No disparagement meant toward the Golden State; I'll explain why the title:
As I said in another thread, I've had poor luck with Sakos in 7mm Rem Mag. I don't think it is the cartridge, and certainly not the caliber as I've had great luck with two Sako .280's and two Sako 7x64's -- and even a TRGs in 7STW. I'm not superstitious and attribute my lack of success with the 7mm RM to the luck of the draw and not something inherent in the chambering. So, when I came across a really nice, very clean Bofors Deluxe in 7mm RM for sale from a California shop at an attractive price I decided to "try again".
When I received it everything appeared in great condition. It was only after firing it a couple of times that I realized that some Einstein had "adjusted" the trigger by loosening the mounting screw. When the firing pin was down the trigger would thus swing back and forth inside the trigger guard quite freely! This allowed the sear's engagement to barely catch, thus achieving his desired light pull. SHEESH! Fortunately, no permanent harm was done and I was able to restore the trigger to its proper mounting and adjusted to a crisp 2.75 lbs.
Looking down the bore everything looked great -- nice sharp riflings and no visible powder residue, and it appeared that maybe the seller had at least run a patch down the bore before marketing it. So I properly tightened the action screws, mounted a Leupold VX-II 3-9X, took it to the bench, and bore-sighted it. Before moving from the 50 yard target where I bore-sighted I decided to fire a couple more shots to assure everything was as it should be. Whoops! It seemed to be walking around. "Must be these crummy factory loads I dug out of the back of the closet" I thought to myself.
So I quickly cobbled together some handloads with a dependable 150 grain Sierra and returned to the range. Two shots at 50 yards landed four inches apart. Well, 'taint the ammunition.
I checked all of the usual suspects -- scope mounts, scope adjustments, etc. No ding on the muzzle crown. Nothing would explain the shotgun accuracy. So I decided that maybe I should clean the barrel before proceeding further. Shot it full of foaming bore cleaner, waited a half-hour, then ran a patch through it. Talk about BLUE! That was about the bluest patch I've ever seen come out the end of a barrel. I ran several more patches through, then refilled it with foam, waited another hour and cleaned it again. The blue seemed to subside by the third patch down the barrel.
Now, the reason for the title "California Crud". This rifle has obviously seen very few shots down the barrel, but it was copper-coated but good. As most are aware, California adopted a no-lead regulation a number of years ago due to large raptors supposedly being poisoned by carrion killed with lead bullets. Barnes was about the only monometal bullet originally available, and the early Barnes monos smeared copper like a Crayola on a hot sidewalk. Not knocking Barnes as they eventually came up with a fix for this, but this is the second barrel I've seen (apparently) seriously impacted by copper fouling from early Barnes bullets.
I won't know if this was the problem until I can get back to the range (maybe tomorrow morning), but I'm curious if anyone else has had this experience with copper fouling from monometals.
By the way, the other rifle with copper fouling came with some ammunition from the prior owner -- yes, original Barnes monos in handloads. But its fouling is so bad that "ordinary" cleaning methods have thus far failed me and I'm still looking for a solution (if there is one) to restoring this barrel.
As I said in another thread, I've had poor luck with Sakos in 7mm Rem Mag. I don't think it is the cartridge, and certainly not the caliber as I've had great luck with two Sako .280's and two Sako 7x64's -- and even a TRGs in 7STW. I'm not superstitious and attribute my lack of success with the 7mm RM to the luck of the draw and not something inherent in the chambering. So, when I came across a really nice, very clean Bofors Deluxe in 7mm RM for sale from a California shop at an attractive price I decided to "try again".
When I received it everything appeared in great condition. It was only after firing it a couple of times that I realized that some Einstein had "adjusted" the trigger by loosening the mounting screw. When the firing pin was down the trigger would thus swing back and forth inside the trigger guard quite freely! This allowed the sear's engagement to barely catch, thus achieving his desired light pull. SHEESH! Fortunately, no permanent harm was done and I was able to restore the trigger to its proper mounting and adjusted to a crisp 2.75 lbs.
Looking down the bore everything looked great -- nice sharp riflings and no visible powder residue, and it appeared that maybe the seller had at least run a patch down the bore before marketing it. So I properly tightened the action screws, mounted a Leupold VX-II 3-9X, took it to the bench, and bore-sighted it. Before moving from the 50 yard target where I bore-sighted I decided to fire a couple more shots to assure everything was as it should be. Whoops! It seemed to be walking around. "Must be these crummy factory loads I dug out of the back of the closet" I thought to myself.
So I quickly cobbled together some handloads with a dependable 150 grain Sierra and returned to the range. Two shots at 50 yards landed four inches apart. Well, 'taint the ammunition.
I checked all of the usual suspects -- scope mounts, scope adjustments, etc. No ding on the muzzle crown. Nothing would explain the shotgun accuracy. So I decided that maybe I should clean the barrel before proceeding further. Shot it full of foaming bore cleaner, waited a half-hour, then ran a patch through it. Talk about BLUE! That was about the bluest patch I've ever seen come out the end of a barrel. I ran several more patches through, then refilled it with foam, waited another hour and cleaned it again. The blue seemed to subside by the third patch down the barrel.
Now, the reason for the title "California Crud". This rifle has obviously seen very few shots down the barrel, but it was copper-coated but good. As most are aware, California adopted a no-lead regulation a number of years ago due to large raptors supposedly being poisoned by carrion killed with lead bullets. Barnes was about the only monometal bullet originally available, and the early Barnes monos smeared copper like a Crayola on a hot sidewalk. Not knocking Barnes as they eventually came up with a fix for this, but this is the second barrel I've seen (apparently) seriously impacted by copper fouling from early Barnes bullets.
I won't know if this was the problem until I can get back to the range (maybe tomorrow morning), but I'm curious if anyone else has had this experience with copper fouling from monometals.
By the way, the other rifle with copper fouling came with some ammunition from the prior owner -- yes, original Barnes monos in handloads. But its fouling is so bad that "ordinary" cleaning methods have thus far failed me and I'm still looking for a solution (if there is one) to restoring this barrel.
