I bought a Rem700 in 223Rem off of Gunbroker about a year ago to use on coyotes. It had a 3-9 Tasco on it. It wouldn't group inside of 2 inches and keyholed some of the heavier bullets. Turns out it had a 1 in 14 barrel (mfg in 1970). I had a local smith lap in the lugs, check the action and put on a new 1 in 9 Douglas barrel and I swapped the scope for a 3.5-10 Leupold. I have now tried several different bullets (Hornady, Berger, Barnes) in several different weights (36-62 gr) with 3 different powders (H335, H4895, BLC(2)) at different seating depths and still get 1-2+ inch groups off the bench. The groups are random, not stringing,etc.
The rifle has a later Rem plastic stock and I'm wondering if I need to rebed the action or restock? I've checked the mounts (Redfield 2pc) screws and such. What am I missing?

I would concentrate on the stock and bedding before anything else at this point.

It might not like those powders.I have had good luck with others like tac,imr3031,imr4064,rl-15 and others.Keep trying,it will come in to it's own one day.

quote:

Originally posted by Westpac:
I would concentrate on the stock and bedding before anything else at this point.

I looked at Midway and they have a Miles Gilbert glass bedding kit for about $30.00 or a pillar bedding kit for about $60.00. Haven't looked at Brownells yet.
I'm fairly handy with tools so I'm sure I could do either. Any suggestions on which would be best?

Try W-748 powder, but you still might need to correctly bed it with acraglass, or bysonite.

quote:

Originally posted by Blacktailer:
Any suggestions on which would be best?

You won't go wrong with this kit. http://www.brownells.com/.aspx...ct/ACRAGLAS_GEL_reg_

I'd try the pillar bedding, if for no other reason than I've never done a DIY pillar bedding job before, can't hurt anything. Check the basics: the crown for defects, torque the screws to proper specs, make sure the scope mount and rings are snug, swap out scopes as it could be a scope problem, check that there isn't junk in the barrel channel that could induce stress in the barrel. It could be a lot of things, I'd start out eliminating variables with things that aren't going to cost you any money first.

Since we are all throwing out guesses here, I'd suggest doing a chamber cast just to eliminate that source of issues.

Next, I'd suggest putting some business card shims under the action and see if that affects the groups, and if so how does it.

Lastly, and possibly the most difficult one to do, is ask someone who you know is a good shooter to take 5 shots with it and see how their target looks compared to yours. It helps to first shoot a target yourself at 40 yards and show it to him, saying "this is the last group I got, would you mind shooting a group so I can make sure it's not me?"

No one else suggested it..

if you have another stock for it, change that also and see if it shoots better or the same.

I had one that did that, turned out that the barrel channel on the stock was riding the barrel..

so I free floated the barrel and it shot like you'd expect a 243 to shoot in a model 700.

quote:

W-748

Great powder for .223Rem...

I bought an LVSS that did the same thing. Since it has the factory stock on it, I will bet that it still has the pressure pads on the forend tip. If it does, then I would remove those first and free float the barrel. For me, it took 10 minutes (I am slow) and the results went from 1.5-2" to .5-.75". Take the 10 minutes first.

The others are also right, I was using W748 powder.

Thanks all for the suggestions. I ordered a glass bed kit from Midway which should show up tomorrow so I should have it set up by the weekend. I did free float the barrel and then progressively put shims back in the barrel channel in various spots and various thicknesses and could move the POI around but didn't help the grouping. Did I mention that I've been working on this for a year? Don't think it's my shooting since I can basically duplicate this accuracy with my Garand
With any luck the bedding job will work. If not, it'll go off to the smith in Stockton who has built my other rifles and he'll work his magic.

quote:

Originally posted by homebrewer:

quote:

W-748

Great powder for .223Rem...

I have to disagree. It's the BEST powder for the .223

techincally .. NO rifle shoots STRAIGHT .. they all shoot in arcs (sorry man, nothing to contribute)

have you tried the folded business card trick?

loosen the screws .. fold a business card in half, long ways... pull up the barrel, slide the card about 3" down the barrel/stock.. tighten the screws. .. shoot 3 shots, tighten again .. then shoot for groups

Tighten EVERYTHING, shoot five, five shot groups of 69gn SMK's out of once fired neck sized brass at 2800 FPS and report back. w-748 is fine but shouldn't matter

Collins

I bet bedding. .223 is not real picky about powder. None of the powders you listed should be bad, some better but none bad, esp H4895.

Jeff,
yes, I've tried the biz cards from the forend all the way back to the action and it doesn't seem to do much good. I was even thinking of trying one of those barrel deresonator doughnut looking things but will see if the glass bedding helps first because I think those things are sooo ugly.
Collins, I don't have a torque screwdriver but have tried various tightening from "snug" to as tight as I can get and that also hasn't yielded much improvement.
Thanks for the suggestions, sooner or later we'll get this sorted out.

Blacktailer, have you confirmed the scope is OK by trying a known accuracy producing scope on this rifle. I continue to learn about optics--it is a DEEP topic, but I have learned more than I ever would have believed 12 or so years ago, how much a scope can vary without actually 'tanking' so badly you know it is the scope.

I was lucky to spend some time with John Barnsness on a hunt a few years ago, and he shared so much info on optics, including a copy of one of his books--that I was overwhelmed frankly, but one thing he did tell me is that it is incredibly frequent that a scope can be OK, but be giving inconsistent or intermittent accuracy due to the reticle not being stable--translate: need new scope!!!

I would absolutely confirm this, as it is usually pretty easy to do....I'd probably bed it too if you already have the stuff coming of course, but I think it's worth PROVING it ain't the scope.

Fish,
I guess I wasn't totally clear in my original post but I got the same accuracy or rather inaccuracy with both the Tasco and the Lupy. I bedded it this morning (hope I didn't glue it together permanently) so by the weekend it should be shooting again and we'll know if that was the fix.

10-4 Blacktailer, keep us posted--
Good Luck!

I bought a bedding kit from Midway and bedded the rifle. Reasonably easy and only took a few hours. Now of course I need to start the load development process all over again. BlC(2) had shown some promise before bedding the rifle but now I'm getting flyers that open up the groups to 2+ inches with several different Barnes bullets. (Cal law= no lead). I still had some loads left over from previous range sessions and was able to get less than 3/4" group with the 53gr Barnes TSX using H4895 and 1/2" with the 40gr Berger and H335. Now we are starting to see some progress! With any luck I can get the Barnes into the 1/2 inch range. I also have some Hornady and Nosler no-lead on order and am looking forward to playing with those.