Savage Long Range Benchrest Questions
Yesterday I was testing some loads in my 6 BR Savage Long Range Benchrest rifle in preparation for an egg shoot. Generally, I shoot 108 Berger match bullets in this rifle, which has a one in eight twist. My standard load is 29.8 grains Varget, Fed 205M primers, and seated slightly into the lands.
I had not been thrilled with the performance so I decided to try different distances off the lands. It seemed to like .009 off, putting 4 shots into .249 inch at 200 meters before kicking the fifth about an inch low and right. I don’t think that was me. I tried other seating depths and a few loads with Berger 105 hybrids and 105 A-max but performance was mediocre to poor. One string of the 108’s was seated .036 off the lands and that gave extreme diagonal stringing upper left to lower right and a 2.5 inch group.
My rests, bags and bench technique are good. My cases are sized with a Redding Type-s bushing full length die and concentricity is very good. When putting away the empties this morning, I noticed that at least half of the firing pin strikes were off-center. There was some cratering too, even though none of my loads were even close to hot. Would this have anything to do with the poor performance and what should I do about it?
Another thing I noticed was that underneath the bolt handle at the root, there was a piece of rubbery stuff with fibers in it that had come loose and was wadded up. Evidently it is intended to cushion the handle and prevent if from striking the action. I don’t think this affects accuracy, but I’m not sure it’s necessary. I don’t see it on my other Savage target action. I’m going to leave it off unless someone thinks there’s a good reason to replace it.
