Savage Chronicles...

[nikonNUT]

Looking pretty good!
Looking forward to seeing some long range action

Me too! Sadly summer has struck and I know Texas will be miserable this time of the year Shooting for a trip in October. Maybe visit Triple C Range and then buzz over (up?) to Utah for a class with Long Range Shooters of Utah in Price!

 

[stone and strop]

Me too! Sadly summer has struck and I know Texas will be miserable this time of the year Shooting for a trip in October. Maybe visit Triple C Range and then buzz over (up?) to Utah for a class with Long Range Shooters of Utah in Price!

I didn't know there was such a class.
A wealth of knowledge I'm sure. Sounds fun and educational!

 

[nikonNUT]

I didn't know there was such a class.
A wealth of knowledge I'm sure. Sounds fun and educational!

Yea, sir! 400.00 for two with a “we guarantee to have you hitting at 1000 yards by the end of the course” pitch. I’m game!!!

 

[stone and strop]

Yea, sir! 400.00 for two with a “we guarantee to have you hitting at 1000 yards by the end of the course” pitch. I’m game!!!

A guarantee? Tall order for some I bet.
Damn that would be fun though.

 

[Esox]

Everyone say Lapua brass is heavy duty stuff and great for MAX++ loads. 300gr bullet at 3000 FPS? It boggles the mind.

Lapua brass is good. Its strong but not too hard or brittle. My original 20 rounds are still be reloaded by my nephew. I'd bet some of those cases have been reloaded almost 20 times by now.

I was loading 200 grain Nosler Ballistic Tips at 3500fps, 230 grain Winchester Fail Safe bullets at 3150fps and 250 grain Sierra Game Kings at 3030fps. The 230 grain was the most violent and the 250's were the most painful, but my Sako TRG-S was only 9.25lbs scoped and loaded. Shooting the 300 grain Sierras at woodchucks, even with my 3-12 scope, was a whole lot easier than I imagined at 1000+. They really do shoot flat.

My nephew is loading 225 grain Barnes TSX at 3200fps, from a 24" barrel.

From a cold barrel at 100m. The first two are always touching. The third opens things up a bit.

Enjoy your rifle. My Savage 110 .22-250 single shot is a death ray out to 500. Add another 1000 with the one you have.

 

[nikonNUT]

That is some nice shooting, sir! I have the same cold bore issue! The first one is a tad wild and then the next three are a clover leaf. I am very impressed with the Lapua brass and the gain in strength and (minor) loss of capacity is a non-issue. I weighed 10 Peterson case (also great!) and 10 Lapua cases, took the difference, divided by 10, and backed off my charge that much. Got me pretty close and I have minimal pressure sign (very slight cratering on Fed 251Ms) at 2800 FPS with the 300gr SMKs. That said I am itching to try the 285gr Hornady ELD-M bullets as rumoms say the big Savage really likes them! I am 100% sure that it is the shooter but I can't seem to manage better than a 5/8 MOA group so far with the occational .5 MOA and .4 MOA group thrown in to aggravate me! More aggavating is the SD and ES I'm getting. Now I don't weigh sort anything, neck turn, etc but better than what factory ammo provides would be nice. Flip side is getting factory performance for a $1.25 a shot!

 

[OkieStubble]

Lapua brass is good. Its strong but not too hard or brittle. My original 20 rounds are still be reloaded by my nephew. I'd bet some of those cases have been reloaded almost 20 times by now.

I was loading 200 grain Nosler Ballistic Tips at 3500fps, 230 grain Winchester Fail Safe bullets at 3150fps and 250 grain Sierra Game Kings at 3030fps. The 230 grain was the most violent and the 250's were the most painful, but my Sako TRG-S was only 9.25lbs scoped and loaded. Shooting the 300 grain Sierras at woodchucks, even with my 3-12 scope, was a whole lot easier than I imagined at 1000+. They really do shoot flat.

My nephew is loading 225 grain Barnes TSX at 3200fps, from a 24" barrel.

From a cold barrel at 100m. The first two are always touching. The third opens things up a bit.

View attachment 1121112

Enjoy your rifle. My Savage 110 .22-250 single shot is a death ray out to 500. Add another 1000 with the one you have.

That’s some good shooting! Love my Savage 110 .270.

 

[Esox]

That is some nice shooting, sir! I have the same cold bore issue! The first one is a tad wild and then the next three are a clover leaf. I am very impressed with the Lapua brass and the gain in strength and (minor) loss of capacity is a non-issue. I weighed 10 Peterson case (also great!) and 10 Lapua cases, took the difference, divided by 10, and backed off my charge that much. Got me pretty close and I have minimal pressure sign (very slight cratering on Fed 251Ms) at 2800 FPS with the 300gr SMKs. That said I am itching to try the 285gr Hornady ELD-M bullets as rumoms say the big Savage really likes them! I am 100% sure that it is the shooter but I can't seem to manage better than a 5/8 MOA group so far with the occational .5 MOA and .4 MOA group thrown in to aggravate me! More aggavating is the SD and ES I'm getting. Now I don't weigh sort anything, neck turn, etc but better than what factory ammo provides would be nice. Flip side is getting factory performance for a $1.25 a shot!

