someguy2800
Member
I got a chance to accurize a ruger mk77 for someone and thought I would document my experiences
So my two friends and hunting partners who happen to be my brother in law and father in law, have been shooting factory federal 150 grain round nose load with great effect for many years. I'm a very avid handloader and I load some ammo for them but this year my father in law asked if I could try to find the bullets that come in there 270 and replicate this load since they have about 300 rounds of brass stored up. With the help of a high road member I was able to find these as pulled bullets from American Reloading. I ordered 1000 of them for $100.
To start with I took apart one of there factory rounds to see what was in there. It was loaded with 51.5 grains of powder that looks and measured out very similar to Reloader 19 and a CCI primer.
So firearms deer hunting is coming up in a few weeks here. My father in law and brother in law have a tradition of getting together a couple weeks before hand and we all sight in our deer rifles together. I shoot my deer rifle all the time but its fun to get together an shoot. This year we got together at my place so we could chronograph there factory load to get some data to start handloading. My father in law has a vanguard deluxe, a 700, and an encore in 270 and these are moa accurate in all 3. My brother in law has a Ruger Mk77 in 270 that he has had for about 15 years but unfortunately ever since I've been hunting with them I've never seen this gun shoot better than a 3" group and often much worse at 100 yards. He is a very good shooter but this ruger doesn't cooperate and he often has to chase the groups around with the scope as it changes point of impact really bad from one shooting session to another. He has been talking of getting rid of it for several years but a new rifle is not in the financial picture. This year he was getting pretty frustrated with it chasing the scope around, so I offered to have him just leave it with me for awhile to see what I could do with it. The next day I cleaned it out real good and took it out to shoot a benchmark group myself to get a baseline.
This is how it shot for me with there factory loads at 100 yards. The orange dot is 4 inches and I actually cut one bullet out of the picture that was about 4" above the center of the bullseye. I consider this unacceptable for any gun I'm going to shoot past 50 yards.
After getting it in the shop and giving it a good look over the first things I noticed were that the trigger was atrociously heavy and the bedding in the stock was terrible. While holding the forearm steady and pushing back and forth on the muzzle the whole barreled action could be moved side to side in the stock by 1/8" at the end of the forearm. I called him up and told him I would like to glass bed the action, free float the forend, and do a trigger job on it and he agreed.
The action had side to side play both at the recoil lug and at the tang so the first thing I did was glass bed both of these areas in the stock. To keep the action centered in the forend during bedding I put some strips of electrical tape in the end of the forearm to center the barrel in the channel. To make room for a good thick bedding I hogged out about 1/4" of wood in the recoil lug area and the tang using a die grinder and carbide. I normally use devcon Titanium putty for bedding but due to the shape of the front of the action I decided to us JB Weld on this one to get better flow around the recoil lug. The action screws on both the front and rear on this rifle pass through the bedding so I decided on this one to plug the screw holes with set screws coated in shoe polish to keep the epoxy out and I held the action in the stock with two bar clamps. Here is the result after trimming away the excess. The JB weld after 14 hours was set up enough to hold its shape but soft enough to cut with a razor knife
I did not take any pictures of the forend before floating it, but from the factory the forend just had a 1" or so pressure pad at the end of the forearm applying pressure to the barrel. There was clearance around and under the barrel for the rest of its length, but not very much. Floating the forend only required sanding out the pressure pad at the end with 120 sandpaper around a rod, and widening the forend channel slightly with 120 sandpaper on my fingers. It took mabey half an hour. After it was done I restained the wood with dark walnut stain and gave it a couple coats of polyurethane applied with a paper towel.
After everything was fully cured I blackened the bedding with a black permanent marker.
Turning my attention to the staple gun trigger I measured the factory trigger pull at just under 9 lbs! You could pick up the rifle pointed muzzle down by the trigger and had to shake it to get the striker to fall. After taking it apart I noticed the trigger return spring was quite heavy so I selected a lighter one from an assortment of springs I keep on hand. This brought it down to right around 6.5 lbs. Next I disassembled it and inspected the sear surfaces. The surface on the trigger side was pretty rough but the sear side looked to be fairlly smooth. I lightly dressed the trigger side of it with 800 grit wet/dry paper on a surface plate which brought it down to about 4.5 lbs. After that I went and shot a group with there factory ammo. Measured about 1.75" center to center.
