2 years in...what I've learned.

1. You can't buy accuracy.
   
   1. I spent thousands on a semi-custom rifle that was almost immediately out shot by a tikka that I built for a friendly competition.
   2. I've purchased quite a few pre-fits from well regarded manufacturers and none shoot as well as the take off tikka barrel I twisted on to a used tikka action.
   3. Pre-fit barrels are a crap shoot.
   4. Having a gunsmith chamber and thread a barrel to your action is a crap shoot with slightly better odds.
   5. Barrels are like people, some just eat crayons.
   6. Barrels from some families are less prone to eating crayons. But every family makes a unicorn every so often.
   7. I still think and act like I can buy accuracy.
2. Faster magnums are hard to tune.
   
   1. Its just my experience that bigger, faster, magnum cartridges are inherently a bit more finicky.
   2. 28 nosler, 26 nosler, even 6.5 PRC are awesome rounds. They can be very accurate obviously. But the road to getting there seems to be a bit more windy than slower cartridges with less boom in them.
   3. Shooting a 180 grain projectile at 3600 fps is more fun than a 147 grain projectile at 2800 fps however.
3. Consistency is accuracy, and larger group samples more accurately capture how consistent a gun is shooting.
   
   1. Not to ruffle feathers, and not to say you're doing anything wrong. But in my experience a ten shot group tells me more than a 3 shot group.
   2. I plan and shoot accordingly during load development. I load in 10 shot increments and make
   3. I believe making changes to a load based on a 3 or even 5 shot group will find you chasing your tail more often than not.
   4. A string of 5 3 shot groups, is a 15 shot group when viewed as a whole.
   5. As a rule I try not to chase numbers to a large extent in terms of sd/es or group size. If I'm in the ball park of 30 es and say 12 sd over 10 to 20 shots, I'm satisfied.
4. Most people make load development more complicated than it needs to be.
   
   1. I've noticed powder/bullet combination is more important than powder charge/seating depth.
   2. I can't tune a crappy powder/bullet combo to shoot well.
   3. A proper combination is ALMOST not worth tuning.
      1. If it shoots well, the time and effort spent wringing out tighter groups, or better es/sd numbers can be a fools errand.
      2. My reloading bench is overflowing with powders/bullets due to this fact.
   4. Listening and researching what works for others is key.
      1. For every cartridge there will be loads that most people favor, there is a reason for that.
      2. Experimentation outside of this fact CAN result in some great results, but WILL result in statement 3.2 being true.
   5. Monolithic bullets are harder to tune than traditional bullets.
      1. I have some decent copper loads, but all of them were harder to come by than their cup and core counterparts.
5. A decent trigger is ABSOLUTELY key.
   
   1. I would wager that a good trigger lends itself to better accuracy than throwing an extra few hundred bucks into your scope budget.
   2. SOME factory triggers can be tuned to a perfect thing of beauty, but it will take time and effort.
6. Standardized SAAMI chambers are for standard cartridge configurations.
   
   1. Longer bullet? Monolithic Bullet? Consider very carefully the chamber dimensions and know that SAAMI chambers aren't usually going to cut it.
7. Plain white paint tastes better than most any other color.

ShtrRdy said:

Sounds like you've been busy over a couple years!

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crashlanding said:

Stumpy, you're a man who knows where he stands on things and in today's world, that's priceless

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cajun said:

Haha. You know I have a full blown custom and some semi custom prefits I did and don't you know the most consistently accurate rifle I have is a Savage 12 varmint rifle in 6.5 CM I paid $240 for. Tupperware stock and all.

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StumpyJohnson said:

Friends and I did a challenge to build rifles, with scopes, and all the reloading dies and components for under $1200. You had to at least remove and replace the barrel. Popular actions were savage axis and Tikka t3's. All of them, after some tinkering, **** some lights out groups. I engaged 40 targets at unknown ranges out to 550 yards in around 8 minutes. Then **** two 5 round groups...the barrel was sizzling hot with a wet rag draped over it. It took me 56 rounds to do it. I thought that barrel was smoked for sure...it still prints groups I'm proud of. It was a $150 take off tikka barrel from ebay.

I have a prefit barrel from a well regarded company that can barely dribble turds out the muzzle...

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