The lottery is on wood and accuracy. I have Seven CZ’s. All will shoot sub MOA with good Ammo. Two of them will shoot .5 MOA or better, consistently at 50 yards. I say it’s a lottery on accuracy because my 457 Trainer out performs my MTR by far. The match chamber doesn’t help a mediocre barrel.
The 1st 457 I got my hands on was an American - it arrived in early Feb. of 2019, in the midst of some very cold weather. I finally gave into temptation, cold or not, mounted a Nikon Buckmaster 6-18x44, and set my portable bench up right outside the south walk-in door of the garage/shop. Put some paper targets out at 50yds and got the scope 'zeroed' if you could call it that - it wouldn't put 5rds into anything that really resembled a group, with typical spreads from 1-1/2"-2", with any of the lots of SK Std+ I had, nor with any of several lots of old 'made in Germany' Wolf Match Target or Match Extra. Tried some Eley Target, Match Xtra, Match - same thing. The crown looked pretty rough, so I pulled the bbl, dialed it in on the 4-jaw, and cut a nice new precision 11* crown, which actually helped just a bit. After that, I shot it as much as possible anytime the temps would get above freezing, but never saw any improvement in group sizes. I didn't want to call CZ and try to get them to warranty it for fear that they'd just send me another 457 American, and the stock on this one is nice enough that I didn't want to lose it. So, I ordered a Shilen blank, contoured the breech to fit the action, turned a pretty snug-fitting tenon, and chambered it with my EPS reamer. Cut the extractor grooves, flipped it around in the spindle, dialed the muzzle in on the bore, and threaded it 1/2-28 for a SWR Spectre II, then degreased & blasted it, followed by shooting it with a mix of CeraKote graphite black & tungsten in an attempt to match the nitride finish on the action. Then I got a fresh bottle of LocTite #609 and glued that sucker in the action and left it sit overnight. I'm more than pleased with the accuracy of the Shilen bbl, it's a couple of orders of magnitude better than the OEM bbl. Had a similar experience with the 457 VPT's 24" bbl, though not nearly as bad as the American. It wasn't all that great to begin with, but after I'd run 500+ rds through it, the accuracy at 50yds wasn't that bad. It was at this point that I decided it was time to see how it'd shoot at 100-200yds...and it flat fell on its face at those distances - couldn't keep 10 shots on an 8" steel plate at 200 with it, so got another Shilen and did it up the same as the one on the American. Very pleased with this on also - but not everyone has a lathe in their garage or basement, and the experience to re-barrel a 22RF.
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