cart SHOPPING CART You have 0 items
SELECT CURRENCY

Discussion Forums

1
Search forums
Forum Index > Rifles general discussion > Reminton 700 sps stainless

Reminton 700 sps stainless

05 Aug 2016
@ 04:05 am (GMT)

trevor savage

hi, do Remington stainless rifles get made to a higher standard,
i have a 7mm08 sps stainless and it shoots under 1 inch at 100 meters all day long. 154grain projectile with 40.5 grans of an ADI powder. i broke the rifle in according to nathans book. so i have had about 4 blued Remington 700's of a few different calibers and thay all sucked. locking lug's weren't true/squared up and another was very heavy copper fouling.
anyway am i just lucky this time or are the stainless rifles made better?


Replies

1
05 Aug 2016
@ 10:58 pm (GMT)

Barry Sensing

Re: Reminton 700 sps stainless
I think you just got lucky. My nephew had the blued version in .270 Win. and it would shoot 1/2" three shot groups at 100 yds. with three different loads. I don't think that that the steel being made from 416 stainless makes a rifle shoot more accurately than one made of chrome moly. The rifling in the stainless barrel may last a little longer than a chrome moly barrel, all things being equal. The quality of the steel and quality of the rifling and the quality control on the barrel and action together would have more to do with the stainless vs blued part of the equation. I have had some stainless model 700's that shot horrible without tweaking. I think Remington has declined somewhat on their quality control over the past few years. My older model 700's are more accurate and seem to be better made and the actions are smoother than my newer ones. The good news is that the model 700 can usually be tweaked to shoot very accurately without to much trouble.
06 Aug 2016
@ 01:48 am (GMT)

Dale Wilhelm

Re: Reminton 700 sps stainless
Hi Trevor
If you want to do a side by side test I can sell you a blued Rem 700 in 7mm-08 :)
I would have expected that you should be able to get handloads to under and inch. Have you tried different projectiles? Or perhaps the action needs bedding?
Good luck
Dale
06 Aug 2016
@ 02:50 pm (GMT)

Bryan Webster

Re: Reminton 700 sps stainless
Hello Barry.
I think you got a good one and would shoot that barrel until it wears out, then replace it with a higher quality barrel and at that point have the entire action trued by a good gunsmith while he does the rebarrel job. Part of the rebarrel job will be doing some of that work anyway so the rest of the action truing will likely cost you less at that point than having just the truing done.

In the meantime along the way you might consider one of Nathan's bedding kits as well as the filler for the foreshock. An alternative might be at some point a better stock and a bedding job.
06 Aug 2016
@ 09:47 pm (GMT)

Nathan Foster

Re: Reminton 700 sps stainless
Honestly, I think people expect rifles these days to be cheap junk, so when they get a rifle and find that groups don't look so good, they default to thinking that the rifle is rubbish. With this mindset, the entire approach thereafter is half hearted.

I have seen top end rifles with the same one lug touching, same fit issues, same heavy fouling issues. I really think it comes down to how much time you are willing or able to put in to working through issues. But you have to have knowledge- where to look, what to look for.

I have just finished emailing back to one of our readers, bought and tricked up the same rifle in .30-06, wanted to run the 200gr ELD-X with Superformance. The rifle was throwing shots and he thought perhaps the bore was just too low in quality and that perhaps it was time to fire lap. I aksed him to hold off for a bit. We then talked about ammo concentricity. He bought a tool and off he went. Well, the ammo was good but then a few were out of spec and finally, it was found that the dies needed a bit of a rework. The rifle is now shooting all bullets touching, one ragged hole and its up close to WSM speeds. But you see- he expected the bore to be bad because thats all we hear these days via the internet. Sure, there are some duds, but there are duds in all brands.

I see too many guys go from rifle to rifle because they do not trust either the rifle or themselves. They fly blind, then seek add ons and modifactions but never master the basics.

Four rifles. From memory, your first was a .300 RUM, a half inch bullet jump versus immensely high velocities, completely reliant on extremely accurate concentric ammo. Did you buy a concentricity gauge for this? Did you buy suitable dies or simply buy Hornady dies that are fine for general hunting but no good for the level of accuracy you were looking for? I'll take a punt and assume that none of this was done because you did not know how to do things any differently. Again if memory serves, I had not written my reloading book when you had that rifle.

So the question is, did it take four rifles to find an accurate one, or did it take four rifles to find a combo that worked with your methods. I am sure this rifle could be improved upon further too. If it will shoot an inch with great consisency, it will most likely shoot sub half minute too after bedding, trigger, further load work, good optics, optimal technique.

I think many of us go through this. I went through this to one degree or another myself before I got right into what I do.

I say "I see too many guys shifting rifles" but this is not always a reflection of their abilities, not if they do not have the right information. However, I hope that via the book series (that means reading the books and acting / not just owning them), that I can help guys restore a little more faith in themselves and their rifles and not simply default to low expectations.

Remember what I said in book one (or was it two?). Rather than considering the rifle a dud (unless it is flawed by design as some brands / models are now) consider it a raw, unfinished product. It is up to you to do the rest and that also includes how you go about hand loading / shooting technique and so forth. Also, there is a big difference between the phantom fiddler and a guy who has a methodical problem solving process.

08 Aug 2016
@ 08:25 pm (GMT)

Nathan Foster

Re: Reminton 700 sps stainless
More to this.

The guy I wrote about above with the .30-06 was a very methodical problem solver. I wrote that he talked about fire lapping within the context that we do often assume that we have a dud factory barrel. He bounced around ideas with me but I could only guess via email and ultimately he found what was wrong via his own steps. In this instance, he pursued concentricity.

Yesterday, a shooter turned up here with tales of woe. He had tried every load and done this and that. He wanted me to check the rifle over. But before I checked the rifle, I asked to see his 6mmPPC ammo. I ran this over my gauge and found it was 10 thou, enough to really scatter groups. I suggested it was time he changed dies and reloading processes. This was a shock to him because he has gotten by OK in the past. But that's the problem- we get by. We get by until one day we decide to chase accuracy and those methods which worked OK (and some flukes) in the past are suddenly far less than ideal.

1
 

ABOUT US

We are a small, family run business, based out of Taranaki, New Zealand, who specialize in cartridge research and testing, and rifle accurizing.

store