What’s a realistic accuracy expectation from a factory barrel?

[Laurie]

In my previous post, I mentioned Italian 'Vortex' rifles. Vortex is of course an optics manufacturer. I should have said Victrix. This lot:

https://www.facebook.com/victrixarmamentsitaly/

After we saw their FTR and F-Open rifles here, they were subsequently bought out by whoever it is who owns Beretta, the large Italian manufacturer. They always made a lot of sniper and tactical rifles and under Beretta, that appears to be their focus now.

 

[PopCharlie]

I have a factory Savage .308 barrel that came on a Savage F/TR that did 5 round groups at .5 MOA or slightly below consistently and have a friend that has a Remington police style in .308 that does the same. From what I have heard Tikka's chambered with the right cartridge can do .5's pretty reliably also. However it's like everyone else has been saying .25 MOA on a stock rifle is a fluke, not the norm and when it comes to .5's it depends on the person pulling the trigger

I have a Cooper Varminter in 6mm BR that I have had for many years. It has about 2500 rounds thru the barrel. It still shoots under .5 inch.

 

[Laurie]

I have a Cooper Varminter in 6mm BR that I have had for many years. It has about 2500 rounds thru the barrel. It still shoots under .5 inch.

Coopers fall into the same category as AIs and similar - ie limited production and hardly 'factory' compared to mass produced Remingtons and Savages. I believe that Cooper Arms uses bought-in Wilson premium grade barrels on its rifles.

Returning to the UK's Bench Rest Association's 'Factory Rifle' classification, Cooper rifles were disallowed in it many years since as 'not being in the spirit of a factory rifle'.

Here is what my good friend Brian Fox (Fox Firearms UK) our importer says of these rifles on his website:

"Each and Every Cooper Rifle is Made With the Same Care and Attention No Matter What the Grade"

Fox firearms are proud to supply Cooper Rifles. For hunting, COOPER rifles are probably the best available, world-wide, short of spending thousands on top-quality custom rifles. Indeed, they may be fairly described as ‘semi-custom’ arms, and we believe nothing can compete in anything like their price range. Each Cooper is built to order, but we always have a few in stock. Please scroll through the page to see the full range of rifles.

All actions and stock hardware are machined from solid bar stock steel. All barrels are premium match grade and air gauge inspected. Our stocks are hand crafted every step of the way. They are cut, shaped, sanded, filled, checkered, and oil finished all by hand. When our stocks meet the finished barreled actions in assembly, they are hand fit to the individual rifle. This assures our famous custom wood to metal fit.

The actions are glass bedded behind the recoil lug and 1" forward of the breech. The barrels are free-floated. Once the rifles have been tuned they are final inspected and tested. Each rifle is shot for accuracy in its individual stock. Test targets are provided with each rifle. 22 LR’s are guaranteed to shoot 1/4" 5-shot groups at 50 yards using premium grade match ammunition. 22 Hornet family cartridges are guaranteed to shoot 1/4" 3-shot groups at 50 yards using hand loads. All other centerfires are guaranteed to shoot 1/2" 3- shot groups at 100 yards using hand loaded ammunition.

They are indubitably very nice and effective rifles. 'Factory rifle' in the context of this thread? No.

 

[Laurie]

This discussion reminds me of a story told to me by Mr Norman Clark (one of the UK's longest practising and most successful gunsmiths / rifle builders) some years ago. A guy comes into the shop one day and insists on speaking to the 'top man'. He produces a run of the mill Mauser '98 based Parker-Hale 308 Win sporter, a P-H 1200 or similar, and wants to talk about having it rebarreled with a Krieger match barrel - timescales, costs etc.

Norman who had a year plus waiting list for his talents, has a policy of never undertaking work that won't give the customer value for money politely declined the job saying the rifle and the results wouldn't justify the outlay. The visitor became noticeably upset, not to say angry, and snapped "Ill have you know this is a half-minute of angle rifle!" Norman replied 1) I doubt that and 2) if it really is, why would you want to rebarrel it? Exit 'customer' slamming the front door and Norman thinking .... Well we won't see him again.

