I have a Remington 700 Titanium 7mm-08 that is driving mad.
The 2nd shot of a group is always, consistently as far as 3 or 4" to the right, with the average group being around 3MOA. With load it likes I can get 2MOA groups. I would like for it to shoot sub MOA. I've tried everything from 130gn SMKs to 162gn A-Max, 140gn tsx, 140gn Partitions, 160gn b-tips, 140gn b-tips, 140gn failsafes, Federal primers, CCI primers, VVN140, VVN160, H4895, VVN133…the list goes on…

I bedded the rifle myself, although I can see no faults in the bedding. The barrel is fully floated.
On a gunsmiths' advice the I milled the section of bedding material back closer to the recoil lug. Now it only has about 1" of bedding material forward of the lug.
He reckoned that would solve the problem. BUT IT HASN'T!!!!!

I am %100 sure there are no issues with the scope, rings and bases. The trigger is a Timney with a very crisp, easy half pound pull, scope a Leupold 4.5-14x42, shooting off a pibod and rear bag at a distance of 150 yards.

I’ve just come in from a target session, where I was also shooting with my .300win mag - .46MOA, .308win .200MOA, .204Ruger .25MOA - so it's not me.
This rifle is prone to heating up, but I was waiting a good 5 minutes between each shot, (and it's pretty bloody cold too) without getting out of my seat to ensure the best possible consistency in my shooting technique. The barrel was basically cold for each shot.

Then, just to spite and confuse me, the last group of the session didn’t string wide, but high, and so did the next one. The worst part was that it was a very nice group! I measured it at .52MOA. Nothing came even close, the next best group was 1.85MOA. next best was 2.75MOA.
I will try the same load tomorrow and see if it wasn’t just a fluke.

I realize this is a lightweight hunting rifle, but I would like to get it down to sub MOA. Next weekend I'll be hunting chamois in the mountains where a 350 yard shot is quite likely to present itself. An 8" to" 14group at the range is just not acceptable.

What can I look at?
I have thought about putting a pressure pad in the front of the stock, but the stock is very flexible in that point and I had to mill out a large gap to ensure it wouldn't come into contact with the barrel.

Since the stringing is consistent, it makes me think that something twisting as the barrel heats up even the slightest amount.

I could get it rebarreled by one smith in the UK who will do the work over a weekend when I go to visit, but that will cost me about $1,200 - without even doing any action work. Otherwise a smith here can do it but it will take at least 9 months and still cost about $900.

Should I try re-bedding? Maybe bed the entire barrel? What else could I check?

My 700 Ti did similar things when it had the factory barrel. Not necessarily moving right for the second group eevry time, but a wandering group center and no rhyme or reason to how the sizes of the consecutive groups would be.

I rebarreled it and it has been a very good shooter ever since.

Regarding rebedding or bedding the whole barrel, I would definitely swap the scope first. It is the only way you can rule it out as the problem. If the problem is still there, then I would play with the bedding because it is cheap and fast. You have nothing to lose before rebarreling. But i don't have much confidence at all that the bedding change will help if you have had so many problems with everything you tried.
The first thing I have to ask you is how are you 100% sure it is not the scope. Unless you just got it back from Leupold's lad with a cert sheet, you are almost positively not able to say that. Oh, wait, Leupold screws up all the time anyway! (sorry, looks lame on the screen, but if you could hear how I was thinking it she would have been funny in a frustrated and pissed off kind of way).

Leupold has returned broken scopes to me and friends of mine, with the sheets telling how the all checked out after repair. Even if you shoot this scope on a different rifle, I may not still trust it. I have seen scopes do OK on lighter recoiling rifles, but not do worth a damn on heavier recoiling rifles. Now granted that is not a heavy recoiling rifles, BUT the Ti's are light and the recoil pulse is different. The first thing I would do is put a different scope on it.

If that does not fix it, i would put a new barrel on it. I had my buddy look at my Rem barrel with his borescope. THis guy looks in barrels every week and told me it was one of the best looking factory barrels he had ever seen. Who knows, maybe something was wrong with how it was fit to the action and soemthing would shift as it was fired.

EXPRESS;
I agree with Marc_Stokeld, first try be sure about your scope, mount, screws,ammo and stock bedding a let the barrel to the end, Before rebarreled, try with a re-crown work, easy and fast to do in a late (No more that 1 or 2 hours work!!! perhaps you have an imperceptible damage in the bore barrel. Luck!!!

http://www.snipercountry.com/hottips/Crowns.htm

How much did you float the barrel. Barrels expand and move when they get hot and they tend to whip violently when fired so if you didn't provide enough clearance to account for any expansion AND whip, then the barrel could be making contact with the stock during the whip which WILL send your rounds flying out of the group. Look the crown over really good while you're looking at things.

quote:

I had my buddy look at my Rem barrel with his borescope.

One thing you might try is pushing a lead slug through the barrel to see how uniform the diameter is. If it has a tight spot or a loose spot a bore scope will never reveal it. And it will drive you nuts because everything looks ok. Another killer is a bore that is larger at the muzzle than at the breech..... You can't see that either but you can slug your bore and find it.

Ditto what Westpac said. I recently had the same problem with a featherweight Winchester in 7mm-08. It used to shoot good and went sour. Stringing, 3"-4" groups,etc. It turned out the forend did not have enough clearance. I guess it warped a little. It already had .020" clearance but that wasn't enough. After I opened it up some more it went back to shooting decent again. Maybe the skinny flexible forend and the featherweight barrel need more room.

