Horizontal stringing?

T

taylorce1

New member
If you have a rifle with extreme horizontal stringing what is the first thing you look at assuming it isn't the idiot pulling the trigger?

Were talking 3-4" spread on 3 shot groups, multiple different charge weights. Brass is all brand new .300 Savage from Remington, bullets are 150 grain Core-Lock, and 130 grain Hornady. Because of the extreme weight difference in the Remignton bullets I sorted it all by weight and all bullets shot weigh within .5 grains of each other. I've only tested one powder so far with both bullets, which was Ramshot TAC. I'm going to try Varget, H380, or 4064 next.
 
From a gunsmithing perspective, you've apparently got a horizontal moment of inetia initiating vibration. A common cause is the front stock contacting the barrel on one side. If the gun has forestock contact pads and one came off, that would do it. Another cause could be uneven inletting in the stock and/or the back of the action being loose or whipping in the stock. A bedding job would fix any of the above. I've seen bad crowns bias stringing along an axis before, though usually they scatter the group all around, and taht is fixed by recrowning. Uneven bolt lug contact could cause it. I saw one Mauser that had a 6" horizontal stringing that proved to be making no lug contact at all on side. Lapping the lugs was the cure there.

Tuning the load may or may not produce a visible improvement when overlayed on a horizontal string as large as you have. Dan Newberry's method is the one I like, but it won't help if the improvements are masked by whatever is causing the horizintal stringing.
 
Make sure it's not you first.try a vise first.Not to differ from Unclenick(who has alot more knowledge).But if shots are straight in line with each other i have to beleive gun is not being put in same POI for each shot
 
Make sure it's not you first.try a vise first.Not to differ from Unclenick(who has alot more knowledge).But if shots are straight in line with each other i have to beleive gun is not being put in same POI for each shot
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Pretty sure it isn't me, I was shooting as well a .300 H&H and a .25-06 and was able to hold shot groups under 1.5 and 1" respectively. Plus I had a buddy there who was shooting as well who had the same thing happen when he shot the rifle. So I doubt it was me that was causing the problem, but I see where you were going with your thinking.

The groups had a vertical spread of up to 2" at times. The horizontal stringing was just far worse than the vertical. I figured it would probably be my bedding job, and I'll take a closer look at that this weekend to make sure I don't have pressure somewhere in the forearm that is causing this problem.
 
As Unclenick pointed out, horizontal stringing is typically a bedding problem (usually the forearm, although it can also be the action bedding).
 
Another thing that might help is neck-sizing your handloads after the brass has been fired in that rifle.
This is based on my experience with 1 rifle. Tried two different scopes, cut the barrel, glass bedded. Only thing that helped was the neck sizing.
 
What the neck sizing does is eliminate the head smacking back into the bolt face when it stretches under pressure. Usually that's not an issue if the bolt lugs are lapped to a good fit and the bolt face is square to the chamber. Another thing that can cause it is if the chamber itself is reamed off the bore axis. Like an out-of-square bolt face, this causes the strething head to hit one side first. You can usually tell if either problem is present because the fired brass only fits back into the chamber easily in one orientation.
 
Taylor, check the trigger, maybe it's part of or the problem, check trigger-squeeze...O and BTW you never mentioned the rifle in question.;)
 
O and BTW you never mentioned the rifle in question.
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It is that .300 Savage I've been working on. The one that I built on a 93 small ring action.

Took it out and shot it yesterday again and horizontal stringing problem is fixed. I had some contact on the LH side of the forearm. Now I had some vertical stringing yesterday of about 6" in six shots, but I know that was the ammo. My trigger is a brand new Boyd's Bold trigger, it is set right now at almost 3 lbs and no creep to speak of, and it breaks real nice so it isn't the trigger.

I was playing with my chrony working on some loads for my .25-06 and .300 H&H, and I fired some old factory Remington .300 Savage across it. I had an extreme velocity spread of 151 fps on six shots. My slowest shot being 2549 fps and the fastest 2700 fps. When I fired the 2700 fps round it made my muzzle jump and brought the forearm off the bag probably around 4".
 
Depends on the powder. When ammo gets old, the brass and gilding metal can stick to each other pretty hard. Normal seating and pull in a .30 caliber is around 60 pounds, but a former Aberdeen Proving Grounds employee on another board said that in old ammo they'd measured pull as high as 600 pounds. Still shoots, but erratic MV is common as this sticking isn't consistent, round to round. Consistent start pressure is key to consistent MV. At this point, with old commercial rounds I usually pull the bullet a fraction of an inch and reseat it before taking it out to shoot.
 
I figured that it had something to do with the age. I picked up a couple of old Remington Kleenbore (blueish green) boxes of ammo. One was complete and the other only had six rounds in it. Figured I'd keep the full box complete and shoot up the partial for the brass.

Hopefully now that the stringing is gone I can find a load that will shoot well. I'm really hope I can get the 130 grain Hornady bullets to shoot. Hornady shows that you can get them to 3000 fps with 3031 powder, I'd be very happy with 2850+ out of a .300 Savage.
 
I promise I'll post some if I ever get back to shooting it. Right now the wife is out of town on business, and I've got a 7 year old that is spending about 50% or her time in a wheel chair with a broken leg. Between playing Mr. Mom and work about all I have time for is sleep. I go hunting for deer and elk next weekend so it will be at least 4 weeks until I get to the range again.
 
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