Target Sports

RIFLE REVIEW: PERFECT MATCH

Created on 14th May 2009

The Cz452 Super Match isn't quite what LAURIE HOLLAND
expected - but he achieves some remarkable results with it

THINK OF Christmas when you were a youngster. You'd let Santa (rather, his earthly representatives called parents) know what you'd set your heart on. The make, model and colour of the doll/bicycle/airgun were vital. You'd galloped downstairs before dawn on the great day, excited on seeing the right size of parcel, and ripped the holly-print wrapping off with scant thought for the maternal care that had gone into applying it. Ecstasy ensued if the hints had fallen on fertile ground, disappointment if Santa didn't bring the dream present. However, an initially disappointing gift often came to be appreciated with the passage of time.

When I was offered a newly-introduced Cz452 Super Match .22LR rifle for review, expectations were elevated, as per the Holland sprog's thoughts in the run-up to those far-off Christmas days. It was the name - this had to be something special. I hold Cz452s in high regard for delivering ridiculous amounts of performance and build quality for the money. Enquiring what Super Match entails elicited that it has a new 12-groove (as opposed to the usual six) match-quality barrel. Otherwise things were left to the imagination. An affordable Czech lookalike of the Anschütz 2013 or Walther KK300? Well, I didn't really believe that, but reasoned that given recent Cz452 developments there might be a nice semi-match walnut stock; a short, fat barrel without iron sights; the rifle would be on the heavy side. Think poor man's rimfire benchrest tool.

So, I was the teensiest, weensiest bit taken aback to open the carton and discover a Cz452 2E-ZKM, which to the uninitiated is the Brno Model Two that was current during my long-lost youth centuries ago! No mistake, it was a Two from its hogs-back buttstock to Schnabel forend tip; every one of the 630mm of its slender tapering barrel mockingly whispered Two, and it even wore the Two's blade-hooded foresight at the front end of the barrel and mini-Mauser tangent rearsight at the back. The rearsight is such a useful feature in real life that you rarely see a secondhand Brno/CZ 2 with the leaf still fitted because it fouls the front end of a scope mounted at a sensible height. There was one obvious difference from the scores of Twos and 2Es I've seen over the years: provision of the usually optional 10-round magazine, its body in traditional steel too (with a synthetic base, mind you). Now, what sort of benchrest rifle, poor man's or otherwise, needs a 10-round magazine, not to mention blade and U-notch iron sights?

A jolly jape? No, the people in Edgar Brothers take the business of supplying CZs and Remingtons to the people's dealers very seriously indeed. A mistake - the world's last Cz452 2E-ZKM inadvertently sent to me instead of my benchrest job? I scanned the label on the end of the box and it was endorsed CZUB-120, CZ-code for the Super-Match. Finally, irrefutably putting this issue to rest, the left receiver wall was stamped ‘CZ 452 2E-ZKM XII SUPER MATCH', CZ's little handgun in a circle emblem in the middle of the legend.

If I weren't so virtuous and clean living, I'd have gone off to the smallest room and smoked a Hamlet cigar to the haunting strains of Bach's Air on the G String while I contemplated this. Do the Czechs have a 50m military iron-sighted smallbore postal competition league? Maybe the factory had a warehouse full of 2E stocks and looked for a way of using them? Has CZ got a soft spot for its old Two that did so much to forge the company's reputation for quality and accuracy, and simply wants to keep on making it? That would be reason enough!

Closer examination showed the iron sights weren't quite as on the original - the rearsight has a windage adjustable blade, using grub pinch screws, and the foresight height is also adjustable using a sliding mounting on a ramp. Goodness, the factory thinks people are really going to use these sights in competitive shooting. In fairness, there are still many around who like irons, and will welcome the Super Match for this provision. If you're into historic arms competition, this rifle will provide an excellent smallbore practice tool too for SMLE and K98 owners. I'm even sure the sights will have little trouble helping provide a daytime rabbit or two for the pot, if at shorter ranges than their optical equivalents.

However, the one certainty in this matter was that I wasn't going to see what sort of groups the rifle would produce by looking through irons. As noted, many owners remove the Two's rearsight leaf as soon as they fit a scope, but I could hardly do this with a rifle on loan, so it was unfortunately a case of high mounts to give the necessary clearance. Since I always seem to end up with large 30mm body target or tactical scopes on the rimfires I test, I even bought a budget 4-12x of the sort often found on 452s alongside suitable 11mm dovetail mounts. When I came to fit it, could I find these mounts? Inch jobs no, 30mm examples yes, so yet again a hefty Opti-Mate 10x42 sniper with Mil-Dot reticle found its way onto a rimfire sporter the evening before I took it to the range.

