Quote Originally Posted by 82boy
Hey Gordon, I did the same thing that you did, I built a custom rifle, and what I learned from doing so, is far well worth the cost of the rifle, and more so.
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82boy: incredibly helpful overview information you have given! Very helpful.

As to what makes it more accurate:
1. My experience: so far it isn't JUST the 6ppc. My new Shilen 6PPC barrel is not yet exceeding the groups of my .223 Savage -- even when I moved the Savage barrel to an ancient Sav110 that was RUSTY when I bought it. There is more to it than JUST the 6PPC.
2. The Shilen barrel is SHORT and STUBBY, on purpose, to reduce the "twang" of the long varmint rifle. Testing shows so far that a 2 grain change in H322 results in ONLY a 0.75" rise in point of impact at 100yards -- with the long .223 Savage varmint barrel, it was about THREE TIMES as much. So the short, FAT barrel is making a positive improvement. A combination of several groups plus a few shots with minimal horizontal error and very consistent vertical trend convinced me of this data.
3. My new stock has not yet arrived. Results above are from a tupperware stock bedded with Devcon, using the old (factory) recoil lug. Groups still not much better than 0.500 at 100 yards, 5 shots.
4. Next items on list: I Read the FAQ on bag technique on benchrest.com. I am doing it badly. Also: could be my scope. Will swap scopes in an experiment soon (maybe tomorrow). Also: could be the action; could be my load, probably IS related to the tupperware stock: although not making "two groups", the wide horizontal and nearly equivalent vertical dispersion suggests random error from one or more sources, likely the stock. I'm working on each item a bit at a time....I make lists of what I think I did wrong and want to do better. Once I forgot to perfectly remove parallax...wasted rounds... Current bag setup does NOT ride forward/backward well. Try powder (Suave) deoderant. With the thin forestock, my rifle cants too easily in front rest; get better results with bipod actually.

Loading: Unable to find "best charge" because my errors from other problems vastly exceed the powder errors. my variation in verticle due to 0.1 grain of powder is less than half a tenth ofan inch....but my horizontal is 0.5". So....(wilson) seat to the lands, load reasonably, and work on technique. Later, should beable to improve.

The reduction in torque from going from a 1:9" barrel to a 1:13" barrel is significant. That is helping me out somewhat. Still learning! Much fun. Did some "club" competitions last summer when off work, learned a lot.

gordon