Thanks for all the concern - I didn't know you all cared so much.
I'll try to explain what happened :
It was a dark and stormy night.....
On second thoughts I'll get straight to the point. I had a series of self-imposed blunders over the course of 24 hours, beginning with disobeying the rule don't mix cooking with reloading. I had a loading block of primed cases that apparently had a splash of water over them, and several loaded rounds were affected, causing a misfire and bad vertical at 300. This was only revealed when I disassembled the misfired round - the powder was in sticky lumps. I had very kind offers from Matt Paroz and Steve Rigby to use their spare rifles but opted to reload fresh (dry) rounds. I got to the 500 mound in time to shoot last, but in my haste didn't clamp the scope on properly, hence the very bad start and 51 score
![Crying or Very sad :cry:](./images/smilies/icon_cry.gif)
. So the damage was done and I decided to put the good barrel away (possibly to give to someone who can do it justice?
![Rolling Eyes :roll:](./images/smilies/icon_rolleyes.gif)
). I then missed the first 600 disassembling all the other suspect (wet) cases then decided for the rest of the Queens to use the second new Bartlein which is barely run in. It actually looks quite promising.
So the moral of the story is don't do stupid things
![Laughing :lol:](./images/smilies/icon_lol.gif)
.
On the bright side, the pressure is off, and a more relaxing time will be had.
Its great to see Steve Rigby at the sharp end, he's been thereabouts for many years, maybe this is the one.