But he did. A few months later, the man reappeared, was rude and objectionable to the shop staff and others in the room, and insisted on dragging Norman out of the workshop. He then slapped a shot large 100 yard rimfire target down on the counter and triumphantly said the single word "See!" Norman looked and said "What am I supposed to see?". The target had some 30 or 40 shots spread all over it. "There wasn't anything on it that could be defined as group - 9 or 10 inches at best maybe." says Norman. The man then points to five of them that happened to cluster together in under an inch. "Look, a half-minute group" says the man, "Now apologise!"

The primary moral of this story is that for some people group size is how they define it, not objectively. I suppose the other moral is that gunsmiths can never win (although Norman who is a no nonsense guy did - he threw the man out and told him to not bother returning.)

 

[wbm]

What’s a realistic accuracy expectation from a factory barrel?

Who knows!?

Part I: After 5 decades of shooting and reloading I came to the disturbing conclusion one day that some of the most consistent rifles, accuracy wise, I ever owned were ofttimes not the ones that were designed for that very purpose. For example, years ago I came into a 7mm Magnum Savage Weather Warrior that was dressed in stainless steel, sporting a 24" fluted braked barrel.aaaand at no extra charge, an infamous black "tupperware" stock. That little beast was just phenomenal accuracy wise....I still turn to my reloading pages and look at the groups that were shot with that rifle from 120gr Noslers to 168gr Sierra's. In three pages of cut and pasted groups none were larger than could be covered with my index finger and a few that my little finger tip would cover. That rifle was just "blessed".

Part II: Had a neighbor and friend that shot a lot at Ben Avery in Phoenix. In summer he would come to the New Mexico mountains and we would shoot...well...a lot! He happened to have a rather shabby looking Remington with varmint contour barrel and tricked out trigger in 243 Winchester. Now the interesting part was that his rear base was shimmed with a piece from an old waxed match book cover...tightly wedged just under the left rear corner. That rifle would shoot 75gr Sierra HP's with a "secret" load of H4350 into groups that defied explanation. He always gave local "good ol boys" and Navajo sharpshooters a thrashing at 500 yards on weekend "turkey shoots"...never lost. The rifle was a legend! One winter day he went over to Bruno shooters supply and let a guy talk him into replacing the bases on that rifle. Next summer the rifle did not shoot well at all. The magic was gone. We told him jockingly that he needed to find that match book shim and put it back. He took us seriously and said he would try it and see but he didn't have that rear base anymore. He is gone now, gave it all up at 87. We still talk about Dick Fisher and that shabby old Remington.

 

[Evan]

I think most rifles tell you in very short order how they will shoot. Load tweaking only goes so far when you start with great components and a known good process.

I continue to play with loads for fun to see if I can find something smaller, but if you don't have fun with that, then find something that works and move on to shooting more, confident that you probably have not left anything on the table.

My experience with factory rifles (4 of them total) have achieved reasonably consistent 1/2moa performance (3, the fourth was sub 1 MOA) with tailored reloads in my hands without having to try every bullet and powder combo under the sun.

 

[Laurie]

I remember my Savage BVSS 308 when I first developed a round it was grouping at about 3/4 inch at 200

A good BVSS is a great rifle, or at least those of maybe 10-15 years ago were. Stuart Anselm who went on to captain the GB F/TR team at the FCWC in Raton 2013 started out with one of these sometime around 2007 or '08 in 223 Rem with the 1 in 9" twist rate they came with in those days. It shot remarkably well, but was hampered by the rifling pitch limitations on bullets so he rebarreled it to 308, did some filling/bedding work and collected several F/TR UK national league medals with it before moving onto fancier rifles.