The trigger was still a little light for my preference so I took it apart and dressed the sear side of it as well. I marked the sear surfaces with a sharpie marker and put it back together. After dry firing it a dozen times or so I examined the resulting witness marks left on the sear surfaces and found the sear was only contacting the trigger surface on about .060" on one side of its surface. Either the trigger or sear were ground at an angle from the factory. To correct this I carefully honed the trigger surface on a wet stone, reassembling the gun and checking until I got even contact across the sear surface face. After doing this the trigger took less than 2 lbs to break which is a bit light for a deer rifle in my opinion. I put the factory return spring in which brought it back up to 3.5 lbs, and thats where it will stay.
Now to handload for it. To start I found the distance for these bullets to touch the lands was 3.225 coal. I started loading at a 3.180 coal. My manual lists a max load of 55.3 grains of RL19 for a 150 grain bullet. I loaded to of each at 51, 52, 53, 54, 54.5, 55, and 55.4 to run over the chronograph. It took 55.4 grains of RL19 to match the velocity of there factory loads. Pressure, recoil and blast was pretty stout. I loaded up 5 each of 54.5, 55, and 55.4 to shoot for accuracy and all three shot about 1.5 moa. Finally getting somewhere now. Note that the wind was blowing left to right about 15-20 mph
The next day I decided to try some other powder to see if it would respond better without so much pressure so I loaded up some H4831sc, and some IMR4350. I didn't expect much from the 4350 so I only loaded a 51.5 and 52.5 in that. The H4831sc grouped about the same as RL19 but pressure was high so stopped and pulled my top load. To my surprise both 4350 loads shot superbly and the recoil, muzzle blast, and pressure was very noticeably softer. It was a night and day difference shooting one then the other. I thought for sure those loads would be slow so I went and got the crono and 51.5 grains of 4350 gave 2790 fps, which is only 25 fps slower than the hefty load of RL19. Well that settles that, 4350 it is!
5 shots, wind is still howling left to right. I wish it would stop for awhile so I could see what it will really do. These low BC round nose bullets blow around like tumbleweeds. My 25-06 with 120 boat tails has less than half the wind drift.
Now I don't want to give it back!
So my two friends and hunting partners who happen to be my brother in law and father in law, have been shooting factory federal 150 grain round nose load with great effect for many years. I'm a very avid handloader and I load some ammo for them but this year my father in law asked if I could try to find the bullets that come in there 270 and replicate this load since they have about 300 rounds of brass stored up. With the help of a high road member I was able to find these as pulled bullets from American Reloading. I ordered 1000 of them for $100.
To start with I took apart one of there factory rounds to see what was in there. It was loaded with 51.5 grains of powder that looks and measured out very similar to Reloader 19 and a CCI primer.
So firearms deer hunting is coming up in a few weeks here. My father in law and brother in law have a tradition of getting together a couple weeks before hand and we all sight in our deer rifles together. I shoot my deer rifle all the time but its fun to get together an shoot. This year we got together at my place so we could chronograph there factory load to get some data to start handloading. My father in law has a vanguard deluxe, a 700, and an encore in 270 and these are moa accurate in all 3. My brother in law has a Ruger Mk77 in 270 that he has had for about 15 years but unfortunately ever since I've been hunting with them I've never seen this gun shoot better than a 3" group and often much worse at 100 yards. He is a very good shooter but this ruger doesn't cooperate and he often has to chase the groups around with the scope as it changes point of impact really bad from one shooting session to another. He has been talking of getting rid of it for several years but a new rifle is not in the financial picture. This year he was getting pretty frustrated with it chasing the scope around, so I offered to have him just leave it with me for awhile to see what I could do with it. The next day I cleaned it out real good and took it out to shoot a benchmark group myself to get a baseline.
This is how it shot for me with there factory loads at 100 yards. The orange dot is 4 inches and I actually cut one bullet out of the picture that was about 4" above the center of the bullseye. I consider this unacceptable for any gun I'm going to shoot past 50 yards.
After getting it in the shop and giving it a good look over the first things I noticed were that the trigger was atrociously heavy and the bedding in the stock was terrible. While holding the forearm steady and pushing back and forth on the muzzle the whole barreled action could be moved side to side in the stock by 1/8" at the end of the forearm. I called him up and told him I would like to glass bed the action, free float the forend, and do a trigger job on it and he agreed.
