A friend just bought the new 16/116 FCSS Weather Warrior from Savage in 6.5/284 Norma caliber and handed it to me to play with
When he got it, he sent it off to have the full-size Vais brake installed on that 24" barrel. This is the model with the Accustock and Accutrigger. After disassembling it and tweaking a couple of things, I cleaned the bore, lubed everything, etc, etc.
Sized some Lapua brass and sat down to work up a load using V100 powder and a lot of WLR primers of known quantity. After gauging the throat, I determined where .025" jump would be with the Nosler 140 Accubond bullets. Interestingly, when the bullet is seated at that depth, the rear bearing band of the bullet sits about .05-.06" below the junction of the neck/shoulder junction in the case. That's a real good balance for max case capacity and bullet support by the neck. The box magazine fed the cases with the bullets seated like this very well and there was plenty of room to seat them out further.
After cleaning the bore and a manual bore-sighting from the bags, the first 3 shot test load went into 3/4" @ 100yds. Pretty encouraging. I then thoroughly cleaned the barrel to remove all trace of copper and lapped the bore with JB. Flushed and patched the bore dry and fired 2 fouling shots in the dirt.
Swinging to 200yds, I began increasing charges 1/2 grain per group. The rifle showed no sticky bolt all the way up to Hodgdon's recommended max charge (at 90F), but the accuracy and good ES numbers came at 2825-2850fps on the chrono. The groups ran 1.12-1.38" mostly at 200yds. Not too shabby for a factory rifle that comes in at its price.
Recoil of this 6.9# bare rifle was on par with a std weight rifle in 22/250 caliber. It was a real pussycat. After running the G1 ballistics, it should deliver 1500 ft/lbs at just shy of 400yds.
[This post was last edited on 8/8/12 at 9:28 PM]
