Despite the benefits it has for youths, this build was always meant to be a highly portable bush rifle. And what are the key requirements for that? Short length and light weight. This issue we'll cover length.
At this point we also decided to step up optically, fitting a Zeiss Conquest V4 3-1 2×44, also from Outdoor Sports NZ. This scope has much better optical performance and a wider magnification range, making it more versatile and much easier to shoot with in low light. It does come with quite a weight penalty at 630g, but the 150g we removed from the barrel offset this to a degree.
There's not a lot you Can do about length at the stock end, the gun still has to fit you. But there's usually some room to manoeuvre at the muzzle end. Shortening the barrel will mean reducing the velocity you can achieve, but with handloading you can often make up a lot of that loss anyway. A shorter gun is much nicer to carry around in the bush. We recently did a test like this on the 28 Nosier build which started in Issue 80, so we decided to follow the same formula.
We needed to wait until wed finished cutting the barrel to try this as that would make it easier to reach more consistent subsonic velocities with our light little 6.5 projectiles. Typically you use a larger Calibre for subsonic rounds