 

[Old Tanker]

So just to get back on track let’s, for the purpose of this discussion, consider what is a typical “optimised load” MOA for a Ruger Precision Rifle in 6.5CM, as this can be considered a “factory” setup but it’s certainly not your run-of-the-mill sporter by a long shot. Just to compare apples with apples.
And Thanks for all the replies

I agree. I’m not a competitive shooter by any means and generally just read this forum to learn. The RPR is pretty good out of the box. In the attached file, the top row are the first three groups I shot with a RPR 6.5CM. The bottom row was experimenting with new bullets for an old, factory Rem700 Tactical .223. I am a beginner reloader.

 

[corsair4360]

Some rifles shoot very well... those with match high quality barrels more often than factory barrels. Other rifles do not shoot well, I have had several that shot well, a couple very well and multiple that are mediocre (more than 1.5" at 100 yards). The rifle makes a difference, the loads are important and the shooter makes a difference.

 

[Laurie]

Coincidentally, an interesting and (I believe ) relevant comment on this issue came out of a chat I had at a UK BR Association winter season BR match this morning with Darrel Evans. Darrel won the UKBRA's 100 yard Factory Class championship for no end of years when we had such a thing and his tool of choice was a Sako 75 (??) Stainless Varmint in 6PPC-USA with the nice laminate stock, not exactly your standard sporting rifle.

Only a handful of these beasts made it to the UK and are much prized. Darrel really made this thing perform and he used it extensively too on long-range hill foxes in his native (and windy!) Wales region of the UK - wasn't fair on the foxes he said, anything under 300 yards and a fox was dead.

That much I already knew. What I didn't know was that he and a friend bought identical Sako 6PPCs together on the same day from the same gun dealer, both rifles factory new. Almost from the 'off' Darrel's rifle was a tackdriver. His mate's never performed anything like as well, in fact performed badly for a rifle of that specification, reputation and price. Darrel's handloads in it performed as badly as the owner's efforts.

When you pay the money for a custom rifle fitted with a quality match barrel from Bartlein, Krieger et al you not only buy a certain (very high) performance level, but also an expectation that you'll get it - and 99.9 something % of people do. With factory rifles, there is nearly always that random factor that sees a gulf between the best and worst examples. Sure, all manufacturers' standards and consistency have risen hugely over the last 20,25 years (as have cars and other complex manufactured items), but there is always some degree of performance variation even now and most of that comes from the barrel. In fact, Darrel and his friend did a barrel swap and sure enough Darrel's barrel transformed the other rifle's performance.

 

[Homerange]

Interesting post Laurie.
My son has an old .222 Sako L56 Mk5 IIRC made in the same year I was born and it shoots the lights out of anything else we have here (we're hunters not target shooters).
It has a short and light action with a heavy 24" varmint barrel but so finicky with boattail pills I gave up on finding a load it likes as it shoots .3 all day long with plain old Hornady flat base SX50's.
In '59 when this one was made adjustable triggers were things to be dreamed of and this one came from a dear departed friend that put a trigger shoe on it for better trigger control.
He also had its bigger brother in 243W that apparently shot well too and another local acquired it which in this case was a shame as he's not a shooter to speak of and wouldn't have the faintest idea of the quality rifle in his cupboard.

 

[Brians356]

Hey, it's about time we built a campfire and broke out a jug, ain't it, boys?
-

 

[Evan]

I clarified my above post. I have worked with 4 factory rifles, of which 3 gave 1/2moa performance with match bullets and quality reloading procedures after trying no more than 2 bullet types or 2 different powders. They immediately shot sub MOA and it took laddering to max pressure, dialing back a touch to stay away from excessive pressure, and then a little tinkering with seating depth, if the chamber didn't have a mile long freebore.

1 rifle, a Remington 700 CDL in 30-06, immediately shot sub MOA (just) and 3 different bullets and powder combos couldn't shrink the groups further. That was all it had in it!