dang stubborn gun ;-[

[lal357]

i dont clean mine until the groups start to open up right now my 308 has about 200 rnds thru it still shoots good took my godson to the range 2 week ago (came home on leave )we were shooting 20ga. shotgun hulls off the target stands @ 300 yds i was using my 223 and my 6.5cm the 223 started opening up so its time to clean it but the other 2 are goo for another practice session before i clean for my last match of the year.
like what was said above the gun will tell you when its time to clean it .

as for the 6.5 cm i was about to scrap my barrel like you my groups were hitting in the 1.5-2.5 range @300 yrds until i found the right combo it liked now its holding 3/4-1.5 @ 300 yds if i do my part its the smaller ones i also went to smaller dots and sometimes instead of shooting at 1 dot i will shoot 1 round at 1 dot and do this for 10rnd strings kinda lets me know how the bullet preforms when the barrel starts getting warmer.

[Westcliffe01]

I have battled with particular rifles to get them to shoot. Mostly Remington 700's....

Issues:

Trigger: Weight, Creep, repeatability (the last 2 are often connected)

Bad action bedding: This can drive you nuts. This is particularly the case for harder recoiling calibers. Badly inlet stocks with lots of slop for the recoil lug. My Remington 700 "Classic" in 8mm Mauser ultimately got a replacement stock, because the original was a good looking stock and I wasn't going to make it the subject of my first bedding job... The replacement Boyds thumbhole stock worked perfectly from the moment it was installed. Disappointing that Remington did such a bad job. Unless you get a rifle with a stock with a bedding block in it, just assume you may need to improve it. If you are lucky, it may shoot fine from day 1, or it may just become inconsistent.

Barrel quality: Definitely differences out there. Some are 2-3MOA, some are slightly over 1MOA and others like my 10PC in 223 are 0.5MOA from the first day, every day. The 8mm Mauser Remington 700 was 5MOA when I started and I got it down to just over 1MOA after replacing the trigger and stock.

Sighting system (scope, rings, rail, loctite and finally - your vision) There are lots of variables here. The only thing I recommend is to avoid aluminum rings and mounts (Warne steel rings and picatiny rails are the same price as aluminum and far stronger and match the expansion of your action). I loctite the rail to the receiver and its screws, but there is no need to use loctite on the rings. The only "inexpensive" scope I use is a Weaver 6x classic K. Otherwise nothing less than $350 and it better have parallax adjustment. I have bought a few used rifles with scopes on them, and they have all been junk. The second Remington I had was a 700 SPS 223 with the 26" heavy barrel and a 4-16 Barska milldot scope and bipod on it. It did not shoot better than 3MOA, even though the trigger was great. Got rid of the Barska and put on a Nikon Monarch 3-12x42 with SF. That brought it down to about 1.5MOA. Then checked the stock (synthetic) and found it was warped. Got a 3/4" hardwood dowel and 36 grip paper and opened up the barrel channel. I kept checking it and the left fore end kept interfering until I had sanded it down to a knife edge. I ended up removing close to 1/8" on the left side. After that the barrel remained free floated even when on the bipod (that is a very barrel heavy rifle). Next time out, it shot 1/2 MOA as it did every time after that.

The 10PC I bought to replace the Remington came with the best trigger and stock I had owned and had a twist more suitable for high BC bullets (1:9) where the Remington was 1:12. With a 20" vs 26" barrel it was equally accurate and a lot lighter and more balanced. The stock with its wedge to load the recoil lug left nothing to be desired. After 1 miss at 130 yards due to the ballistics of the 75gr ammo I was shooting and a 250 yard zero, I got a custom elevation turret for the Nikon so now I can just dial up the distance and shoot. Those 75gr bullets are devastating when out beyond 250 yards, while the 55gr bullets are getting blown all over the place.

The most recent purchase was a model 12 in 243. A heavier gun than the old SPS but better balanced because of the stock. The action bedding needs to be improved and I have not shot it a whole lot since I have not yet acquired my brass and dies. The Hornady superformance 95gr SST's are shooting just over 1MOA, but pretty expensive..

I personally don't buy sporter weight barrels anymore, since they are notoriously fussy. Perhaps when I an old and weak, I will have to rethink that plan, or get someone to carry my rifle.... You really want your rifle to be boringly reliable... not giving you fits..

[Luckus]

M.O.A., How are you measuring your groups?

[JackinSD]

why would Berger say this if this wasn't so..No everyone is gonna B.S people...If the man thatmakes the bullets
knows what he is talking about,again why would I listen to you?

82boy is correct.

They stopped using potassium chlorate in the 1950's.

They use lead styphenate now.

Not many times are you going to find that he is wrong. This is certainly not one of them.

[82boy]

why would Berger say this if this wasn't so..No everyone is gonna B.S people...If the man thatmakes the bullets
knows what he is talking about,again why would I listen to you?

Just because someone is employed by a manufactor, doesn't necessary mean they know what they are talking about. Just because someone answeres the phone doesn't mean that they have any real world experince, or even have any experince with the product they are talking about. It also dosn't mean they the even shoot, or even are qulified to speak on the product. All it says is they work there, and they have matrial that someone put togeather to help them do there job of answering the phone. You dont have to listen to me, but I am willing to bet I have shot more of their product, done more research, and know more about it, than the people your talking to. ;)

[M.O.A.]

M.O.A., How are you measuring your groups?

Outside to outside then sub. the diameter of the bullet. Why?

[acemisser]

So was it a guy from Hodgdon powder or Berger bullets that gave you the information?

