GUN NOTES
Raising The Bar, Part II
Is there a recipe for extreme accuracy?
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In this column last month I talked about how accurate factory rifles have become, especially if you spend the time fiddling with loads and the other little tricks. Part of the reason both factory rifles and factory ammo have gotten so darned good is because shooters have demanded it. Part of it, too, is that a growing number of custom and semicustom makers have proven they can deliver exceptional accuracy time after time.
There are many semicustom makers, but those whose work I am most familiar with include Kenny Jarrett, John Lazzeroni, Geoff Miller, Kerry O'Day and Lex Webernick.
Each and every one of these guys will maintain there is some magic, or at least alchemy, in the steps taken to produce exceptionally accurate rifles. This mystique is important when you're producing rifles that cut group size in half at a relative cost of several times that of a factory rifle in comparable chambering.
They do spend extra time (which means extra cost) in "truing up" their actions for concentricity. They also take greater pains with the bedding, with the barrel-to-action mating and critical issues like precise chambering and crowning of the barrels. In the search for extreme accuracy, little things matter. But, mystique aside, the one thing that matters most of all is the barrel.
The custom makers who truly concentrate on extreme accuracy have one thing in common: All insist on starting with the best barrel available. This means the smoothest, straightest, most uniform, most "perfect" barrel they can find or make.
Somewhat uniquely, Kenny Jarrett makes his own. This is not necessarily a cost-saving move; his discard rate is frightful, but quality control is all within his shop. Most of the other small manufacturers who truly concentrate on accuracy source the best barrels money can buy. Favorites tend to follow the benchrest circles, with names like Hart, Krieger and Pac-Nor coming up frequently. Even with those names, the accuracy guys insist on only the best barrels.
Rigby's Geoff Miller is, like Jarrett, an old benchrest shooter. Whether it's a single-shot, bolt gun or double, he starts one of his rifles with a best-grade barrel, usually from Pac-Nor. These are button-rifled barrels, and he insists on a barrel made within the first 10 passes of new tooling, rifled .002 of an inch undersize and hand-lapped to dimension. If you start with a barrel like that, you can expect it to shoot. Exactly how well depends somewhat on the ammo, the shooter and all the little magical tricks that the accuracy-freak gunmakers use. But unless you muck up the assembly, such a barrel should be capable of half-MOA accuracy, and if the magic is really strong, it might well cut that in half again.
I have a .300 Wby. Mag. made by Lex Webernick on a Winchester Model 70 action. Note that this cartridge, though certainly a world-standard hunting cartridge, has never been considered supremely accurate. For that matter, the Winchester Model 70 action is a world-standard hunting action, but you won't see it in benchrest circles. With the right load this rifle produces sub-half-MOA groups all day long. Obviously, it was made right, but I'm sure its top-of-the-line Krieger barrel has a whole lot to do with this.
Some years ago Geoff Miller made me an 8mm Rem. Mag. Kenny Jarrett tried to talk me out of it, reasoning that the bullet selection was limited and that nobody had ever invested R&D into developing truly accurate .323 bullets. Maybe, but with its wonderfully straight and smooth Pac-Nor barrel, it is also, consistently, a sub-half-MOA rifle, and on one fine day it produced a .052 group.
I have another rifle that, with few other changes, Miller simply rebarreled for me. It's a Remington Model 700 BDL rebarreled to .300 H&H with a very good Pac-Nor barrel. On Jarrett's range, shooting 150-grain Sierra bullets in this rifle, I shot a 11?2-inch group at 400 yards. Jarrett and Miller have sort of a friendly competition, so Jarrett was extremely upset by this. He needn't have been. Later on that same day, shooting a Jarrett rifle (thus barreled with one of Jarrett's barrels) chambered to a standard 7mm Rem. Mag. and using Jarrett's loads with 140-grain Nosler Ballistic Tips, I fired a four-inch group at 600 yards. There was a bit of unstable wind, but I guess I doped it fairly well.
