Accuracy issue with Rem. 700 SPS

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At 25 yds. it's still pretty bad, just not as wide spread as at 50 and 100 yds.. It goes back to the builder / smith tomorrow, so well see after that.

But it could get pretty heated tomorrow, as I also noticed some damage to the bore up near the muzzle. I know a builder / smith who may owe my Son a new barrel if things don't improve after the crown issue has been addressed.

My Son and I are both very surprised, as this builder has been in business for over 40 yrs. and has a reputation as one of the best around these parts. I know him well and have done business with him, so I think the bad job had nothing to do with his personal work, as he farms out a lot of these type jobs to other smiths. But because everything passes through his hands, he should have inspected the work before putting his name / reputation on it before releasing it to the customer.

GS
 
You never said what weight bullets you were using. I'd do the cleaning rod/brush trick and confirm the twist rate. What you expect it to be may not be what it is.

If the end of the barrel looks hacksawed off, I'd also press the smith to re crown it. If the muzzle face isn't square, it would also affect accuracy (along with no or poor crown) I've seem several NIB crowns that were visibly out of square to the naked eye.
 
As for bullet weights, 165 gr., 180's, and 200's. And regardless, any decent bullet will at least stay on the target board, if not the target at that close range.

Three different work ups with each, IMR-7828, IMR-4350, and H4831.

Brass, Hornady, F.C., R.P. and Win..

In addition to the load work ups, we have run 6 different boxes of factory.

It won't even consistently stay on the paper. One round will be dead on, the next will be off the target, next one 12" high right, then 12" low left, it's all over the place. We had to pay for a target board last Saturday cause we shot the heck out of the target frame.

GS
 
700

I had one in 308, sps or something like that. heavy barrel. glass bedded, trigger job, recrowned. wouldn't group unless you seated bullets too long for the magazine; very, very excessive freebore.
Dumped it, got a Patrol Bolt rifle, trigger job, similar story, got a TC Icon.
Shot sub half inch out of the box. Got 2 more, they all shoot that way oob.
Only thing they are discontinued by TC.
 
We had a rather interesting visit with the gun smith this morning. We showed him the barrel, he removes the brake and says, what, it's crowned. And also said he wouldn't have had a reason to cut on the barrel, all I did was thread the barrel for the brake, I didn't touch the crown. Both my boy and I looked at each other, and then said, you mean that this barrel came hacked up from Remington? Are you kidding me? He then says, well it's obvious that it needs crowning, but I just don't see how you consider it hacked up. It was like he was trying to convince us that what we were looking at was an optical illusion or something. He then crowned it while we waited.

What I think really happened is he messed up the first threading job, and then had to cut some barrel off to re-thread it. Either way, the problem has been resolved, and we'll be out at the range Saturday morning to see what she does.

Thanks all
GS
 
If it was so obvious it needed crowning, why didn't he make your son aware when he installed the brake?
 
Exactly, why was that not addressed from the get go? Reason, because there was nothing wrong with the crown until after he installed the brake.

GS
 
We had a rather interesting visit with the gun smith this morning. We showed him the barrel, he removes the brake and says, what, it's crowned. And also said he wouldn't have had a reason to cut on the barrel, all I did was thread the barrel for the brake, I didn't touch the crown. Both my boy and I looked at each other, and then said, you mean that this barrel came hacked up from Remington? Are you kidding me? He then says, well it's obvious that it needs crowning, but I just don't see how you consider it hacked up.
Click to expand...

My response to him would be, "I just don't see how you consider yourself a gunsmith."

And in the future, I'd take my business elsewhere.
 
Unfortunate that you did not test fire the rifle before sending it off for the brake job to give a valid comparison of factory performance versus modified. Suspect that even with the lug issue so long as all the screws were property torqued it would have been under 3MOA. Remington may be cheap on these guns, but their barrels tend to shoot.
 
Well, aside from being rather upset with my son for not keeping me completely in the loop with this rifle and optics, we finally solved the mystery this morning, once and for all.

After all this extra work and money he has invested into trying to make this rifle shoot, it turned out to be a bad scope! Originally, he was getting unacceptable groups with a Leupold something or another. So considering only one lug was making contact, the stock was bouncing off the barrel in multiple spots, the crown was badly chingered up, it no doubt had some problems. So he buys this really nice Vortex since we got all the issues with the rifle resolved, and it still wouldn't shoot, and it had obviously gotten much worse and totally unpredictable, as I described in my earlier posts.

Today, and on the previous range trip I mentioned that the scope just didn't look right, it didn't seem to want to focus, the parallax wasn't functioning IMO, and eye relief at any power was practically zero with lots of glazing, just horrible for a $400 something Vortex in my experience. Then it happened, the power adjustment froze up, and the glass just went almost completely black.

So as soon as this happened, I pulled a old Leupold 3x9 out of my range bag I brought along just in case, and swapped the scope right then and there. Did a quick bore sight to get it on paper, and was shooting sub moa at 100 yds. with all 4 load work ups I had with me. Even the factory ammo we had was shooting nearly 1".

PROBLEM FINALLY SOLVED

But this takes me some place else in terms of optics. This Vortex brings to the total 3 scope that I have personally experienced a problem with over the last year. I know Vortex makes some good glass, but I also know that they aren't yet time tested and proven like Leupold optics have been. I my self have been sucked into the Vortex thing recently, but at the end of the day, I just don't think Vortex has yet earned my trust. 3 problems in the last year, and I haven't had 3 problems with Leupold in 30+ years that weren't my fault.

GS
 
Thanks for the update.

At least the rifle itself has become one you can have confidence in......
 
I had a power ring lock-up on a Vortex Diamondback last year, same symptoms though not as pronounced. To make matters worse, it was during a load work up, so I was pretty much losing my mind. "There's no way this load is that bad!". I went through a hundred rounds of ammo before the mechanical symptom showed up. Prior to that, the Parallax adjustment seemed way off, but I hadn't given it much thought though, cause I wear glasses. Thought maybe that was throwing it off.

They replaced the glass no questions asked. I have a crossfire and PST that have been problem free for three years now. Lemon law... happens I guess.
 
Seems like more often than not bad optics and loose screws are the root cause whenever rifles have big inconsistencies like two or three shots in one place then suddenly everything shifts a foot or more. Even inaccurate rifles tend to "pattern" with some consistency -- ie might shoot a 5 inch group, but the group stays in the same general area. Glad you got it figured out!
 
Ya, I was definitely pulling some hair out, as this was a load work up, or an attempt at such. we probably put close to 200 rounds through that rifle, while tuning almost every aspect of the system trying to diagnose the problem.

And the fact that it was all over the place with no general POI made me lean toward optic or mounts / rings. But my boy insisted it couldn't be the brand new Vortex, after all it was new.

It's all good now. SWH will swap it out today and we'll be back on track.

GS
 
OP glad you got it all figured out. Sorry it took so much time and effort to figure it out though. Funny you mention Vortex scopes I had a new Vortex scope that had issues right out the box. Called them and they fixed it no problem "loose erector tube" but I had to pay $10 to ship it back. I own several budget scopes (~$150) I have one Vortex, 2 Red fields and 3 Nikon's and the Redfields are the clearest to my eye hands down.

Are they all serviceable and hold zero yes they do but for the same $ I'd take Redfield every time over Vortex or Nikon.
 
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