Sporting Firearms Journal

®

RIFLERIFLETESTED: Cooper Model 54 - 6.5 Creedmoor

Long-Range Accuracy!The Best of the West System

Display until 4/16/16 Printed in USA

March 2016 No. 285

SavageAmerican Classic

A Timeless .270Winchester

HOW TO:Buying UsedCustom Rifles

Shooting aMontanaRifle Co.7x57mm

4 Rifle 285www.riflemagazine.com

Page 58 . . .

FEATURES

COLUMNS

On the cover . . . A Savage ArmsAmerican Classic .270 Winchester topped with a Leupold 2.5-8x 36mm scope. Photo by Stan Trzoniec.20 Savage Classic

A Timeless .270 Winchester Stan Trzoniec

26 Long-Range Shooting The Best of the West System John Haviland

32 The American Standard Rifle Shooting a Montana Rifle Co. 7x57mm Terry Wieland

36 Cooper Model 54 6.5 Creedmoor Shooting the Jackson Hunter Brian Pearce

42 Buying Used Custom Rifles Understanding Pitfalls and Priorities John Barsness

ISSN 0162-3593Volume 48 Number 2Issue No. 285 March 2016

Publisher/President – Don PolacekPublishing Consultant – Mark Harris

Editor in Chief – Lee J. HootsEditor Emeritus – Dave Scovill

Managing Editor – Roberta ScovillSenior Art Director – Gerald HudsonProduction Director – Becky Pinkley

Contributing EditorsJohn Barsness Stan TrzoniecJohn Haviland Mike Venturino Brian Pearce Ken Waters Gil Sengel Terry Wieland

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Rifle® (ISSN 0162-3583) is published bi-monthly by Polacek Publishing Corporation, dba Wolfe Publishing Company (Don Polacek, Pres ident), 2180 Gulfstream, Ste. A, Prescott, Arizona 86301. Tele phone: (928) 445-7810. Periodical Postage paid at Prescott, Arizona, and additional mailing offices. Subscription prices: U.S. possessions – single issue, $5.99; 6 issues, $22.97; 12 issues, $39.00. Foreign and Canada – single issue, $5.99; 6 issues $29.00; 12 issues, $51.00. Please allow 8-10 weeks for first issue. Advertising rates furnished on request. All rights reserved.

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Sporting Firearms Journal

6 Accuracy? Spotting Scope - Dave Scovill

8 Timney Triggers Mostly Long Guns - Brian Pearce

12 SVT40 Sniper Rifle Down Range - Mike Venturino

14 Cartridge/Chamber Headspace - .22 Rimfire Light Gunsmithing - Gil Sengel

18 Old Scopes A Rifleman’s Optics - John Haviland

48 Dual- Chamber, Single- Barrel Rifle Reader Research - Norman E. Johnson

58 Smithson Rifle Custom Corner - Phil Shoemaker

62 Driving Lessons Walnut Hill Terry Wieland

Page 32 . . .

Page 42 . . .

Savage Classic

Stan Trzoniec

In 1988, Savage Arms filed for bankruptcy protection. To cut costs, production was limited to only the Model 110 bolt-ac-

tion rifle, leading to a complete fi-nancial turnaround by 1995. Today, the company in Westfield, Massachu-setts, manufactures an array of rifles that would have made Arthur Savage (1857-1938) proud. While the list is in-

deed impressive, the one rifle that al-ways held my favor was the Savage Model 14 and 114 American Classic. This particular action was originally designed by Nicholas Brewer as the Model 110 around 1958. His main ob-jective for the company was to man-ufacture a low-cost rifle, available in both right- and left-hand actions adaptable to all cartridges. Produc-tion started in 1962.

This Savage American Classic .270 Winchester has a Leupold 2.5-8x 36mm scope mounted.

www.riflemagazine.com Rifle 28520

A Timeless .270 Winchester

The short Model 14 and long 114 Classics are mod-ern, improved versions of the 110. While Savage does have some rifles in the line that mimic the “Califor-nia” look, for the most part, they all follow the classic school of thought in overall appearance. The Amer-ican Classic even features a black forend tip cut at a 90-degree angle with a black pistol-grip cap to match. The stock is designed so your eye centers on the reti-cule without any additional movement. The forearm is easy to grasp, and the extended checkering panel on this part of the stock is perfect for all-weather use. Ex-ecuted in a traditional point pattern, the machine-cut checkering showed no run-overs or deformed dia-monds on the review rifle. Both sides of the pistol grip are checkered as well.

