Review of this rifle and reading past experiences make it look fine, but I'm wondering if my barrel is defective? I did a proper break in procedure.

Bergara B14 HMR in 300WinMag. Gunwerks brass that's now on it's second firing. Berger 215s with H1000 powder and CCI 250s.

I try to load to perfection. My shoulder bumping, trimming, and seating is all within .001.


I fire formed my first 100 pieces and gathered data working up a ladder.The groups were all pretty terrible never even reaching 1 MOA but I figured was because of new brass. Now that I have my first round of fire formed brass I loaded as perfect as possible I'm still shooting god awful groups. It doesn't matter if I lock it up in a sled, shoot from a bench, or prone with a bipod.

My Pro Chrono 2 is showing an ES of nearly 200fps. Groups are 1.7-2.5 MOA


What in the world is going on? This has been incredibly expensive to shoot such garbage and still nowhere near a good load. Factory ammo wasn't match grade but still shot no better than 1.5MOA.

Advice?

Any mfg can have a bad product sneak out, but I dont know if your at the stage yet where I would reach that conclusion. I would try some different powders and bullets. Perhaps even some factory ammo that tends to shoot well in many guns (e.g. 190gr Federal GMM).

OP, lets start with there maybe multiple problems..lets start with the crony readings...sounds very much like the readings are off..maybe the bullet is not going squarely over the windows, maybe you have the crony to close to the muzzle and its seeing the burn't gas.. when I use that type of crony, I put it at least 15 foot from the muzzle and normally 18-20 feet away...its also critical to make sure it is square in all three planes to the barrel..I hook a string to the muzzle back by the action that I can pull tight as I set the crony, I can line the string up with the barrel in all three planes while positioning the crony to the string..when its all correct it makes setup much easier and helps make sure your readings are correct...

Now on to the rifle..have you shot any other ammo thru it? mainly a match grade factory round that groups sub moa? That is something I would try to verify if its a rifle issue, a shooter issue, or an ammo issue...

On your handholds, have you isolated a node in velocity where it showed good consistency? Have you done a bullet seating test for that bullet in that rifle? Have you checked all screw torques on the action/stock, the rail/action/scope rings? anything loose? anything way over torqued?

When shooting, have you tried videoing the rifle/shooter from the side? it usually works good for finding excessive recoil/shooter actions which are causing group issues...

Yeah. Disregard post. Barrel is absolutely defective. I shot some Federal Premium which gave me 6" groups at 100m and an ES of 100. Barrel is leaking.


Thanks Bergara. $600 in components wasted plus dozens of hours reloading and testing just to have to start over.

Ouch, that sucks..give them a call and ask them to fix it...

Yeah it does. But thanks for your help. You tried walking me through reloading stuff on another thread or two. At least I'm not going crazy and my reloads are good.

worse comes to worse, buy a quality barrel for it and have it installed, then you know exactly what you have...

I think they have an accuracy guarantee.   A friend has one I think in .300 win mag and loves it.   He bought another for his son that was a turkey.  Barrel was wedged up against the channel side.  They made it right I believe.

Well hopefully this muzzle brake I had put on will come off. It sounds like they might consider it a "permanent modification" that voids the warranty.

The infamous "Oh by the way, did I mention..."!  Before you send your boom stick back to Bergara, I wonder if, in the process of doing the modification, something may have come loose.  Go over the rifle with a torque driver and make sure that everything (action screws and scope mounting hardware) is torqued to spec.  Also make sure that the recoil lug is properly seated against the stock.  If that doesn't produce any beneficial results, take the brake off and shoot it again just to see what it does without the brake.  Might save you some time and postage...

- R -

It shot just as poorly before I added the brake. I thought I was just messing up reloading or hadn't found the right node yet, since I was still fire forming brass. I've checked everything it's all tight.

Fair enough...  was just thinking out loud...

Did you check that the recoil lug was well "mated" to the stock?  Its easy enough to do and might help...

I have a Bergara Premier Ridgback 6.5CM, it is a finicky rifle, factory match or handloads, its a roll of the dice. My Savage .308 is spot on out of the box with 168gr FGMM, go figure.

Spend 2K on a rifle to find out it sucks.

Went through this with my grail rifle , A ruger #1 in 6mm Remington. I spent hundreds of dollars on components  only to find it was a garbage gun. To This day, I am still pissed at Ruger  and would never buy one of their centerline  rifles.I I think the best group I got with that Ruger was 2 MOA.

Appreciate the attempt to help. I swear I've spent from morning until now trying to figure it out on either on the internet or messing with it.
If you're talking about the two screws that mate it to the stock, yes. No other screws that I can see.



Yep. Funny by buddies budget 6.5 from Walmart outshoots my Bergara.



I have a feeling even if Bergara replaces my barrel I will always be pissed about this. Just the time investment alone

To make sure the recoil lug is well mated to the stock, when you are putting the action back in the stock (after doing some work on it), you start tightening the action screws and before they get even a little snug, you stand the rifle straight up with the muzzle in the air to make sure the recoil lug is in good contact with the stock... some folks even bounce the rifle gently on the butt pad a few times...  you then continue to tighten the action screws with your torque driver until you get to the desired torque spec.  I agree that this is unlikely to be your problem but it is easy enough to check/fix...  my brain wants to eliminate the simple problems first...

The idea is - if the lug is not well mated with the stock, you can get some movement under recoil that may have an adverse effect on your accuracy...

Best,
- r -

My Bergara HMR in 6.5CM shot about 1.5" with 140 ELDM until i tighten the action screws, the rear screw was at ~35in-lbs. Spec calls for 55in-lbs. Now it shoots 1 ragged hole.

Have you shot 300 win mag before?

Interesting, a simple thing like that made a big difference ?

It is a flaw in the design of the traditional-stock Remington 700, which the Bergara is a copy of.  Easy enough to work around though.

This is supposed to be fun dammit.  Get out there and keep having fun!!!

Any update OP?

@101stCurrahee

My Bergara HMR 300 WM

Prefers 180gr  
Nosler Ballistic Tip or Accubond
74.0 of IMR 4831
WLR primer
WW brass

My first .300 WM loads for my Model 70 super grade was

Nosler 180BT
RL22
Rem case (nickel)
WLR iirc

with the BOSS brake on the factory setting  that gun was shooting 1/2/MOA.   It was a very short load workup.  

I suspect OP was SOL with Bergara if he had that barrel threaded for the brake.  It would have been nice to hear how he made out.

If I didn't hand load everything I would have sent mine back. With Hornady and Federal match ammo it was a 2-2.5 MOA gun. I had to seat the bullets out to about 25 thousands of jump and it went sub MOA.