rimshottom
05-08-2016, 12:49 AM
Greetings fellow shooters!
I'm a new member here, but joined to share my experience with those who have been out there looking for the same things to make the MKII
a more shootable rifle. We all know that with the right ammo it'll make bugholes at 50yds. Thank goodness my barrel likes Norma match and not
some $10+ a box gourmet feed. I wanted to make a relatively low cost effective rimfire bipod shooter, and after scouring the internet for products
and modifications, I narrowed it down to what seemed to me the way to achieve that. That consisted of a Boyd Tacticool/varmint stock, 20moa
EGW rail, Mueller 8-32x44 target reticle scope, low rings and some kind of trigger job. I had a Harris BRM-S bipod, and wound up using a set of
Warne rings that I had also, so that helped keep my cost down. But I did look at Caldwell bipods and lock, and some Blackhawk alloy rings that
would have added around $100 to the finished cost. The Boyd stock: Ah yes, you get what you pay for, and with the latest price increases for
this stock, a little less IMO. I couldn't find any bottom metal in stock anywhere but DIP, so I paid them for their "Varmint" package. It's a nice
looking stock, but it's pretty much hollow. No bed or pillar support. What I wound up doing was the Lowe's poor man's nylon spacer pillar fix that
can be found on the AR website, and it's been reposted in a few other places, and a JB weld bed for the action. The barrel channel did not have
enough clearance for the FV bull barrel, so I started by relieving that with a sandpaper wrapped dowel. Then I did the nylon pillar spacers.
The material that they are made of is very tough, and it was somewhat time consuming, but if you cut them a shade too long, they can be
shaved quite precisely. With 200 grit sandpaper, a bunch of passes were required to reduce the height by .002 or so. I originally thought these
would be adequate to maintain accuracy with this stock, but after trying to true what little bedding surface there was, realized that the action
screw holes in the stock were not perfectly concentric/perpendicular to the centerline of the barrel and action, being just a smidgen off in the
front action screw hole. I mated the action to the stock with the new pillar spacers and got the wood creak on one side before the other had
0 clearance. I tried putting more pressure horizontally on the sanding dowel to try to take more material from the close side, but after several
passes and refits, decided to take it down to about .020 all around, and use epoxy to make it even. This procedure can also be found out there
with google. I made much use of modeling clay, masking tape on barrel and stock, followed by thorough application of KIWI's neutral shoe polish
with a small hobby paint brush. The use of JB weld as a bedding compound has been debated ad nauseum on the web, but It's a .22 folks.
There were several void areas like in front of the forward action lug and the center section where the blind lug is that were dammed(?) off with
clay and also filled with the evil JB to provide more bearing surface and bridge the thin sides. I let the JB set about 45mins. and gooped it in/on
with a popsicle stick. I had found one bedding post where electrician's tape was wrapped on the barrel to center it in the barrel channel and match
the bearing depth of the pillars. This was actually easier than I thought it would be, and by wrapping one layer at a time was able to match
contact with the bottom out of the pillars/shims. This was at the barrel just inside the stock fore end. I squished the action into the stock
and snugged up the action bolts to about 18inlbs. As the JB squeezed out I scraped it away with pieces of popsicle stick. After most of it
was removed, I hung the thing upside-down horizontally to keep runs to a min. inside the stock, and for a couple of hours periodically checked
it and cleaned off anymore migrating JB with paper towels and Q-tips moistened in Lacq. thnr.. After the set time of around 5 hours, I gave it
one more pass with the wet towel on the exposed areas of JB to smooth it up. The next day, the action popped right out with a dowel in the
action and a hand on the barrel with considerable thumb pressure. It came loose and I walked it out a little at a time to preserve the surface
contact. I cleaned everything up and screwed it together with 18inlbs on the action screws. Then I reattached the rail, this time with blue loctite.
Ah the rail: the front 2 screw holes on the savage are shallow, and the thread stops shy of the bottom. The EGW screws supplied with the rail are
too long, and the Savage screws are too short and are flush with the bottom of the rail. Luckily EGW provided enough metal in the bottom of the screw holes so they can be drilled a little deeper so the Savage screws can stick out about 5 threads and still have enough meat left in the bottom of the
rail. I set my drill press to not bore thru, but it was still exciting. The screws were torqued to 20inlbs, which I felt lucky to get. Next was the rings
and Mueller scope. Warne Maxima rings are steel and the spec torque for the cross bolts steel to steel rail is 65# which is insane IMO for anything
approaching normal use, let alone exceeding the torque spec for the size screws used. It's a rimfire bipod/bench gun. I had the industrial rings, they
were on hand. Cross bolts to Alloy rail were set to 22#, and the top scope screws at 18#. It's all on the web. Google it until you feel happy with it
and use your own values. Mueller actually has in their warranty disclaimer that there should be a "very fine gap" between the scope tube and the
inside of the rings. I sh!t you not. oh! the rail was actually listed being for the mod. 93, but it works for the newer, longer ejection port MKII's.
