Worn out old rifle...

entoptics

Well-Known Member
Joined
Jan 16, 2018
Messages
878
Keep trying to convince myself to rebarrel this sucker, and perhaps toss it in a Mg Element 4.0 chassis, but pretty much every time I take it out, it does something like it did today while I was doing a little powder testing of some new lots of Retumbo and H1000...

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Began life as a lightly used Savage 110 Long Range Hunter in 300WM. Shot the OEM barrel out (~1500 rounds), so I rebarreled it a few years ago myself with a 24", heavy sporter, 1:10, Shilen Select stainless from Northland Shooter Supply, but otherwise totally stock. I now have 914 chronograph entries in my spreadsheet's Shilen tab, and it probably has close to 1800 down range, as I'm well into my 5th firing of the 300 pieces of Norma brass I bought somewhere around the 300 round mark in the life of the Shilen.

I've scoped the throat, and it looks like alligator skin, and my distance to the lands has moved nearly 0.1" for a 208 gr ELD.

Kinda crazy to think about. 1800 rounds. That's about 20 lbs of H1000 barbequeing it's way down the pipe. :oops:

Also kinda crazy that the OEM savage action/stock has about 3000 rounds on it, with nothing but a new ejector spring or two.

I haven't babied it either. Full tilt loads of a 208 gr ELD trucking along at about 2875 fps, and though I rarely run it blazing hot, I typically shoot 3-4 rounds as fast as I can shoot them carefully, which results in "hot potato" barrel temps, then let it cool to "warmish" before moving on to the next string.

Not too bad for a $1000 rifle. Particularly one that will flatten any land animal in North America or Europe out to 500 yds or so, and is capable of hitting a car door at a mile 9 outa 10 times.😁
 
Nice write up. Just curious - are you losing velocity with that throat wear?
I've replaced a few barrels in smaller calibers and they seem to lose velocity before the accuracy becomes much worse.
 
Nice write up. Just curious - are you losing velocity with that throat wear?
I've replaced a few barrels in smaller calibers and they seem to lose velocity before the accuracy becomes much worse.
Hard to say for sure, but I don't think so.

I just sorted through my chrony data, and plotted up velocity per grain of powder for everything I could confirm had identical components (e.g. primer, brass, bullet, powder). Every time I do this sort of thing, I kick myself for not taking better notes...There's a pile of data that had to be left out due to incomplete notes...:(

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The left most data is ~500 rounds on the barrel, and the right most is >1500 rounds. As you can see the data is pretty much inconclusive. If anything there might be a slight upward trend in velocity per grain of powder. I wouldn't put much stock in it though. With variation in powder lot, ambient temperature, C.O.A.L., etc, that could just be an artifact in the noise.
 
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