Montana rifle company

Hi everyone! Been a few years since I have been on here. Been moving and working a ton. Anyways I had a chance to pickup a montana rifle company x2 rifle in the 26 nosler. I have a farrell 20 moa base leupold rings and a vortex hst scope mounted on it. I was told it was a used rifle when i purchased it. But there was no marks on the follower or the bolt face that indicated it had been shot. So I scrubbed it with gunslick foam cleaner before taking it out. Well I bought a box of nosler 129 grain AccuBond bullets to put through it. Set up the chronograph and shot. Here is the interesting part. The first bullet started at 3215 fps. I let the barrel cool at least 3 mins between shots. 2nd shot was 3225 fps. I proceeded to shoot with letting the barrel cool between shots and the velocity climbed on each shot. By shot 6 the velocity was at 3365 fps. Then the velocity started to fall off back down to 3240 fps by shot 12. I have never seen a rifle do that before. I couldn't get the gun to group better than 4 to 5 inches at 100 yards. I stopped shooting and took the gun home and adjusted to trigger to a nice 3 lbs, scrubbed the barrel with bore paste. Took the scope, base off the rifle and cleaned everything to a t. Put it all back together and torqued everything to specs and then took it back out. Rifle still would not group better than about 4 inches at 100 yards. Last 3 shots went into a straight horizontal line about 2.5 inches with no vertical variance. What are your thoughts? Ammo related, bedding?

Welcome back, first I would take stock off and check for any barrel to stock tight spots and if ok then try another scope unless that one is proven to be good. Also those acc long range bullets can be finicky.

I took the stock off and all seems good. The company glass bedded it and I checked and there is no barrel to stock contact. I took it to my smith last night and he thinks the action might me a little twisted in the current bedding so he is gonna re bed it.

The salesman there told me that they “weren’t selling Saturns” when he wouldn’t honor the prices published on the website. Maybe they ARE selling Saturns. [emoji1]

Hope you figure it out. Does read to me like you have a bedding problem. Always test with a known scope that you trust, too. That can really drive a person nuts.

gbflyer":3gssljbu said:

The salesman there told me that they “weren’t selling Saturns” when he wouldn’t honor the prices published on the website. Maybe they ARE selling Saturns. [emoji1]

Hope you figure it out. Does read to me like you have a bedding problem. Always test with a known scope that you trust, too. That can really drive a person nuts.

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:lol:
Isn't that the truth! Just going by my eyes. The scope I installed on there came off my custom 6 creedmoor and was doing awesome on there. So hopefully when I get the gun back it will do better.

You might take a good look at the crown if you haven't already. A couple years ago I had a rifle that inexplicably starting throwing bullets left and right (moreso than up or down) and found out that I had managed to mess up the crown. Each successive shot would change the burr on the crown a little, so consistency was non-existent -- the rifle went from a solid 1 MOA to something akin to 8-10 MOA. Re-crowned the muzzle and all went back to normal.

maverick2":kbp6uicz said:

You might take a good look at the crown if you haven't already. A couple years ago I had a rifle that inexplicably starting throwing bullets left and right (moreso than up or down) and found out that I had managed to mess up the crown. Each successive shot would change the burr on the crown a little, so consistency was non-existent -- the rifle went from a solid 1 MOA to something akin to 8-10 MOA. Re-crowned the muzzle and all went back to normal.

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That's a great point and thank you for bringing that up!! I did look at the crown and it looked great. My gun smith
(Randy Selby) also looked at the crown and didnt say anything was wrong with it. But thank you again for reminding me about that!

I believe that the faster the velocity, the more the crown effect it.


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