Savage Model 25 in .204 Ruger - Need some advice

[TLARbb]

I am the mostly proud owner of a new Model 25 in .204 Ruger, but I am having trouble with the rifle quickly fouling and groups opening up.  I can shoot two marvelous 3 shot groups, 1 decent group, and then it begins to open up to about 2" at 100 yds. 

I am wondering if you folks can tell me what kind of phenomenon this is and if there is anything I can do about it.  It has a very low round count now, about 50 rounds, so it may be a break-in issue. 

Now, I have never gone to the trouble, nor needed to, to do a "clean the bore after every shot for X no. of shots, then every 3 shots for X number of shots".  Is this what the rifle needs?  Is it forcing me to do this on its own? 

After I clean the bore, each time I have, it seems to be absolutely like glass to my eyes. 

I know the .204 is very fast, maybe that is part of the deal. 

Anyway, if you have any words of wisdome, let me know.  So far, everything else about the rifle is fine.  To those of you that don't know about the 25, it does have plastic parts such as the trigger guard and the magazine. 

EJ

[mattmillerrx]

What ammo are you using?  I have had a simular problem with the 40 gr vmax.  I assumed is was not stablizing.  Some groups good some 2-3 in.

[TLARbb]

Most of what I have shot has been the Hornady 40gr V-Max.  Current ammo situation makes it tough to get a variety, but I do have some Winchester 34gr hp and some Federal 39gr Sierra to try.

Like I said my experience so far is two 3 shot groups significantly better than MOA, then about 1-1/2" and then 2-3".  I'm going to clean it good again and shoot some more Thursday or Friday to see if this pattern continues.  I'd do it today, but the weather is ugly.

EJ

[LaOtto222]

Some guns like the barrel to be clean and some like it dirty. Usually, but never always, a gun that likes a clean barrel shoots better, some times exceptional. I have a A&B barrel that was real rough to start with. It would shoot a decent group or two and then things would start to go south. It really did a lot of polishing on that barrel. It now will hold groups for about 30 - 40 shots before things really get noticeably bad. Maybe yours just needs to be shot more to smooth it out and you may find that is just the way it is. Not much of a problem shooting coyotes, woodchucks or paper, but more of a problem shooting PD's. The frequent cleaning in the field would be a pain, but the plus side, is that you not over heat your barrel if you stop shooting every 10 rounds and clean. Good Shooting and Good Luck

[helotaxi]

Every once in awhile it seems that a Savage rifle will have a very rough bore.  The bore looks like the tool used to cut the rifling chattered all the way down the tube.  The issue with this is that the barrel copper fouls very quickly.  You can either contact Savage about sending it back to them for a barrel swap, upgrade to an aftermarket barrel or run your barrel through a course of fire lapping to smooth the bore.  I've heard of Savages that foul quickly seeing significant improvement from fire lapping.

[Slowpoke Slim]

I have experienced the exact same problems with my 22-250, and my buddy with his 204. Both of our guns copper foul extremely quickly and accuracy goes to heck very quickly. Plus, they are a royal S.O.B. to get all the copper out. I have repeatedly polished mine with JB's bore paste, which is the only way I can get almost all of the copper out. My buddy's 204 is equally troublesome to get all the copper out. Minutes to shoot, and hours of scrubbing to get the copper out. Not fun.

It's frustrating because both rifles really want to shoot good. Both shoot bug-hole groups, until they foul. Then the "fun" of cleaning them begins. Sigh.

We have both resolved ourselves to trying the Tubb's firelapping kits for our respective rifles, in hopes that it will improve our barrels surface. Both our bores, when looked at with magnification, look like they were chiseled with a hammer and chisel. You can clearly see the "train tracks" across (perpendicular to the boreline of) the rifling. I think my buddy is waiting for me to try the kit on mine to see if it works before he orders it.

 

Please don't get me wrong, I'm not bashing Savage. We both really like our rifles, but I think we are both resolved to rebarrel them with a Shilen drop-in if the firelapping doesn't end our misery. I bought mine for prairie dogs, and I NEED to be able to get a good round count out of it!

Curiously, my Stevens 200 in .223 doesn't have the same problem?

[Slowpoke Slim]

Oh, I forgot to mention:

My buddy's 204 prefers the 32 gr Vmax far more than the 40 gr Vmax.

My 22-250 really likes the 50 gr Vmax and H380. I just wish I could shoot more than 20-25 rounds (all shot single-shot and slow cadence) before I have to pack it home and scrub the @!&@! out of it.

[LaOtto222]

Just thought I would mention that with copper fouled bores, I use TM solution for a couple of passes, dry it, then I run foam into it. It takes a little while for the foam to work. If you are on a prairie dog shoot, if you have another rifle to use while the foam is working, you can do it right in the field. It does take a little while to work so you may have to wait a while, depending on how bad the fouling is. The thing I like about it the most is that it does not take a lot of work. You run the foam in and let it set for a while to work. I then patch it out and run in some more if it needs it. You can do some thing else while it is working - like shooting PD with another gun or reading through GBO