The test rifle’s stock is straight-grained select wal-

nut with a touch of fiddleback in the butt section that travels up and into the forend. There is a touch of darker wood near the comb of the stock that adds a distinctive look to this rifle. Around the magazine, receiver, barrel and trigger guard, inletting is perfect without any gaps. Around the pistol-grip cap, the wood is finished flush with the plastic cap, and the sweep of the pistol grip is made for the average hand. There are twin stock bolts filled with darker plugs along the flanks of the stock. A classic-styled recoil pad is furnished with a black spacer, and sling swivel studs are installed for field carry.

The overall finishing and detailing of the stock is first rate, with no raw edges showing from the sand-ing, checkering or final finishing. For a final exte- rior finish, an applied coating of a semigloss is the

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SavageClassic

Savage bolt-action rifles now feature a barrel nut without grooves.

right combination to show off the grain, figure and color of the stock. A few coats of a quality furni- ture polish brings it up to full potential.

All the metalwork on this rifle is more than up to today’s stan-dards. Barrel length is 22 inches. The older, so-called barrel nut has been replaced by a streamlined “nut” that is attached at the fac-tory with a spanner-type wrench, torqued to factory specifications. At the receiver juncture, the bar-rel diameter is 1.350 inches, taper-ing to .590 inch at the muzzle. The barrel is free-floated. There are no sights, but the rifle is shipped with a pair of Weaver-styled bases mounted on the receiver. Since I like something more stylized and a little more rugged, I replaced them with a two-piece set of Leupold bases and low rings in a matte fin-ish. To this, a 2.5-8x 36mm scope was added, which I consider a per-fect magnification range for the .270 Winchester.

The Savage features a tang safety lever that is easy to get to even with gloved hands. The safety is three position with audible clicks in each detent.

Checkering is cut by machine with no run-overs or irregular-shaped diamonds. The checkering pattern runs around the forend and is almost eight inches in length.

Specifications:Savage American

Classic Action: bolt, magazine fedStock: select walnutCartridge tested: .270 WinchesterCartridges available: .243 Winchester, 7mm-08 Remington, .308 Winchester, .30-06, 7mm Remington Magnum, .300 Winchester MagnumBarrel length: 22 inches standard; 24 inches magnum calibersOverall length: 423⁄4 inches, as testedSights: drilled and tapped for opticsWeight: 71⁄2 pounds, as testedFinish: matte finished metal, satin finished stockPrice: $949.00Manufacturer: Savage Arms 100 Springdale Road Westfield MA 01085 www.savagearms.com

23March-April 2016 www.handloadermagazine.com

The receiver is massive, mea-suring 9.25 inches from the recoil lug to the rear of the tang exten-sion. Receiver diameter is 1.355 inches. Like the rest of the rifle, it is finished matte blue and has a gas escape hole on either side of the front receiver bridge. At the rear tang is a three-position safety that is positive to operate; push it fully forward to fire; midposition locks the sear while allowing the bolt to be cycled; all the way back

locks the sear and bolt. The action is pillar-bedded.

While the bolt of this rifle has not changed much over the years, there has been some design work on the way it is removed from the action. Gone is what I call that annoying lever on the right side of the receiver, located forward of the bolt handle. In its place, the bolt is now removed by the appli-cation of pressure on the trigger and the bolt release button at the top of the trigger guard under the rifle. With the rifle unloaded and

the safety off, lift the bolt handle, pull the trigger firmly to the rear, push the bolt release into the trig-ger guard then pull the bolt from the receiver. To reinstall the bolt, line it up with the rear of the re-ceiver, pull the trigger to the rear and push the bolt home.

