Supported Air Rifle Shooting - early days

[zooma]

Rossendale Model Target Club is in the process of starting to shoot Supported Air Rifle (once a week) and we would be happy to share any information that may be able to help or encourage any other club or individuals who may also be either contemplating, or actually making a start, in this latest branch of our target sport.

The thinking is that this discipline is "new" to us all, and if we all share our success's and failures it will help to get this sport moving more easily than if we all work in "independent seclusion" trying to solve problems alone when they have already been resolved by others.

So far we have had some regulation sized hard 50mm diameter bars cut that are 100mm long ( the minimum length), and have designed and made some simple "easy to make" plywood bar holders that can be easily mounted on any sort of stand. Ours include a flat shelf on either side below the bar that can be used for holding a pellet tin or pellet tray etc.

We have also made a simple box top to clip securely over the bar and holder than can in turn have a pad glued onto the top of it for use as a rifle rest when the stand is not being used for Suported Shooting!

We have used some heavy duty speaker stands to fit our bar holders onto - the sort you see holding really big speakers in clubs and pubs etc. These are not too expensive to buy and really are "as solid as a rock" and are considerably more stable than required in use.

Some of the 50mm bars that we had cut are from chrome plated steel and look really "cool" but we have noticed just how much more slippery they are than those that do not have a plated surface. It is not possible to add any sort of non-slip surface treatment to the hard bar surface but it is possible to choose what you make it from so our advice would be not to use chrome plate as it is very slippery!

We have also made some simple "resting plates" to fit our rifle stocks at the front where they will rest on the 50mm bars for use with "Supported Air Rifle Shooting". We started by just balancing the rifle on the bar, but the flat extension "resting plate" protects the under-surface of the rifle stock and gives slightly more (within the 60mm rules) width to balance on.

We were fortunate enough to be given a short length of oak to make a "resting plate" for each of our rifles and this not only works really well but it also proved to be a lot easier to make than we had feared.

I oiled my rifle's "resting plate" as I thought it would look good, but when combined with the polished chrome bar I had a really slippery combination that I would not recommend as being the most stable combination possible

With this basic "home made" kit we are now enjoying taking part in "Supported Air Rifle Shooting" and we are all presently surprised to find that this is a highly enjoyable discipline !

[zooma]

Almost any .177 air rifle can be used for Supported Air Rifle Shooting but the recoilless types will give the best results.

SSP air rifles are a good choice to get started with and will work as well as any other type but they will have to be removed from the bar stand to cock them after every shot. This may not be a bad thing as this "break" will force the shooter to take more time between shots and we have found that this can help keep the concentration levels good.

CO2 and PCP rifles will not need to be removed from the bar to be reloaded and for many this will be seen as the most convenient option, but this speed of reloading can lead to shooting too fast and spoilt shots !

Any rifle can be used "as it comes" by just resting the front of the stock on the bar, but making a simple hard wooden "resting plate" to fit under the front of the stock will prevent any possible damage or wear marks to the rifles stock that may occur after extended use on the bar.

The "resting plate" can be made from any "hard" surface but wood (maximum 60mm wide) is the easiest to come by and the most simple to work with. We were given an old piece of water stained oak and that proved to be ideal and cleaned-up really well for our rifle rests, but it would have been just as practical to use any other sort of hard wood or even MDF to make a "resting plate" to fit under the front of your rifle stock - and MDF is probably a good idea when experimenting with shapes and fitting as it cheap and could always be copied at a later date in a more exotic wood or just sprayed matt black to look good.

The "resting plate" can be made to extend the length of the typical match rifles hand rest by making it fit immediately in front of it - but at the same height to give a smooth continuous lower support to the area under the main stock body. It would also be possible to simply replace the hand rest with a new longer one in much the same way as the manufacturers produce their specific "senior" rifles that are designed for bench rest shooting.( see Walther Anatomic Senior to get the idea).

The important thing about the "resting plate" is that it must be made from HARD wood as a soft wood will eventually "dent" in use and will then become illegal as this will give an unfair (and illegal) support as it begins to mould itself to the shape of the bar.

The contact point between the surface of the 50mm diameter hard bar and the 60mm wide (maximum) hard surface of the "resting plate" fitted to the front underside of the rifle has to be no more than a tangent when placed together. Any soft or "compliant" surface will help to hold and stabilise the rifle much more that the two hard tangental surfaces can achieve and so will give an unfair advantage to anyone whose equipment does comply with the ISSF rules

We have made our "resting plates" so they can be easily fixed to the front underside of the rifle stock and can be quickly removed again to return the rifle back to its standard form so it can be used for any other type of target shooting without compromise.

[zooma]

Making a bar holder can be simple and easy from 1/2" (or thicker) plywood.

First find yourself a piece of 50mm bar cut to the minimum permitted length of 100mm long (it can be longer if you prefer - our's are 125mm long). The easiest way to do this is to buy a piece of mild steel bar from you local metal supplier cut to length to save a lot of hard work with a hack saw!

