Tag: Remington Model 700

IMR 4166: A quick look

Necessity is the mother of invention, or something like that.  When I heard that IMR 4320 was discontinued (on top of the ammo and components shortage), I was not a happy camper.  IMR 4320 was my go to powder for several cartridges, and now what I have left is all there is (and it’s almost gone).  But it really doesn’t matter, because we can’t hardly find propellants of any flavor. That notwithstanding, I made the trek to my local components supplier a couple of weeks ago, and he had only three propellants left:  IMR 4166, 8208, and BLC2.  I’ve never used any of these, although I had heard of Ballsy 2.  The 4166 seemed interesting…it matched my motorcycle jacket, but none of my reloading manuals had any data for it (it’s that new).  I bought all three.

I went online and found data published by the manufacturer, so I worked with that for my 30 06.  IMR 4166 is an extruded stick powder.  It will flow through a dispenser, but the dispenser throw variability was about 0.2 grain, and that’s enough when loading for rifle accuracy that I’ll weigh every charge with my scale and trickle it in with my RCBS powder trickler.N Would 0.2 grains make an accuracy difference?  I don’t know (and someday I’ll test to find out).  I suspect not, but weighing every charge only takes a few seconds more, and it seems like the right thing to do.

IMR 4166 is a stick powder that looks like any other stick powder. It’s in a powder trickler in this photo. Yeah, I weigh the powder for every cartridge.

On the IMR website, it said that Enduron IMR 4166 is one of a new class of propellant that offers four adventages:

Copper fouling reduction.  These powders contain an additive that drastically reduces copper fouling in the gun barrel. Copper fouling should be minimal, allowing shooters to spend more time shooting and less time cleaning a rifle to retain accuracy.   Hmm, that might be interesting.  We’ll see how it does, I thought to myself as I read this.

Temperature change stability.  The Enduron line is insensitive to temperature changes. Whether a rifle is sighted in during the heat of summer, hunted in a November snowstorm or hunting multiple locations with drastic temperature swings, point of impact with ammunition loaded with Enduron technology will be very consistent.  In the old days, I might have dismissed this as a solution looking for a problem, but I’ve experienced what can happen in a temperature sensitive powder.  I had a max load for my 7mm Weatherby that was fairly accurate that I took out to the range one day when it was 107 degreees.  I fired one shot and had great difficulty getting the bolt open.  It’s a real issue if you develop a load at one temperature and then shoot it at an elevated temperature.  If IMR 4166 is free from that characteristic, that’s a good thing.

Optimal load density.  Enduron powders provide optimal load density, assisting in maintaining low standard deviations in velocity and pressure, a key feature for top accuracy.   Eh, we’ll see how it does on paper.  I have some loads that are low density (i.e., they occupy well under 100% of the case volume) and they shoot superbly well.   I’m interested in how the load groups.  The target doesn’t give extra credit if an inaccurate load has a low standard deviation.

Environmentally friendly.  Enduron technology is environmentally friendly, crafted using raw materials that are not harmful to the environment.  Okay, Al Gore.  Gotcha.  Now go back to inventing the Internet.

My test bed for the new powder would be a Model 700 Euro in 30 06, a 27-year-old rifle I bought new about 10 years ago.  I had just refinished it with TruOil and glass bedded the action (a story a future blog, to be sure), and I hung a cheapie straight 4X Bushnell scope just to get a feel for how everything might perform.

The Model 700 Euro had a tung oil finish. The rifle was only offered in 1993 and 1994. The tung finish didn’t do it for me, so I did my usual TruOil finish. That’s an old Bushnell 4X economy scope up top.

My load was to be a 180-grain Remington Core-Lokt jacketed soft point bullet and 47 grains of the IMR 4166, all lit off by a CCI 200 primer.  If you’re interested, I was using Remington brass, too.  The cartridges were not crimped.

Loaded 30 06 ammo with the Remington 180-grain jacketed soft point bullet.

Wow, those 180-grain bullets pack a punch.  Recoil was fierce, and I probably felt it more because the Model 700 doesn’t have a recoil pad.

