Basic maintenance

Guy Miner · Nov 8, 2010

I've been shooting my .25-06 Rem 700 CDL a fair bit this year. Popped some rockchucks and just did a fair amount of target shooting with it in the spring and early in the summer. Somewhere along the line I sort of neglected to do much maintenance on it, except for wiping it down after shooting.

Shortly before our October mule deer season I took it out to the range along with a couple of other rifles, just for a quick check, and... well, I was shooting better with a 90 year old .30-06 sporterized battle rifle than I was with my .25-06! That just wasn't right. Groups from ammo known to be accurate were terrible! Bullets all over the place on the target and hits on the 300 yard gong were rare! Cleaned the barrel. Still not much of an improvement. Hunted all mule deer season without it. Dang. Hunted elk season without it. That's okay, I didn't really intend to use it for an elk rifle anyway. That's what the .375 is for... :grin:

Took it out of the stock, cleaned the heck out of everything, including the barrel again. Tightened down every doggone screw head I could find. Scope mounts, everything. Took it out to the range this morning and the first three shots clumped into about 1/2" at 100 yards, about 2" high, just like they're supposed to be. Had to dial in a couple of clicks of right windage, just to center up the group... Sheesh. All it needed was a little routine maintenance.

I'd conned myself into thinking that it shot better with a fouled barrel. Yeah, okay, but not THAT fouled!

Meanwhile it's great to have the quarter bore shooting right again. Really right!

I might need to ask some questions about velocity though - when I work up the nerve... Saw some pretty incredible readings on the chronograph today... :shock:

DrMike · Nov 8, 2010

Guy,

It has happened to all of us. Good that you found the source of your discomfort.

FOTIS · Nov 8, 2010

Unlike most women....
Be good to her, and she will be good to you.

JD338 · Nov 8, 2010

Guy,

Glad to hear you got her going right again.
What load and speeds are you getting?

JD338

Guy Miner · Nov 8, 2010

Ummm. Same load as before, a healthy (book max) charge of Retumbo under 115 Nosler Partitions and 115 Berger VLD bullets.

Velocities are unprintable at this point until I go out and run them over the chronograph again. Higher than I've ever shot 115's by a fair amount. Chrono problem perhaps? Kind of doubt it though as the .30-06 recorded normal velocities - it was just the .25-06 attempting to shoot as fast as a .257 Weatherby that flustered me a bit.

Guy

FOTIS · Nov 9, 2010

Well when you get them chrono'ed again I am interested in the full load stats and velocity please.

SJB358 · Nov 9, 2010

Me too, sounds kind of interesting! Glad you did some maintenance on your rifle. I am surprised an old Marine like yourself could stand to sleep at night with a "nasty" old rifle in the safe! Just kidding about that. I am starting to shoot mine more and clean them less though. I was cleaning after every range session, but as I am seeing a little now, I am going to shoot them until they look dirty. Probably not a good idea to have more barrel wear from cleaning than shots down range! Scotty

Guy Miner · Nov 9, 2010

Yeah it's kind of funny. With all the match shooting I was doing, I got used to not cleaning the barrel for 100 - 250 rounds. That's just normal in some long-range prone competition circles, because there is simply no time during the match to clean a rifle.

So, when I'd shoot the .25-06 hunting rifle, I guess I transferred some of that attitude to it. Oh, I'd wipe it down with an oily rag to get the dust & dirt off and prevent rust, but wasn't doing much about cleaning the barrel. Bad move I think! The fairly rough Remington factory barrel can't take as much shooting as my match rifle with the hand-lapped cut-rifled Krieger barrel. Wow - shocking!

And the action screws in the wood stock had worked a smidge loose. And there were a few other details I hadn't attended to. After all, this rifle was essentially fool proof. Five mule deer in five years, 30 - 400 yards. Rain or shine, snow or wind, high elevation or low. No problems. Always just good old Steady Eddie. Zero never even shifts. Hah!