The Mueller. I saved $30 off the cheapest web price by buying it off fleabay......a couple of weeks later I notices a boogered screw head on the
eye piece adj ring.....It seems to be working ok tho, but I have some observations to offer: one of the most heard complaints is the feel of the
tower adjustments. There is a rubber O ring that is supposed to be there for waterproofing and alignment I assume, on the part that is permanently
attached to the scope body, that is visible when you take the top off to reset 0. It could be thinner in cross section. As is, it dampens the tactile
feel of the click adjustment of the mechanism, gives a spongy feel to it, and may actually impede the mechanism's function. Ergo the 2 clicks back,
8 clicks forward drill. I've got some white lithium grease that I'm gonna apply, or maybe take it off altogether. Maybe some plumber's washer is thinner even. The other puzzle is the main gear on top of the turrets that the cap fits over. They don't have enough teeth. That's why you get the 1/2 or 1
mark off when trying to re-zero. No quick fix for that one. I also run mine w/o the sunshade. It helps. The lenses are supposed to be Japanese. I
guess that's good. The side focus/parallax seems spot on, if a little stiff, prob for the same reason the turrets are. The eyepiece focuses the crosshairs on my scope, that's what it's for I think. Eye relief is picky on up to 24-28 power, about like a Leupold on full mag, and on 32(?) mag it has a small,
elusive sweet spot. Also even with good eye position, there seems to be more "black" on the left side of the "picture" at higher mags.. And I'm not
sure yet if the cross-hairs (which are very fine/good) are actually out of square with the turret tops, or if the turret tops are a tad tilted.....Maybe
that rubber O ring again. But it's clearer than the Nikon's and most scope's costing $200 more so....All it's ever gonna do is sit on this rimfire and shoot
25-50-100yds. I'll take it.
The trigger was no better than 4# adjusted all the way down, so I modded it using a procedure I found on the web. Combined with some polishing
and tweaking, I have a 28 oz. trigger. Google MKII trigger job.I believe there are drop-in solutions available for purchase out there too.
I will say that this "accutrigger" is no where near as good as the one on the CF guns, and is "different" at any rate. Also that if you remove metal
or modify components that result in an inoperable and/or an unsafe weapon, Savage in not selling trigger/action replacement parts as far as I know
at this time, and you will be unhappy.
At the range it shot about as good as the factory stock with the Norma match at 18# torque. I had about 8 or 9 half boxes of "match" ammo from my original ammo tests and went through action screw torque settings in 2# increments from 14# to 22#. The 22# setting appeared to bend the bott. mag
plate slightly so I stopped there. I'll have to put that on some glass to tell if it's bent. The results were interesting and I made a chart to keep it
organized. Different ammo would seem to group ok at different torque settings, but there were always fliers. The setting and ammo that proved
best was 14# (in/lbs) on the action screws with the Norma match. Better than the factory stock. Factory torque is 15-17#'s. I threw away the chart.
I had more of the Norma, so I shot a 10 shot group of it at 50yds for the last group, and it was the size of a quarter CtoC w/no fliers. The first 5 rds was one ragged hole, the best yet, and I was getting tired and blurry-eyed so the last 5 opened it up some & there was nothing to aim at but a hole. So the marginal pillar fix with the JB bed and trigger job seems to have worked in producing smaller groups rather than just comparable accuracy to the factory stock, which seems to be what one or the other "bedding" produced alone, or even some of the more elaborate "fixes". But it should have if done correctly methinks. Oh! The ammo tested was wolf match, SK rifle match, 2 Norma types, 3 Fed "target"or"match" types, CCI sv and some
SK trickle downs, Eley club and target. The Wolf and Norma match shot best. The Fed HV Match shot well at higher torque settings. My cut-off was
$12 a box. I'm sure glad the Norma won.
(ok, no more run-on sentences)
So If you've got nothing planned, You can make the eggshell Boyd Tacticool stock shoot better than the factory stock on your MKII action without aluminum channels, lathes or lamp hardware. Not that there's anything wrong with any of it, but this takes half as long and requires minimum skill.
I suppose the stiffener methods might be more durable in the long run, but it's a rimfire going from case to bench or pad, and has a Mfr. recommended
action screw torque of 15-17in/lbs (which shoots the best IMO). So unless it takes a 4 foot header from a bench that cracks the stock, it could
probably be reset. So how much lipstick is required on a given pig? Or you can just buy a CZ and shoot 20+ cents (min) a round and fagetaboutit.
The cost without the bipod and rings was right around $650. I think I might try a non-moa rail with alloy rings if I were to do it again.
