I never had any luck with the Scenar's for the 7mm. I found that they prefer a tight bore diameter. I bought 500 of them and ended up selling most of them on here. Mine likes Hornady and Bergers.
My story with those bullets and a tight bore didn’t turn out well, when it mattered the most. About 2018, I’m totally into the saum as a cartridge and two exceptionally accurate saums, of 4 I’m running are Krieger 5R’s. At this time, I do not know they are tight bored, but I do know from their brass, that I must down load for them relative to the other two. That’s no issue once known, because whether it’s the bore, fast twist or throat, these barrels are fantastic, and the same velocity is reached, anyhow. (Now, I have blown up ELDM’s at this point, but nothing else whatsoever.)
So, in leading up to a big team match, I’ve settled on the Scenars after detailed head to head accuracy comparisons at 600, and the fact that their jacket appears to be as sturdy as an old penny rolled into a cone.
Fast forward to Ben Avery, team match at1,000. Deep into the team match all is going well. The coach has steered my saum clean through wind, a bit ahead of the .284’s. It’s late in match and we are really moving when disaster strikes, a 7 or 6 is raised low left. We stop and discuss. I confirm but he already knew there wasn’t and unintentional fire, and the gun handling had been good. I know the load recoiled as expected. Forced to resume unresolved, the next round, or possibly one soon after it, required a call to mark the target. That sickening wait, as expected resulted in a miss. The 7 was a bullet strike in the process of delaminating.
I had never generated the same level of barrel heat through that point, with those bullets, is all I have ever concluded. In hindsight, the downloading associated with the two 5R’s wasn’t the 8 twist rate or the throat, it was the bore. When I say “downloading,” we are only talking about 1.5 grains or so. While the best grouping I have experienced, they were grim reapers. Berger wasn’t immune, either. When it was 100% acknowledged that this particular SAUM could and would blow up bullets if shot fast, my daughter still picked it for a state LR match. Shooting 10’s and X’s in the changing wind like it was intended to do, she couldn’t let off the gas when things were going really well, and the same thing happened. She had led junior div with it comfortably but had both a blue and a yellow 180 vanish in Texas heat in that match.
So, I agree they shoot incredibly well with a tight bore. I think all 7mm’s likely do, but the added heat and stress to the copper sure can be more than they can take when the barrel gets really hot. If you can be sure it will never get extremely hot, then a barrel like that is magical.
