I only have the one. 22 hornet. I like it. A lot of times those tales of woe are repeated by guys just because thats what they heard. Mine doesn't have a thumbhole stock or bipod but it shoots great. An old beaver trapper I knew in WY had everybody around there calling me Dangerous Dan. He was with me one day when I shot a fox with it at about 200 yards. Maybe mine is an exception but before I spent a bunch of money I would try other stuff. Starting with powder charge/type and bullet seating. All the other stuff too. Good lock up, good sight, no loose screws. That O ring thing is cheap enough too.

Wolf, what is your goal for this rifle... What level of accuracy are you trying to achieve?

Answering that question will determine how much time, effort, and money you want to invest in the gun and handloads.

If you want to just tinker with it and see if you can continuously improve it then you'll never be done. If you have an objective in mind work to that goal.

Both options are fine and depend on the shooter and his goals. Just keep in mind the limitations of yourself, the gun, and the cartridge.

BTW, how does the crown look?

Mike

Honestly with all the reading I'm doing with this and being realistic. If i can consistently get this thing to shoot a 3rd group 1" and under @ 100 consistently ,I'll be happy. It's showing me already that with hand loads @1.5" isn't super hard.
As far as money,egh I'm not gonna try and drop more then $100 more bunch I to it . It's just not worth it. It's not a bench rest gun ,not at prs gun and I'm not about to try and make it into one. Just way more trouble then even I wanna go though. Gonna try bedding the forend then after that just different style of shooting and messing with reloads. Honestly even if I can get this thing shooting consistently,I'm still probably gonna mess with it. Just my nature lol

Sorry forgot to add the crown is pretty nice,I'll take a pic when I get back to the house

I guess I should have asked what your goal is. If that thing is shooting 1 1/2 inch groups at 100 then at 200 you should only miss by 1 1/2 tops . Won't work for competition but will be good coyote medicine which would tickle me pink. I need to remember not everybody see's a firearm the way I do. Its a tool to me. I like shooting but trying to hit a nickel at 300 yards just isnt in my cards. 1 1/2 at a hundred will easy tip over a coyote at 3 and thats a good tool in my book.

I forgot to ask what your barrel twist is.

If the crown isn't dinged, that's one less variable. Try the O-ring deal too... That's a dirt cheap experiment. May not yield anything but no big loss if it doesn't. Bedding it probably won't hurt either, if you do it yourself and do a good job, then you haven't lost much money.

1 moa @ 100 is perfectly acceptable for a goal.

If you play with the handloads and it looks like the gun is serviceable, then consider spending the dough on match brass/bullets if you want to wring more accuracy out of it.

Keep after it.

Mike

Supposed to be 1-12
And here's the crown,pretty nice imo

Ya know I tell my self sometimes, "man you should just save up ! Stop buying fixer uppers, just say up $2000bucks ! Buy ya a nice gun a bagara ora Ruger RPR mabye get it in something that works like 6.5 Creedmore or just a .308 a classic! Put a nice bit of glass on it and just shoot , it would be easy !"
Then I get a lil $300 pawnshop special and the ADHD Mad Scientist/ clueless wanna be gunsmith comes out and I'm just like " nawwwww where the fun in that ?! " boy o boy I have problems
So yeah wasn't able to do load testing today and it's supposed to be kinda bad weather tomorrow soooooo I said screw it I'm bedding this forarm.
Don't help I found this Lil beauty at in the tool pile for $16 bones out the door !


Lol under half price then at the store !
Yeah I know I need to stay out the pawn shop but
Anyhow picked up a $15 tool kit from Wally world and now I got a new helper for the gun bench!

So before I go any further lemme go ahead and give the disclaimer :I AM NOT A GUNSMITH I haven't been to school for this ,I don't do these things for a living ,heck I'm probably doing it wrong . Don't do what I'm doing until you do your own research.

So anyhow I've done this on a few of my rifles and seems to be a pretty straightforward deal and so far everyone I've done has shot better soooo.
First off took of my for arm and used a Lil drill bit to perforate the inside to give my bedding compound some where to latch on to

Then I went back with some 120 grit sand paper . Everything has a layer of clear coat so I just got that scratched up hopefully to help it bind better. Then went over and got rid of all the saw dust

And gotta say, that is some BEAUTIFUL wood grain . A+ rating in my book. But now I mix up my bedding compound which will remain nameless less the the actual gunsmith strangle me


And this forarm has a SNUG fit so I didn't put down a super thick layer. It's decent but not crazy. Actually don't use half of the compound I mixed but it's cheap so


And now for my release agent. Last time I did this when I was like 19 I actually used Crisco. Worked like a dream but after doing some reading and looking at what I had. , I'm using molly grease this time. Have a whole tuber if it for air rifle work so just too a paint brush and slathered it on everything that could come in contact with the bedding agent.