I'm a new member here, but joined to share my experience with those who have been out there looking for the same things to make the MKII
a more shootable rifle. We all know that with the right ammo it'll make bugholes at 50yds. Thank goodness my barrel likes Norma match and not
some $10+ a box gourmet feed. I wanted to make a relatively low cost effective rimfire bipod shooter, and after scouring the internet for products
and modifications, I narrowed it down to what seemed to me the way to achieve that. That consisted of a Boyd Tacticool/varmint stock, 20moa
EGW rail, Mueller 8-32x44 target reticle scope, low rings and some kind of trigger job. I had a Harris BRM-S bipod, and wound up using a set of
Warne rings that I had also, so that helped keep my cost down. But I did look at Caldwell bipods and lock, and some Blackhawk alloy rings that
would have added around $100 to the finished cost. The Boyd stock: Ah yes, you get what you pay for, and with the latest price increases for
this stock, a little less IMO. I couldn't find any bottom metal in stock anywhere but DIP, so I paid them for their "Varmint" package. It's a nice
looking stock, but it's pretty much hollow. No bed or pillar support. What I wound up doing was the Lowe's poor man's nylon spacer pillar fix that
can be found on the AR website, and it's been reposted in a few other places, and a JB weld bed for the action. The barrel channel did not have
enough clearance for the FV bull barrel, so I started by relieving that with a sandpaper wrapped dowel. Then I did the nylon pillar spacers.
The material that they are made of is very tough, and it was somewhat time consuming, but if you cut them a shade too long, they can be
shaved quite precisely. With 200 grit sandpaper, a bunch of passes were required to reduce the height by .002 or so. I originally thought these
would be adequate to maintain accuracy with this stock, but after trying to true what little bedding surface there was, realized that the action
screw holes in the stock were not perfectly concentric/perpendicular to the centerline of the barrel and action, being just a smidgen off in the
front action screw hole. I mated the action to the stock with the new pillar spacers and got the wood creak on one side before the other had
0 clearance. I tried putting more pressure horizontally on the sanding dowel to try to take more material from the close side, but after several
passes and refits, decided to take it down to about .020 all around, and use epoxy to make it even. This procedure can also be found out there
with google. I made much use of modeling clay, masking tape on barrel and stock, followed by thorough application of KIWI's neutral shoe polish
with a small hobby paint brush. The use of JB weld as a bedding compound has been debated ad nauseum on the web, but It's a .22 folks.
There were several void areas like in front of the forward action lug and the center section where the blind lug is that were dammed(?) off with
clay and also filled with the evil JB to provide more bearing surface and bridge the thin sides. I let the JB set about 45mins. and gooped it in/on
with a popsicle stick. I had found one bedding post where electrician's tape was wrapped on the barrel to center it in the barrel channel and match
the bearing depth of the pillars. This was actually easier than I thought it would be, and by wrapping one layer at a time was able to match
contact with the bottom out of the pillars/shims. This was at the barrel just inside the stock fore end. I squished the action into the stock
and snugged up the action bolts to about 18inlbs. As the JB squeezed out I scraped it away with pieces of popsicle stick. After most of it
was removed, I hung the thing upside-down horizontally to keep runs to a min. inside the stock, and for a couple of hours periodically checked
it and cleaned off anymore migrating JB with paper towels and Q-tips moistened in Lacq. thnr.. After the set time of around 5 hours, I gave it
one more pass with the wet towel on the exposed areas of JB to smooth it up. The next day, the action popped right out with a dowel in the
action and a hand on the barrel with considerable thumb pressure. It came loose and I walked it out a little at a time to preserve the surface
contact. I cleaned everything up and screwed it together with 18inlbs on the action screws. Then I reattached the rail, this time with blue loctite.
Ah the rail: the front 2 screw holes on the savage are shallow, and the thread stops shy of the bottom. The EGW screws supplied with the rail are
too long, and the Savage screws are too short and are flush with the bottom of the rail. Luckily EGW provided enough metal in the bottom of the screw holes so they can be drilled a little deeper so the Savage screws can stick out about 5 threads and still have enough meat left in the bottom of the
rail. I set my drill press to not bore thru, but it was still exciting. The screws were torqued to 20inlbs, which I felt lucky to get. Next was the rings
and Mueller scope. Warne Maxima rings are steel and the spec torque for the cross bolts steel to steel rail is 65# which is insane IMO for anything
approaching normal use, let alone exceeding the torque spec for the size screws used. It's a rimfire bipod/bench gun. I had the industrial rings, they
were on hand. Cross bolts to Alloy rail were set to 22#, and the top scope screws at 18#. It's all on the web. Google it until you feel happy with it
and use your own values. Mueller actually has in their warranty disclaimer that there should be a "very fine gap" between the scope tube and the
inside of the rings. I sh!t you not. oh! the rail was actually listed being for the mod. 93, but it works for the newer, longer ejection port MKII's.