The action had side to side play both at the recoil lug and at the tang so the first thing I did was glass bed both of these areas in the stock. To keep the action centered in the forend during bedding I put some strips of electrical tape in the end of the forearm to center the barrel in the channel. To make room for a good thick bedding I hogged out about 1/4" of wood in the recoil lug area and the tang using a die grinder and carbide. I normally use devcon Titanium putty for bedding but due to the shape of the front of the action I decided to us JB Weld on this one to get better flow around the recoil lug. The action screws on both the front and rear on this rifle pass through the bedding so I decided on this one to plug the screw holes with set screws coated in shoe polish to keep the epoxy out and I held the action in the stock with two bar clamps. Here is the result after trimming away the excess. The JB weld after 14 hours was set up enough to hold its shape but soft enough to cut with a razor knife
I did not take any pictures of the forend before floating it, but from the factory the forend just had a 1" or so pressure pad at the end of the forearm applying pressure to the barrel. There was clearance around and under the barrel for the rest of its length, but not very much. Floating the forend only required sanding out the pressure pad at the end with 120 sandpaper around a rod, and widening the forend channel slightly with 120 sandpaper on my fingers. It took mabey half an hour. After it was done I restained the wood with dark walnut stain and gave it a couple coats of polyurethane applied with a paper towel.
After everything was fully cured I blackened the bedding with a black permanent marker.
Turning my attention to the staple gun trigger I measured the factory trigger pull at just under 9 lbs! You could pick up the rifle pointed muzzle down by the trigger and had to shake it to get the striker to fall. After taking it apart I noticed the trigger return spring was quite heavy so I selected a lighter one from an assortment of springs I keep on hand. This brought it down to right around 6.5 lbs. Next I disassembled it and inspected the sear surfaces. The surface on the trigger side was pretty rough but the sear side looked to be fairlly smooth. I lightly dressed the trigger side of it with 800 grit wet/dry paper on a surface plate which brought it down to about 4.5 lbs. After that I went and shot a group with there factory ammo. Measured about 1.75" center to center.
The trigger was still a little light for my preference so I took it apart and dressed the sear side of it as well. I marked the sear surfaces with a sharpie marker and put it back together. After dry firing it a dozen times or so I examined the resulting witness marks left on the sear surfaces and found the sear was only contacting the trigger surface on about .060" on one side of its surface. Either the trigger or sear were ground at an angle from the factory. To correct this I carefully honed the trigger surface on a wet stone, reassembling the gun and checking until I got even contact across the sear surface face. After doing this the trigger took less than 2 lbs to break which is a bit light for a deer rifle in my opinion. I put the factory return spring in which brought it back up to 3.5 lbs, and thats where it will stay.
Now to handload for it. To start I found the distance for these bullets to touch the lands was 3.225 coal. I started loading at a 3.180 coal. My manual lists a max load of 55.3 grains of RL19 for a 150 grain bullet. I loaded to of each at 51, 52, 53, 54, 54.5, 55, and 55.4 to run over the chronograph. It took 55.4 grains of RL19 to match the velocity of there factory loads. Pressure, recoil and blast was pretty stout. I loaded up 5 each of 54.5, 55, and 55.4 to shoot for accuracy and all three shot about 1.5 moa. Finally getting somewhere now. Note that the wind was blowing left to right about 15-20 mph
The next day I decided to try some other powder to see if it would respond better without so much pressure so I loaded up some H4831sc, and some IMR4350. I didn't expect much from the 4350 so I only loaded a 51.5 and 52.5 in that. The H4831sc grouped about the same as RL19 but pressure was high so stopped and pulled my top load. To my surprise both 4350 loads shot superbly and the recoil, muzzle blast, and pressure was very noticeably softer. It was a night and day difference shooting one then the other. I thought for sure those loads would be slow so I went and got the crono and 51.5 grains of 4350 gave 2790 fps, which is only 25 fps slower than the hefty load of RL19. Well that settles that, 4350 it is!
5 shots, wind is still howling left to right. I wish it would stop for awhile so I could see what it will really do. These low BC round nose bullets blow around like tumbleweeds. My 25-06 with 120 boat tails has less than half the wind drift.
Now I don't want to give it back!
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