You could make this bar from hard wood, but 50mm diameter steel (or other metal bar) is a lot easier to find.

We have also made a couple from 50mm outside diameter alloy pipe. This also works just as well and it much easier to cut to length and weighs a lot less too!

Cut some strips of the 1/2' (or thicker) plywood to 25mm wide and cut two lengths exactly the same length as your piece of bar.

Place them (on end so they stand 25mm high) each side of your bar centrally on a baseboard cut from your plywood and run some thin superglue down the outside edge of each strip keeping them as tight as possible to the bar to make a very close fit. This will dry almost instantly making assembly fast and easy.

Cut two more short lengths so you can superglue one tightly across each end to completely surround the bar completing the box that will retain the bar securely on the base board.

Remove the bar and run superglue completely around every joint (inside and outside) to make a really secure open box fixed to your baseboard. Modern superglues are very powerful and are more than up to the job but the steel bar is very heavy so I also added some headless nails to the joints for additional security.

Your bar holder is now assembled and can finished in any way you choose. As we made ours from used scrap (and water damaged) plywood the finish was not too good so we painted ours to improve the appearance and to help them survive a future life in our cellar!

When the bar is placed in the retaining box, only the top half will be showing and it can be removed anytime for cleaning or for safe transport.

All that remains now is to fasten it to your chosen stand. We used heavy duty speaker stands and these usually come with a flat top to mount the speaker on so all that needs to be done is to screw your bar stand onto this fat top and it is ready to use!


To fit the speaker stands that we used the ply base was made 5" wide. We decided to make the base a bit longer than the bar holding box so we had enough left over on each side to hold a plastic pellet holder box or a tin of pellets.

Some self adhesive Velcro can be used to secure the pellet holders (if you choose this option) so they are easy to place securely on the sand for convenient use when Supported Air Rifle Shooing ( SARS).

We will be having a go at Supported Air Pistol Shooting (SAPS) too in the future and will use these same stands and bar holders for this discipline too. The speaker stands can be easily adjusted in height to suits any shooter for pistol or rifle use.

[zooma]

When we first started to plan the "new to us" Supported Air Rifle Shooting (SARS) discipline at our club we looked to see what would be the most suitable types of air rifles to use. We also hoped that some of the less expensive types would be as competitive as the latest (expensive) crop of PCP match rifles to help encourage newcomers to "join in" by not being put-off by the equipment cost.

As we are a target club, most of our air rifles are match rifles, and most of them are recoilless, so we had a good pool of models and types to look at and to test to see what was the most likely to work the best. We think that they can all have their advantages, and all of them can be made suitable for SARS at a modest cost. None of them "need" to be modified for SARS shooting but if used every week it may be desirable to protect the undersurface of the stock from "bar rub".

SSP rifles usually need to be removed from the bar for the easiest re-cocking method and this was thought to be a good idea as it forces a break between shots and prevents too many "rushed" shots being taken. These rifles are also comparatively inexpensive and have excellent triggers together with a totally recoilless action so they make a really good choice. More about these at a later date.

Some of the oldest PCP match rifles are quite cumbersome and heavy compared to the latest crop of much thinner and lighter weight PCP match rifles, and although they are still "pin-point" accurate they have been discarded (prematurely) by many of us in favour of various newer types.

One of these is the FEINWERKBAU P70. We have some of these excellent rifles in our club (the type with the alloy stock), but they were not being used much by any of us any more as we had all bought newer models that are smaller, lighter, and generally easier to balance and shoot in the usual free standing position - but the P70 rifles remained extremely accurate and have a very good trigger.

The cocking action of the P70 match rifle is also ideally suited to SARS as it is easy to simply push the cocking levers forward - either left or right handed as they are on mounted on both sides of the rifle, and this can be done without removing the rifle from the bar (all PCP rifles can be cocked and loaded without removing them from the bar).

The P70 rifles have a "nose heavy" balance and this suits SARS perfectly and works well.

Those that read the Target/Competition shooting section of the BBS will have noticed that I failed to sell my red "as new" P70 match rifle a few weeks back and this turned out to be a really unexpected bonus. I had some genuine regrets about parting with it, so when we started SARS I was delighted to take it off sale and to give it some regular work - probably for the first time in its life!

The P70 rifles have been given a new lease of life in SARS shooting, and we actually think that they are at least as good as any of the newer and more expensive PCP match rifles, but no PCP rifle will be able to beat a better shooter with an SSP rifle.

As an aside, our alloy P70 match rifles are either coloured red or blue. We have never seen a black coloured P70 but have been told there were plenty of them made so we are looking forward to seeing the first black alloy P70 come through the doors of our club and we have yet to see the various laminated stock P70's !

[zooma]

SARS is still going strong and is proving to be the post popular discipline in our club - it is well worth giving it a try!

[Brian.Samson]

SARS is still going strong and is proving to be the post popular discipline in our club - it is well worth giving it a try!

Sounds like it might be of interest to some of the shooters at my range. Thanks for taking the time to detail your findings.
Is there a website perhaps with the rules for SARS?