The Mueller. I saved $30 off the cheapest web price by buying it off fleabay......a couple of weeks later I notices a boogered screw head on the
eye piece adj ring.....It seems to be working ok tho, but I have some observations to offer: one of the most heard complaints is the feel of the
tower adjustments. There is a rubber O ring that is supposed to be there for waterproofing and alignment I assume, on the part that is permanently
attached to the scope body, that is visible when you take the top off to reset 0. It could be thinner in cross section. As is, it dampens the tactile
feel of the click adjustment of the mechanism, gives a spongy feel to it, and may actually impede the mechanism's function. Ergo the 2 clicks back,
8 clicks forward drill. I've got some white lithium grease that I'm gonna apply, or maybe take it off altogether. Maybe some plumber's washer is thinner even. The other puzzle is the main gear on top of the turrets that the cap fits over. They don't have enough teeth. That's why you get the 1/2 or 1
mark off when trying to re-zero. No quick fix for that one. I also run mine w/o the sunshade. It helps. The lenses are supposed to be Japanese. I
guess that's good. The side focus/parallax seems spot on, if a little stiff, prob for the same reason the turrets are. The eyepiece focuses the crosshairs on my scope, that's what it's for I think. Eye relief is picky on up to 24-28 power, about like a Leupold on full mag, and on 32(?) mag it has a small,
elusive sweet spot. Also even with good eye position, there seems to be more "black" on the left side of the "picture" at higher mags.. And I'm not
sure yet if the cross-hairs (which are very fine/good) are actually out of square with the turret tops, or if the turret tops are a tad tilted.....Maybe
that rubber O ring again. But it's clearer than the Nikon's and most scope's costing $200 more so....All it's ever gonna do is sit on this rimfire and shoot
25-50-100yds. I'll take it.
The trigger was no better than 4# adjusted all the way down, so I modded it using a procedure I found on the web. Combined with some polishing
and tweaking, I have a 28 oz. trigger. Google MKII trigger job.I believe there are drop-in solutions available for purchase out there too.
I will say that this "accutrigger" is no where near as good as the one on the CF guns, and is "different" at any rate. Also that if you remove metal
or modify components that result in an inoperable and/or an unsafe weapon, Savage in not selling trigger/action replacement parts as far as I know
at this time, and you will be unhappy.
At the range it shot about as good as the factory stock with the Norma match at 18# torque. I had about 8 or 9 half boxes of "match" ammo from my original ammo tests and went through action screw torque settings in 2# increments from 14# to 22#. The 22# setting appeared to bend the bott. mag
plate slightly so I stopped there. I'll have to put that on some glass to tell if it's bent. The results were interesting and I made a chart to keep it
organized. Different ammo would seem to group ok at different torque settings, but there were always fliers. The setting and ammo that proved
best was 14# (in/lbs) on the action screws with the Norma match. Better than the factory stock. Factory torque is 15-17#'s. I threw away the chart.
I had more of the Norma, so I shot a 10 shot group of it at 50yds for the last group, and it was the size of a quarter CtoC w/no fliers. The first 5 rds was one ragged hole, the best yet, and I was getting tired and blurry-eyed so the last 5 opened it up some & there was nothing to aim at but a hole. So the marginal pillar fix with the JB bed and trigger job seems to have worked in producing smaller groups rather than just comparable accuracy to the factory stock, which seems to be what one or the other "bedding" produced alone, or even some of the more elaborate "fixes". But it should have if done correctly methinks. Oh! The ammo tested was wolf match, SK rifle match, 2 Norma types, 3 Fed "target"or"match" types, CCI sv and some
SK trickle downs, Eley club and target. The Wolf and Norma match shot best. The Fed HV Match shot well at higher torque settings. My cut-off was
$12 a box. I'm sure glad the Norma won.
(ok, no more run-on sentences)
So If you've got nothing planned, You can make the eggshell Boyd Tacticool stock shoot better than the factory stock on your MKII action without aluminum channels, lathes or lamp hardware. Not that there's anything wrong with any of it, but this takes half as long and requires minimum skill.
I suppose the stiffener methods might be more durable in the long run, but it's a rimfire going from case to bench or pad, and has a Mfr. recommended
action screw torque of 15-17in/lbs (which shoots the best IMO). So unless it takes a 4 foot header from a bench that cracks the stock, it could
probably be reset. So how much lipstick is required on a given pig? Or you can just buy a CZ and shoot 20+ cents (min) a round and fagetaboutit.
The cost without the bipod and rings was right around $650. I think I might try a non-moa rail with alloy rings if I were to do it again.