Ruger 77 Rebarrel Help

[NEMTHunter]

Dennis Olson of Olson Gunsmithing will get you covered as far as gunsmithing goes. He does good works on the Rugers. Nothing hard about working on them. Just need a special jig and need to be careful since the receivers are harder than normal guns and they can be hard on tooling.

As others said jump to a .338 or .375 round. A good round would be the .338 win mag.

But if all your doing is close range shoots even the good old .35 whelen will get it done.

 

[Nowoolies]

A

I'm tagging in on this conversation. I have heard the re-barreling a Ruger is hard to do. I want to see how this turned out. I also have 7rm that's shot out and would like to replace the barrel. The 270 wsm was a good idea. Tiny Tim, please let me know what you decide to do and how it went.

G'day battering ram and Tiny Tim
Nothing hard about rebarreling a Ruger M77 I'm on my third barrel,on the same action , stick with a Ruger barrel fairly easy fit off

 

[Darren Russett]

I built a 6.5-06 on an old 80s Tang safety and love it! I'll vote with Rhett on the 6.5PRC...should work perfectly for what you want!

 

[18whlsrolin]

I'll second the 35 whelen recommendation. Newer Load data has worked miracles for this cartridge in the last 5 years or so. I'm getting 3100 fps from 180gr and 2840 fps from 225gr bullets. 24" barrel. It's a great cartridge for the distances you listed. Not difficult to transform 30-06 brass over so no worries about cost ( Lee die set comes with primer punch that gradually expands neck) and the overall length would work great for ya. Good luck

 

[Dean2]

I'll second the 35 whelen recommendation. Newer Load data has worked miracles for this cartridge in the last 5 years or so. I'm getting 3100 fps from 180gr and 2840 fps from 225gr bullets. 24" barrel. It's a great cartridge for the distances you listed. Not difficult to transform 30-06 brass over so no worries about cost ( Lee die set comes with primer punch that gradually expands neck) and the overall length would work great for ya. Good luck

Only problem I see with this is the bolt face is setup for 7 Rem Mag. Never tried to down size a Ruger bolt face, anyone know if the difference in size is hard to adjust for, does it work with no modifications? I know it doesn't on a lot of Mauser actions and it doesn't work well at all on a Rem 700.

 

[KurtB]

264 win mag or buy my 1988 7mm Rem Tanger barreled action with fewer than 100 rounds on it.

 

[codyadams]

I have had a couple m77's rebarreled, there is a smith here I use that knows his way around Rugers quite well. You have two options-

Select a cartridge that will work with what you have (3.43" OAL)

Have a Rem 700 (3.7" OAL) or Wyatts extended (3.850") mag box installed and select whichever long action cartridge you want.

My smith has installed rem 700 mag boxes which allow 3.7" OAL into ruger actions, he has also installed a few Wyatts extended mag boxes as well, which would pair nicely with a 300 win mag. I had one 300 win mag built into a .264 wm, 1-7.5 twist for the heavies, and feeds flawlessly. I think the .264 wm is a fantastic choice with 140+ class. The 147's are going 3240 with retumbo, anxious to see what we will get with the 156's. A 300 wm wouldn't be a bad option with either a rem 700 box or an extended wyatts box, get a 9 or 10 twist and shoot the 215's at 3000 fps or so with H1000, excellent long range critter medicine.

If your interested, my Smith's name is Mike, his business is Tetrahedron Arms Company and he is out of Rock Springs, Wyoming. His number is 1-307-922-1159. He does fantastic work, and at a great price. He has a facebook page you can check out as well, just search his business name and it will come up. Best of luck to ya.

 

[19elkhunter51]

I will add my two cents worth. First I want to address someone that said Rugers were hard to re-barrel. I had a Ruger tanger in 22-250 with standard twist. Wanted a faster twist to shoot heavier, longer bullets. Had a GREAT gunsmith (retired now, much to my loss) put a Broughton heavy varmint 1:8 twist on that Ruger. Shoots itty, bitty little groups. No problem. I am partial to Winchester Model 70 but can't always afford them. Ruger is a good gun for the money.
If you are mostly a whitetail hunter at 300-500 yards, I would seriously consider a
25-06. Plenty of giddyup for whitetail. Great accuracy and easy to reload. More importantly, IMHO, you can find factory ammo without any problem.

 

[Reloder28]

I chose .300 Dakota. The real downside of the Dakota is the initial expense / availability of the brass, but once you have it its a great case that gives you more performance out of the standard length action. I really like the Dakota, but I'd probably go with something that has more industry support

How does the 30 Nosler compare to the Dakota? Gotta be nearly equal, right?

 

[Reloder28]

Ruger's are no harder to 'smith than any other gun. Their investment cast metallurgy requires more expensive tooling on the 'smith's part. They already have the tooling for more run-of-the-mill rifles which they can make lots of money from.

They are simply unwilling to learn new tricks. The hard part is finding a smith that has the tooling.

