This is not the norm for me. Is it safe?

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Those 110 VMAX are so short that I have never been able to touch lands and have enough bullet in the case to hold it properly so I doubt you were jamming the lands. I run max loads of AA2460 under the 110s for shooting prairie dogs out of my 15" Encore pistol. Fantastic splat factor and pretty accurate bullets. I tend to run 150gr and up in my rifles because the ballistics are so much better once you start shooting beyond 1-200 yards. If I were to guess at you pressure problem, I would say it's a combination of thicker brass and possibly a hotter than normal lot of powder. Depending on the age of your powder, I think I remember a recall on 2015 powder a while back. Might be worth contacting Hodgdon just to check.
 
Those 110 VMAX are so short that I have never been able to touch lands and have enough bullet in the case to hold it properly so I doubt you were jamming the lands. I run max loads of AA2460 under the 110s for shooting prairie dogs out of my 15" Encore pistol. Fantastic splat factor and pretty accurate bullets. I tend to run 150gr and up in my rifles because the ballistics are so much better once you start shooting beyond 1-200 yards. If I were to guess at you pressure problem, I would say it's a combination of thicker brass and possibly a hotter than normal lot of powder. Depending on the age of your powder, I think I remember a recall on 2015 powder a while back. Might be worth contacting Hodgdon just to check.
This was Accurate 2200 powder. It has shot fine out of our 17 hornet. Chronoed just about what book said.
 
So I tried the "push a loaded round in to see if it sticks or falls out" test. Never tried that before.
Loaded round definitely stuck. Backed it out about 100 thou before it didn't stick. :eek:
So I thought what the!?!?!? So I took a loaded round and colored it and chambered it with the bolt.
It went in easy and came out easy, but there was a large scuff all the way around the bullet just in front of the neck about 1/8". There weren't any land marks at all.
So I used my new Teslong for the first time. There was a lot of copper and carbon in the lead area.

I have seen where some guys use J-B bore paste to clean this area up some. I never have but i may give it a try.
One box of factories seems a little harsh to have done this much gunking up. The 110 Vmax does have what seems to be a long straight bearing surface. Makes me wonder if this was a new rifle or if someone had "tried it out" it, ran some ammo through it and then reboxed it.
If they did I think they may have missed out on a good one. So far it is sub MOA with zero load development. May have to feed it a lot of ammo and clean it a lot to get it polished up.

What's anyone's opinions on trying to lap it all the way through with J-B paste? The guy I watched just took his new custom barrel and did about the first 3" to clean up the reamer marks/lead area. Would it be better to shoot and clean and see how it does?
 
So I tried the "push a loaded round in to see if it sticks or falls out" test. Never tried that before.
Loaded round definitely stuck. Backed it out about 100 thou before it didn't stick. :eek:
So I thought what the!?!?!? So I took a loaded round and colored it and chambered it with the bolt.
It went in easy and came out easy, but there was a large scuff all the way around the bullet just in front of the neck about 1/8". There weren't any land marks at all.
So I used my new Teslong for the first time. There was a lot of copper and carbon in the lead area.

I have seen where some guys use J-B bore paste to clean this area up some. I never have but i may give it a try.
One box of factories seems a little harsh to have done this much gunking up. The 110 Vmax does have what seems to be a long straight bearing surface. Makes me wonder if this was a new rifle or if someone had "tried it out" it, ran some ammo through it and then reboxed it.
If they did I think they may have missed out on a good one. So far it is sub MOA with zero load development. May have to feed it a lot of ammo and clean it a lot to get it polished up.

What's anyone's opinions on trying to lap it all the way through with J-B paste? The guy I watched just took his new custom barrel and did about the first 3" to clean up the reamer marks/lead area. Would it be better to shoot and clean and see how it does?
For cleaning---I am a BR shooter and am specific about cleaning down to bare metal. Borescope never lies. This stuff works like nothing I have ever used, and I have used just about everything there is!

