I bought the old girl from a friend who had grown tired of her inconsistency. I had tried to help but soon I realized that all the symptoms were there and the prognosis bleak, my diagnosis... a shot out barrel. I loaded some shells for him with the bullet seated waaaay out there and told him it would be alright for awhile but he lost interest in the gun and I asked if he would sell her to me. I shoot higher end rifles and enjoy the accuracy of a custom rifle but I saw the challenge of this little handi and wanted to see if something could be done to save her.
I brought her home and cleaned her up, I mentioned earlier that I enjoyed higher end rifles, I am used to a barrel cleaning up with minimal effort, not this barrel I worked for the better part of a morning trying to get all of the copper out. I must admit that taking the barrel off made clean up easier.
While I had the barrel off I determined the rate of twist at 1:12, and droped a bullet down the barrels' chamber side until it found the lands and measured from the base of the bullet to the end of the barrel. This measurement along with the bullet base to ogive measurement would give me the length of a loaded cartridge from case head to bullet ogive (give or take a few thousanths). I made a chamber cast, and smoked the latch/ lug to check the lock up even though the actual lockup was tight. I also used a bore light and a jewlers eyepiece to look at the chamber throat and lands, then I tried to take some pictures so I could show them to you boys.
This picture was taken from the chamber:
Due to the camera lens narrow focal length there is only a small amount of the barrel in focus but the rough inconsistencies were found throughout the length of the barrel. At this point I understood why the rifle shot so poorly.
This picture shows the chamber cast and 2 bullets seated at different depths one is minimum for a fifty grain bullet, the other is a 69 smk seated to just touch the lands when chambered. I must note that I only had to barely seat the bullet into the case neck to achieve this.
This picture shows why I couldn't seat a 50 grain bullet and have it touch the lands. If you look closely at the cast you can see the start of the lands. I will say that the chamber was cut straight as all rifling started at the same distance from the case neck.
Here is what I learned so far:
With a 1 in 12 twist rate I might be able to stabilize a 55 grain bullet.
The latch was only locking on one side
The barrel looked like a rasp just waiting to deform any bullet that came down the tube
The barrels throat had eroded making it difficult for a bullet to be supported while jumping from case neck to rifling
The fact that the gun was made in 1996 might be an accessary barrel issue with remington
The only thing left to do was shoot the old gal and leave the range with a target that looks like some one shot it with buckshot.
I loaded a 55 gr nosler ballistic tip over 26.1 grains of H4895 with CCI #41 primers at a COL of 2.435 after working up from 24 grains to test for pressure.
I have to admit that I was very surprized at how a worn out workhorse of a rifle, despite all the flaws could still put them in a 2 inch square at 100 yards, one right after the other with no time to cool.