 

[DSheetz]

I had an M77MK II in 7mm mag re barreled in 7mm Dakota by Bisson barrels out of Gillett Wy. .It worked out well mag fit good bolt face good less recoil no muzzle brake . Hazzer Bulky did the work he said that mark II's are a lot like working on win model 70's he accurized the action at the same time shoots raged holes at 100 yds. . He also did an M77 MK II from 25-06 to 30-06 that worked out good for me .

 

[DMP25-06]

I have a Ruger M77V , .220 Swift , tang safety rifle , that I sent to Douglas Premium Barrels , in 2012 , to be fitted with a 1-8" twist , .220 Swift barrel . Got their XX Premium stainless steel barrel , and asked that it be exactly matched in contour to original Ruger varmint barrel , target crowned , and have a bead-blasted finish.
They did excellent work , perfectly matching the original barrel contour , and delivered it back to me in about 4 weeks total time . It shoots 1/4 MOA .
Very reasonably priced , less than $500.00 total , including shipping , at that time .

 

[NEMTHunter]

Only problem I see with this is the bolt face is setup for 7 Rem Mag. Never tried to down size a Ruger bolt face, anyone know if the difference in size is hard to adjust for, does it work with no modifications? I know it doesn't on a lot of Mauser actions and it doesn't work well at all on a Rem 700.

LOL Yea I did not think that one through when I said that. Ok go .338 win mag....

 

[Alibiiv]

Thanks for the replies and sorry I haven't been more active in the discussion. Had a wedding yesterday. I have no experience with the short mags and feeding was a concern with the 243 AI. I guess I'll know more about this in the near future and imagine this would only be magnified in the short magnum platform. Thanks Shane for your reply. I also considered rebarreling to 300 WM, but again was concerned about mag length. Good to know that's a possibility. I also should have made it clear that I don't want to go full custom and want to keep this fairly simple. Really looking at options. Gunsmith suggestions anyone? Sorry for the long post.

I have a love for the Ruger 77 tang safety rifles; and, a safe full of them. My most recent/first build on a Ruger 77 is a .270 Ackley Improved. There's plenty of opinions on the cartridge, I wanted a wildcat and I like the .270 round, the rest was simple for me from there. I designed the rifle to shoot 130 and 150 grain bullets, not anything heavier where I would need a longer magazine box. I was "told" that there is a longer box conversion made for the Rugers, I never looked in to it. You can consider one of the short mags, .270WSM, 7mmWSM, 300WSM, in my opinion they are all on the threshold of what you already have. From what you have described as the hunting you intend to do, IMHO the 7RemMag is all the rifle you will ever need. There's a great selection of bullets, ammunition is readily available, as are the reloading components at relatively less expense than some of the new designer cartridges on the market. You will not have to change bolts, or bolt faces, feed rails or anything else. I'd say stick with what you have, put a nice barrel on the rifle, have the rifle blueprinted and have fun shooting it. If you rebarrel you could go 26 inch over the present 2 inch barrel that presently is on your rifle; you ought to pick up a little more horsepower there if you'd like. I swapped a Ruger 30-06 for a .338WinMag, I fired the WinMag three times, took the rifle back and got my 30-06 back; I didn't need the mag and even if I did it was too much recoil for my liking. That rifle kicked harder than two mules that just got stung in the --s by hornets; rattled the fillings out of my teeth!!!

As for a gunsmith, I used Dennis Olson in Plains, Montana. I had some difficulty finding a gunsmith to work on my Rugers. Many of the gunsmiths are not set up to work on them due to the square receiver (that's what some told me), or they simply don't like or want to work on them. I sent two rifles to Dennis for the .270AI builds, he installed 26 inch, "contoured" Lilja barrels, lapped the lugs, trued the action/bolt face, trigger job, did a CeraKote and a bluing job, pillar bedded the stock and glass bedded the receiver/barrel channel. There was about a 4 month turnover time; the Lilja barrel took a bit of time to get. Presently the barrels have about 40 rounds through them, they are shooting about MOA, but that is either while fireforming from .270 Winchester or with fireformed/neck sized brass that has been shot twice. I know they will shoot better, just have to put some trigger time on the rifles, and....I'm still learning how to reload for the rifles as well; dies are in the making. I presently have a Ruger 77 tang safety rifle that I picked up very "right" and was going to use it for a donor rifle. I looked at plenty of cartridges, had settled on the 338-06 round. I did a comparison between the 30-06 and the 338-06, what I found was there wasn't that much difference between the two cartridges out to the distance that I felt I was going to be shooting/hunting at. With that said I will be sending the donor rifle to Dennis and have him build the same rifles that he just built for me, only in 30-06. One last suggestion/recommendation for the Ruger 77s, their striker springs tend to get weak and you can encounter fail-to-fires. We learned this the hard way while on a hunt. Wolff makes a good 24 pound replacement spring, another company is Osterberger springs. I read another thread on the forum where another guy was having problems with FTF, I recommended the striker spring replacement to him and that fixed his problem.