Okay, that’s enough about my heroics.  Let’s take a quick look at how the propellant performed.   With regard to the reduction in copper fouling claim, I’d have to say that’s an accurate claim.  After 20 rounds (the very first through this rifle), I ran a single patch with Hoppes No. 9 though the bore, followed by a clean patch, just to remove the powder fouling.  There was a very modest amount of copper fouling, way less than I would have seen with any other propellant.  Ordinarily, at this point in the cleaning process (i.e., removing the soot) I would normally see a bright copper accent on top of each land.  With 4166, there was only a minimal amount of copper present (as you can see below).   After a second patch with Hoppes No. 9, the copper was gone.  I guess this copper fouling eliminator business is the real deal.

This is a brand new rifle even though it’s nearly 30 years old. Check out the machinings inside the bore. Remington, for shame!

With regard to accuracy, 4166 has potential.  I shot five targets that afternoon, and this was the best.  It’s a 0.590-inch group at 100 yards, and that ain’t too shabby.

Sometimes you just get lucky. Other times you rely on careful load development, glass bedding, and a steady trigger squeeze.

The bottom line for me is that IMR 4166 is a viable powder.  Now, like everyone else, I need to find more.  That’s going to be a challenge.  But at least I know that my IMR 4320 has a decent replacement.

The 375 H&H at 100 yards…

Here’s a quick update on the .375 H&H that I promised a few posts ago.  In that post, I mentioned that I had been shooting the Remington Model 700 Safari Grade at 50 yards for my load development work, and I mentioned that I wanted to try it at 100 yards.

The Remington Safari Grade Model 700, chambered in .375 H&H Magnum.

I did, and the bottom line is that I shot the tightest groups I’ve ever shot at 100 yards using iron sights (i.e., not a scope).   Take a look.

Two 3-shot groups fired at 100 yards, with iron sights, off the bench. The first round fired through a cold and lubricated barrel hit almost exactly to point of aim (it’s a little hard to see in the photo). Once the bore was fouled, the rifle grouped very tightly a couple of inches to the right.

My point of aim was at 6:00 on the bullseye, and the groups I shot were worthy of a scoped rifle.   I may need to adjust the rear sight to bring the group over to the left a couple of inches or so (which is a bit funny, because at 50 yards the windage seemed perfect).  The elevation is perfect; the point of impact is even with the point of aim for elevation.  When I shot those groups it was overcast, and that could account for the rifle printing a bit to the right.  Our range is aligned such that in the morning the sun is to the left, and that makes the left side of the front site a bit brighter than the right side.   Because it was overcast the day I shot the target you see above, the sunlight-induced bias wasn’t present.  That could account for the groups offset to the right.  I’ll wait and shoot it again when the sun’s out to see where the rifle hits.

I am enjoying this rifle more and more.  It’s got it all…good looks, power, and it groups like a target grade rifle.

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Big recoil, tiny groups: A Model 700 in 7mm Weatherby

 

The Remington Classic 700 in 7mm Weatherby Magnum: An unusual, collectible, and as it turns out, extremely accurate rifle.

A short while ago I wrote about my Dad’s left hand 7mm Weatherby Mk V, and how Roy Weatherby personally helped me select it.  Well, here’s a story about another rifle chambered for the powerful 7mm Weatherby Magnum cartridge.

About a year ago, I saw something unusual on Gunbroker.com.  It was an ad for a Remington 700 Classic rifle chambered in the venerable 7mm Weatherby Magnum cartridge. This rifle is quite a setup and, I think, quite a score for me personally. I’ve been a huge fan of Weatherby rifles ever since I was a little boy, when my father chased woodchucks in New Jersey with a .243 Winchester Model 70.  Back in the day, woodchucks were about the only thing you could hunt with a rifle in New Jersey. I grew up in a farming community (there’s a reason New Jersey is called the Garden State), and the farmers in our area gave my Dad free rein to cull the chuck population. Those little woodchucks did a lot of crop damage, and the farmers were grateful that my Dad was able send those critters on to their reward. As a little kid tagging along with Dad, it was grand fun. It was not at all unusual for him to take (and make) 400-yard shots, with his rifle resting across the hood of his ’65 F-100 Ford (there were a lot of powder burns on that old pickup truck). Like I said, it was awesome.