The bolt on the long action

Savage has a unique bolt head, with a bolt guide at the rear and locking lugs at the front that house the plunger ejector and blade-type extractor.

A black forend tip complements the lines of the stock.

The AccuTrigger is fully adjustable with a minimum of effort, using the tool (yellow handle) that comes with the rifle.

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SavageClassic

measures a full 7.25 inches from its face to the back of the shroud. On the bolt face is a traditional plunger ejector and spring type extractor. On the front of the bolt head is a pair of locking lugs. The front pair lock to the receiver. The rear “lugs” are actually a bolt guide and deflect any hot gases away from the shooter’s face in the unlikely event of a ruptured case. The bolt shank is .693 inch in diameter, is jeweled and has the Savage logo embossed on it. The bolt knob is nondescript and is machine checkered on one side.

The AccuTrigger is fully adjust-able, and after cleaning the rifle, I adjusted it down to 3 pounds. The detachable magazine is removed by pulling the magazine release to-ward the trigger guard, allowing the magazine to drop out from the rifle. With standard calibers, ca-pacity is four plus one in the cham-ber; magnums are three plus one. The magazine holds cartridges in

a staggered position, with the top round dead center in the maga-zine for flawless feeding into the breech. Additionally, the rifle can be fired in single-shot mode by placing a cartridge on top of the magazine and pushing the bolt home.

The subject rifle here is a .270 Winchester, a cartridge I have used throughout my hunting ca-reer for pronghorn antelope and mule deer in Montana and Wyo-ming and a nice caribou in Can-ada. The .270 Winchester is not shy of accuracy.

A lot of factory .270 Winchester ammunition has been used over the years, but a favorite hand-load for over 30 years has been a

Hornady 130-grain Spire Point or Remington 130-grain Core-Lokt over 57.0 grains of IMR-4831 trick-led into each case, along with CCI 250 primers. With my old Reming-ton (with a 22-inch barrel) velocity was 3,029 fps, and with the Savage it averaged 3,025 fps.

Another load tested in the Sav-age on a gutsy, fall day was the new Hornady American Whitetail fac-tory load. With this ammunition, groups averaged just over an inch with a velocity average of 3,053 fps. With Remington 130-grain Core-Lokt PSP factory loads, velocity averaged 2,962 fps. No deer is going to feel the difference of 90 fps.

In testing all the loads, I enjoyed the AccuTrigger and especially how the rifle recoiled straight back, and the moderate recoil of the .270 Winchester helped produce some tight groups. The Savage American Classic looks, feels and acts like a true custom rifle.

Above, with Hornady 130-grain American Whitetail ammunition, three shots at 100 yards grouped 1.25 inches apart. Right, handloaded Hornady 130-grain Spire Points and Remington 130-grain Core-Lokts over 57.0 grains of IMR-4831 grouped under an inch.

Savage American Classic Accuracy

load velocity group (grains) (fps) (inches)

130 Hornady American 3,053 1.25 Whitetail 130 Remington 2,962 1.50 Core-Lokt PSP 130 Hornady Spire Point 3,025 .75 handload*

* 57.0 grains of IMR-4831, CCI 250 primer; Rem- ington cases; OAL, 3.240 inches Notes: All testing done at 100 yards over a rest with three-shot groups. Chronograph readings from an Oehler Model 35P set 8 feet from the muzzle. Tem-perature in the low 70s; wind variable to 15 mph.

Be Alert – Publisher cannot accept responsibility for errors in published load data.

R

60 www.riflemagazine.com Rifle 285

their accustomed routes into the sights of a waiting hunter. This is remarkably similar to methods used in the Deep South, immor-talized in literature by William Faulkner (Race at Morning, The Bear) and Robert Ruark (Mister Howard Was a Real Gent). With dogs moving the deer, of course,

any opportunity was bound to be sudden and brief. In the “bucks only” days, hunters also had to be certain in that instant that it had headgear.

All those cabins had faded black-and-white photographs on the walls showing hunters with lines of deer hanging from meat poles. The vast majority of the rifles they were holding were Winchester 94s and Savage 99s, and there was nary a scope to be seen. One photo I remember vividly showed a dozen hunters with two dozen deer hung up. Every single rifle was a Savage 99, probably in .250-3000, since it was around 1919.

