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I may be fairly accused of saving the best for last with reports on the K31 Schmidt -Rubin, the 03-A3 Smith Corona Springfield and the M96 Swedes. They all shot, some a little better than others, but every one was trouble-free fun.

K31

The K31 came with dinged-up wood, perfect metal work and a card under the butt plate with the name, address and telephone number of the Swiss trooper from Basel who was sent home with his rifle in 1958. He must not have shot it much because a borescope inspection showed no discernable throat wear and a mirror finish rivaling the product of some U.S.-based master barrel makers. Slugging it revealed an exceptionally round and uniform .3070 bore. Swiss issue 1911 type 174-grain full metal jacket boattail ball shot so well that I thought that my first 10 rounds at 200 yards were an anomaly. They weren’t, and they scored an easy possible with about half x’s on the 200 yard NRA “A” target.

The next 10 were as good or better. The chronograph gave a muzzle velocity right at 2550 fps. Thinking I could improve on the GI issue stuff, I broke the bullet seal by reseating the out-of-the-box ammo by about .015 inch. Wrong. It made no discernable difference. Next step was to load some 168-grain Sierra Matchkings to the service load velocity. No help there, either. The 168s weren’t quite as good as the Swiss issue, still cleaning the 200 yard “A” but with far fewer x’s and noticeably more dispersion. I gave up and ordered another case of 7.5 x 55 Swiss GI. “‘Arf a crown and no regrets!” to quote the Picadilly Lily!