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A bad joke and of the kind Dave was known to make on a regular basis.

Possibly he meant--and maybe Virgil-- meant that ARC stood for "Aggravate Reclusive Curmudgeons" as the warehouse articles certainly did--witness the following:
Secrets Of The Houston Warehouse

Most BR shooters did not and still do not see a lot of use in firing groups in ideal conditions. In his book, Tony Boyer advises against doing this when working up loads, as you will not see the wind bucking capabilities of those loads. Personally I say work the load and then the wind, but as we all know Tony is the best BR shooter ever- past present and future and his word is--well his opinion until someone beats all his many, many, ridiculously many records.........

I like to think that he meant ARC as in Agg Real Consistent since that is what we all strive for in BR shooting not just isolated wonder groups.

But he may have meant arc as in "describes an arc" - this is what your rifle does when recoil is arrested due to the fact that the butt is below the axis of the barrel - therefore the muzzle tends to rise --describing an arc. This happens to some degree, although much less in BR guns with their stocks designed to reduce just this problem--and rail guns--with no stocks at all-- whether you use talc or silicone spray or bacon grease on the bags and all the stock tape in the world. Friction, like rust, never sleeps....... We say we get a rifle to agg--maybe he got one to arc with unsuspected consistency--not just a control of the vertical dispersion problem as the name suggests but also horizontal as the rifle will react to the shooter and the bags in all dimensions of travel, free recoil notwithstanding. This is a subject often discussed when talking about barrels bags and the shooter's bench manners--so the commment about brass prep may have been another bad joke/red herring although you cannot spent too much effort in brass prep and cleaning barrels when shooting BR for competition or experimentation.

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All that probably does not answer your question, but I think the Comment first posted by Jackie Schmidt on the benchrest gunsmith forum undoubtedly nailed it....................
 
What, his comment on "solving a problem that doesn't exist" ? I thought ARC was a dangling carrot that may or may not be the pot o' gold at the end of the rainbow -- but it makes you think doesn't it?

I can see the benefit of shooting in a controlled environment. You focus on what you can control: equipment, technique and load. Outside of that environment, you may still be no better than the next man, who has overcome the deficiencies of his equipment as compared to yours by his ability to respond to uncontrolled variables and technique in the field.

I thought the comments on brass prep to be interesting and am trying some loading to the lands (with reduced loads) in contrast to my normal loading of .020-.060 offset.

The 21-3/4" barrel is also interesting, but you could actually calculate the ideal harmonics for your barrel (material, rifling, length), bullet, and powder. Not that I've spent any time thinking about it, but a bullet is a wave of energy.... If it were true, wouldn't we see a lot more rifles in these calibers being built to that length rather than 20"? I don't know anyone there, but I suspect Bartlein barrels could weigh in on that one.
 
Something for others who want to shortcut the process P7 is talking about:

When you load to the lands, you need to keep some things in mind- especially if you like to load on the max end of the recommended powder charges.
It is a very good practice to reduce loads to at least midrange to try this.
It is a good idea to be able to control the amount of neck tension in your cartridge.
You should be able to actually find the lands accurately and load bullets that contact them with the OGIVE to the degree you desire--accurately--that is--you should know when the datum point of the ogive of your bullet has contacted the lands--when it is in .002" jam and etc. This cannot be done with any degree of certainy using standard grade bullets, as the base to ogive and ogive datum point to tip are unpredictable-- this is why guys like Don Lahr or others get $$$$$ for their BR bullets-- Berger's column bullets show a lot of promise in this area for less money. This is also why Redding had begun to offer a VLD seating stem, since heretofore ALL seating stems in ALL seating dies were not indexed on anything but the designers' wives' astrological signs or something similar--had nothing to do with the bullet ogive--which we now know is so important.

all this is in aid of tuning the barrel in such a way as to insure that the bullet exits the muzzle at the same point in the barrel arc--or whip every time--or as close as we can come to this--there are many many factors that have to be considered when you attempt to do this--most important the shooter and the action of his rifle and himself on the bags and bench--and yes case prep and load denisty can be part of the equation-- but when you stop to consider that people like Jim Borden load their ammo a year in advance and Jack Neary says that he does not consider loading at the match to be all that important-- and these are BR hall of famers--when Jackie S does not clean cases until he's completed a yardage and almost no one anneals cases during the season the case prep thing gets to be a joke---to some people-- I am of the opinion that anything I can do to cover all the bases is time well spent--and I have more time than money.....


Still--let's remember that all the experimentation and all the discussion was about shooting a particular case--the PPC at a short range--100 yards--in a dead still environment and the inevitable pitch and yaw that is produced through barrel arc or whip-- in the bullet is not a factor in its flight in the warehouse--a point made lous and long after the warehouse articles began to appear in the IBS unofficial/official newsletter--now defunct--pitch and yaw has a lot to do with how the bullet flys and where it lands--especially at short range--a point the FB bullet fans often raise in the face of the boattailers...........since shorties never get to smooth out the flight and negate the effects.......to some degree

BTW --a NBRSA world record in group competition was shot a few miles north of me at 200 yards using a 28" barrel and another (IBS) was denied only at the final judging --it was out of a 24" barrel-- and a 30BR cartridge--absolute heresy--we all know 30s are not group shooters.............
 

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