@CEO10KaDAY - wow, you sure seem to have some strong opinions, and made some strong statements, for a self-proclaimed novice. And, tbh, that status is sort of...kind of...apparent from some of what you posted. And I say this as I'm absolutely NOT one of the very expert and very experienced people on this forum.
There have been replies to you in this thread from such people...
@spife7980 ,
@Ledzep , and of course
@Frank Green are all people I absolutely listen to.
But, perhaps I may have some thoughts to offer.
1. I am NOT one of the many on this board who will say, in a knee jerk fashion, to throw it away at the first mention of a bore scope. To me, borescopes are GREAT diagnostic tools with which to evaluate your cleaning r lack thereof. Also, its just sort of nice to peak at the throat to on a new, unfired barrel just to see how OCD your gunsmith is. I like OCD gunsmiths (haha like to like, eh?) but looking at the throat is no guarantee that it will shoot well or badly unless, perhaps, its really fucked up. I have NOT personally found any way to predict a barrel's performance from just looking in the bore...again, absent any really gross defects. Others may be able to, but I just haven't found any information to support a reliable correlation of one to the other (and many will offer a Savage barrel as a prime example why you cannot really make such a correlation).
2. As far as I can tell you pics are just downstream of the throat. If so, that fire cracking doesn't look like doodly-squat to me.
3. I could tell you were shooting a large magnum by the bullet weights you mentioned. I was going to ask what caliber it is exactly but I see Mr. Green mentioned .338 Lapua so either I missed it or he recognizes the caliber from the bullet info shared. But, you said you think your rifle AND
you should be shooting hole in hole at 100 yards. Have you ever shot hole in hole with any magnum rifle....or even any centerfire rifle? I'm serious...cause that seems to be your criteria for happiness with this rifle and I'd say that's a damn high bar.
4. Berger bullet consistency - ok, you say you find Bergers to be very inconsistent. What are you measuring? Bullet base to ogive (the first part of the bearing surface to reach the lands) or bullet base to meplat (yeah, that's the pointy end of the bullet). If looking for consistency of a manf's bullet, you should be looking at base to ogive. An open tip match, copper jacked, bullet will always have a bit of variation in the meplat that's formed when they pull the copper cup up over the lead core. And, if you really want to jump down the rabbit hole you can join the F-class and BR guys and get into bullet tipping but I rather like Keith Glasscock's understanding that there are very important limitations in how much of that you can/should do before you start negatively impacting performance rather than enhancing it. With those guys, that rabbit hole is often part of a family of rabbit holes including neck turning and sorting cases by volume (like with water, right), sorting primers by weight, and I'm sure there are many others.
5. Extreme Spread - I'm pretty sure you understand what ES is...the difference between the largest and smallest data point in a set...but I'm also pretty sure the entire shooting community doesn't care if you think its "stupid". Really?
6. Why work up a load if you are having good ES and SDs? Well, because those are measures of consistentcy in your reloading process and have shit all to do with whether your rifle likes that load or not. Many will advocate doing a charge ladder and look for some speed that your rifle (really the barrel, I think) likes. Some will say just pick a speed (our own Frank Galli has said many times that right around 2,850 is a sweet spot for most 6.5 CM rifles) and then vary seating depth to fine tune it in. Some say do charge testing, find a charge that your rifle likes, then vary seating depth to see if you can tighten it up even more.
If I seem to have just a wee bit of attitude then I apologize (well, not really but...to be polite, yeah?) but your forum handle...CEO10kaDay? Wow. Look, you may be a CEO and make $3.5M/year...or, you could be a custodial worker in a penitentiary. Who knows. But nobody here is going to be impressed with one or look down on you for the other. See what I'm saying. I guess it just got under my skin a bit....and I don't expect you to give a flying fig about that...even I don't think what annoys me should be important to anybody. lol
Best of luck. Hopefully some of what I wrote is actually accurate and something you will find useful. If not, just ignore it. I'm nobody...just another swinging dick on an anonymous shooting forum.
Cheers
