Customer Reviews

Rifle Accuracy Facts

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

An excellent book. Great detail of what happens in a rifle
when a shot is taken. Very technical but presented in a way
that is very easy to understand. Opinions of the author are
clearly separated from the facts he has gathered.

Harold Vaughn is another aerospace engineer who ventured into the world of firearm research and gunwriting and it is fortunate that he did. The focus of this 290-page b&w book was to determine which factors contributed to accuracy and which to inaccuracy. Vaughn set about it systematically. The books tarts out with general internal ballistics and then moves on to specific issues such as chamber and throat design, barrel vibration, riflescope mounting, barrel fitting and muzzle blast before it switches to bullet related issues and wraps up with maintenance and handloading issues that affect accuracy. The text is supported by over a hundred explanatory photos and graphs and that is essential, because the book is quite technical. Even so it is readable.
Production quality is good, the font readable and the page design functional if unimaginative as one would expect of a technical work.
This is a book for precision shooters, gunsmiths and accuracy buffs after small groups. Most of its content fall in the nice to know bracket for the general hunter. The tinkerer and home gunsmith will find lots of things he can do and try to improve his rifle.
The main value of this book lies in the fact that Vaughn conducted original research and presented the empirical results for interpretation and use. He isolated many accuracy factors, evaluated them and separated the wheat from the chaff. It is no longer necessary to fumble around in the dark or believe all the old wives tales.

Really great book that shows how the author tried to prove what really affects a rifle's accuracy. Beside learning a lot of this book about rifle accuracy I also learned a lot of the authors way on how to solve scientific problems. But be warned - the book has a rather scientific approach and might not be so easy to read for someone who is not accustomed to that.

This is a wonderful book on the causes of inherent (i.e. rifle-based) inaccuracy, and also how to correct them. It certainly has very technical information in it if the reader chooses to delve into that content, but that really technical depth is mainly reserved for appendices.

The book is written in a plain and straightforward style, and it clearly notes when/where statements being made are opinions or guesses rather than data-backed facts.

If a person doesn't have a background in or affinity for math, I imagine there might be a couple sections that seem difficult to understand. Nevertheless, the book is written in a way that any such section can be skimmed over until the outcome or 'bottom line' portion is presented in a very clear way.

I recommend this book to all who are interested in what makes a rifle shoot poorly (other than the shooter!), and all who have a general interest in precision shooting.

A small irritant: The word "effect" (or effects or effected) is used incorrectly throughout the book, where the word "affect" (or affects or affected) should have been used instead. There are a couple other similar issues. I consider this to be a fairly major editorial failing, but it does not particularly detract from the content of the book nor the work of the author.

This book is an excellent piece. The author has an exceptional background compared to many others who have written on this subject, and this shows in his work.

Not only has he gone to great lengths and efforts to quantify the impact of different variables on accuracy and repeatability, for the most part he demonstrates excellent allegiance to the scientific method by commenting on, and quantifying sources of error in his experimental method, something that is exceptionally rare to find, but very important, for works on this subject. Many of the areas that lack quantification are understandable given the time and resource constraints that the author was working under.

The book might suffer somewhat for readers who do not have an engineering or scientific background, though it is not an insurmountable problem by any means. To an extent it is an unavoidable facet of the subject matter, and some of the will go over peoples heads in certain instances, mine included. The provision and discussion of the empirical or experimental evidence that is provided sometimes necessitates an unavoidable level of detail if it is to be adequately addressed. Personally I have no problem with this, as this book will be an excellent long term reference that I will no doubt return to many times whilst improving my knowledge on the areas that I struggles with.

Overall I would say this is very much a worthwhile purchase for those who want their decisions for rifle purchases or modifications to be grounded in reality rather than myth and to understand, rather than merely do.

A very famous, savvy and intelligent gun smith is in the process of putting a new barrel on a 6mm Dasher bench rest action for me. He is also brillantly modifying said custom (as in very expensive) action to make it even better, having no retaliatory response other than: "why didn't I think of that" I gave him carta blanche to go for it. In our conversation I mentioned that on occasion the rifle would shoot 2 small but distinctly different locations on a target and asked if he had any ideas what might cause this. He immediately referenced the paragraph and page that covered this phenomenon in Harold's wonderful book. By the time he realized who he was talking to and what he said: "the cat was out of the bag". So I told him he might as well give me the title and author to save me time tracking it down myself. After dissection I found that a great deal of his knowledge and now mine came directly from this book. I do have to say that Harold sometimes can't see the forest for the trees and went down the wrong path problem solving but hey every successful engineer has done this in their careers, for which I have to say: "it takes one to know one". Aside from a couple of solutions (that you will have to discover for yourself): Harold's book is a master piece that I hope not too many people read and fewer understand as it is going to (hopefully) give me an edge in 1000 yard bench rest.

I bought and read the book more than 24 months ago and still re-read the book from time to time. It is not a gunsmith book, it is not a book teaching how to shoot accurately, but the personal research result by the author who has a distinguished career in ballistics in national lab. The book resembles a peer-reviewed technical publication in style and rigorousness; and it explores the various factors limiting the accuracy of rifle shooting, from barrel oscillation, headspace, receiver/barrel screw joint to ammo.
Although it may be a bit outdated compared to the customized rifle of today (the author pushed toward the 0.2-0.3MOA accuracy), the basic factors studied by the author remain the same as the limiting ones. It is highly informative and readable to any one who has a technical mind wanting to know the science of accurate rifle shooting beyond the discussion of model and brand.

It is an okay read, nothing really new or differently presented. Personally I did not like it just because I thought he sounded self righteous but that is a personal opinion, the facts are sound and you can learn from it if you are a beginner there were a couple things in there that I did not know so props for that; All in all 3/5