Last gunsmith I talk to about this said it's better to go over board then have a mechanical lock up and have to cut a stock off .
Then I proceeded to completely stuff the for arm hanger and retainer screw with Molly and some wd40 sinch her down with masking tape, and btw when it comes to masking tape just spend the extra and get frog tape this cheap stuff is such a pain.


And now we wait 24hr to see just how bad I done goofed

Good old JB weld bedding....... uuups I said it

So had a lil heart attack lol. This thing was in their tight! Had to wrap a large diameter punch in a Lil towel and tap around the sides and it popped right out ! And weeeellll







The round end looks pretty nice but the rear ! Really should have added more but hay . Y'all Reckon I should give this a good wipe down and do a second application to fill in all these gaps ? Also end up getting a tiny bit on the front end of the barrel, what would be a good way to remove this without messing up my bluing? Or is there just not a way ?

Shhhhh it's a secret

You went this far. May as well smooth it all up. I doubt you get that speck off without leaving a mark on the blue. I am curious to see if your groups get smaller too. Don't leave us hanging.

You can get the JB..... errrrr bedding compound off with acetone and some time and elbow grease. I soak a paper towel folded with it and leave it of there for a while and that softens the surface of the stuff . I would spray the bedding you got in there down with brake clean , being careful not to get any on the wood finish and put another layer on there. May as well do it right ish, now that you started on your way down that rabbit hole.

Rightish
Well taped her up ,blasted the tar out of it with break cleaner air it out and too the end mill bit on my Dremel and honed out the hole for the hanger. Just was nasty and figured there was suttl some Molly stuffed in there sooo. Also too the drill bit and divided it out again and btw check the bedding layer. It's like 1/16" thick till you hit wood !






So yeah used a metric butt load this time and the way it's all sealing out I'll be surprised if I don't have a really good deal tomorrow

So just got home and had to give her the old tape wrapped punch treatment again but popped off and after a little clean up with the razor knife !




Fits like a pair of yoga pants now the question is, should I wait till I get my new front rest in a week to test it or should I go out on the bipod again ?

Weather gonna be colder in a couple days. Give her a test tomorrow.

Give'r a whirl !

Might be the fix and one way to find out.

That looks good.

Ok y'all lil update !
So I scrubbed the tar outta this gun. Took about 30min but she's patching out white now

So got out less then an hour before sunset. Set up in prone and the first thing I did was test the best load I had to date in two three round groups @100yd. I adjusted the scope I lil better and boooooy I love this thing ! I just put my face down and bam ! Perfect ! But I digress. Anyhow both the bipod and the bag set up where both shot with 19.5 gr of h322 which WAS my best load so far though sloooooowww according to my last Chrono session it's running around 2400fps when I average it out.


So side by side here the two groups

So yeah the bags win out. Interesting thing though ,seems bedding the gun shifted my POI because last time I shot this I zeroed it to at least patter in the sticky. And as y'all see these are a bit higher up and to the right.
So it's obvious the bags work better , idk mabye it's the rifle mabye it's just more stable , but the rest of the set where shot off if bags.

Now I did try and get velocities but due to the sun dropping my chrony only caught the first 6 and I'm not sure if I wanna trust them. I also tried shooting with the front bag either on the for arm or under the reciver. I honestly wasn't comfortable with it under the reciver so I mainly shot with it under the for arm and a rear bag



So absolute worse group was a bit over 4"@100


But with that being said it easily kept everything thing else at or under 1.5"@100yd


With my best group to date being a hair over 1" @100yd

And ya know , if I can get this to be repeatable I think imma be happy...kinda lol

So now that I was back at the house. I feel that the solid bed...didn't really do anything accuracy wise. Mainly feel the problem was the first go around was I didn't keep giving it more powder. So after eveyone and there mom on the handi pages kept asking I finally said screw it and found some o rings to this o ring trick thing. Had some for air rifle repair that fit the hanger perfectly so I just slipped two on after I did some sanding to the for end . I only sanded past the hanger area. I want everything past that to float.


So yeah I can slide a pice of folder paper under it super easy so let's see what happens next

Are you shooting cast bullets? If you are those groups are pretty decent. Its shooting good enough now to be a very effective tool.

Going down the rabbit hole chasing dime size groups is fun though.