cdself
Member
I am getting back into rifles after some time away and I've run into a little problem with one of my first efforts out of the gate.
I bought a used G McMillan rifle in 280 remington with a 24" Shilen barrel a few months ago. It looks like it's in great shape and for what I paid, it should be a good back-up rifle. I personally mounted the rings and scope (lapped rings, torqued all fasteners, Leupold VX6 scope) and took it to the range. I also checked to be sure the stock was tightly attached.
The trigger was beautiful, but my groups were awful. My lever action 45/70 shoots as well as this thing.
Now I know I've only used one brand of mediocre quality factory ammunition (Rem Core Lokt 140's), but I've never had a rifle that shot so poorly. 5 shot groups at 100 yards were in the 3.5" range.
I have dug out my reloading equipment and I'm looking to load some custom ammo for this thing to see if I can get it to shoot better. I've used my Stoney Point gauge and found the lands at 3.370 OAL using Nosler 150 ballistic tip bullets (i've had these in my box for 15 years). I'm about to load some cartridges using 0 to 30 thousandths off the lands to see if it shoots better. I tested the Core-Lokt against my dummy round on the lands with a comparator and it looks like the Remmy ammo is jumping just over 80 thousandths to the lands. This seems relatively typical and probably wouldn't account for such poor groups.
I'd like to change the scope to remove that variable, but my other 30mm scopes have larger objectives than the Leupold and won't fit these rings and I hate to buy rings just to see if my scope is bad, but I couldn't sell this rifle today in good conscious today if I wanted to and I certainly wouldn't take it hunting. If my reloading efforts are not fruitful, I'll mount another scope on it to see if the Leupold is bouncing all over the place.
One other thing I noticed - the chamber on this rifle is pretty tight. The fired brass has rebounded such that I could reload this brass without ever touching a neck sizer. It's grown a few thousandths, but not enough so that I can seat a bullet with my hands. No signs of pressure and everything was great at the range other than the proximity of bullets to one another on the paper 100 yards away.
Any thoughts from experienced riflemen would be helpful and appreciated. Thanks. Chuck
I bought a used G McMillan rifle in 280 remington with a 24" Shilen barrel a few months ago. It looks like it's in great shape and for what I paid, it should be a good back-up rifle. I personally mounted the rings and scope (lapped rings, torqued all fasteners, Leupold VX6 scope) and took it to the range. I also checked to be sure the stock was tightly attached.
The trigger was beautiful, but my groups were awful. My lever action 45/70 shoots as well as this thing.
Now I know I've only used one brand of mediocre quality factory ammunition (Rem Core Lokt 140's), but I've never had a rifle that shot so poorly. 5 shot groups at 100 yards were in the 3.5" range.
I have dug out my reloading equipment and I'm looking to load some custom ammo for this thing to see if I can get it to shoot better. I've used my Stoney Point gauge and found the lands at 3.370 OAL using Nosler 150 ballistic tip bullets (i've had these in my box for 15 years). I'm about to load some cartridges using 0 to 30 thousandths off the lands to see if it shoots better. I tested the Core-Lokt against my dummy round on the lands with a comparator and it looks like the Remmy ammo is jumping just over 80 thousandths to the lands. This seems relatively typical and probably wouldn't account for such poor groups.
I'd like to change the scope to remove that variable, but my other 30mm scopes have larger objectives than the Leupold and won't fit these rings and I hate to buy rings just to see if my scope is bad, but I couldn't sell this rifle today in good conscious today if I wanted to and I certainly wouldn't take it hunting. If my reloading efforts are not fruitful, I'll mount another scope on it to see if the Leupold is bouncing all over the place.
One other thing I noticed - the chamber on this rifle is pretty tight. The fired brass has rebounded such that I could reload this brass without ever touching a neck sizer. It's grown a few thousandths, but not enough so that I can seat a bullet with my hands. No signs of pressure and everything was great at the range other than the proximity of bullets to one another on the paper 100 yards away.
Any thoughts from experienced riflemen would be helpful and appreciated. Thanks. Chuck