Whats My Borescope Telling Me

[Buzzsaw]

Yeah, they have shotgun triggers. Never going to be better than what you're seeing now.

THIS< THIS< THIS tell your buddy to go buy a Ruger American with a Vortex cheapy. It will be ten times the shooter than his trotline anchor. OR, keep the Remy and hunt under 100 yards.

 

[best defense]

Nothing that you have said or shown is out of the ordinary for those rifles. The barrel is fine, could use a little cleaning.
As others have mentioned, if you get under 1 1/2" you have a shooter.

I have a old 742 30/06 carbine that would not shoot well so I took it apart and cleaned the bbl. Just by chance I measured the id on the muzzle with some of my chamber reamer bushings and found the bbl was belled at the muzzle end. So I cut the bell out which was about .250" long and recrowned the bbl and threaded for a muzzle break. The rifle is not a bench rest gun but it shoots almost moa.

As suggested by others, clean the barrel down to bare metal and try two or three other brands of ammo. If that doesn't work, there are only two choices that I can think of; Either rebarrel the rifle or trade it in on a "good" bolt action. Just as an aside, it never hurts to take a bore scope when you are going to buy a rifle.

 

[Muddyboots]

They are no different than most 2 piece stocks. There is a sweet spot to place stock on a bag or sticks that has to be identical for EVERY shot. My Ruger No. 1 was absolute PITA to insure placement to get best accuracy. I took a water based marker to the best spot. Even my Encore is same. Also make sure both stocks are torqued correctly. I would also scrub trigger assembly with really good degreaser to remove "centuries" old oil and grease buildup. Like most said, great up close and personal rifle. I would also try loading in down a bit to see if the rifle settles down better with lighter load. Its a 200yd rifle accuracy wise at best so why not try to find a best load that still is effective at its range.

 

[DDB TX]

I own several of the Remington pump rifles. 760s, from the 1950s and 1960s. They are not tack drivers, but I was experimenting with pump vs. lever action (Savage 99s) for followups. They are perfectly acceptable 150 to 200 yard rifles. Most interesting one is a .270 that someone before me professionally chopped to 18.5 inches with a recessed crown, and which I put a Boyd's thumbhole on. THAT is a handy rifle and you can get 10 round magazines for when the wolves circle. Tasco Silver Antler scope that you don't dare change the power on or it will change POI by 2 inches. (Why such an old cheapo? Just to see what happened.)
I tested RL 17 and RL 15, using 130 grain Nosler Accubonds loaded around an OCW node predicted by Quickload and an OCW calculator for an 18.5 inch barrel.
Best results were from 49.5 grains of RL 15, set at 3.28 inches. (Longer than that and the accubonds were in the lands on this old rifle). The 49.5 grain Quickload velocity was about 2850 fps.
The "Shooting Range" was dicey, 50 yards and a steel drum lid as a target - rough when using shoot n see targets because of the backsplash. I was all contorted up to even get a rest on the fender of a Gator. But I still managed to get a 0.6" group (corrected to 100 yds) out of the 49.5 grain load, and the 49.4 and 50.0 grain loads were under an inch (corrected for distance) as well. I was pretty pleased with those results!
pic 1 is the 760 and a one off proprietary hard chromed Savage 99 carbine with an unbranded plastic stock.Pic 2 is the backside of the 49.5 grain target. It is more accurate than the Savage 99 too.
I have untouched 760s in 30-06 (a BDL no less) and .300 Savage (an old 1954 gun). They are not as accurate. But are fine 200 yard deer rifles.

 

[best defense]

THIS< THIS< THIS tell your buddy to go buy a Ruger American with a Vortex cheapy. It will be ten times the shooter than his trotline anchor. OR, keep the Remy and hunt under 100 yards.

Just keep the Leupold. If you send it in to the Leupold company and tell them you just want to have it checked, it should only cost you the price of shipping.

 

[Dr. Vette]

FYI, there are replacement trigger springs available.
Buff and polish the trigger internals, replace the springs, and you will be amazed at the change. The distance you still have to pull the trigger is too long, but it's much lighter and smoother.
One of mine is 1 1/2 pound pull though the spring was advertised as 2#. It's really too low, so I plan on swapping for a slightly stronger "allegedly 3#" spring.

Don't let them fool you - the Ruger American trigger needs work out of the box too. That one needs the spring cut to just below 0.600 inches.

 

[Tiny Tim]

What do you think this rifle should do?

Not sure. I think it'll probably make 2 MOA when fouled a bit more

 

[QuietTexan]

There is more corrosion in the barrel. Pictures are just typical of what's there. It exists from throat to muzzle, but chamber is clean.

