Elbow grease, gut feelings and sear springs...... My 788

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Art Keys
Posts: 2
Joined: Wed Aug 13, 2014 10:38 am

Elbow grease, gut feelings and sear springs...... My 788

Post by Art Keys »

Listening to one's "GUT"! The feeling is like NO other. I did this when I saw a used Remington 788 30/30 Win. "Beater" @ a local shop. "It's shot out" , "Been put up WET" , "Truck GUN" and many more indignation's had probably been bestowed upon this poor example. YET, when I picked it up, many times, the feeling was there. Quiet, mute, but persistent. I won't lie, I have longed for a bolt action 30/30 for a VERY! long time. I've looked at and held and shot and for a brief time owned a Savage-Steven variant. That one shot good to, but not like this. I had to move that rifle due to family priority. Most people poo poo, dismiss the 30/30 in anything other than a lever action rifle. Let me tell you, I'm glad Remington took the time to make this rifle way back in 1967. It boggles my mind that a rifle can languish for decades and still after lack luster care, consideration, and ambivalence can with a few weeks elbow grease and pig headed determination; can dance! The bore on this rifle hadn't seen cleaning in probably years. Kroil, Hoppe's 9, JB bore paste got it back into shape. I'm amazed, with all the bore cancer, jacket fowling, powder fowling build up that it shot this well after severe neglect. In these few pics I've tried to show what this rifle will do with ordinary factory ammo. The ammunition was Hornady American Whitetail 150gr Interlock RN fodder. This was a hot day @ almost 100 degree's F. Wind was 0 to 15 mp winds with swift direction changes. The second target was run right after the rifle has been moved indoors for about 40 minutes writing up the target info and talking about the first target. By the time I moved back to the firing line: The stock had cooled as did the bore. WELL, you can see in the second target results. Frustrated, Angry: I brutally ran a third group, blazing fast in a rage, forgetting to top off the mag for 4 shots total. It ended WELL!.... happy again! What's funny is this rifle shot like this for 3 more avg. .700's groups with the poor man's friend PPU 150gr FP. Then I tried Federal staple fodder and it would only shoot 1 good group then NO THANKS, hate this ammo!. The new Hornady Leverevolution 160gr ammo shot very well too, but due to bolt design, I've notice with neer MAX pressure loads, cases bulge a bit. (I've read others state that the pressure in the Hornady LVR ammo is funny and bulges their cases too). I mik'd the fired cases and all numbers jive with none over SAMMI / Sierra chamber dimension. When I got home, broke out the Dial micrometer and measured to the best of my abilities, measure the case bulge at around .001 to .oo2 Here's a really cool thing, my cases come out with almost NO powder blow by. Nice, clean, shiny. Well I'll do some more work with her and post results. Thanks for reading

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600RemGuy
Posts: 353
Joined: Sat Mar 25, 2006 10:29 pm
Location: Ontario, Canada

Re: Elbow grease, gut feelings and sear springs...... My 788

Post by 600RemGuy »

Nice find. I wish I could get my hands on one too. Could have back in '06. Same fella had one and a M600 in 35. Grabbed the 600 but couldn't afford both.

Again , GR8 find and good write up. Enjoy!
The Gamemaster
Posts: 59
Joined: Fri Oct 07, 2011 7:04 am

Re: Elbow grease, gut feelings and sear springs...... My 788

Post by The Gamemaster »

You group is stringy which denotes that you have some kind of problem either with the barrel or more likely the stock.

It was not designed for 2300 fps or faster, and trying to go faster is only going to make it unstable.
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