I have polished several bores and got good results. I have use a more aggressive polishing paste than JB bore bright (which has a fine abrasive). I used Mother's aluminum and mag polish. I think that Flitz is more aggressive than the JB. I had a SS barrel that was very rough on the inside, you sure did not need a bore scope to see the roughness in the bore. I must have run at least 800 full passes through it. It now shoots even better than it did and accuracy starts to fall off, but not until I get in 50 - 60 rounds, and it is much easier to clean up than before. I have not used the Tubbs bore polishing bullets or any other kits for that matter. I know that people have had good results from them, but personally, they scare me. I have done a lot of reading about them, because it sure would be easier than running a tight rod back and forth through a bore several hundred times. They work by having abrasive on a bullet, you start with a course compound and work your way with finer and finer material until you put through 25 or so rounds. I have read that it wears away a lot of the beginning of the rifling. In effect giving you a much shorter barrel life. It works like throat erosion. I also understand that the guy who invented this advises setting a barrel back or chamber to a longer cartridge after shooting these bullets down the bore because for the throat erosion it causes. I have also read where the bore gets polished up with less fouling and that accuracy can be improved in a poor shooting gun. I have not read where accuracy was improved if a gun was shooting well to start with. You can do as you like, and I have read where people get satisfying results; but they still scare me. Try to polish it up with some thing more aggressive, but not too coarse polishing paste. There are several sources that tell how to do a polish job. This is what I do - I use a old worn out brass brush with patches wrapped around it, apply some polishing paste and go to work, making sure I use a bore guide and I do not booger up the crown when working it back and forth. The brush I use is a long one and I wrap the whole length with patches I use 45 cal patches on a 22 cal brush. When I run it through, I do not run it all the way out the end. As soon as the tip  starts coming out, I with draw the rod. If I do go too far, I detach the brush/patch from the rod and start over again at the breech. I would run about 150 full cycles through, clean it up and shoot 20 rounds. If that was not smooth enough, I re-clean the barrel to remove fouling and repeat. I keep this up until I get it smooth enough to not foul more than it should. I then give it a couple hundred cycles of the JB Bore Paste to help smooth it out even more. It is a lot of work - shooting a few bullets down the bore is much easier for sure, but I have gotten good results with little if any rifling taken off at the throat. Good Luck and Good Shooting

[Slowpoke Slim]

I've never fire lapped a barrel before. I'm with you in that it scares me too. I'm just to the point now where it'll give me something to do before I order the Shilen drop in barrel. It would be a last step before unscrewing the barrel and throwing it in the trash...

 

I haven't tried to polish the barrel with anything stronger than the JB's bore paste. I'm kind of at the cross roads with this barrel anyway. I'm to the point where I DON'T shoot it, just because it's such a pain in the @ss to clean, it's just not worth the hassle. I hadn't really thought of using anything stronger, like lapping compound or other...

Hmmm...

I have some valve lapping compound somewhere around here...

No, just kidding.

[TLARbb]

Thanks for the input.  This doesn' sound to encouraging to me, but I don't think I'm going to try the fire lap thing.  I'm hoping that with some more shooting, it will settle in.  It's a pretty sweet little rifle and I was under the impression that Savage barrels are amoung the better factory barrels.  Doesn't look like I'll be doing a whole lot of shooting though what with ammo so hard to come by.

I'm going to try to get some more shooting in the next few weeks until I run low on ammo.  If it gets better, I'll let you know.

EJ

[TLARbb]

I thought I'd post an update on this rifle.  After some more shooting (about 100-120 rounds), the rifle has been doing much better consistency wise.  My biggest problem now is trying to keep myself in ammunition.  I plan to reload it as I reload for everything else I own, but right now primers seem to be unobtainable.  So, I'm not going to try to buy the dies and such until I can lay in a stock of components.

I did find that I was having trouble with the cheap Tasco rings on the rifle.  It came with the scope already mounted and I didn't want to have to spend another significant amount of money for glass.  I did change it out to a Bushnell 4200 4-16x with Burris Signature rings and that has been a good combination.

I really like the rifle and it has turned out to be accurate and fun to shoot.  My son shot a 3 shot group at two hundred yards yesterday that was about 5/8" c-c.  I'm pretty satisfied with that kind of perfomance.  It is shooting as well as my Remington VLS in .260 Rem or maybe even better.  I'm still working with the Remington, but this little Savage has turned out pretty sweet.

EJ

[Slowpoke Slim]

Well my update also,

I tried the fire lapping kit on 2 rifles, my savage bvss 22-250, and a winchester stealth 2 in 25 wssm. Both these barrels exhibited the exact same problems, with the corresponding "train tracks" reamer marks in the bores from the manufacturing process. Both these barrels coppered up very quickly and were a pain to clean.

The savage, after the firelapping process seems to have no improvement whatsoever. It's definitely getting a new shilen "drop in" barrel in the near future.

The winchester, after the process, seems to show some improvement. I'm not sure yet whether it's enough to warrant keeping the barrel or not, I just haven't had the time to do anything with it. I will try it out here in another month or two and see.

More than likely, both my barrels were too far gone to expect them to come back with the firelapping kits. When you can see the reamer chattering without a borescope (as I could with both barrels), there's really not much else that can be done with the barrel. I don't think it's fair to judge the firelapping process based on these "basket case" barrels

[yankee]

Here is something to try.  In the past I have sometimes felt it was the powder fouling that was the problem and not the copper.  I have a 222 that powder fouls and I have used the following with good results.  After 10 or so shots the accuracy starts to go south.  I run 2 or 4 wet patches of Hoppes thru the bore then brush it a couple times then a couple more wet patches then let it cool and back to shooting.   Then really clean it up when I get home.   

[Graybeard]

If you bought it new why not give Savage a chance to make it right and see how they react?

[Slowpoke Slim]

My Mcgowen drop in barrel is sitting on my bench. I still have to order the action wrench and barrel nut wrench + go gauge to put it on. It sure looks pretty, I can't wait!

[JPShelton]

What ammo are you using?  I have had a simular problem with the 40 gr vmax.  I assumed is was not stablizing.  Some groups good some 2-3 in.

If you had a stabilzation issue, I would suspect it would be manifest to some degree by keyhole-shaped bullet holes on the target. 

-JP