I've been working up a load for a 30-06 I've had since about 1974. A gentleman by the name Cal Albright built it for me. Some of you here may remember his ads in Rifle and Handloader Magazines for the Albright fast fit trap door butt plates, same fellow. Very nice butt plates BTW. Anyway the rifle was an FN commercial mauser with a bad barrel and he said he could put a barrel on for me for $100. :shock: Seems he'd ordered a barrel for a rifle he was building and the one they sent had a 1 in 12" twist and he wanted the standard 1 in 10". A 1 in 12" is great for cast bullet so I said OK. He called and not only did he rebarrel the rifle but put a pretty fancy piece of wood on the gun., no charge for the stock. Well, I shot it some over the years but while it would make very tight 3 shot groups, .25" to .50", none would hit in the same place twice. I'd sight in 3" high at 100, let the barrel cool and the next group might be 4" high and 10" to the left, right up down who knew where they would land? When I got transferred to Tucson in 1979 I play with that rifle some. I re bedded dit 5 time times to no avail. screws always checked, swapped scopes several times, just no luck getting it to hit in the same place twice. In 1988, I drove up to Deer Creek AZ, a suburb of Phoenix and went to the McMillan plant to see if I could get a stock for the rifle. They said normally you order and wait your turn for a stock but they had one for a Mauser that was a cancellation. We tried it with my barreled action and it was a go. I glass bedded it and all seemed well. Then financial problems popped up and I couldn't shoot or load ammo for a while and the rifle was put in the back of the safe. After that mess was taken care of I played with other guns and completely forgot about that 06. About a month ago I dug it out of the back of the safe with the intention of using it for the back up rifle for my upcoming elk hunt. I was already doing work up for my .280 Rem. as well but in the last few days have only taken the 06 out. It doesn't seem to be too happy with the Accubonds so far but seems to like the Partions. Both are 180 gr. bullets. I got out last Wednesday and ran 3 loads that showed promise and all 3 loads gave almost great groups. Each 5 shot group had 3 in a very tight cloverleaf and two out by as much as 2". :shock: The flyers were random, rather than being on say shot #3 or maybe #5. Shots were spaced 5 minutes apart. When I got home, I decided to give the rifle a good cleaning and 2 things became apparent. The barrel on that rifle had to have been lapped by cal as all I got out of that barrel was black carbon. Even after that was gone, no trce whatsoever of copper in that bore and no blue on the patches. The second thing I notice was a peening mark at the top of the slot that the bolt drops into. Apparently the bolt was being kept from closing all the way by about 1/32". Some quick work with the Dremel tool cleared that problem. Now, with a weather forecast for 100 percent probability for rain for the next 48 hours, guess I'll be waiting to see if that fixed the problem. 
Sometimes it just never ends. :roll:
Paul B.
Sometimes it just never ends. :roll: Paul B.
