This has been a pretty big two weeks for me as a rifle shooter. On top of last week’s highly enjoyable Prairie Dog trip to South Dakota, this week saw rifle projects progress unequaled. Imagine getting not one but two esoteric headphone/amp projects begun and successfully completed with wildly successful results in one week and you will have an idea.
On Monday, I ordered the Vais for the Tikka T3 and took the Remington 700 VSF with the new parts over to my gunsmith. Tuesday was very hot and Wednesday started cooling down around here, so I spent my time paying my dues for last week out of town; besides working, I managed to put away gear, cleaned house, made a big pot of corn and crab chowder (yum-yum
), mowed grass and the Vais arrived for the Tikka.
Thursday dawned a beautiful and seasonable cool and sunny June morning, so it was out to the range with the Tikka to see its accuracy potential. With the 50 grain BlitzKing loads that will be its PD fodder, the Tikka shot bugholes! Little bitty sub half minute groups. Can’t wait to see what the Tikka does with heavier bullets. Came home to a voice mail message that the Remington .243AI was done. Ran over and picked it up and dropped off the Tikka and its Vais to have them married up.
Back to the range Friday morning with the Remington .243AI for barrel break in and to fireform some new factory .243Win to the .243AI chamber. And even during barrel break in, the Remington shot bugholes, too! Back home to receive another voice mail that the Tikka was ready as well. Hot damn!
So here are to two completed varmint rifles. The Remington runs 12.75# and the Tikka weighs in at 7.8#. Remington wears a Leupold 8-24x50mm LRT with varmint hunter’s reticle. Tikka has a Leupold 6.5-20x40mm with duplex reticle. The stainless Shilen Match Select barrel on the Remington finished out at 27.5”
Here’s the fit and finish on the Remington’s bead blasted Shilen stainless barrel and Vais. Is that kustom or what?!
Here’s how the bead blasted stainless micro Vais looks on the Tikka T3. Made for each other!
Here’s the Remington’s modified bolt face; trued and fitted with a Sako style claw extractor. Action is smooth as silk. Timney trigger breaks clean at two and a half pounds. The barrel channel also had to be opened up for the new tube and the action was glass bedded.
A comparison of the a standard .308Win case on the left with the wildcat .243 Ackley Improved case. Different calibers on the same case, but the shoulder and wall change should be clear. The walls of the .243AI are blown out and straightened and the shoulder is sharper. This gives both greater case capacity and reduced case stretch. The sharper shoulder also causes the case to have better propellant burning characteristics and improves efficiency.
Friday morning’s confidence builder group at 100 yards. Shot with my Remington 700 VS in .308Win, this cold barrel 5 shot group demonstrated to me how well I was shooting and that I might have confidence in groups I was shooting with the other new rifle. That is a 3/4 inch black paster dot. Without the first cold barrel round, the group in sub 3/8ths of an inch. Any of these shots would do your average cerebral cortex out to 300 yards.
An interesting group from barrel break in on the .243AI at 100 yards. You may have heard how the first bullet from a cleaned barrel has a different striking point from the subsequent shots. In this case for ten shots I was cleaning and firing two shots and then cleaning again. You see there are two circled groups. The first clean barrel shot of each two grouped on the left. The second fouled barrel shot in each string grouped on the right. Voila!
Friday on the last string of the day. Firing .243Win cases for fire forming, mind you, the .243AI hit the two inch steel gong at 395 yards six out of ten shots with moderately variable cross winds. That's a target less than 1/2 MOA at 395 yards! I think this rifle will do!
