Thread: 223 build - or "how I got up-sold"

After selling a Zastava 223 (perfectly fine, but I wanted to try something else) I acquired a Remmy 700 SS, just a standard sporter with a 1:12 barrel, looked to be in pretty good nick so I just shot it. Groups were "OK", considering the ammo I was using and I sorta put it aside over Christmas pending getting it going a bit better.

So dragged it back out today and after a bit of thinking decided that before load development it could do with a barrel chop to 485mm (just a figure plucked out of studying a few of the "inch by inch" barrel shortening tests on the interweb). Marched off to Gunsmith!!

Well things went pear shaped real quick - before he had it in his hands he was scheming his "up-sell" and bugger me he had me by the goolies!! He'd straight away spotted that it had a bulged barrel. And damn he was right!! Just a tiniest wee one that you could just feel, not visible from looking down the bore.

While he was giving me the big sales talk on new barrel options I was scheming "avoidance" and I was able to put him on the back foot by declaring that I had a old single shot target 223 with an "as new" 1:8 Krieger barrel - so it was back home to fetch it.

Back at the shop "Yes its a beauty, yes it has heaps of reinforce to play with, and yes, throating it for the big pile of Sierra 80gn HPBT's I have would be fine". At this point I was feeling like I'd sorta come out on top of the "up-sell" thing, but he had one more trick up his sleeve.

"You can't possibly put a nice barrel like that into a standard remmy action - it needs blueprinted". Well of-course he was right so the $80 threading job had been "up-sold" to a $500 plus one!! All great fun.

So I'm going to finish up with a Remmy 700 "varmint" rifle with a 24" barrel that I know shoots well (better than well actually).

Anybody wanna buy a SS Remmy 700 223 barrel (with a wee bulge haha)??