I also had to open the barrel channel more in my 264. I squared the receiver face and barrel shoulder and the barrel moved closer to one side. I still had the .020" clearance I usually look for but it wasn't enough there either and it wouldn't shoot decent until I gave it more room.

Scope & mount, crown (eapecially if it has never shot well,) barrel channel, all important to check out.

You mention that you have bedding under the chamber. No problem there, but does the recoil lug have clearance at front, sides, and bottom?

Likewise the front guard screw, is it well centered in the hole with clearance all around?

Did you break the sharp edge at the top of the recoil shoulder after bedding?

Does the rear guard screw have clearance like the front one?

Does the tang have room to move back at least 1/32" during recoil, or is there a ridge of bedding compound behind it? This will lift the recoil lug away from the shoulder and produce very erratic shot-to-shot behavior.

Hope some element of this ramble helps.

Ok, good point about the scope. In any case, it holds zero, and the rifle is pretty reliable for a spot on first shot.
I lapped the rings and added bedding compount to both the rings and the bases/reciever.
The barrel channel is plenty large enough, I's go so far as to say the gap is unsightly.
The crown doesn't look damaged, but I can easily address that.
I think I'll hog out some of the bedding adn do it over, then take on the scope.

After a bit or research on horizontal stringing, it seems that ofter it is caused by some kind of shooter error. Even misaligning the stock in the rear bag is rumoured to cause it. Paralax and shooter technique also.
In this case, I am shooting different rifles side by side and the only one that gives the vertical stringing is the 7mm-08 in question.
Maybe that doesn't rule out shooter error. this particular stock might cause me to hold differntly in a way I cannot notice...?

For the rest of the week I will continue to chase an acceptable MOA hunting load.

Thanks for the suggestions.

If you want to know how good of a job you did leveling and bedding the action, tighten both front and rear guard screw and then slowly loosen the front and closely watch or feel for the slightest movement of the barrel and/or receiver. If there is any movement, then you need to correct it before you can truly rule out bedding as a cause.

I have seen a lot of Rem 700's start shooting badly when the customer has had the barreled action out of the stock, then assembled the rifle in a way that the magazine box is in a bind with the floor plate/trigger guard assembly. There is a small recess in the floor plate/ trigger guard that the magazine box has to fit into.

Another way to check the bedding is to mount a dial indicator to the barrel with the stylus touching the stock. Then alternately tighten and loosen the action screws. You should not have over .003 movement. If you have zero, something is stuck and that is not good either.

I logged back on to mention bag technique, but see it has already been touched on. As a rifle gets lighter, the criticality of bench technique goes up exponentially. I can't stress thi senough. When shooting light or fly-weigth rifles, I put teh front bag just in front of the front guard screw. I get more consistent results this way.

I built a 5# 2oz rifle for a sheep guide and he kept getting groups in the 1 1/2"-1 3/4" range. Plenty good enough for hunting, but he wanted more off the bench. I shot it before shipping it and knew it did much better for me. He sent it back after the first season (where he shot a 40" Dall with it) wor me to modify something for him, so I took the oppurtunity to shoot it again. With 3 brands of factory ammo, I never got agroup t ogo up to 1 1/2". One brand never went over 3/4". These were 3 shot groups at 100 yards.

Point is, I have shot very light rifles off a bench and know what works for me. I coached him over the phone and he got his bench groups to shrink a good bit. Does not make a difference in field shooting, but it always gives one more confidence in a rifle if they can make small groups with it.

Also, be damn sure the barrel is cool before shooting the next group. The lighter the gun, the more critical this is. The Remington Mountain Rifle profile on your rifle is light and whippy, so let it totally cool before the next string.

Another thing I have found about light rifles is that they often shoot different loads to wildly different points of aim. When you consider the force of the bullet going through and expanding the barrel steel and compare that force to the overall rifle weight, you will see that it is much more significant than the ration would be in a heavier rifle. These vibration differences make groups go to different places relative to your point of aim.

The same thing happens with bag technique. If you start really cheeking the stock, putting a death grip(or no grip) on the forearm, give it more or less shoulder, or whatever, it matters more as the rifle gets lighter.

Marc you have raised and confirmed some very valid points there.

Especially about different points of impact.
Changing only the primer and neck sizing I found about 4" of difference in POI.

Today I loaded up 3 more batches of the 162gn A-max that shot the .5MOA group;

One lot was neck sized only 39gn H4895 and seated to the lands (2.267").
One lot was the same powder and dose, but with Federal GMM Primer instead of the CCI & COL 2.244"
The third had 42gn ov VVN160 and the Federal primer COL 2.244".

Well, the neck sized only, 39gn H4895 COL 2.267" CCI BR primer lot shot a .60MOA group!
The others didn't do too badly either, probably slighly over MOA but still acceptable.

Over the course of this past weekend and today I have been in and out of my reloading shed making up strings of loads to test, shooting for most of the day. I've got a slight headache, sore shoulder and a sense of satisfaction.

Unfortunatly, I can't say that I am completely satisfied; I wanted to get this rifle shooting well with a hunting bullet, preferable a Barnes of Failsafe. In this instance I found accuracy was there with the Amax and I'm going to be hunting chamois, which are fairly delicate animals so it's not an issue, yet...

For anyone intersted in using this load, I'd have to post the obligatory warning, it may not be safe in your rifle...you know the story.