Thread: New Sabatti Rover 6.5 x 55 review

So I just got myself a new Sabatti, and because I couldn't find a decent deep dive into what they're like anywhere when I was weighing things up I thought I better do one.

Sabatti is a really old company from Italy, who've been making rifles for a few hundred years.

I saw a new 6.5 x 55 on TradeMe a few weeks ago that caught my eye - it looked nicely classical, versus all of my other black plastic rifles. I shoot goats and wallaby at some distance sometimes so I thought the 6.5 factor would be ideal.

The TM pictures...



It arrived yesterday and it's as finely made (to the eye) as it looked in the photos. If I have a whinge, it's that there's a slight half ring worn round the barrel where it's been resting in a gun rack. I realize now it's visible in the TM photos too.

But otherwise it looks and feels great. The bolt is heavy and solid and fairly stiff to close, but the rifle itself feels quite light (without the glass on it yet). The trigger hardly moves when you pull it, a bit like a Browning X-Bolt, just a little tick and the rifle fires.

My first job last night was to wipe it down, clean the barrel - for the sake of the close inspection that encourages - and then I pulled the action from the stock to see if the inletting was well protected.

Answer: ish. I could see all the inletting had been oiled at least once. Unlike the last two X-Bolts I've purchased. But it also looked like the Sabatti's barrel channel was trimmed to float the barrel after it had been oiled.

So it got another coat of tung oil to be sure.

The inletting was nice and tidy though, not much burr, fairly smooth. I've seen good rifle brands hiding inletting that looks like a chain saw was used.

Here's the innards of the stock, with the recent coat of tung oil soaking in...



I've got a box of those cheap Serbian PPU rounds to break it in this weekend. 149g FMJ from memory. I'll swar in the iron sights while I'm doing that. I'll post a range report when I'm done and before I add the glass.