8" turns doing 3 shot groups to see how they were grouping at 30 yards. When they tightened up at 30 yards I moved out to another target I have on a tree as far as I can go in my back yard which is at 63 yards. I'm ~guessing~ they're shooting in the 920's . . . 'ish fps. I think they're showing promise - at 63 yards they / I was able to hold to under 3/4" - would have been less had that last shot - the one off the the left not been "the flyer".
Colder weather = slower flying projectiles?
From an efficiency point of view - I started with a 230 bar fill ( my tank is getting low and I can't fill to 250 now anyway ) and I still got three full mags out of it ( 30 shots ). Referencing 23* cold again though - I probably "lost air" due to the cold - in warmer weather I might have been able to get a 4th mag?
I'm really looking forward to the weather finally breaking, hopefully warmer temps so I can test this thing further and hopefully get it dialed in. I have a carbon fiber tube coming in that I plan on slipping over the barrel - don't know if it'll "do anything" to aid in accuracy - but at the very least it'll look kinda cool. ( lol ) And yes - I have a ripped piece of t-shirt duct taped in place over the moderator and in between the air tube to try and minimize "whip" or any flexing movement. It's an experiment - lol - if I can get it going then I'll worry about getting it to look cooler - right now I don't care what it looks like - I just want it to shoot.
