I ordered a new in box Savage 25 in 22 Hornet June 2024. After a lot of range time, I gave up on trying to get anything under a 2.5" group at 100 yards. A quick borescope showed a barrel so rough the rifling was actually torn and missing in places. Absolutely unbelievable. Extraction was an occasional issue. The mags are the same external size as the 223 Rem mags, so savage thick walled them to house the 22 hornet. These mags will only house cartridges that are the same length as what was designed in 1930, nothing longer. That means that a lot of new high ballistic coefficient bullets from Nosler, Hornady, and others will not fit in these short welled mags if you follow the reloading listed COLs.
After winter was over, I called Savage and was given permission to send it back to Savage. Of course I had to pay for the shipping so there's another $75 into this rifle. I haven't been charged for shipping a problem gun since Remington in the 1980s. After a couple of months of no contact my rifle showed via FedEx. The receipt listed "small items replaced. Deburred. Test fired. etc". A quick borescope showed this barrel was in much better condition but not without chatter marks. Not awful, but a whole lot better than before. I put my "Proofing Scope" back on it and headed out the door for some testing.
The accuracy is much better than before, with some 4 round groups staying at 1". Not great, but workable for the ranges this rifle will be used for. It's not like I'm going to shoot coyotes at 600 yards with this! It seemed all just might be well, but the extracting function is worse than before! What the heck Savage? Repeating bolt rifles is not exactly unproven cutting edge technology. Sometimes the case never leaves the chamber, sometimes it just drops free and lays on top of the ammo in the mag, sometimes it works like it's supposed to. Pulling the trigger on this is like a "Box of Chocolates". You never know what you're going to get.
Perhaps a clue to this whole mess is my primers. After firing the primers are all slightly backed out, as if the distance between the bolt face and barrel is too wide a gap. It's possible the bolt sets too far off the barrel face to allow the extractor to properly grab the case rim. That should have showed up with fitting a new barrel and checking headspacing. I'll have to ponder that a bit.
Well, what now? I can spend another $75 and ship it back with no guarantee of success, dink around with springs and extractors myself, mount a cleaning rod holder under the barrel like a muzzle loader to extract the rounds, or sell it. I get it. It's an entry level rifle, but even an entry level rifle should still function.
If anyone has a proven way to fix this, or knows of a good gunsmith that addresses the Model 25, I'm all ears!
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