New 17

[jhamilt]

Just went and picked up a new savage, but now I have a simple question. I know you should always clean a new rifle before shooting, but this is my first 17 so I dont have a small enough cleaning rod to fit the barrel. No one in town sells one small enough that is any kind of quality. I was really wanting to sight it in tomorrow and start looking at which of the 3 kinds of ammo I bought for it worked the best. Would I be ok to just spray the bore with some of the hornady gun cleaner and let it run out? I know it leaves some kind of dry lube so not sure if that is a good thing or not... I'm really not wanting to wait another week to get to shoot it, but I can if necessary.

Oh and all the horror stories about the factory stocks? They arent kidding, talk about horrible. 2 weeks and I should be ordering a tacticool and new bottom metal. I'm hoping from all the posts I see with tacticools that they are a good bit stiffer?

 

[Cacciatore]

Re: New 17

You can just shoot it. The oil from manufacturing will eventually be shot out with the bullet. It won't hurt the barrel but you might not get the best accuracy until the barrel has 50+ rounds through it. In short, go ahead and shoot the darn thing. You can test the different types of ammo, but ideally you want to test after the barrel has a few rounds through it.

 

[justin amateur]

Re: New 17

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body"> I dont have a small enough cleaning rod to fit the barrel</div></div>

Make a patchworm from nylon weedeater line.
Cut a section about 10 inches longer than the barrel to be cleaned.
Use fingernail clippers to shape a point at one end.
The point is used to pierce the center of a cleaning patch.
Melt the other end into a button just large enough
to hold the patch from pulling off.
Use like a boresnake, wipe the nylon string clean after each pull through.

 

[jhamilt]

Re: New 17

Weedeater line.. never would have thought of that thanks. And yes the barrel free floats, but with a bipod on the front it doesnt take much pressure at all to bend it to the point it does contact the barrel. I may end up breaking out the marine tex until I can get the boyds.

 

[Lafayette]

Re: New 17

I picked up a guide rod from Walmart made by Winchester specific for rimfires. Might be worth a try.

 

[Ghogs Nightmare]

Re: New 17

weedeater line is a cool idea. But be careful on patch size etc doesnt take much to break that line. Would suck to get it stuck. I'd rather spend the bucks on a boresnake or dewey rod of proper size.

 

[FALex]

Re: New 17

I found the boresnake is best for my .17/ I tried multiple rods with just as many failures. The one rod I found that would fit, had a screw-on adapter for the brushes/jags, which made the diameter too big, and therefore, I couldn't get it down the barrel!

 

[jhamilt]

Re: New 17

Took it shooting this morning and had good and bad results. On the good side, the trigger is excellent, light and crisp with no adjusting. I got several decent groups considering that it now has exactly 65 rounds thru it, and is no where near being broken in.
On the bad side, the scope that came with it is even worse than I thought and needs to be replaced asap. Above 5x it was so blurry as to be ridiculous. I also had to deal with some scope shadow, but this was mainly the scope being a hair too far forward, and of course I didnt have the right allen wrench with me to adjust it.
Also on the bad side, with both hornady and winchester I had misfires. Single round on both but only shot 10 of the hornady vmax, and 5 of the winchester. I loaded both back in to the mag, recycled and they fired the second time.
So far my better groups are running a little less than an inch at 50, with the winchester opening up to almost 2 inches, pretty sure they will tighten up a good bit with decent glass and just getting a few more rounds thru it.

 

[FALex]

Re: New 17

Huh, that is surprising...the .17 seems to be a pretty darn accurate round, no matter what barrel it comes out of. I have a Marlin 917 that shoots hair's off of gnats. Do you have a different scope you can try? I get the best accuracy out of the 17gr Vmax.

 

[jhamilt]

Re: New 17

I have been wanting to upgrade the scope on my 270, its wearing a bushnell banner right now, not a great scope but a lot better than what is on my 17 now. I will probably swap it over and try again. I want to get some of the 20 grn pills to try also, all I had today were the 15.5 and 17s.
Also, I kept finding myself making small errors, so I'm sure that part of the larger groups was me.

 

[justin amateur]

Re: New 17

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body">and all the horror stories about the factory stocks?</div></div>

If you got one of the Savage synthetic (cheap plastic injection molded) stocks
then most of your problem is the stock. Too much flex and a ton of slop
between the stock and the receiver makes for lousy accuracy.
The recoil load off a 17 hmr is enough to shift the barrel/action
every time you pull the trigger. Same stock is used on the all-weather 22.
Horrible piece of plastic cr*p!

 

[Cacciatore]

Re: New 17

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: jaia</div><div class="ubbcode-body"><div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body"> I dont have a small enough cleaning rod to fit the barrel</div></div>

Make a patchworm from nylon weedeater line.
Cut a section about 10 inches longer than the barrel to be cleaned.
Use fingernail clippers to shape a point at one end.
The point is used to pierce the center of a cleaning patch.
Melt the other end into a button just large enough
to hold the patch from pulling off.
Use like a boresnake, wipe the nylon string clean after each pull through.
</div></div>

This works really well.

 

[jhamilt]

Re: New 17

Took it out shooting again yesterday and had a lot more misfires, looks like light primer strikes. usually if I lift the bolt and close it again it would fire the second time but a couple of times I had to eject the shell and spin it a little to get it to fire. Its kind of wierd, the first box I shot was hornady 15.5 gr ntx, had no misfires with it. The winchester and hornady 17 gr vmax are both having at least 1 in 3 misfire. Guess I'm gonna call savage and see what they say. This is turning into a nightmare lol, took 3 trips to the store to get everything right when I bought it (long story but geez), now having it not work right.