Just before I went to Korea, my Dad bought a 7mm Weatherby rifle for me as a going-away gift, and I loved it. I shot the barrel out of that rifle (yep, I shot it so much I wore it out) and then I had it redone with a Douglas barrel in 300 H&H. But the 7mm Weatherby Mag cartridge had its hooks into me, and they never let go. The idea is that a 7mm projectile is aerodynamically more efficient than a .30 caliber bullet (the 7mm is 0.284 inches in diameter; a .30 caliber bullet is 0.308 inches in diameter). For the same weight, the 7mm cartridge has a lower drag coefficient, so it retains more velocity downrange and it has a flatter trajectory.

All of the above is probably more theoretical than real world, but I still like the idea of a streamlined, hard-hitting, flat-shooting, hot 7mm. And that’s what the 7mm Weatherby cartridge is. It was one of Roy Weatherby’s first magnum chamberings, and it has been the fastest 7mm cartridge ever for many decades.

The 7mm Weatherby cartridge. Note the classic Weatherby double radius shoulder…the theory is the double radii act as a venturi, providing higher projectile velocities. It’s probably more marketing magic than real world measurable results, but I’m a believer.

I’ve also always been a fan of the Remington 700 rifle. They are inherently accurate, and when I used to shoot high power metallic silhouette competition back in the ’70s and ’80s, it was rare to see anything other than a Model 700 in the winners’ circle.  I’ve owned a few of these rifles, and they are indeed extremely accurate.

Remington had a run of Model 700 rifles they labeled the “Classic” for a little more than 20 years, with the idea being that each year they would do a rifle in one chambering only.  Remington stopped making the Classic series more than 20 years ago, and I always wanted one.

Recently, I saw an ad on Gunbroker for one of the rarest of the Classic series, the single year they chambered these fine rifles in 7mm Weatherby Magnum.   That was a “must have” rifle for me.  A Model 700, chambered in 7mm Weatherby.  Wow.  The rifle was advertised as new in the box, the cartridge is an awesome one, and unlike most of the Classics I had previously seen, it had killer wood. Hey, what’s not to like? I bought the rifle from Heritage Shooting Academy in Triangle, Virginia, and it was a great deal. If anything, the rifle was better than advertised, and I sure couldn’t argue with the way it shot (more on that in a second).

When it arrived, I was more than impressed.  It was indeed new in the box, it was flawless, the walnut was understatedly elegant, and as I was to learn, it shot very, very well.   The only thing that initially concerned me was that these uber-velocity cartridges generally give up accuracy for what they gain in speed.  But that sure isn’t the case with this rifle. I reloaded different cartridges trying various powder charges using two different bullets, and the groups that resulted (all at 100 yards) were fabulous.

Whoa! Out-of-the-box accuracy!

My initial testing showed that the trick here was to load toward the higher end of the powder charge spectrum to more fully fill those big belted magnum cases.   The theory is that doing so results in a more uniform pressure wave/flame front when the go-juice lights up, and I guess it worked that way for me.   More powder results in more velocity and that meant more recoil, but wowee, the Model 700 provided great results!  It shot phenomenally tight groups and the little bit of dispersion you see is undoubtedly more me than the rifle or the ammo. I am one happy camper!

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The Remington Safari Grade .375 H&H

Two of the all time greats…a Safari Grade Model 700 Remington, and the .375 Holland and Holland cartridge.   Check out the walnut on this magnificent rifle!

I started playing with guns when I was a youngster and the disease progressed as I aged.  I almost said “matured” instead of “aged,” but that would be stretching things, especially when it comes to shelling out good money for fancy guns.  When I see a rifle I want, I haven’t matured at all.  I sure have aged, though.

So anyway, when I was a young guy, I read everything I could about all kinds of guns, and I especially enjoyed reading about big game rifles. Really big game, as in Peter Hathaway Capstick chasing cape buffalo, Jim Corbett chasing man-eating tigers in India, and Colonel John Henry Patterson chasing the man-eating lions of Tsavo.  It was all books and magazines back in those days. Al Gore was still a youngster and he had not invented the Internet yet, and if you wanted to read about cool things you went to a place called the library. One of the cool things to read about there, for me, was the .375 Holland and Holland cartridge, along with the rifles that chambered its Panatela of a cartridge.  The descriptions were delicious…a magnum rifle firing a 300-grain bullet 3/8ths of an inch in diameter at 2700+ fps with the trajectory of a .30 06.