In three days in Poland, I had a half-dozen legitimate shooting opportunities. In all but one of them, I would have been far bet-ter off with one of those old, iron-sighted 99s than that ultramodern, ultraopticked .300 magnum.

As with any hunting, you have to learn how to do a driven shoot. The best hunter in our group, a man of great experience, was a Norwegian writer named Jørund Lien. He was crowned “king of the hunt” on the second day (a great honor, awarded daily) and was generous with his advice. The first thing he said was that you have to be prepared to shoot instantly, every second of every drive. This means holding your rifle at the ready, like a quail hunter walk-ing in on a point. This is easier said than done when your rifle is a nine-pound railroad tie. Jørund carried a short-barreled .308 Win-chester, with a low-power scope, weighing about seven pounds. It was light, handy and fast. That makes a big difference.

Looking back on my half-dozen chances, a scope was critical for one, optional for another and al-most a hindrance for the other four. The longest shot I was of-fered was from a high stand over-looking a cultivated field that was at least a mile across. Three red deer, a stag and two hinds, burst from the woods far off to my left and crossed the field at a dead run, probably 400 yards away. With nothing to lose, I led the stag

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Walnut Hill(Continued from page 62)

62 www.riflemagazine.com Rifle 285

I t’s funny how, trying some-thing new, half a world away,

you can find yourself doing some-thing you first encountered in childhood. One of the favored Eu-ropean methods of hunting big game is the drive, wherein hunters with rifles are posted on stands, and beaters with dogs work their way through the woods or across the fields, moving the animals be-fore them. Most Americans as-sume this is easy shooting. Most Americans are wrong.

By and large, any opportu-nity will be sudden, unexpected, a glimpse through the trees at a fast-moving target. Not only do you have to size up the game in that instant, deciding if it’s legal, but then also make the shot. Not easy under any circumstances.

In Poland recently, during three days of driven shooting, I was armed with a borrowed rifle that, given my druthers, I would not have carried. It was a Merkel RX-Helix straight-pull rifle. Nothing wrong there. Unfortunately, it was cham-bered for the .300 Winchester Mag-num, an excellent cartridge, but unnecessarily powerful for what we were doing; and the rifle itself was long-barreled and heavy. Top it off with a large Zeiss scope, and the whole outfit became unwieldy.

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WALNUT HILL by Terry Wieland

driVing lessons

(Continued on page 60)

Legal game covered a wide range. Red stag, any age, any sex; roe deer does and fawns, but not bucks; wild boar (but don’t shoot the big mama pigs); foxes and pine mar-tens, among others. There was a fine for shooting a roebuck, a bigger fine for moose, and if you shot a wolf, you faced the joys of a Polish jail, and not just for a few months. It should be added that the roebuck were shedding their antlers, so telling a buck from a doe in a dark thicket was difficult.

Oh, and don’t shoot down the roads or into the drive. And don’t shoot any mushroom pickers. Since it was October, prime mushroom season for a nation of mushroom aficionados, this was no idle warning. For their part, the mushroom pickers considered us interlopers and dared us to shoot in their direction.

The déjà vu stemmed from memories of deer hunting in south-ern Ontario in the 1960s. Although never referred to as “driven” shoot-ing, that was what we did – albeit

in a less organized way. In On-tario, deer hunters can hunt in vast tracts of forested Crown land with free access for all. In those days, groups of hunters obtained per-mits to erect a hunting camp on Crown land for a period of time, usually 10 years, and this was renewable. Some camps I knew were then 60 or 70 years old, and the hunters who met there annu-ally were the grandsons of the men who built them. On every cabin wall, there was a topographical map with penciled-in “runs,” usu-ally deer trails, and spots marked where hunters were posted.

Before dawn on opening day, a few dogs were released. They raced into the woods and (in the-ory) got on some deer scent, fol-lowed it into the swamps and thickets and rousted out the deer. To escape, the deer would follow

Blaser R8.270 Winchester

Mannlicher-SchönauerModel 1903 6.5x54 M-S