 
So this post popped back up in my inbox. Figured I would update.
We have cleaned and shot this rifle a fair amount now.
What I think is/was the problem is that as the gun starts to get dirty(20 rounds even)
you can start to see that one side of the bullet is contacting the lead area. Basically I think it may be a crooked or off center drill job on the barrel or chamber job crooked or maybe a little of both.
So with some shooting and cleaning and polishing it is somewhat better now. It doesn't build up crud as fast plus we have been shooting Varget instead of 2200 in it.(Varget cleaner than 2200?) Crazy part is how accurate this thing is. We have done zero load development...lack of time. What is crazy to me is that after cleaning there really isn't a flier. The other day we cleaned it thoroughly then took it out to switch from deer season load to coyote load. It shot a 155 grain fouler round(deer load), two Nolser 110 yote loads with benchmark, and two hornady 110's with Varget all into a 3/4 MOA spot. Which was exactly where we had sighted it in before deer season and before cleaning. I know that is by no means a spectacular group but 3 bullets with a 45 grain spread and two powders with random charges all in the same spot after cleaning. Plus this is the same gun we remounted the thermal onto the rail and it was still dead on at 300 yards.
After this starts getting dirtied up good you can see where one side of the bullet is contacting the side of the chamber. Load a round up and unload it and it has a scuff on one side right in front of the case mouth. This is where the "push a loaded round in to the chamber to see if it sticks" method of checking for lands contact was not showing what was going on at all. The sticking was being caused by the bearing surface being stuck up against the free bore on one side of the chamber. Gonna try to load develop on this thing after thermal season is over.
Crazy stuff.
 
So this post popped back up in my inbox. Figured I would update.
We have cleaned and shot this rifle a fair amount now.
What I think is/was the problem is that as the gun starts to get dirty(20 rounds even)
you can start to see that one side of the bullet is contacting the lead area. Basically I think it may be a crooked or off center drill job on the barrel or chamber job crooked or maybe a little of both.
So with some shooting and cleaning and polishing it is somewhat better now. It doesn't build up crud as fast plus we have been shooting Varget instead of 2200 in it.(Varget cleaner than 2200?) Crazy part is how accurate this thing is. We have done zero load development...lack of time. What is crazy to me is that after cleaning there really isn't a flier. The other day we cleaned it thoroughly then took it out to switch from deer season load to coyote load. It shot a 155 grain fouler round(deer load), two Nolser 110 yote loads with benchmark, and two hornady 110's with Varget all into a 3/4 MOA spot. Which was exactly where we had sighted it in before deer season and before cleaning. I know that is by no means a spectacular group but 3 bullets with a 45 grain spread and two powders with random charges all in the same spot after cleaning. Plus this is the same gun we remounted the thermal onto the rail and it was still dead on at 300 yards.
After this starts getting dirtied up good you can see where one side of the bullet is contacting the side of the chamber. Load a round up and unload it and it has a scuff on one side right in front of the case mouth. This is where the "push a loaded round in to the chamber to see if it sticks" method of checking for lands contact was not showing what was going on at all. The sticking was being caused by the bearing surface being stuck up against the free bore on one side of the chamber. Gonna try to load develop on this thing after thermal season is over.
Crazy stuff.
Just curious but what rifle manufacturer did you go with on this rifle ?
 
Just curious but what rifle manufacturer did you go with on this rifle ?
It is a Savage. My local "out of his house" FFL gun dealer found this left hand rifle for us. I had searched everywhere for one on the internet (110 tactical) and there were none to be found.
In all fairness I think a lot of manufacturers in all areas of life suffered a tremendous blow with the covid scandal. Here in the midwest we all kept working and said to heck with the masks. I know on the east coast they were shut down for years. Our local sporting goods stores had next to nothing to sell..... everything was sitting in boats off the east coast(China). Bow manufacturers, archery release manufacturers, game call manufacturers etc all produced in china or parts made in china were sitting in boats.
So I think a lot of stuff manufactured from 2020-2022ish ended up rushed and sub par.... even stuff coming out of Europe too. Put yourself in charge of a big company and the government says employees need to stay home.
I was so happy to get to the Iowa Deer Classic in March 2021 and no one was wearing masks. There was just a feeling that these people, all with the same/similar outlook on life, might as well all have been wearing "Don't Tread on Me!" shirts.
Sad saga in USA history.
 

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