280 AI Production Rifle Recommendation

Bominiscious said:

7mm man,
Thanks! I'd like to get two rifles anyway so that I can give one to my son, so maybe I will start with the re-barrel and then start doing some load development with that. Later in the year I could pick up a production rifle.

New question, what is the fastest way to get one rebarrelled? Are pre-fit barrels the way to go and do I want one with a shoulder? This is new territory for me, but I have a Gunsmith locally, who is very reputable, and could spin a barrel on for me pretty quickly. In fact, he rebarrelled another Tikka for me last year with a preferred barrel blanks 7MM rem mag. But I had to wait three months for that barrel and I'd like to move more quickly on this project as we have some vacation time set aside in May to spend a couple days shooting on our hunting lease.

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Bominiscious said:

I want to try my hand at the 280 Ackley but don't want to spend $3000+ on a custom type rifle. Would love to hear some recommendations on a good production rifle. Seems that Kimber produces their excellent mountain line in 280 Ackley, as well as some Savage and Weatherby offerings. Can anyone recommend something that I could get into and be shooting in the next week or so?

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Bominiscious said:

I'm going to throw a curveball into the conversation. I have an older stainless Tikka T3 in 270 that is just sitting in the safe but is in a nice manners stock. Maybe I will just rebarrel that to 280 AI. Would love to hear some thoughts on that as an option or does it make more sense to just go with a Browning, Weatherby, Kimber, etc.?

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Buck1970 said:

Recently purchased the xbolt long range max. Stock, trigger, ease of shooting all great. However we can not make it group less than 2" with 162 hornadys and H4831. About to try 150's and have 165 and 175 on the way. 1/8 twist. Any suggestions are appreciated, as I'm closed to ready to sell it.

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7mm man said:

I have done several pre-fits myself, mainly on R700s I true up and get shouldered prefits. I have been waiting close to 6 months though for my latest pre-fit from Carbon Six. If you have a good gun smith there is nothing wrong with buying a blank and have it chambered. If you are going to do a pre-fit yourself you need to buy a few things. I would check x-caliber lead times I think they have went down lately. Mcgowen is another good barrel maker. Preffered is ok, criterion is good for barrel nut style heavy barrels. Carbon Six is amazing but as you can see I am dealing with a long lead time.

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Bominiscious said:

I want to try my hand at the 280 Ackley but don't want to spend $3000+ on a custom type rifle. Would love to hear some recommendations on a good production rifle. Seems that Kimber produces their excellent mountain line in 280 Ackley, as well as some Savage and Weatherby offerings. Can anyone recommend something that I could get into and be shooting in the next week or so?

Click to expand...