As to when to clean, you really have to decide that yourself.... read interviews on that question from several barrel makers and they do not agree. question was ask and 82boy gave his impression based on his experience so why be so negative about his response.
I figure the folks at Hodgons ought to know something about cleaning..But maybe they don't.....Same with the fellows at Sierra...I aint being negative...

[acemisser]

Just because someone is employed by a manufactor, doesn't necessary mean they know what they are talking about. Just because someone answeres the phone doesn't mean that they have any real world experince, or even have any experince with the product they are talking about. It also dosn't mean they the even shoot, or even are qulified to speak on the product. All it says is they work there, and they have matrial that someone put togeather to help them do there job of answering the phone. You dont have to listen to me, but I am willing to bet I have shot more of their product, done more research, and know more about it, than the people your talking to. ;)

Yeah your right...Sorry if I offended you in anyway...I feel bad about it....Thank you for you advice and expertise.....I see what you mean about it now...The old old primers....I polly-jice.....John

[Luckus]

I just wanted to make sure you were subtracting the bullet diam.

[82boy]

Yeah your right...Sorry if I offended you in anyway...I feel bad about it....Thank you for you advice and expertise.....I see what you mean about it now...The old old primers....I polly-jice.....John

No offence taken, I feel that my job as a moderator is to keep misinformation down as much as I can, and that is why I try to jump onto things like I do. I am no expert at all, I am a guy who has a hobby of shooting, and my interest is in Savage and custom action bolt guns. I try to steer people with the knowledg I have gained from experince. I wish I could shoot more, as I feel the more you shoot the more you know.

I blame big box store for trashing America, everything is about money, and maximizing profites, and doing what ever it takes to get there. I will not say that ever company is like this, but they have to compete with ones that are, and either they follow suite or they will be buried. What in turn this does is limit the amount of money they can spend on expertice, and exprerince. With that said, many times you get what you pay for. At one time you use to be able to go into a Radio Shack and know that the person your talking to knew eletronics, and the little piece that go into them, such as resister, compasitors, etc, Now you go into a Radio Shack, and the person that is helping you has no idea, you said I need a resister, and he will look at you and say "whats a resister?" basicly the firearms industy has done the same thing. I highly admire Fred Sinclair, this was a man who truly understood what is needed, he paid for his employees to go out and compete, and he challanged them to learn about the products, and gave them opertunity to do so. This is what ALL companies need to do.

As far as the company reps, dont get me wrong these guys are not total idiots, many of them are experinced and vast in knowledge, the problem lies whith there being so many diferent fields of firearms it is hard to be an expert of them all, which is what is expected with someone answering the phone. I feel that the reps should be broken down into their felds of expertice, such as hunting, or target shooting, then into pistol, rilfe, shotgun, ETC. For example I know nothing at all about lever action guns, I have never even owned one. I have always been told that you can not load pointed bullets in a lever action becaose under recoil, the bullets in the magazine will hit the primer and cause a chain reaction of rounds going off. Now I think this sounds obserb, but I am going to take it as gospile, because one I dont want to be around to test this, in the case of catastropic failure, and 2 I have no interest in know if it is right or wrong. Now if you put me in a call center and someone would ask me about it, I would tell them I dont know, but it could be that they have told a few people this, and they got there butt chewed off, as they are supose to be an expert, so they would take the easy round out and just say yes this is a fact, even thought they have no experince with it. Last thing to remember is politics is everywere, ther person may be there because they are related to someone, or other reasons.

With that said most call center people are sales people, and there goal is to get you to buy their product, so this may influance the responce you get from them. You also have to remember sometimes call centers are not even owned by the company and they are farmed out to another company. So they may not truly have experince with the product, they are advising. Many companys hire outside experts to test and advise on their products, they get back from them there findings, and issue this out to the call centers. Many time the true experts in the field, have other jobs, and it would take way more money than the company can aford to even attract them. Last thing about experts, they may not be people persons, or they may be secertive about giving out knowledge, as they are tired of being told they are wrong.

You will find that there are shining start in some of these call centers, there are people there that do have an interest in the same genra of shooting that your in , and they spend there free time learning. One that comes to mind is Rich Macholtz of Sierra bullets. Rich is an acomplished rifle shooter, that shoots matchs, (Mostly 1000 yard benchrest) and is well vested, as he use to wright for a handloading magazine. He is the only one I will deal with there. Not that the others are dumb, but there experince and expertise is in other things. When I deal with Berger bullets I deal with the ledgandary Walt Berger, Walt is a higly acomplished benchrest shooter, that still shoots, and has a vast amount of knowledge between his ears.

With that said, keep an open mind, dont believe everything you read, or what someone tells you. When possible test the therories. The best way of learning is to spend time and shoot, and do some expermintation. Shooting competition is a great way to find knowledge, as the experts are there, and they will freely share knowledge with you, if your willing to listen. Just remember that not everyone is right, and sometimes people have alternitive motives with what they say, this goes with call centers, internet, and just plain people in general. What I am saying is dont take what a call center says as gospile, dont take what I say as gospile, and dont take what you read on the internet as gospile, a better way to look at it is this, consider everything as a guidline, not an absolute, experiment and see.

Now that this has all been said lets get this thread back on the the original topic.

[acemisser]

Amen....

[M.O.A.]

Finally got this gun under .5 moa at .445 at 100 yards hurray ;-)

http://i1160.photobucket.com/albums/q492/MOATWO/120930_0003_zpsd277ea17.jpg

Load is 43.0 gns h4350 130 hunting VLD set at 2.860 cci br2

Now to load some up and step it out to 500 yards and see if it holds then do some drop doping ;-)

[kevin_stevens]

How different were those three loads?

KeS

[M.O.A.]

42.8 43.0 and 43.5 went up to 43.8