On the 50m range, some things were obvious. For a start, shooting a 452 is like riding a bike after a long absence - a minor wobble quickly followed by complete control and familiarity. These rifles are user-friendly! Even the high scope position didn't cause a problem. I tried the rifle off a bench, forend rested on a small pillow sandbag sitting atop my usual owl-eared front bag on a heavy Sinclair front-rest. I juggled with the rear end on a Protektor bag, the 1"sling swivel regularly getting in the way - rimfire benchrest best practice this was not! As always with 452s, the action and magazine performed perfectly and smoothly with only two things worthy of comment. A few makes of cartridge needed a little more effort with the bolt on chambering than is usual in .22 sporters. This is not a criticism, quite the reverse, as it suggests CZ has not only added six extra grooves to the rifling, but adopted a match or semi-match chamber that's a bit tighter than in its regular sporters. Such a feature is pretty well vital in improving .22LR accuracy. The other oddity was that one make of budget HV hollow-point cartridges were obviously a tad larger in diameter than the others tried, as they didn't want to rise up in the magazine body. I had to remove the magazine between shots and give its base a sharp tap on the bench-top to get the cartridge column to rise. Not a fault of CZ, and use of this ammo was curtailed. Talking about the magazine, I filled it up completely with the full 10 rounds throughout testing, having to remember to mentally count up to five for the first group.

I had a completely open mind about group size, as I know from experience that the ‘ordinary' 25"-barrelled Model Two and its CZ 2E sporter successor might be unfashionable in the looks department, but often produce startling results. 50yd five-round groups in the three-quarters to inch range are usually not a problem with the occasional half-incher turning up. CZ says the match barrel on this rifle will improve accuracy by 20%, so a reasonable percentage of groups in the half to three-quarters inch range seemed a reasonable expectation.

Over 200 rounds were fired using 10 cartridge models from three makers, eight of them standard-velocity waxed lead bullet types and two high-velocity hollow-point copper-plated. PMC Score Master was used to sight in and fire the first couple of groups as this cartridge seems to suit a wide range of rifles and barrels, but it gave a bit of vertical stringing here, possibly due to being first through a clean, brand new barrel. Four Winchester T22 groups followed and averaged .74" - not too shabby. However, it was when I got around to trying Eley Match, the old pre-EPS bullet model, that things became interesting with an average of six groups coming out at an excellent 0.56", with the smallest individual result a stunning 0.24"! Eley Standard wasn't that much poorer averaging 0.66", PMC Match Rifle giving similar results. Even a couple of makes of HVHP sporting cartridges, a type that isn't expected to give outright accuracy, ran in the 1" to 1¼" range. I sacrificed 10 of my last few pre-EPS Eley Tenex cartridges after the Match results to see if they did better still, but they didn't, producing two groups exactly on the half-inch mark.

Bearing in mind this was over 50m, nearly 55yd, on an outdoor range with the usual breezes blowing around, and the traditional .22LR accuracy benchmark is a half-inch group-average at 50yd, this was a remarkable result. CZ's multi-groove barrel obviously works, and yet again we see that this near half-century old Brno design with its unfashionably long barrel is a good one, especially when manufactured to CZ's current quality standards. Remember, this is one of the very few rimfire designs still around that have the barrel screwed into the receiver like real rifles. Moreover, it won't break the bank with an SRP of £437, which will be reduced to the low to mid-£300s by shopping around.

Technical Specification

Model: Cz452 Super Match (Factory code: CZUB-120)
General description: Bolt-action sporting/target rifle
Maker: CZ (Ceská Zbrojovka a.s.) Uhersky Brod, Czech Republic
Calibre: .22 Long Rifle
Action: Single-lug bolt-action with twin extractors
Magazine: Detachable box
Capacity: 10 cartridges (five round also available)
Sights: Hood-protected blade foresight and Mauser style tangent rearsight. Receiver grooved for scope mounts (11mm dovetail)
Stock: Walnut half-stock
Weight: About 6.9lb (3.1kg)
Overall length: 43" (1092mm)
Barrel: 25" (630mm) sporting weight, tapered; 12-groove rifling
Pull: 13.5" (343mm)
Trigger pull: 3.5lb (1.6kg)
Price: SRP £437
Importer and further info: Edgar Brothers, Heather Close, Lyme Green Business Park, Macclesfield, Cheshire SK11 0LR.

Cz452 also available as: .22 WMR (Magnum), .17HMR and M2 calibres (not all variants). ‘American' (walnut), ‘Deluxe' (walnut); ‘Full Stock' (walnut); Scout Junior; ‘Standard' (beech); Style (synthetic/nickel); Silhouette (synthetic/blue); Varmint (short, heavy-barrel)

T: 01625 613177
W: www.edgar-brothers.co.uk
E: admin@edgar-brothers.co.uk