Discussion Forums

Josh Jackson

Gidday Nathan & forum members. Just wanted to write about some problems I’ve been having with a particular rifle lately and your thoughts on working out what is going on here. Side note: Nathan I have all your books so wouldn’t want you to rehash things here. If you would like to point out where in the books I could go to start figuring this problem out it would be great.
Anyway
For the last 5 I’ve owned a Tikka 7mm08 suppressed that I have only shot factory ammo through, it’s been my bush gun. Recently I’ve started doing load development for the gun per Nathan’s books. The first round of powder charges went well. All loads except the last one were under book max. The last one was 0.4g above book max and I had light ejector marks on all 3 cases. Ok cool, max pressure found. Back off a grain and retest the loads. All initial loads shot under 0.6moa at 100 yards with good cloverleaf “patterning” I guess you could call it. Loaded up loads the exact same way I had previously using the same CBTO and powder charge weights as before. Fast forward to this mornings range trip. All I can say is it was disappointing. Every group shot minimum 1 MOA as well as having very light ejector marks on all cases. Please note, no ejector marks were heavy and only on one case was the bolt a little bit stiff to open. Funnily enough that was the lowest charge weight! I also wanted to point out that every case of every charge weight had heavy soot from the neck, down to almost the shoulder body junction. I clean my barrel thoroughly between every shooting session and regularly polish the bore every 100 rounds or so. The barrel is allowed to go stone cold between groups and I know it’s not my shooting. I have set up numerous other heavy recoiling rigs since buying Nathan’s books and have never had any issue like this. Components being used are Hornady new brass, ADI 2208 (varget), WRE primers and the 162ELDM. Range conditions on both days were as perfect as you could hope for and there is nothing obvious to me that has gone wrong, but obviously something has!
My initial thoughts are all related to fouling. I may have a carbon ring in the front of the chamber before the freebore. Or I may have carbon in my chamber somewhere that I’m missing during cleaning with a bore guide. I also notice that after firing and removing the brass cases I get a huge amount of gases exiting from the chamber end instead of the muzzle.
Anyway I haven’t inspected the gun yet after getting back from the range. I will do that tonight. If you have any thoughts let me know.
Nathan I was happy to see your email and am glad Riley is home with you and Steph and on the mend, I hope she recovers well