I bought my Sako in 1995. At the time it was the third .338 Lapua in Canada. A box of 20 250 grain Scenar factory loads was $140. Brass was $89.95/20. I bought four bags, 80 rounds. The original 20 are still in use.

That round was still in its infancy at that time, as were most loads. Since I was loading IMR powders in most of my rifles, I went with IMR7828. Federal magnum primers are a must with a powder column that long. All three of my loads were IMR7828. 96 grains with the 200 Ballistic Tip, 94 grains with the 230 Fail Safe and 92 grains with the 250 Sierra. All of those loads incidentally, shot close enough to point of aim to make the difference moot on a deer size target at any reasonable hunting range.

The cases were never full length sized, only neck sized and being from the same lot of Lapua brass I didnt bother weighing or sorting either. If you decide to neck size, make sure you resize the full length of the neck. If you only partially neck resize, recoil will send the bullets back into the case. I set my RCBS seating die so the ogive of the bullet was .020" off the lands and never had an issue with the bullet slipping in the neck. The cases will in the magazine however and nylon tipped bullets, and even lead soft points, will deform but I never found it affected my accuracy.

I cant remember the SD across those loads but I do remember the ES of the 250 Sierra's. It was 7fps, across 4 groups of 5 rounds. I've never seen an ES so low.

When your checking cases, its the inside volume that matters. If you decide to check them, fill them with water and weigh the water thats inside them. That way you'll know the inside volume of the cases and can then sort them by case volume. Make sure they're all trimmed to the same length and my Lapua brass didnt stretch much. I trimmed them after the third firing and not since. I think my nephew has trimmed them twice again, but its only a couple thou anyway. Lapua brass, as well as Federal and Remington, isnt prone to stretching like softer Winchester brass.

As far as accurizing, if the stock hasnt been off, you might loosen and retorque the screws by hand. Quite often these days thats a job done by machine and they can torque them so tight they can actually torque the receiver. I keep a flat sided large two handed screwdriver for that and have had to put a wrench on it more than once. I struggled with a rifle at the club one day, it took two of us to break the action screws loose. One to hold the screwdriver down so it didnt slip and one to turn the wrench. A simple retorque cut group size in half.

Savage triggers are pretty good these days so it likely doesnt need much fiddling. The one on my 1990's 110 .22-250 did and I ended up putting it back close to factory because when they're set too light, the firing pin can fall when you slam the bolt closed. Extremely dangerous...

Your rifle with the right handload should outperform a factory load but its hard to say by how much. Factory loads have become much more accurate in the last 30 years. .5MOA is pretty good but like you, I'd expect better. It takes a damn good shooter to wring out the utmost accuracy in a .338 Lapua though. They are imposing and its difficult to let that Lizard brain take over lol.

The groups I posted above my nephew shot. His Lizard brain is bigger, and younger, than mine lol. I could have, maybe, shot those groups on my best day. When I shot it from the bench, the first one always landed exactly where I wanted it to but the next 2 would be an inch away, never touching. His first two shots from a cold barrel are always touching. I was okay with my first shot. With a rifle of such power, one should be all thats needed.

The penetration is something that needs to be seen to be believed. When my club was building the new indoor range, one of the members I hunted with was a materials buyer for General Dynamics. He was able to supply the club with the same armour plating used on the Stryker APC's. The club wanted to test it before they spent the $80,000 so they asked me to bring my Sako down and shoot at a 2x3 foot section. I took a friend with me that I moose hunted with because he had a Remington 700 BDL in .338 Ultra Mag. At 100 yards, he shot with an A Square Dead Tough 250 grain Remmy factory load. I shot next with my load of that old 230 grain Fail Safe and then we all walked down to look. The A Square left a grey smudge without a dent. The Fail Safe whistled right through and for a 1" radius around the hole, the armour plate was fractured and had around 6 cracks in it. The club president said, "Well, I guess no .338 Lapua shooting indoors." lol. Those old Winchester Fail Safe bullets with the black Oxide coating had a steel case inside them to keep the lead core intact.

They were $2 a bullet at that time. My loads, brass included, were $9 a shot.

That’s some good shooting! Love my Savage 110 .270.

A friend of my nephews took my old .22-250 out Coyote hunting a couple years ago.

I gave him the rifle and 100 reloads and told him to check the scope before hunting with it as I hadnt shot it in years. The Leupold 6.5-20 EFR I put on it still held the zero and he put 5 shots in one hole. I could do it with 3 shots, but never 5.

Shooting this Remington stainless fluted .220 Swift, I put 3 in one hole at 200.

Its got a 6-24 Bausch & Lomb on it. Optically, its as good as my Leupold to 20x but falls off in clarity quickly after that.

I was going to buy its bigger brother, the Remington Sendero, at the same time my sister bought that one for her husband at Christmas, in .257 STW. I didnt. Damn, I still regret that thinking about it now haha.

 

[nikonNUT]

I have experienced the dreaded sear jump! I think it was the premise for the accu-trigger and the little blade that blocks the sear. As for magazine feeding, my rifle likes a .030" jump and with the 3.850" AICS mags length is not a problem. I run very light neck tension at .0015" but single feed cause that rifle ain't going anywhere fast!

 

[Esox]

single feed cause that rifle ain't going anywhere fast!

The rifle might not be, but whats in it sure is lol.