The .375 H&H goes all the way back to 1912, when it was developed by the great English firm of Holland and Holland. It’s still one of the best cartridges ever for hunting big beasts that snarl, roar, bite, stomp, and gore those who would do them harm.   It was the first belted magnum cartridge. The idea is that cartridge headspaces on the belt (a stepped belt around the base), a feature that wasn’t really necessary for proper function, but from a marketing perspective it was a home run.  Nearly all dangerous game cartridges that followed the mighty .375 H&H, especially those with “magnum” aspirations, were similarly belted.   Like I said, it was a marketing home run.

As a young guy, I was convinced my life wouldn’t be complete without a .375 H&H rifle.  You see, I had more money than brains back in those days.  I spent my young working life on the F-16 development team, and my young non-working life playing with motorcycles and guns.  I was either on a motorcycle tearing up Texas, or on the range, or hanging around various gun shops between El Paso and Dallas.   In Texas, some of the shops had their own rifle range.  People in Texas get things right, I think.

One of the shops I frequented was the Alpine Range in Fort Worth, Texas. The fellow behind the counter knew that I was a sucker for any rifle with fancy walnut, and when I stopped in one Saturday he told me I had to take a look at a rifle he had ordered for a customer going to Africa. He had my interest immediately, and when he opened that bright green Remington box, what I saw took my breath away.  It was a Safari Grade Model 700 in .375 H&H. In those days, the Safari Grade designation meant the rifle had been assembled by the Remington Custom Shop, and that was about as good as it could possibly get.

The Model 700 was beautiful.  Up to that point, I’d never even seen a .375 H&H rifle other than in books and magazines. This one was perfect. In addition to being in chambered in that most mystical of magnums (the .375 H&H), the wood was stunning.  It had rosewood pistol grip and fore end accents, a low-sheen oil finish, the grain was straight from the front of the rifle through the pistol grip, and then the figure fanned, flared, flamed, and exploded as the walnut approached the recoil pad. I knew I had to own it, and I’m pretty sure the guy behind the counter knew it, too. Did I mention that the rifle was beautiful?

“How much?” I asked, trying to appear nonchalant.

“I can order you another one,” the counter guy countered, “but this one is sold. I ordered it for a guy going to Africa.  I’ll order another one for you. They all come with wood this nice.”

“Has he seen this one yet?” I asked, not believing that any rifle could be as stunning.  I knew that rifles varied considerably, and finding one with wood this nice would be a major score, Remington Custom Shop assembly or not.

“No,” the sales guy answered, “he hasn’t been in yet, but I can get another for you in a couple of days. Don’t worry; they’re all this nice.”

His advice to the contrary notwithstanding, I worried.  This was the one I had to own. “How much?” I asked again.

“$342,” he answered.

Mind you, this was in 1978. That was a lot of money then. It seems an almost trivial amount now.   The rifle you see in the photo above, especially with its fancy walnut, would sell for something more like $2,000 today.  Maybe more.

“Get another one for Bwana,” I said. “This one is mine.”

“But this is the other guy’s.”

“Not anymore it’s not. Not if you ever want to see me in here again,” I said.  Like to told you earlier, I was a young guy back then in 1978.  I thought I knew how to negotiate.  My only negotiating tool in those days was a hammer, and to me, every negotiation was a nail. You know how it is to be young and dumb, all the while believing you know everything.

“Let me see what I can do,” the sales guy said, with a knowing smile. When the phone range at 10:00 a.m. the following Monday, I knew it was the Alpine Range, and I knew the Model 700 was going to be mine. I told my boss I wasn’t feeling well.

“Another rifle?” he asked.  He didn’t need to ask.  He knew.  We were in Texas.  He had the disease, too.

In less than an hour, the rifle you see in that photograph above was mine. The guy behind the counter at the Alpine Range was good. He had already received a second Safari Grade Model 700, in .375 H&H, so the safari dude was covered. I asked to see the replacement rifle and the walnut on it was bland, straight grained, and dull…nothing at all like the exhibition grade walnut on mine.  It made me feel even better.

I’ve owned my Model 700 .375 H&H Remington for more than four decades now.  I’ve never been on safari with it and I have zero desire to shoot a cape buffalo, a lion, a tiger, or anything else, but I do love owning and shooting my .375 H&H.  I’ve never seen another with wood anywhere near as nice as mine, and that makes owning it all the more special.

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