I have already been shooting the gun so returning it is out of the question.
I am shooting 53gr Hornady Vmax I talked to the factory tech guy at Hornady and he said shooting the 53 gr's you need the 1:12 twist. It is shooting quite well now. Am I asking for problems if I do cut it down?
If I do decide to cut it down what would be the optimum length to cut it to?
Thank you in advance
I tried the 53 grain bullet last year in a couple 22-250's. Shot very well, but the 55 grain Sierra still grouped tighter. Still I don't think I gave the 53 grain bullet an honest effort, so it may have shot even better. They seemed to group about as well as the 60 grain Hornaday (FBHP with a .27B/C) shot about the same in a 12 twist barrel. But on the otherhand I shot two five shot groups with them in a ten twist AR15, and shot .60" groups with zero load development. I personally think a 12 twist is getting borderline with them and an eleven twist would be better yet. Just find that the .25 - .26 B/C seems about perfect in a 12 twist rate.
Cutting the barrel back will mean nothing in stabilizing a bullet. It's the rate of twist per foot that matters. I personally would not cut the barrel back shorter than 22". I was stuck with a junk barrel, and you are not. One thing I would do before cutting the barrel back, is to gauge the barrel to see what it's really like.
*** here's how I go about it, and it's really pretty easy. If the barrel has been removed your ahead of the game in my book! Put a strip of masking tape lengthwise on the barrel. Run as tight a patch as you can thru the barrel. Mark all the tight spots on the tape, and all the loose spots as well. I would do this several times to get a feel of what the barrel is like. If the barrel is looser on the muzzle end, it needs to be cut back to remove this part. But if it's tight there, then you should leave it alone. (we're talking about three to four inches in length). You can get by with loose spots back towards the chamber, but never the muzzle. The barrel on my Remington was so bad that it actually tore up patches, and even the last two and a half inches could still be tighter. The chamber should also be checked out at the sametime (mine was reamed .007" off axis, and at a rough seven degree angle). A good chamber cast will show you a lot here.
I have tried a lot of different powders and bullets in the 20" barrel, and always seem to come right back to BLC2 and that 55 grain Vmax. I am doing some load development right now with a few 50 grain bullets. The 3270 fps load is not a max load, but saw little if any gains in velocity with the 26" or the 20" barrel and more powder. Twenty seven point two grains was about all the case would burn in either barrel.
gary
