Thread: Where to from here with my 7WSM?

As has been said the crown looks rough, it also appears that the rifling is damaged/not straight just inside the muzzle (about halfway down the visible part). Maybe the muzzle end of the barrel has opened up slightly when it was threaded.

I'd send it to a trusted gunsmith with instructions to cut an inch off the barrel and rethread, make sure you mention it's not shooting quite right and get them to check the barrel with a borescope first in case there's damage further up. I'd be sending the whole rifle to not just the barreled action, that way the smith will be putting it back together so no issues with mag binding etc.

Before you send it to the smith. alot of Remington rifles unbedded (is it bedded) shoot terribly without some form of barrel pressure point at the very foreend of the stock.. slip a business card up there and then group it.. some may notice some Remington factory stocks have small pressure points integrated into the fore end....
I've seen a .243 700 that shot 2-3" tighten up to 1/4 with that simple trick...

Secondly.. (ya can't fuck it more) you can do a simple recrown yourself before you send to smith with a drill and a case mouth camfer tool....

Delete the thread and put on TardMe...

That crown yuck,chop chop.

the rechamber itself would raise suspicion with me. get a smith to have a look. had a 280 rem years ago and the chamber looked like it had been done with a cordless drill and a masonry bit...

So its been rechambered from 7mm Rem Mag to 7WSM ? That raises the needle on my weirdshitometer.

Greetings,
We have the winner, a badly damaged crown. I am amazed it shoots as well as it does. It looks like damage was done by rough handling. I have no doubt that the barrel is original to the rifle and originally chambered for the Remington short action ultra mag after comparing it with my own rifle. Who knows why. This may have been done some time back as the 7mm WSM has faded with the 7mm SAUM soldiering on in F - class. In any case the rifle is now a bitza but still worth cutting back the barrel enough to remove damage, if required, and re crowning to see if there are more demons from the rechambering. This would let you get some use from your components and dies. Not the answer you were hoping for but it is what it is.
Regards Grandpamac.
PS. The rifle would have originally had a 22 inch barrel. Handloads with projectiles of 150 grains and up would have seldom topped 3,000 fps.
GPM.

Thanks all! I'd assumed the crown would be fine as I've never carried it without the brake on, and I had that put on as soon as I got it... woulda thought the smith who did the threading for me might have looked at the crown, but there you go.

Yes @grandpamac - 22 inch barrel. Didn't want to shorten it further, but needs must.

Will take it down to Gunworks, but I'm also thinking of switching to a suppressor so I'll wait until a secondhand one comes up as I may have to get it re-threaded anyway.

gunworks will see you right..... probably looking at around the $400 mark for them to recrown,thread and fit brand new suppressor.

As fault finding and nothing to lose, try polishing the crown before you get it cut back. This is diagnostics time, as I said you are looking for improvements not a complete fix! Brass round head screw, grinding paste (it wont tear worse chunks) and polish until its even in the light. Try it again and see how it goes - push a patch through to clean everything out and also check for loose ares (bulges) in the barrel and at the muzzle.

Better?

MUCH better.....interesting to see what range result is.

Originally Posted by mopheadrob

Better?

Looks betterer to me, if grouping improves I'd still get the bore scoped before getting it professionally crowned.

Thought I'd post an update for the benefit of everyone who has offered advice & help.

Contrary to good scientific method, I changed everything at once Left the brake off and ran ladder tests on a number of different projectiles thanks to an awesome forum member. Tried 130 grain Hot-Cors, 162 and 180 grain ELD-Ms, 175 grain ELD-Xs and 180 grain Berger Hybrids. Accuracy was still shit, but I was only looking at velocity & elevation to get an idea of optimal charge. A couple of projectiles did show more promise than others though.

Then took off my Meopta scope and chucked on a Burris 3-9x40 and a Hardy Gen VI can. Back to the range to test 2 charge weights behind the Hot Cors (I'm loading these to SAAMI spec so they fit in my mag) and 3 x seating depths for each of the 162 ELD-M and 175 ELD-X.

The Hot-Cors shot one group of 3 rounds almost touching with a fourth about 0.75" to the right. The other group had about 1.25" of horizontal dispersion and 0.75" of vertical. I believe horizontal dispersion indicates poor seating depth, but as I don't want to seat them longer and it's only ever going to be a sub 200m load I'm happy with that.

All three x three-shot groups of the ELD-Ms were within 0.25" of the centreline. The group jumping 20 thou' had 2 in the same hole and a third 0.75" below them, but the 80 thou jump wasn't much worse. I'm happy with that too, but might try a touch more powder in case it tightens them up further.

What was most pleasing was the repeatability of the groups, with the two Hot-Cor groups having very little vertical dispersion and the three ELD-M groups almost no horizontal ruling out poor shooting technique, bedding issues etc. Hunting this weekend, then I'll swap the scopes back to see if it goes to shit again which will tell me if it was the scope or adding the can.

Thanks all for your input!

I'm stoked you have had such huge amount of progress. Your confidence will be good again yabbadabbadoo. Now go shoot something lol