Load is nothing special. Pulled it right off the Hodgdon web site, a 115 gr bullet over 60.5 grains of Retumbo. Worked up to it and have been using it for several years. It's a max load for a 117 gr bullet according to Hodgdon - but they're showing a velocity lower than what I normally see with this load and a LOT lower than what I saw with the load just yesterday. I need to chronograph the load again, just to double check... These are cartridges that I loaded a year ago and have had no trouble with, ever. No trouble with them yesterday either, they're just moving... FAST! At least according to the chronograph... Same chrono as usual. I bought it about five or six years ago. Same range, same distance from the chronograph, same rifle, same load/ammo... The only thing that changed was the velocity... I only had a few with me, so I couldn't check long range trajectory, but at 100 yards they hit right at the elevation they're supposed to.

Okay - Hodgdon lists it as a 3080 fps load. I was seeing about 3370 fps with this load yesterday - and normally I get about 3180 - 3200 fps. Was 150 to nearly 200 fps faster yesterday than ever before, and nearly 300 fps faster than Hodgdon reports. That got my attention. I'm going to be checking the brass to see if it needs trimming or if there is some other reason the load might be developing such high velocity. If it really is. The day was overcast, perhaps that affected the chronograph reading. That's why I'm going to chronograph the loads again when I get a chance. The only pressure sign I noticed was slightly cratered primers, same as normal. Temps were in the low 50's so heat wasn't a factor.

I was using 115 gr Berger VLD's - with which I originally worked up the load, and also 115 Nosler Partitions, which I also recently worked up. The Noslers were a little slower and were loaded over a half grain less powder, but were still fast, well over 3300 fps, and the Bergers were just flat hauling you know what. Assuming they were really going that fast. Who knows?

I'll see about figuring it out in time.

Regards, Guy

FOTIS · Nov 10, 2010

Nice!

Songdog · Nov 10, 2010

Guy Miner":2foetmb2 said:
Okay - Hodgdon lists it as a 3080 fps load. I was seeing about 3370 fps with this load yesterday - and normally I get about 3180 - 3200 fps. Was 150 to nearly 200 fps faster yesterday than ever before, and nearly 300 fps faster than Hodgdon reports. That got my attention. I'm going to be checking the brass to see if it needs trimming or if there is some other reason the load might be developing such high velocity. If it really is. The day was overcast, perhaps that affected the chronograph reading. That's why I'm going to chronograph the loads again when I get a chance. The only pressure sign I noticed was slightly cratered primers, same as normal. Temps were in the low 50's so heat wasn't a factor.

I was using 115 gr Berger VLD's - with which I originally worked up the load, and also 115 Nosler Partitions, which I also recently worked up. The Noslers were a little slower and were loaded over a half grain less powder, but were still fast, well over 3300 fps, and the Bergers were just flat hauling you know what. Assuming they were really going that fast. Who knows?

I'll see about figuring it out in time.

Regards, Guy

I shoot the same load... 60-61 grains of Retumbo behind a 115 VLD stoked with WLRMs... been shooting that load for years and years now. Typically it'll run anywhere from 3100-3250 out of a 24" barreled .25-06... I've shot it out of a half-dozen different .25's... never seen 3300+ though. Maybe the pressure was a little higher for the first coupl'a shots from a squeaky clean bore?

Also, sometimes if you're using a Shooting Chrony (the fold open kind) they won't be fully open... and you can get some pretty crazy readings. I remember a .221 Fireball pistol clocking 40 grainers at 4350fps... untill I realized that the chrony wasn't open all the way... fixed it and got the normal 3100ish. I've also seen it happen when you put the chrony on a tripod... somehow they sit unlevel... or cockeyed to the shooter... and you can be off 50-200fps pretty easily. I'd not think anything of it untill I shot them again... and made sure all was right with the chrony... and I was shooting over it square and plum.