Jeff Hutchins
I’m kind of a procrastinator when it comes to getting my hunting rifles ready.
It always seems that customers’ guns take precedence and mine get pushed to the back burner because of time constraints. Half of the time I don’t even get my rifle sighted in until I get to eastern Oregon a day or two before the season.
I do always take a tried-and- true rifle for back-up to the new experimental one and so far this lack of preparation hasn’t ever bit me but someday I’m going to take one of these new “projects” that I’ve just finished on a hunting trip and it’s going to shoot huge groups or not feed right to show me the error of my ways.
This year I expect my wife, son and I to get our mule deer tags and only my son will be using a “known” rifle. My wife and I both will be using rifles I have just recently finished, and have yet to shoot.
However, I’m further along than normal since both of the rifles are totally finished, build-wise. I might actually shoot and sight them in before leaving for the hunt.
The rifle I built for my wife is a Remington Model Seven in stainless steel, chambered in .284 Winchester. The cartridge could be considered the first short magnum and it’s about all of the power you can wring out of a short-action rifle with a standard .473-inch bolt face and factory-available cartridge. The body of the case is larger than the rim diameter, which makes it a rebated rim cartridge.
The cartridge case itself has proven so efficient and useful that it has been necked up and down to about every conceivable bullet diameter. I have even owned 6mm/284, 257/284, 6.5/284, 30/284 and 35/284. chambered rifles. All of those are gone now but the 6.5/284 proved so good that Norma finally made it a factory cartridge and is very popular with long- range shooters.
A heavy factory trigger does nothing but hurt the “shoot ability” of any rifle, so I reworked the factory assembly down to 3 pounds. The face of the receiver was trued since a square face on a factory rifle is as rare as an honest politician.
I already had a Pac-Nor stainless barrel with a standard sporter contour, so I installed and headspaced it. I wanted to build her something special, so I had Terry Wright of Right Rifles flute it. Fluting slightly reduces weight but it’s mostly for looks. Some people claim the increased surface area also allows the barrel to cool faster, and it does, but the difference is academic.
Fluting is also said to make a barrel stiffer. This is completely wrong, because if you remove material from a barrel it is going to be less stiff. But a fluted barrel is stiffer than a standard round barrel of the same weight. The barrel was cut and cut with a recessed, protected crown at 23 inches.
The whole barreled action was then bead blasted to give it a uniform matte finish so as not to shine in the woods and potentially spook game. I had a factory-laminated stock off of a Remington Model 673 in .350 Rem. Mag. and since the 673 is really just a Model Seven, I bedded it to the action.
I’ve always been a fan of the 80s Bushnell Scopechief scope, probably since my dad used to always use them with great success. I have a gloss finished one on my “updated” Pre ’64 Model 70 in .270 Winchester and had recently acquired one of the last ones made with a matte finish that I thought would be perfect and appropriate for this rifle. It was mounted in a rare Leupold matte-finished one-piece Dual Dovetail mount with their low matte rings.
I have to say this build made for one attractive package. I gave it to my wife on her birthday and she put photos of it on Face Book, it seemed to be a real hit, especially with the ladies.
My rifle is much plainer and utilitarian.
It started off as a solid but unloved Savage Model 111 DBM in 30-06 Springfield. I could see the potential immediately, since it is the newer-style single/top-feed magazine style, didn’t have the Accu-Trigger and had the much nicer, newer stock.
The older synthetic stock on Savages was kind of homely and not very ridged at all. The magazine stacks the cartridges side by side but single feeds them at the top, much like a modern pistol magazine.
Another added benefit of this detatchable magazine is that if you use an ATV to get from one hunt to the other in Oregon it makes unloading the rifle much easier every time you get on and off of the vehicle. The Accu-Trigger is a great innovation that let a manufacturer offer an owner adjustable trigger without having to worry about safety issues.
I don’t really like it, however. That lever in the face of the trigger kind of annoys me but I can live with it; in fact, my 6.5 WSM has one. Plus, about every rifle manufacturer has copied the design on their entry-level rifles.
