My "short" 260 budget build

[thespecialist]

I was asked about this rifle in another thread, so I figured I'd throw this out as not to take that one off topic. I actually put this rifle together about a year back, but haven't shot it much due to work and a newborn son. I had Chad at LRI whack 4" off the end of the barrel and screw the tube on and headspace it. It's nothing special, and it's definitely not up to par with a full tilt custom, but it's honestly becoming one of my favorite rifles. For what I have invested though, I can't complain one bit about the way it shoots.

Rifle Specs:

R700 action, untrued
AAC 260 Rem barrel, hacked off and crowned at 20"
HS Precision PSS takeoff stock
X-Mark Pro tuned to 3#
EGW HD 20MOA base
Vortex (Seekins) rings
Vortex Viper HS 5-15x44
PTG Stealth DBM

Once I got the barreled action back from Chad (about 1 week from my door to his and back again) I bedded it into the stock with Devcon after opening up the barrel channel. I didn't realize how fat that AAC barrel really was until I laid it into the channel of the HS-P stock, lots of sanding and cursing involved for a few hours after that. Once that was done, I rolled it over and fitted the DBM and bedded it as well. By the time that was done I needed a drink, but it turned out good considering I was doing it by hand. It's not the perfect fit you'd get from a CNC, but it doesn't look bubba'd either. Most importantly it feeds flawlessly. I was trying to save $$ on this every way I could, so inletting the DBM myself was enough to justify ditching the Weaver 6-hole rings I planned on using and buy a nice set from Vortex. After a few trips to the range to make sure it worked like it should, I textured the grip area and forend of the stock with 10110 and shot everything with Duracoat to get rid of the 4 different shades of black on the gun.




The gun shoots decent with 123gr Amax's and 44.5gr of H4350, running just shy of 2900fps and .7-.8" for 10 rounds @ 100. The E/S is kind of high on this load, but it was the most accurate I found so I ran with it until I ran out of Amax's. It shot well at Woody's Summer Smoker this past summer, but I can't help but think the high E/S was at least a partial cause for my misses from the house stage. I tried Nosler CC 140's but they seated so deep into the case to keep them out of the lands that they shot like absolute shit, so I basically put that data aside and kept on with the 123's.

Fast forward to a few weeks ago, I ran across some 140gr Hornady BTHP's and bought 500 hoping they both shot good and would be mag friendly. Turns out I can Jam them and have .020" to chase the throat before I run into any issues with mag feeding, and so far the gun seems to really like them. A quick trip to the range with some test rounds .005" off the lands (loaded 3 each from 42.7-43.6gr H4350) revealed some potential at 43gr.



I came back home and loaded up 20 more rounds at 43gr and bumped the COL in .005" increments to see how they responded to a little more jump. I hit the range again the next afternoon to try .005, .010, .015, and .020" jump out and see what happened. .010" turned out to be a winner, and shot better than I expected. I can't say how the load will perform over time as I haven't shot it any more than this, but I hope to stretch it out a little more later today and see. They're running 2720fps with an E/S in the teens, not smoking fast but nothing to sneeze at either, with RP brass and CCI 200 primers.