EABCO Standard Rifle.........219D.Wasp

[bgjohn]

I received my rifle from EABCO today. As usual they do a beautiful job. This one is in caliber 219 Donaldson Wasp. I have a side focus Nikon Buckmaster scope for it which I will mount tonight and sight in tomorrow. Hopefully it will be another tackdriver as is my other M97 rifle.
JM

 

[AckleymanII]

The barrel on my buddies Model 97 in 6.5 Benchrest Magnum is a real piece of crap. It has to be the roughest barrel that I have ever seen put on any gun. It has to be de-coppered every 10-15 shots because the barrel is copper plated...yes, I mean copper plated!
He does not lap his barrels.

Also, he does not make a bore guide for the gun. The action and trigger gets full of cleaning solvent everytime you clean it.

I wonder how long it is going to take the amonia based products to eat up that complicated falliing block action and trigger mechanism.

I think that he used to put Shilen barrels on the guns, now he makes his own, big GIANT step backwards!

I had rather eat a rat than own one of those guns.

 

[bgjohn]

I now own TWO of them. Plus a BF pistol. I just run a patch down the barrel and it is CLEAN! The same is true of two others own by my friends. EABCO uses premium barrels. He doesn't make his own. I suppose you might get a bad one. But I'll bet that Eben would replace it if you talked to him. I suspect that what you say is WRONG!
JM

 

[AckleymanII]

I did call him and he told me that he did make his own barrels. I told him of how bad the barrel fouled. He explained that the barrels were not lapped and it would be cost prohibitive to lap the barrels.

In addition, he said that the rifle would need to be cleaned every 10-12 shots until the barrel was broke in. I looked at the barrel with a bore scope and the barrel is so rough that it may never get broke in. I have a 150+ rounds down the barrel now
and the bore still turns gold after 15 shots. I have tried to polish the barrel with JB and Flitz to no avail, the tool marks are just too deep.

I have had many, many custom barrels of Hart, Shilen, Broughton, Krieger, Douglas, and Pac Nor. I have never seen a barrel of this poor quality put on a custom gun. by the way, all the custom barrels above whose bores are slick as a piece of glass take more than one patch to get them clean.

This 6.5 Benchrest Magnum Model 97 is the biggest POS that I have ever seen in a custom gun, I feel really bad for my good friend that waited a year to get this rifle.

I am glad that you have a good one, you obviously got one of the barrels that Shilen made. You really need to get someone to make you a custom bore guide that will seal the chamber to keep all those solvents out of the trigger and falling block. Amonia really etches Carbon steel.

 

[ChuckMiller]

I've owned 4 of the M97 rifles, 1 - 223AI, 2 - 223's, and a 25-35AI, and a 357mag pistol. The last 223 was a current rifle and had the usual "will not extract" after a couple rounds and barrel felt like a sewer pipe, accuracy was terrible. All the rimmed case rifles I've had worked fine, as for rimmless he should take the offerings out of his line. The flimsey extractor is a poor design at best and the company response is, "your shooting too hot of a load" is crap. You don't buy this rifle in 223 to load it down to 221FB velocities. I'm not talking about 150.00 beater built in a third world country, this is a 900.00 custom! The 223AI is an early model with Shilen barrel and accuracy is good, I just need to find a way to sling a rod under the rifle so I can knock out the case every shot. I love the way they look and feel I just wish there was a way to re-chamber mine into a rimmed case without breaking the bank, again.

 

[bgjohn]

Re-Chamber it to 219 D.Wasp. More powder capacity and a rimmed case too.
JM

 

[AckleymanII]

Good luck and best wishes with your rifle, JB.

 

[bgjohn]

These rifles have a very tight chamber. They are a pain-in-the-butt to load for. Formed brass from EABCO needs to be sized, trimmed and neck turned to chamber in the rifle. This is not for the casual reloader.
JM

 

[ConnorExum]

I received my rifle from EABCO today. As usual they do a beautiful job. This one is in caliber 219 Donaldson Wasp. I have a side focus Nikon Buckmaster scope for it which I will mount tonight and sight in tomorrow. Hopefully it will be another tackdriver as is my other M97 rifle.
JM

John, I hope your rifle is everything you want it to be. Personally I know nothing abotu EABCO... So I'm interested in hearing how your rifle shoots... I'm also interested in hearing about the 219 Donaldson Wasp it is a cartridge that I thought went out of favor years ago... I would love ot hear about it.

 

[ConnorExum]

I did call him and he told me that he did make his own barrels. I told him of how bad the barrel fouled. He explained that the barrels were not lapped and it would be cost prohibitive to lap the barrels.

In addition, he said that the rifle would need to be cleaned every 10-12 shots until the barrel was broke in. I looked at the barrel with a bore scope and the barrel is so rough that it may never get broke in. I have a 150+ rounds down the barrel now
and the bore still turns gold after 15 shots. I have tried to polish the barrel with JB and Flitz to no avail, the tool marks are just too deep.

I have had many, many custom barrels of Hart, Shilen, Broughton, Krieger, Douglas, and Pac Nor. I have never seen a barrel of this poor quality put on a custom gun. by the way, all the custom barrels above whose bores are slick as a piece of glass take more than one patch to get them clean.

This 6.5 Benchrest Magnum Model 97 is the biggest POS that I have ever seen in a custom gun, I feel really bad for my good friend that waited a year to get this rifle.

I am glad that you have a good one, you obviously got one of the barrels that Shilen made. You really need to get someone to make you a custom bore guide that will seal the chamber to keep all those solvents out of the trigger and falling block. Amonia really etches Carbon steel.

Why not switch the barrel out to somethign that is lapped?

 

[bgjohn]

These typicaly shoot great. I have a M97 in 6.5 BRM caliber and it is very accurate as are the BF pistols in various calibers that I have had. This M97 Is a 219 D. Wasp. EABCO makes his chambers very tight. I have the brass problem solved and will do some accuracy testing next week. I have a pistol silhouette match this Sunday shooting a BF pistol in 22 Hornet caliber.
JM

 

[bgjohn]

Got to the range today and did some load testing. It shot 52 gr Speer HP very well after sighting in on sandbags. It shot 55gr Dogtown sp good too but I had them loaded too hot and couldn't extract the fired case. I had to poke those out with my Dewey teflon coated cleaning rod. The 52's were not loaded as hot and ejected just fine. After sighting in I shot up the rest of my ammo zapping small rocks on the 200 yd berm. Too easy, hard to miss with this rifle setup with a Nikon Buckmaster SF 6-18 scope.
JM

 

[travisch]

I bought a Model 97 D in 6.5BRM 2 years ago and love it. The target picture in this link is actually mine http://www.eabco.com/6.5mmBRM.pdf I will admit that the bore is maybe a bit rough and I do need to clean this gun more then others but it does NOT affect accuracy in any way. Its taken 4 Elk, 12 Antelope and 8 deer here in Wyoming - it is a very effective cartridge. I hate the ejection system but once I learned that clean brass and a clean chamber are the key its functioned fine. A hot load in any falling block is going to stick but I will admit that I do push the envelope with this gun on certain loads but as long as its clean it will function fine.
I was going to order one for my son as he starts hunting this year but if you guys that hate yours are interested in selling I just as soon not wait for Eben's backlog.

 

[bgjohn]

I have found that using VV powder as recommended by EABCO allows me to load hotter loads with less extraction troubles. I have sold my BF pistol to a friend. Now I'm thinking about buying another in a different caliber or another M97.
JM