Won a Kimber 8400 270 wsm, what now?

[Schnyd112]

my dad won a rifle at a banquet. Elk foundation, Nevada mulies or chukar foundation. Working on getting bases and a scope but I have never been around Kimber rifles or 270 wsm.

First impressions: it is amazingly light. Without a scope it isn't really fair, but wow. It's light. The trigger is a little heavy, but that may be alright once we get to shooting it. 10 twist, 4 groove barrel. Factory ammo looks like 130 hollow points and 140 lead softpoints. It bucks a little but is threaded from the factory. Probably going to put a brake on it for that reason. Not a huge fan of the stock feel but again, without a scope it is hard to make much of a judgment. Rifle looks well made, everything is nicely finished, but not sure I am a huge fan of the texture on the stock. Kinda sandpapery? Grippy for sure , but maybe too abrasive. It looks like it would wear on fabric when carried with a sling.

Questions: are there any trigger replacements or is it a matter of further tuning what it has?
What should I look for to reload? This cartridge looks to be capable of 800 yards on anything with 4 legs and hooves, aside from moose but we don't get to hunt them here. What bullets are available? Guessing h1000, and h4831 sc would be a good place to start, but I am not seeing much load data or long range bullet selection.

I am working on research, but like I said I am not seeing a lot of public information so I am asking here. I will probably get at hammer bullets and see if they have something for us to test out but am open to other opinions.

 

[RockyMtnMT]

All you guys winning rifles, what the heck! Pretty cool.

The 270 cal is held back a bit by the 10" twist for true long range shooting. Originally the 27cal was designed for fast and flat to 300y and the standard twist has never changed. With the lead free pure copper bullets it is tough to get a fully stable bullet that has low drag design to weight much. With that said our 117g Hammer Hunter has been stellar on game out to 570y on a big bull elk from a 270wsm. My buddies son is running that bullet in a Savage 270 win and took 3 mulies last year all between 400y and 450Y. Our customer that shot the big bull with the wsm is running the 117g pretty close to 3500fps, if I remember correctly. This makes the wsm very capable out to 700y on game. Max point blank range with this is 410y at 3000' elev zeroed at 350y. Meaning that from muzzle to 400y you can take a center hold with no correction for elev and still land in the 5" kill radius.

Otherwise our Sledge Hammer line will run up to 145g for the 10" twist. The Sledge Hammers are a large 2.5mm hollow point bullet designed for normal range hunting under 500y where bc is not needed. The Sledge Hammers straight up hit hard.

Steve

 

[Schnyd112]

That was my worry. I am seeing a few options in lead 140 gr, and a 150 ablr but without the bullets in front of me I am not sure of the stability factor.
These are maxing out just below .5 g1 bc.

I'm not sure if I can take advantage of the case with lower bc bullets unless I go sledgehammer or partition and just muscle them out to 500 yards. I know the partitions hit like trucks and it looks like those sledgehammers do as well.

If it comes to a rebarrel, it will almost certainly be of the 7mm variety.

 

[30 Hammer]

The 270 wsm will do everything you need it to do on game to 800. 140 Accubonds with Retumbo, R26 , H1000 or 7728 are all good.

As for the Kimber -
Some recommendations:

1. Get the factory muzzle brake it really seems to help the accuracy of these thin barrels.

2. Trim the front scope base screw down 2 threads. Put a nut on it before grinding it down and turn it back and forth and clean the threads. The screw is often too long and pushes on the barrel.

3. The factory trigger is actually great. It's easy to adjust, google it. Better yet have a gun smith do it.

4. If it has a blind mag box make sure it isn't binding up on the bottom of the stock causing the action to have pressure . PM me if so and I'll help.

5. Trim the bottom two threads off of the front action screw, you will need a 1/4" fine thread nut for this. The front action screw is too long.

6. Have the gun bedded and float the barrel.

7. Have the muzzle crowned concentric to bore.

A good bolt action rifle smith would charge you less than $200.00 for all of this and you will likely have a whole new gun in terms of accuracy.

I took a 6.5 Creedmore from a 4" group to 1/2" with these and a little load development and I plan on doing a 300 wsm Subalpine next week.

You have a fine mountain gun on your hands in that exact cartridge.

Enjoy!

 

[Schnyd112]

Awesome! Thank you.

We should be getting a low mag scope mounted to see what groups look like before we do anything. I have always liked accubonds on game, they have done very well for me.

I have never had to cut action screws but I have a local Smith that can help with anything over our heads.

 

[Weatherby Fan]

They are a great rifles, lightweight all stainless, an excellent adjustable trigger, Kevlar-Carbon Fibre stock, CRF action,
I had a brand new 6.5CM in the Montana, its shot 1" to 1 1/4" inch groups, got the action bedded and the trigger lightened and it would put three in the same hole with factory Hornady 120gr ELD-M ammo.