I don't have anything to say about the rifle in general, but rather the bore specifically:

Looks about like several I've had. Like you I've seen awful barrels shoot, usually after they copper up but before they copper out (pretty narrow window).

I got really really serious about cleaning up a barrel that was worse than this one, to the point I kind of tried to ruin it. I used as stainless steel wire brush, and JB Bore Paste (blue tub) on VFG pellets with Kroil to try to polish it without actually using polish (red tub). It did kind of smooth out the bore in general and helped with coppering up. Since this is a 30-06 and a repeater, you might want to try running a Tubbs final finish kit down it to see if that helps the coppering up and gives you more of a window to work with. It will almost certainly move the throat out, but given that you're probably already jumping quite a bit at mag length that shouldn't hurt much. I'm not saying in any way you'll get under an inch doing this, but you should at least have more shots to work with before it goes to pot.

FF Kit 308 Cal

FinalFinish and FinalFinish TMS bullet kits and loaded ammo correct and improve reamer marks, dimensional uniformity, tool marks and surface finish issues in your barrel providing enhanced accuracy of your .308 caliber rifle.

www.davidtubb.com

Didn't see anywhere that they type of ammo was mentioned (sorry if I missed that). I love 30-06, but man there is some absolute junk ammo out there that is slow, piggy garbage that doesn't group for anything. I don't know if he handloads at all, but it's not hard to produce better than factory ammo using economical equipment in this specific cartridge. I went through something like 10 different types of factory before I found something my A-Bolt would group ~1MOA more than once with. Not even consistently, just did it twice instead of once or never. I beat all that factory ammo with the very first handloads I ever made on a Lee press using a powder dipper.

 

[Dr. Vette]

I loaded up some Tubbs Final Finish bullets for a rifle that I had whose bore looked not unlike the one in this thread. I figured why not, as it was otherwise going to be the cost of a rebarrel. I shot the entire kit through in order to give it a full effort.

It brought it from a 2 MOA rifle to under 1 MOA shooting at 200 yards. While not stellar that at least made it usable for the small amount I will ever shoot it.

 

[Tiny Tim]

Thanks all. Rifle was cleaned to bare metal prior to shooting. He uses 150 gr core lokts. 90% of his shots are likely inside 75 yds. He's going to Saskatchewan in November. No shots over 200, most inside 100. I think a little more fouling will help. He only shoots a few rounds a year. Offered one of my rifles, but he wants to use his.

And I agree with all who have experience with this rifle. The trigger feels like gravel in a pair of slip joint pliers; gravel, not sand lol. None of it is conducive to accuracy. Was just wondering if what I see in the barrel is consistent with what I see on paper. Regardless, sounds like it's not out of the ordinary. Had a slide action when I was a kid. Shot 1.5- 2 MOA with most ammo.

 

[QuietTexan]

It brought it from a 2 MOA rifle to under 1 MOA shooting at 200 yards.

Thanks for the first hand account. I've never been brave enough to use the entire kit Good to hear a positive result.



(supporter post inbound): Any chance he'll let you slip some HHs into a few cases for him? I'm 5-for-5 on bang flops with 180s from a Begara 30-06 of similar barrel quality, they've just flat out dug graves for whitetails for me, with the side benefit of they didn't copper up like (in my case) Hornady bullets did. I think the jackets were essentially tearing on the messed up parts of the barrel and leaving huge ribbons down the lands.

 

[Dr. Vette]

Thanks for the first hand account. I've never been brave enough to use the entire kit Good to hear a positive result.

Yeah, what was I going to hurt?
I figured by the time I had a rebarrel, Cerakote, etc it was going to be close to $1000.
The Tubbs, powder and primers last summer were a lot cheaper despite the supply drought.

 

[Hairtrigger]

many people are too quick to use a bore scope
Many other things to check before and also you need realistic expectations on the rifle

 

[HunterMann]

I had a 742 in 30-06 when I was younger. When I was a kid most of the gents had one or the 760 pump version so I had to get one when I could buy one for myself. It generally shot minute of deer with most loads. After a lot of scrubbing and cleaning the bore it did shoot a little better. It seemed to prefer 165 grain bullets. The old Winchester Fail Safe cartridges shot the best with 2 inch groups at 200 yards; I could not test 300 yards at the time. A better trigger would have helped. I successfully shot deer, bear, and a moose with it up in the Northeast Kingdoms. It wore a Redfield 2 3/4 power scope. Driving the backwoods with a loaded gun was not allowed so the magazine had the quickest load time. Eventually I sold it and moved on to the bolt action rifles, but I still have great memories from those hunting adventures.