Trickymissfit
Well-Known Member
I own exactly one accutrigger rifle, and other than adjusting it right after I got it; it's never been touched again (close to ten years). I personally prefer the Sharpshooter trigger group, but have never personally owned one. I have several friends that put them on the older style actions and loved them.
lets talk about the other brand of triggers instead of the "off brands"
* I've own four or five Mod. 700's that I can remember. All were long actions till I bought the .223. Never had a problem with the longer actions. I'm a set it and forget it kinda guy. Then things changed with the .223. First of all it was a good solid 4.25" five shot group gun with the best hand loads I could produce. Everybody said I was nuts; well OK maybe I am a little nuts! I gunsmith at the place I bought the rifle said to let him take a look at it. He shot five inch groups with it, and later told me he had trigger problems. Then he calls me up and asks me if it's OK to let the Fairland boys take a shot at making it shoot. (I knew these guys were at the top of their game 24/7). I get a phone call from one of them asking me what load I used to get it to shoot 4.25" groups as they were only getting slightly less than five inch groups. I told them, and they saw groups slightly bigger than mine (I suspect it was in their seating depth). Doug suggested that I send it back to Remington, but being the hard headed person that I am I didn't. About the sametime I read Bill Calfee's stuff on how to judge a barrel, and promptly followed his instructions. A tight patched jag was like riding a roller coaster when pushed thru the barrel. Take a hand full of cases into work and check everyone of them on a Shadowgraph. Thought it was just me, and my boss did the same checks to make sure I got everything right. Every neck was bent! The rims were all bent in one spot, and the bodies themselves were way outta round. Next day doug and I compaired notes, and I made an expanding plug to help me gauge the chamber (about six inches long and tight at the shoulder and about a quarter inch above where the rim should be. It looked like it was bent! My calculations showed it to be off axis about .007" and at a seven degree angle to the bore!! Well now I knew I had a bad chamber, but also the last three inches of the barrel were bigger than the rest of the bore by what looked like .003". Borrowed a national match chamber reamer from Ferris, and cut two inches off the big end of the barrel. Then cut the small end back to where I ended up with a 20" barrel finished out (might be 20.25" max). Rethreaded the action to where the threads were about .050" oversized (they were not strait and the tap they used must have been very dull. The bolt was pretty strait and square (about .00035"), but that's when I discovered the next major issue.The bolt lugs were seating on a very large burr (about .07" worth). So I took the action into work a recut the seating face while removing the burrs on a #13 Brown & Sharpe. I made a spring loaded jig to check the seating surface with the bolt lugs and it had about 75% seating. I left it alone. I didn't know they made aftermarket recoil lugs at the time, and made one out of 4150 pretreat steel that was ground flat and was parallel. I then finished up the headspacing with a Forster gauge as a reference. Rechecked it with the home brew gauge and runout was less than a half thousandth. So now I have a good barreled action, and Doug went thru the trigger group setting everything at about 3lb. more or less (I don't remember the exact numbers). Then we looked the stock over and knew we had a problem! Their investment casting was a joke. I went to my drawer full of ball end mills and found one that was about .0075's smaller than the diameter. Made a ground pin to lap the casting to fit the reciever OD. Ended up being about .002" smaller than the OD of the reciever. I then drilled the stock for pillars, and made a couple. Doug and I rebedded the action and recoil lug with Super Belzonia with satinless steel. Then we bedded the pillars.
Now we're finally ready to shoot. Doug and I go to the range and about every thrid shot the trigger freezes up in mid travel. But I then have a round fire while easing off the saftey. I thught it was me! But it did it again with Doug. He takes the rifle home and redjusts everything. said he saw nothing outta place. Samething thing, but maybe slightly smoother. After a couple more times the saftey screwed up he takes it back to his shop, and calls Ferris. Ferris looks it over and said everything was dead right. Ferris goes home and brings back a highly rebuilt 1978 trigger (lots of custom built parts in it), and it worked just fine. He told Doug that everybody knew that the Remington triggers were suspect, and never trust their saftey. I started out shooting 3/4" groups and got them down to sightly less than a half inch in a day. Bullets were just plain jane 55 grain Vmax's, and the powder was BLC2. I was finally happy. Had I bought a Savage (or Howa) in the first place I'd not gone thru this load of crap. Now I'm about ready for a good barrel, but may go to .222 or 6x45 instead. I could have had the reamer for next to nothing, and wish I'd have bought it from Ferris as it was ground to his specs. I miss Ferris dearly
gary
