Quote Originally Posted by Texas10 View Post
You probably have a couple of things going on. First of all, your chamber is larger than your unfired brass, or is the brass once fired and not fully fire formed? It's possible that when you chamber the case and bullet, it's sitting off center at the bottom of the chamber. This would put the bullet into the lands at an angle, so that might explain your uneven marking. Your chamber might be a bit oversized too. Once you've fully fire formed your brass you can measure your brass and compare to sammi drawing to determine this. Or make a chamber cast and make a direct measurement.

Thus far I’ve been feeding it factory fodder, it really likes 165gr corelokts, although I’ve fed it a box or two of some federal ammo. I’ve been stock piling the used brass, however I think I’ve polished and resized almost all of to this point. I have about 20 fired cases I haven’t touched. These all have the bulge on one side. I’m tempted to buy one more box and inscribe witness marks on it and then shoot to see where it’s bulging. See if it is indeed due to the brass sitting in the bottom of the chamber or another issue. Crazy thing is it shoots about 3/4 moa regularly. That group in my picture is a 300 yard group from this rifle IIRC.

You might be able make a better determination by drilling and tapping the flash hole of your shot brass to fit a cleaning rod. I use a cheap 3 piece rod for this. Screw the tapped case onto the cleaning rod and slide it in the chamber with the bolt removed. Spin it around and feel for any tendency to stick in the chamber. If the case neck is off center, or the chamber is reamed off center this will be apparent, especially if both conditions are present. In that instance, you'll feel a real tendency to jamb in the chamber as the two off center conditions align in opposition.

Cheap and easy to do, and will provide some valuable information.

I really like this idea. I should probably have a machinist drill and tap to ensure concentricity though.

While your at it, you can seat a bullet into that drilled and tapped case, again mount it on your cleaning rod and push it into the chamber firmly. If it sticks upon retraction, the bullet is in the lands. Seat it slightly deeper and repeat until you can feel no tendency to stick. That is your touching lands dimension. Keep that cartridge intact for future reference.

As for the barrel being off center, try loosening the action screws a turn or two and shift the barrel into alignment and hold while you retighten the screws. Take note of the rear tang position, it should not touch the stock. You can slide a .005 feeler gage around it so make sure of clearance. If it is bearing against the stock on one side, try realigning the barrel/action again to see if you can find a happy position where neither is touching. Torque the front screw to 45 INCH pounds, and the rear to 25. The rear one can be adjusted up or down to tune the stock to the action. If you have a accustock, the numbers will be higher, but same process.

Yes, this is an accustock.

I hope this helps.
Yes this helps. I’m always on a learning quest. In another life I would have been a gunsmith and machinist, although I’m a savage-smith and have done a good bit of other little fixes and adjustments to firearms over the years. I just don’t have the appropriate tools or access to a shop that does, to measure half the things I want to. Outside of owning a pipe wrench I think a micrometer is the only precision tool I own. J/K.