I am currently working on a new project rifle which until yesterday I was quite excited about. For a few years now I have wanted a 6br so a short while back I finally bought one. My choice was a Savage 12 Benchrest. I am not a competition shooter, just a guy who enjoys punching holes in paper targets. Read a lot of good stuff about the inherent accuracy of the over the counter Savage rifles and my shooting buddy has a couple of them that shoot lights out so I thought I would give one a chance. Never had a Savage before but the ability to swap barrels and the availability of good quality hand lapped barrels was very appealing so I bought it.
Yesterday was the first chance I've had to get to a range that I could shoot out to 100 yards. I took four different loads with me to see how they printed. One of them was the load I used to print a five shot group at 50 yards that measured about 3/8" at my local indoor range. I proceeded to shoot six five shot groups using each load, some twice, and none of them grouped under two inches! This was a 72 degree day with zero wind. I packed up and left the range going over everything I could think of on my drive home that could have resulted in such lousy results. Once home I checked everything over and found no loose action screws or loose scope mounts etc. So, next thing was to grab my buddy's bore scope and look at the barrel. What I saw was enough to make me toss my tacos! This barrel is an absolute piece of junk! I looks like starring down at a railroad switch yard! Thers's not a smooth spot in it! It sucks!
If a company is going to sell a rifle as a "target" rifle why in the world would they put a junk barrel on it! The whole idea of a target rifle is to shoot the smallest groups possible. Raise the price $200 bucks and put a decent barrel on it! There is no damn excuse for this. My buddy has a Savage LRPV in 260 Rem and we scoped it and the barrel looks good. Not a match barrel but a pretty good looking barrel and the gun shoots great. I am really disappointed with Savage about this and it makes me wonder about their quality control. I say this because I contacted them about a couple of other issues I discovered when I got this rifle. One was the action screws were only engaging the action by two threads and the tiny 6-48 tapped holes for the scope rail required thread chasing before the screws would go in. The response I got was "OK". Boy, I feel better now!
I'm going to re-barrel this rifle with an after-market barrel and my guess is that it will shoot great. I see no reason to contact Savage about replacing it as I don't want another piece of crap barrel or the hassle of sending the gun back to them. I am going to send them some pictures of the bore and tell them what I think about it. What's right is right, and this ain't right.
Thanks,
Mike
Yesterday was the first chance I've had to get to a range that I could shoot out to 100 yards. I took four different loads with me to see how they printed. One of them was the load I used to print a five shot group at 50 yards that measured about 3/8" at my local indoor range. I proceeded to shoot six five shot groups using each load, some twice, and none of them grouped under two inches! This was a 72 degree day with zero wind. I packed up and left the range going over everything I could think of on my drive home that could have resulted in such lousy results. Once home I checked everything over and found no loose action screws or loose scope mounts etc. So, next thing was to grab my buddy's bore scope and look at the barrel. What I saw was enough to make me toss my tacos! This barrel is an absolute piece of junk! I looks like starring down at a railroad switch yard! Thers's not a smooth spot in it! It sucks!
If a company is going to sell a rifle as a "target" rifle why in the world would they put a junk barrel on it! The whole idea of a target rifle is to shoot the smallest groups possible. Raise the price $200 bucks and put a decent barrel on it! There is no damn excuse for this. My buddy has a Savage LRPV in 260 Rem and we scoped it and the barrel looks good. Not a match barrel but a pretty good looking barrel and the gun shoots great. I am really disappointed with Savage about this and it makes me wonder about their quality control. I say this because I contacted them about a couple of other issues I discovered when I got this rifle. One was the action screws were only engaging the action by two threads and the tiny 6-48 tapped holes for the scope rail required thread chasing before the screws would go in. The response I got was "OK". Boy, I feel better now!
I'm going to re-barrel this rifle with an after-market barrel and my guess is that it will shoot great. I see no reason to contact Savage about replacing it as I don't want another piece of crap barrel or the hassle of sending the gun back to them. I am going to send them some pictures of the bore and tell them what I think about it. What's right is right, and this ain't right.
Thanks,
Mike
