rebarrell Ruger Hawkeye

[JDS]

I am giving up on a Ruger Hawkeye barrell in 257 Roberts, shipped back to Ruger and they already replaced barrell, small to no improvement. I have 4 other Bobs in pre64, Kimber, Cooper and Remington and I know all challenges to a quarter-bore. Is the Ruger Hawkeye reciever worth rebarrelling with a Hart barrell, or are there inherant accuracy issues with this receiver. Always wanted a 257Roberts Ackley Improved and wanted to ship rifle to Hart for a #4contour with a 26"barrell but would that configuration be unbalenced and barrell heavy? varmint and hunting only. thanks,John.

 

[Larryh128]

There is no reason that the Ruger action can't be made to shoot. I would check the locking lug engagement before I got too wild on anything else. A friend had a Ruger re-barreled, bedded etc & it still was only a minute of whitetail rifle. I was going to turn it into a 300 WSM for him over the winter & when I got into it, it had a Shilen Barrel & a really good bedding job. The culprit was a locking lug that was .0015 ahead of the other lug, squared them & it went to a bug hole rifle. Worth looking at.

 

[WyleWD]

There is no reason that the Ruger action can't be made to shoot. I would check the locking lug engagement before I got too wild on anything else. The culprit was a locking lug that was .0015 ahead of the other lug, squared them & it went to a bug hole rifle. Worth looking at.

I've found a couple of Rugers like that over the last 10 years. That would be a quick and easy item to check, especially since you replaced the barrel already and that didn't solve it. In any event, if I was you I'd want to find out exactly why it isn't shooting before I spent a serious chunk of change to rechamber it only to possibly find out there is something else causing the problem. Just my 2 cents worth. WD

 

[chino1969]

My personal opinion is the Ruger receiver is not an accurate platform to merit a custom barrel. They are fine hunting rifles but they have very thin rails on the receiver, not much bedding surface and the angled front guard screw presents problems. I have an older 77 tang safety in .25-06 that I bedded, floated the barrel, fine tuned the trigger, etc.. This rifle is as good as I can make it but I will not spend the money putting a quality barrel on it for the previous reasons mentioned. I have several trued Remington actions that are switch barrel rigs, a Borden Alpine action along with a Savage single shot action. All these actions have at least 4 or 5 barrels chambered to fit them and they do very well. That's my opinion but you'll rarely see a Ruger in groundhog matches or club competition.

 

[watercam]

I have replaced barrels on three Rugers and managed to make all shoot. There is plenty of flat bedding area and if one uses the pillars Brownells has for the angled front action screw I do not think it presents any problems at all. I have an early MKII (ie - hammer forged) barrel in .257 Roberts that responded well to pillar/bedding. Started as a 1.5-2 moa shooter and ended up under .5 moa. I did lap the barrel which had a large effect. Perhaps the throat was iffy. Did not have a bore scope at that time.
Installed a Lilja 6mm/7.5 twist on a Target/Varmint (6XC) and shot Long Range with it successfully for several years.
Last was a 77R magnum that received a #3 Shilen 7mm Rem. mag. barrel/ lug lap/bed and pillar with no other truing and it shoots .7 moa w/ Barnes 150 gr. TSX out to 400 yds. so far.
Guess it depends upon your requirements!

 

[SDWhirlwind]

About a year ago Jim Scoutten's Outdoor Channel show(Shooting USA) or similar did an in house walk through of Ruger. In one part it showed an employee using a hydraulic press to 'straighten' the recievers before they went on down the assembly line. Cannot remember if the 'straightening process" was before fitting bolts/barrels or before final machineing but either way it made it easy for me to decide to never own another. Suppose some die hard Ruger fans will claim I 'don't have a clue' or it not true but when a reciever needs to be straightened first it isn't coming into my house. The surprising part is how little time he took on each!!!!! Kinda like in a meat packing plant picking what goes into wieners and what goes into dog food!!!! Many top end smiths won't touch one and I suspect they have good reason!

 

[JDS]

I tried Tubbs bullet lapping package and lots of JB but still after 500 rounds this barrel is a true copper mine. Averaging 3hour of soaking with Barnes for every 10rounds fired. Lugs look evenly balanced in there ware pattern and contact, I would bed it if I wasn't so suspect of the barrell. It will average 2MIA but where I hunt, high sagebrush desert, that won't cut it, where 250 yard shots is close. It is probably meeting Rugars accuracy requirements, but thats not saying much. thanks for suggestions and help. John.

 

[1000yardstare]

Had a Ruger Hawkeye in .257 Roberts three years ago. Finally had a rifle in one of my dream cartridges. To say the dream turned into disappointment would be overly dramatic. Shot 1 1/2 inch three shot groups at 100 with great regularity with the occasional 1 inch group. Plenty good enough for deer or coyote.

As a previous poster said, depends on what you are after. I was after tighter groups so I traded the rifle on something else.

This was after talking to my local gunsmith who will not work on a Ruger. He says the receiver is an investment casting which may explain why a previous poster described a straightening process on the receiver. They come out of a mould and may slightly warp in the cooling. My `smiths main problem is removing an overly tight barrel from a Ruger receiver. The process may crack the cast receiver ring. He just went through too much pain with customers many years ago in trying to accurize a bolt action Ruger. The customers could not accept the real cost based on hours of work at a reasonable rate.

I had a heavy barrel Ruger Mark I with tang safety in .220 Swift which was one of the most accurate rifles that I have owned. Nailed chucks at 400 yds shooting prone with a sling. Shot it until the barrel was gone and sold it to a chap who had big plans. Lost track ot it. Same could be said of a Ruger heavy barrel Mark I in .25-06.

On the other hand one of the worst "target" rifles I have owned was a Ruger Mark II Target Rifle in .308. The laminated stock slowly disintegrated around the recoil lug. Way too soft.

So in my experience with bolt action Rugers it has to be accurate out of the box or it is not worth the effort to accurize it with a reasonable amount of effort and expense.

But I imagine there are those that would disagree with me.

Bill

 

[Larryh128]

While I'm not a big Ruger fan, investment casting is not necessarily a bad thing. There are quite a few top end recievers that are investment cast. The big drawback is that the initial tooling is expense, but you have a finished part that doesn't require polishing. A cast reciever shouldn't be less strong than one machined out of bar or round stock if the alloy is the same and might actually have less stresses induced by the lack of machining.