My rifle has the old-style Savage trigger so I worked it over to give a 3-pound pull. I normally like 2 pounds but this one feels good and crisp so it will suffice.
My customer/friend Doug Yunke found a really good deal on some no-name stainless barrels chambered in .280 Ackley Improved that were fully ready to install on a standard Savage action. The barrel was advertised as being 24 inches long, but is actually about 23.5 inches – close enough I guess. The Savage rifle is, by far, the easiest bolt-action rifle to rebarrel there has ever been. It’s such a good system that most other manufacturers incorporate it into their new rifles.
It took about five to 10 minutes to install and headspace the new barrels on both of our rifles, it took hours to install the barrel on my wife’s project Remington.
I called this Savage unloved because the previous owner wanted the stock shortened, so apparently he took a hacksaw to the butt and then installed a Limbsaver slip-on pad over the top of the mess to hide it. It was pretty hideous.
I squared the mess up and installed a pre-fit Limbsaver pad. This made it just the right length for a ladies/youth rifle but about an inch too short for me. That was an easy fix since I had the slip-on pad already sitting close by. So now it has two recoil pads. The older Pachmayr (and other brands) slip-on/over recoil pads were not very good at staying in place but the Limbsaver works really well if the appropriate size is chosen.
Another part of this project that Savage simplified was to include two steel pillars around the two action screws and to provide the rifle with a free-floated barrel. The pillars basically eliminate the need for action bedding. Most hunters have probably noticed that the standard blued steel sling swivel studs can get dry and/or rusty and then the swivels start squeaking inside of them.
I carry a tiny bottle of oil in my pack in a plastic bag just to remedy this but on many of my rifles (including these two) I install the old Uncle Mike’s silver swivel studs. These studs were nickel plated and are somewhat self-lubricatiing. Unfortunately I can’t seem to find them for sale anywhere anymore.
The barrel came with a polished finish and the action is a polish blue in great condition. Normally I would bead blast the whole thing and blue it. This gives the action a nice matte black finish and gives the stainless steel barrel a nice matte finish that is just a tad gray.
I haven’t done that to this rifle since the scope I want to use is gloss black so I just took a Scotch-Brite pad to the barrel and cut down the shine, it actually looks pretty good.
I have never made it a secret that I’m not a huge Leupold fan but I have a “thing” for their 3.5-10x 40mm Vari-X III with the adjustable objective. It’s a solid scope but I really like the looks of it on a rifle.
I’d like to have a matte finished one but have only found two gloss ones. I fit one of them to this rifle installed in Burris Double Dovetail bases and Leupold Dual Dovetail rings. As usual, when mounting a scope on a Savage, I had to use an extension base on the front to move the ring back in order for the scope to sit far enough back on the rifle for proper eye relief.
Because the Burris bases are machined from steel and not cast like most mounts, they are very blocky and it actually got in the way and offered very little rearward advantage. To solve that, I ground an angle on the front of the base as much as possible. That let the objective of the scope clear the front base and now the scope sits on the rifle perfectly for me.
I am also not a big 7mm fan, usually preferring the .30 caliber, but I really like the .280 Ackley and have built quite a few over the years for others.
I would still prefer the 30-06 Ackley if I could have only one or the other, but the .280 AI is very close to duplicating the velocities of the 7mm Remington Magnum, only in a much smaller diameter case that allows more rounds in the magazine, less noise and less recoil (assuming the same weight of rifle). It’s also just a cool cartridge.
I know many .280 AI fans who are not generally 7mm fans so the “coolness” must be a determining factor. The larger diameter of the Ackley cartridges at the shoulder can cause feeding problems in conventional magazine rifles but the aforementioned single/top feed of the savage lets them slide right into the chamber with ease.
I saw the Savage as a budget build. There is nothing extravagant or non-functional on it. It’s only attractive in the functional sense, yet I am very happy with it and can’t wait to take it hunting. Basically, it’s the exact opposite of the one I built for my wife. Now I just have to is give in to her constant request to go shoot her rifle.
It just doesn’t seem right to do it until the last day or two before the hunt.