Re: Nosler Model 48, any good
I bought one of the Nosler 48 carbine models that retail for $2800 in 270wsm about three months ago when a local dealer was blowing out a new one for $1500 on a trade deal. They have a new model out now that's retailing for about $1800 that's heavier in an HS stock, that addresses some of the complaints about the old versions and is probably closer to what they should retail for.
If you are looking at the wood stock custom gun, that's a different animal that retails for $4000+ and is a heavy 8+ pounds, but with my experience with my 48 I'd find a custom maker to build something unless you were getting one for well under $2000.
In reading other reviews it seems like there are some common themes, and I'll add my impressions as well, which are not very positive overall. I'd be really upset if I had paid anywhere near the $2800 retail on one of these things.
First the good, it's a light rifle, with a light scope and mounts you can easily get it around 7 pounds ready to hunt. The action is smooth, it seems well machined and put together. It's essentially a howa/weatherby vanguard action with I'm sure (hope) with higher tolerances.
The bad:
They use a timney trigger, which overall I hear good things about but on mine the surfaces were very rough. It had obvious "notching" as the trigger went through it's travel. If I adjusted enough travel out of the sear to smooth the travel the safety was no longer reliable. A little stoning and the notching was taken care of, however it still has a long travel before breaking and if it's adjusted out the safety does not function. It may be possible to fix that but I didn't want to mess with it any further. Trigger weight is adjustable in the 2.5-3lb range easy. The shoe is very wide with sharp corners, I'd prefer a more rounded profile that's slightly narrower but that's personal pref.
They use cerakote on the entire gun and it was applied way too heavy on the action and bolt. This means that unless you run the bolt wet with lube it gums up quickly. Also the fleckstone style stock paint is not durable at all. This is a common complaint you hear in the reviews for them. It appears the bolt lugs have even wear.
They do bed them, but they are not pillar bedded and the stock has no AL insert/spine/bedding block etc. The bedding on mine is so bad that it's pulling the rear action tang and rear trigger guard almost 1/16" each when you tighten the rear action bolt. It flexed the action enough that when torqued down it was pulling the scope rings out of alignment. On a ultralight low density stock like this I think it's vital to have it pillar bedded. There have been other reports of poor bedding on them as well. I'm planning on pillar bedding it this winter. I'm sure I could send it back to Nosler and they would re-bed it but again I feel it should be pillar bedded.
The bottom metal is thick steel, while durable it's a 3/4 pound part, had they used a heavy duty AL I have no doubt they could have dropped at least another 1/3-1/2 pound off the rifle. I'm considering trying to find a howa or vanguard Al bottom metal to drop some more weight, as it is a light hunting rifle.
Originally I had problems feeding, normally the gun is 3+1 but if 3 rounds were loaded in the mag and you cycled the action the feed lips would not retain the round so it would pop up freely as soon as the bolt contacted the rear of it and get jammed as the bolt started to close. This didn't happen with 2 rounds so I can only figure the follow spring tension is too great with 3 rounds in the "mag" for the feed lips to retain them. Once I used it as a 2+1 gun it never failed to feed. I haven't messed with trying to reduce the follower spring tension to allow running 3 rounds in the mag.
My understanding is they use PacNor barrels, which have a pretty good rep.
Scope mounts use the standard 2 piece remington mount hole setup, however one piece remington mounts will not work. I have never tried a 1 piece howa/vanguard mount. I put talley lightweights on it.
So far I have not done any load development with it as I don't reload, but having tried 3-4 factory loads including Noslers own trophy ammo it has not shot well, around the 1.5-2" area. For now I'm going to blame this on the bedding problems. Others have had good luck with the accuracy performance but some have had issues, my guess is bedding related. So I'm hoping after pillar bedding it, it shoots to their 3/4" guarantee.
They won't guarantee the rifle until 40-60 break in rounds are fired through it I can only assume they don't test fire them when they are built for accuracy and are assuming most people can't shoot that well, won't pay the $50+ price to use their trophy ammo, and won't bother to return them.
I brought these issues up rationally and calmly on the Nosler shooting forum for their rifles, and my account and all posts were promptly deleted with no warning or explanation. Evidently they don't want people saying anything but good things about their rifles. Which leads me to wonder how many other people have tried to bring up issues on their forums only to have their accounts and posts removed.
So I plan on pillar bedding it, and I'll probably try a rifle basix trigger as I prefer their trigger shoe take care of the accuracy issue I'd consider it a good rifle, but no where near worth their retail price. I'd say it's on par with rifles like the sakos finnlight etc. and if I had it to do over again I'd probalby just buy a sako T3 put it in a new stock, or buy a Finnlight.
