October 2, 2022Sunday GunDay: Matt’s Screamin’ Yellow
Heads turn when Matt Bianchini takes his bright yellow.243Ackley to the firing line. This rifle is as handsome as it is accurate. This rifle can be used to compete in 1000-yard benchrest matches and long-range smoke varmints. The Yellow Ackley comes with a Farley action and a Jewell trigger, Leupold LRTscope, and Lilja/Krieger barrel. It can compete with the big dogs in 1K Benchrest. The Ackley can toss 106gr Clinch Rivers at 3350 feet per second, making it a hard-hitting varmint rifle.
Matt’s rifle’s heart is a Farley action. Because the bolt can be used so quickly, Farleys are a popular choice among Benchrest competitors. The Farley is both smooth and fast. It is easy to see the difference if you compare it with a blue-printed Rem 700 or a Stolle Panda. Farleys were customs that were built one at a given time by the Farley family of Oklahoma. Farleys are not made from billet steel like a BAT, but instead they are made from stainless investment castings, similar to Ruger pistol frames. The Farley uses a cone bolt to lock up the gun. The ejector can be turned off if you are load testing hot rounds. To make the ejector work normally, you can turn it “on” during a match. Matt is now a true Farley fanatic. He says, “I have quite a few other very nice activities, including Nesikas. Farley is the most skilled. It feels almost like the bolt is on ball-bearings when you work it. “Matt’s Screamin Yellow Ackley-The need for speed.243 AI Speed Demon
Speed is key in a long-range varmint rifle. Ultra-high velocities can deliver flatter trajectories, and more explosive hits on the critters. This is where the.243 Ackley Improved shines. Matt has pushed the limits of.243 Ackley Improvementd performance using his yellow long-range rig with a 29? Lilja 3-groove, 1:18?-twist barrel. Matt’s “Screamin’ Yellow Ackley”, using a heavy load of Alliant Reloder 25 has reached 3340 fps when he used Clinch River 106s. This is a serious speed for heavy 6mm cartridges. This shows that a well-built.243 AI is capable of delivering pure velocity. Ultimate Evolution of the.243 Winchester
Matt’s standout rifle is a.243Ackley Improved (40 degree shoulder,.271?) Chambered with a Manson-reamer, the neck. A Leupold LRT (1/16 MOA) is mounted on top of the stainless Farley S” action in Farley 30mm rings. It has been boosted to 18X-40X with Premier Reticles. Matt currently has SIX barrels, three Lilja 3-grooves and a couple Kriegers. Matt’s gun currently has an 8-twist 29. Matt loves the Lilja 3-groove HV taper. The stock is a Shehane ST-1000 Tracker made of fiberglass by McMillan. It has a BAT trigger guard, and a Shehane polished billet aluminum buttplate. Matt finished the flats and angles before final finishing. This rifle’s facets are much more defined than other ‘glass Trackers. Dave Bruno, Cheswick, PA chambered the gun and Matt Bianchini applied the Sikken “Viper Yellow” paint job. Matt Bianchini, a do-it-yourself painter, is known for his flawless, smooth-as glass Screamin’ yellow finish. His family runs an automotive body-shop, so he had access to premium paints and a quarter-million-dollar spray booth with all the latest technology. Matt spent hours working on the stock, trying several colors before settling on Sikken automotive Viper Race Yellow, which was specifically formulated for Dodge Viper sports cars. After careful preparation, Matt applied two coats Viper Yellow and three coats high-grade automotive clear. The clear was baked on in a heat chamber. Matt also painted the Sinclair frontrest to match the stock and polished the surfaces on the Hoehn windage roof. Matt explained that it took a lot of work to achieve the results you see. .243 Ackley Improved Velocity, Less Case Stretch by Bob Blaine Sinclair International Parker Ackley reluctantly created the.243 Ackley Improved (“AI”) Ackley finally agreed to the requests of his customers to create the.243 AI. Although he felt the.243 Winchester was an improved configuration, he said that the best thing about improving the.243 Winchester would be to significantly reduce the case-stretching issues. The.243 Winchester parent has always stretched brass almost as much as the Swift. The improved.243 gives you more velocity, but the improved version also has a longer throat life. The.243 AI has five grains more H20 capacity that a standard.243 Winchester, which gives it more velocity. The water capacity of the.243 AI is approximately 57-58 grains, as opposed to 52-53 for the standard.243 Winchester. Loading Long-Range
Matt loads 106gr Clinch Rivers and 47.5gr Alliant Reloder 25, for long-range shooting. He also loads some powder with the Lilja 3-grooves. The Lilja load is 3342 fps with a 3.228? OAL. Cases are neck-turned Lapua.243 Winchester. Wilson inline seater and Wilsoneck-sizer (.267) are used by him. Bushing), and a custom-cut FL sizing tool. This gun can hunt!
Matt has many varmint rifles in his arsenal, but the Yellow Ackley has served a lot of duty in the ‘Hog field. Matt comes from a farming background and can shoot almost right from his back door (see top photograph at the farm). He has shot some big groundhogs at 800 yards or more. Although the.243 AI kicks a bit more than other varmint cartridges it is still quite manageable with 105-106gr bullets. A muzzle brake could be added to one of the barrels to improve his ability to see impacts. Matt originally planned to build the gun as a 6BR or 6BR Improved. He also has a Manson reamer that is similar to a 6mm Dasher. It has a 40-degree shoulder, and.008? Body taper. He hasn’t actually shot the barrels he chambered with the 6BR Improved Reamer. He was so happy with the gun’s performance in.243 AI that he didn’t see any reason to change. It may be a while before he adds a Dasher-chambered bar to the rig. “I really like how it shoots in.243 AI. It’s so good that I won’t touch anything else. I don’t think I will run out of Ackley barrels soon. Millender’s.243-Ackley Improved page.243 Win Dies & Reloading Gear. The.243 win cartridge is so popular that all major die-makers offer various reloading tools. Redding Type S Full-length Bushing Die-item 77114 is for the standard.243 win and item 77420 is for the.243 AI. It’s difficult to go wrong with this die. Whidden Gunworks also offers great.243 win sizing dies. Custom.243 Windows AI dies are available upon request. These can be used to resize the case and bump the shoulder as needed. They also allow you to adjust neck tension using bushings. You can also use a body die and a separate neck bushings die. This will allow you to resize the case and bump the shoulder as necessary. Then, Forster or Whidden will hone your neck to the desired tension. This elegant one-pass sizing method produces straight rounds with low run-out. Redding’s.243 AI Comp Seater, item 55420, is more expensive than the standard version. Forster doesn’t have a.243 AI Seater in their catalog. To fit the.243-Ackley Improved case, you can simply insert your chambering reamer in the inner sleeve. Sinclair International offers the Wilson Stainless Micrometer seater (items 50-1114S). This die is only a few bucks more than a Redding Comp, but it’s a joy to use and gives you excellent control over the depth of your bullet seating. The Wilson provides unrivaled “feel”, for bullet-seating force, when used in conjunction with a high quality arbor press. This can be used to monitor neck tension, which is crucial for maintaining low ES or SD for long-range accuracy.
Similar Posts:Tags :.243 Ackley..243 AI..243 Winchester. 1000 Yards. Alliant Powder. Clinch River Bullets. Farley Action. IBS. Jewell Trigger. Krieger. Lapua Brass. Lilja. McMillan. NBRSA. Norma. Powder selection. Redding Bushing. Reloading. Rifle Accuracy. RL25. Shehane stocks. ST1000. Tracker. Varmint.
