Is my Bergara Bergarbage?

101stCurrahee

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Super frustrated. Review of this rifle and reading past experiences make it look fine, but I'm wondering if my barrel is defective? I did a proper break in procedure.

Bergara B14 HMR in 300WinMag. Gunwerks brass that's now on it's second firing. Berger 215s with H1000 powder and CCI 250s.

I try to load to perfection. My shoulder bumping, trimming, and seating is all within .001.


I fire formed my first 100 pieces and gathered data working up a ladder.The groups were all pretty terrible never even reaching 1 MOA but I figured was because of new brass. Now that I have my first round of fire formed brass I loaded as perfect as possible I'm still shooting god awful groups. It doesn't matter if I lock it up in a sled, shoot from a bench, or prone with a bipod.

My Pro Chrono 2 is showing an ES of nearly 200fps.


What in the world is going on? This has been incredibly expensive to shoot such garbage and still nowhere near a good load. Factory ammo wasn't match grade but still shot no better than 1.5MOA.

Advice?
 

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First off, a load with a 200 fps ES is not the best way to judge rifle accuracy. You need to figure out what is causing the big variation. That said, factory ammo doesn't shoot well either so I would measure the ES on the Factory stuff too. If they are also very wide that will tell you a few things. Second, I have worked on quite a few Bergara and they are prone to multiple defects. In order, bedding is bad, glass or pillar bed to fix, Chamber issues, needs to go back for new barrel. The chamber issues are sometimes so bad you can actually see them on the once fired cases and or they show up in measuring the various critical points. Also check to see it has enough throat, short throated chambers have been an issue too. Crown issues and sundry feeding issues round out the common defects. Unfortunately the track record of the warranty depot for fixing these issues properly is very poor and Bergara won't pay for a qualified smith to fix them locally. The good news is, except for the ones with poorly made chambers, once bedded and crowned most of them shot really good. The feeding issues are usually not that hard to repair.

My personal opinion after experience with them and the very poor customer support, there are much better rifles in the same price range. Let us know what you find.
 
You don,t say what your velocities are? What primer? It is obvious your load is very inconsistent. It may be that your load is too hot but more likely it is too soft. Or possibly your neck tension is not enough?
 
I can guarantee if you have 200 es you are not anywhere in the ballpark of being done with load development and expecting even a 10k rifle setup to shoot that is asinine. Seating depth being incorrect is not going to cause those variances. You need to find a powder charge node where es is somewhat reasonable to start tweaking other variables.
 
Are you allowing the rifle to cool between groups, and how much time between shots? If you are getting the barrel hot, then chamber a new round but let it sit in the chamber for a long period of time getting hotter, that will cause your velocities to increase for those hotter rounds. As someone said, post what the velocities are, in order if possible to determine if the barrel heat-up could be causing the higher velocities in the shot string.
 
If you did a ladder test with virgin brass then it's pretty much a useless test. Why don't you try doing load development starting at around 73 Gr of H1000 instead of 77gr. That's a bit hot as I have a Bergara B-14 ridge and 77 Gr was a hot load and gave me bad ES as well. You should find a good load around 75 Gr.
 
If you did a ladder test with virgin brass then it's pretty much a useless test. Why don't you try doing load development starting at around 73 Gr of H1000 instead of 77gr. That's a bit hot as I have a Bergara B-14 ridge and 77 Gr was a hot load and gave me bad ES as well. You should find a good load around 75 Gr.
That first sentence is incorrect. I do load development on every rifle I have ever owned with new brass. When I find the accuracy load I note the velocity. I drop a grain and check velocity with once fired brass and tweak it back to the accuracy velocity(almost always within .1-.2 grains). Some cartridges don't even change from new to once fired, such as the 6.5 PRC(in the chambers I have shot). I do agree that not every rifle, lot of powder, and brand of brass is going to be capable of handling 77 grains in the win mag.
 
Can a rifle barrel alone cause 200fps ES? Seems like there is more to it than it needing a new barrel.
Very unlikely. You can almost always obtain small es. It may not be accurate depending on a multitude of different things but obtaining low is requires load development not just throwing components together.
 
Can a rifle barrel alone cause 200fps ES? Seems like there is more to it than it needing a new barrel.

In fact they can. If the neck is too small, the front of the chamber where the end of the neck rests is cut too short, or the throat length too short or ramp angle is screwed up or very rough entry into the barrel you can get very large ES swings from barrel induced issues. Now, that is far and away NOT the common causes of wide ES, it is far more often load related, but it is possible for chamber and barrel issues to induce wide ES swings.
 
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