The Borden Timberline action is perfect for the 7mm Dakota. It is long enough to allow me to seat the 180 Berger to the junction of the neck an shoulder and still has adequate room in the magazine for good feeding.
I just finished building one with a Timberline action, Krieger barrel, McMillan A-5, and Leupold 8 - 25 LR scope. Greg Tannel of Gre-Tan rifles did the metal work. He has a reamer with a .312 neck, which allows me to neck turn my brass to .0125. This gives a loaded round a neck diameter of .309, which gives me a clearance of .0015 all the way around. Greg has a great reputation and does excellent work. He made me a set of dies using the same reamer he used to chamber the barrel and they are a work of art.
I was a little disappointed with the Dakota brass. I weight sorted them and they weren't that great. The cases I purchased from Midway were made by Norma. Dakota tells me that Hornady will be making their brass in the future, and that doesn't fill me with confidence. If I were to do it over again, I'd do a group buy with a few of you fellows, buy 300 rounds, and weight sort the brass into three groups - this way we'd all get brass that would be consistent in weight. But for the price we have to pay for Dakota brass they should rival Lapua in consistency.
. Great cartridge, you should have alot of fun.
