Thread: Howa 223 not shooting well and my quest to fix it

My buddy recently brought a brand new howa wood/blue hunter in 223
On my recommendation
Ive had dealings with probably close to 20 howa 1500 rifles everything from long action to the newish mini action
And all of them were tack driver’s
I currently own 2 and they both live upto those same standards

My mate just couldn’t get his to shoot and nether could i
We are both normally Reasonably good shots
He was useing very cheap ammo federal American eagle 62gn fmj
And pmc bronze I forget what bullet that was
But the best group we could get was like 3 inches which is just completely Unacceptable even considering the cheep ammo
the rifle is a 1:9 twist so should handle the 62’s no worries

So being a somewhat experienced handloader i done some handloads and tested a few loads
Still no good!

Just out of interest I screwed my dpt on to the factory threaded barrel
As all my howas have preferred being supressed

This did somewhat improve things as ive found it dose on most howa rifles
But apart from a couple of fluked groups at an inch or better
It was still far from where it should be in comparison to the other howas ive experienced

My mate left the right in my hands to explore
I had the stock off and noticed that the recoil lug was very poorly fitted to the stock
With heaps of space under it and a small amount of space arround it and the action fit in the stock was sloppy at best

So with my mates permission for obvious reasons I took to glass bedding the rifle
Ive glass bed several rifles before but this is my 1st time doing a howa
My two have been done by the smith

The bedding job came out awesome 😎

On top of that my mate has brought himself a supressor

My gut is telling me that the very poor recoil lug especially but all up horrible stock to action fit was 99% of the issue

Ill Cook up some handloads tomorrow with some hornady 50gn soft point and some 65gn serria game kings
As that will give us a couple of good tests one lighter one heavyer

Hope to head out to the farm Friday for a shoot so we’ll find out

What’s your thoughts?

Results will be posted
Cheers
Darryn