Father's Day HW35

[Craig-P]

Evening all.
As yesterday was, 'leave Dad alone day', I finally got around to having a play with a HW35e I've been wanting to sort for a while.
I picked this rifle up about twelve months ago from Perkins Guns, with the intention of using it with iron sights ( I've also had a Williams peep sight sitting in the spares box for a good few years - so that more than justified me buying it - at least that's how I convinced myself ). The break barrel action being much less of a faff to operate than my open sighted HW77, was another bonus ( again, justification really )
So, rifle was purchased and then put in the cabinet as one of those, 'to do', jobs…And there it's stayed.
I cashed in a few Father’s Day vouchers yesterday and enjoyed some time with it.
No idea what's going on inside of it but it shoots extremely nicely and when I ran it over the Chrono, it was putting out a twang free 11.2fpe. It’s also ridiculously consistent, so well done to whoever sorted it. I left well alone as I couldn’t improve on what’s been done and whatever has been done is more than good enough for what I want from it.
I shot five shoot’nsee targets with the standard sights just to make sure it was all ok and to select the favourite ammo, which turned out to be nice and affordable FT Trophies.
I’ve a few peep / diopter units in the drawer and have long considered mounting one of my Parker Hale units to various actions, purely because they’re beautifully made - but I’ve considered that for at least ten years now, so have to admit it’s not happening anytime soon…
How happy was I to find the adjustable aperture unit of a PH17 unit screws directly in to the Williams unit?! And the Williams unit is just a straightforward fit to the HW dovetail. So no drilling like the PH unit requires.



I switched the HW circular insert on the foresight to the post and dot insert which gave a more precise target picture and set the target box out at 40 yards. Again, I shot five shoot’nsee targets (with a point of aim marker placed just above), the average from both sessions is shown here:
Standard opens:



Williams with aperture closed:



Accuracy improved with the Williams, especially when notching down the aperture to give an image akin to a parallax fussy optic. This is probably due to the now near two mile long sightline offered by the 35e - but it slowed target acquisition down considerably.
It’s lovely to shoot at set distances and at a push, with clear aim points, is comparable to accuracy from a low magnification optic. That’ll do for me.
Another one set up and we’ll see what it can do at the next Bash.



Cheers, Craig