.308 HOWA upgrade

[Chiquita]

I have a .308 HOWA 1500 on a KRG Bravo system. The barrel has about 1800 rounds through and it may be due for a new one in about a year.

I will keep the KRG Bravo stock and stick with .308 but either keep the action and upgrade the barrel or upgrade the action and the barrel.

I like to get recommendations from you guys as to what I can upgrade to.

Thanks fo your input.

 

[joshb]

I’m watching this and I started another thread to ask the basic question: “Are Howa action’s worth building a gun with?”

 

[ballisticxlr]

A .308win barrel should be good for around 4k rounds before it starts to even get tired. If you're shooting an aggressively busy match schedule then you might need one in a year but I'm going to go out on a limb and predict that that's not the case.

Howa are great actions. You'll benefit marginally from having the action face and tenon threads trued but other than that there's not a lot you can do to it that's worthwhile. I'd just slap another barrel on. McGowan makes drop-in's but grab yourself a McGowan barrel nut so you can get your headspace set as close as possible to zero and call that a day.

As far as are they worth building... meh. There's a lot of good stuff going on in a Howa. Japanese made and the machining is really good to begin with. Metric tenon threads piss off every American gunsmith and the recessed breech face is annoying for me. M16 type extractor is liked by many (I can take or leave it), bolts move very smoothly. Firing pin channels need bushed if using small primer cases (or go with magnum primers). The flat bottomed action is brilliant in chassis applications especially if you put in a skim bed of epoxy. Plenty of good triggers available. I dig on the integral recoil lug.

In South Africa Howa's are extremely popular and used by a surprising number of people for a surprising number of things, especially competition. Here in the states I think they get less attention than they deserve. I really like Howa 1500's myself, especially the silky bolt cycling. So much so that I did a full build on one in 6xc. That being the case, I might be a little biased.

 

[Chiquita]

Thank you.

 

[Forum Boss]

1. The two-stage HACT factory trigger is one of the best factory triggers for general use (other than benchrest).

2. Metric threads should not be an issue for a competent Smith with modern equipment.

3. Watch the Rifleshooter.com video on barrel removal. It is not as difficult as some suggest.

Howa 1500 barrel removal

Howa 1500 barrel removal I’ve been asked by quite a few different shooters if Howa factory barrels are difficult to remove- the short answer is, no, they aren’t. You don’t even n…

rifleshooter.com

 

[DGP4]

I too own a Howa 1500 heavy barrel in .308 and I am very impressed with it. Ballisticxlr's comments are spot on. The only thing to keep in mind is that since the front action screw goes through the recoil lug you need to play with the torque setting of it to get the best accuracy.

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