Good to know Shep, I thought they were 1000-1200. I believe I'm at about 300 now.
I want to let everyone know that Bergara has been great. Nate called me directly and is still trying to figure this out. Even after apologizing and telling him this sounds like an optic problem, he is trying to find me a loaner optic. Yeah, trying to help something that may not even be their products fault. If I get this sorted out this is the kind of company that will have my business for life.
Tagging back in on this, props to you for sticking through to the end on this. Sounds like you are on the right track, and as many people pointed out early on, all companies are capable of turning out a dud from time to time, what you pay for is how they respond to it.
My thoughts now are the following: dont make the same mistake of throwing a bunch of money at the scope, send it to NF (sounds like you already did) and give them the same chance you gave Bergara. Dont fall victim to the temptation to buy a cheaper optic to use in the meantime as some are suggesting. In the meantime, spend your time and money going through your entire hand-loading process and make sure you are ready to go when everything is back together.
- Buy a good chronograph, I've heard way too many stories of people having issues with the optical ones, unless you have the coin for a 35p or that infrared one (PVM21 I think?), get a Magnetospeed or a Labradar and verify it on your buddy's gun against a known load
Then focus on your handloads (unless you want to keep dropping serious money on Fed Gold Medal).
- Measure your fired brass, some of the belted magnums have loose chambers since the brass headspaces off the belt not the shoulder, dial in your sizing die to bump the shoulder back 0.001-0.002" from a fired case, dont resize back to mins every time.
- Check your dies, is your brass concentric when it is re-sized? if you are using the factory decapping rod they can sometimes pull the necks off center, spend the money for a Redding Type S full length bushing die and swap the expander button for their carbide expander that floats and self centers in the case neck, get the proper sized bushing for your die so that your neck tension isn't contributing to high SD/ES
- check your powder scale, my brand new Chargemaster regularly throws charges that are almost 0.2-0.3grs apart, I use it just as a powder measure now and weigh all my charges separately on a beam scale and trickle up to my desired weight (this is just a stop gap until I can convince the CFO to let me buy an A&D rig).
- Practice doing everything exactly the same every time all the time so that when your rifle is back up and running you can trust the ammo you are feeding it
When you get it all back together, do a proper OCW test with the chrono attached, dont look for group size, look for flat spots in the velocity curve indicating the most consistent charge weights (I usually load a minimum of 2 rounds at each charge weight to help eliminate potential outliers), this will yield your best SD and then you can tune seating depth to turn your groups into bugholes (I've gotten multiple loads on multiple rifles shooting sub half MOA with single digit SDs using this method). Dont get locked in a specific powder either. I know a lot of guys swear by H1000 for heavy bullets in magnum cartridges, it may just not work in your gun though (I've burned through my fair share of the stuff trying to get another rifle to shoot, outright velocity was good, but consistency wasnt there, ended up going with a powder than yielded slower MV but was way more consistent in my rifle/bullet combo.
Best of luck!
