The natural point of aim was being compromised by the fact that the windage feature relied on the rest top pivoting about the base screw. If my rifle wasn't square to the rest top, the forestock would get trapped by the edges of the front bag, and thus would impart a sideways and upwards recoil. Although the rifle is a .22, this weird recoil would be enough to push the impact away from the point of aim, towards the rifles natural point of aim.
I would see this as I moved from one edge of the target card to the opposite edge. When I push the rifle back into battery, it's point of aim would be different to just before the shot broke. I noticed these subtle differences because I'm a geek who notices patterns, and this pattern began to really annoy me.
BTW, the new Rock BR version has been changed, so the rest top slides from side to side.
Anyway, I decided I needed a better front rest, so I settled on the Farley front rest. I also had a look at the SEB front rest, but emails to the distributor over here were never responded to, so the SEB was out - do they want my business or not? The Farley is imported and sold by BRT - Stuart and Annie Elliot have been responsive, full of advice, and shoot using the Farley themselves, so the selection of a Farley was a no-brainer.
I received one on Friday, took all of about 15 minutes to assemble, and I was off to St Marys Indoor to have some fun with it!
Apologies for the photo quality - they were taken by an iPhone in terrible light conditions.
The Farley is supplied as a complete unit. It's a joystick-based system, where the rifle sits on top of a rest top which is free to move in any direction, according to the movements of the joystick. The cast iron base is extremely heavy. The rest body and top are machined to tight tolerances, so there's no slop anywhere (unlike my Caldwell). The range of movement _almost_ covers the entire TRA benchrest card at 50m.
The large knob on the left hand side is used to raise and lower the rest body. There's a little screw next to the knob which controls the force required to move the knob. The lever is used to lock up the rest body from moving up and down on the post. This vertical movement is precise, and is able to hold the weight of the rest top and rifle in position, without having the locking lever done up tight.
The way I set it all up is to place the rest squarely on the table, and level it off using the inbuilt levelling bubble. Then I place the rear bag down in position, then the rifle itself. Line up with the target, check to see the rifle is square to the rest, move the joystick all the way to the bottom of travel, move the side height adjuster knob so the sight cross hairs are just below the 10-ring, then check the full range of movement so the rest covers the card.
One thing I noticed almost straight away was the rifle kept returning to POA each time a shot was fired, and the rifle pushed back up into battery. No weird recoil patterns, no NPA problems, though I did score a 199.17, and I attribute that more to the weird wind patterns in the range.
Yesterday, I went out to Sutherland, and shot a 200.20 (perfect score) in the first detail - pretty darn good for the Farley's first outing in anger! The shots didn't even look like straying out to the edge of the 10-ring, or drop a point... Everyone else present dropped or point or a few.
If you're interested, these rests aren't cheap (something like $1200+), and their availability is limited.
Cheers,
- bec
