Target Sports

PROJECT RIFLE: SILK PURSES AND SOW

Created on 14th May 2009

VINCE BOTTOMLEY takes on a new challenge - building something usable from the parts of a shot out Winchester

YOU KNOW the old saying: ‘you can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear'? This always puzzled me when I was a kid. Although I had a good idea what a sow's ear looked like, I'd never seen a silk purse. I reckoned it must be similar to a sow's ear if someone were to even contemplate making one from the other. Now of course, I know what it means and fellow scribe Laurie Holland has just presented me with the rifle version of a ‘sow's ear' and challenged me to turn it into a ‘silk purse'.

In addition to being a good friend and shooting buddy, I have a lot of respect for Laurie and the work he puts into his articles on cartridges and components. I don't know another magazine anywhere - even in America - where you can read such well-researched and range-tested reports. Laurie does a lot of his testing at Diggle Ranges and many a time I've watched him spend hours shooting, measuring, chronographing and recording the results for Target Sports readers. Literally hundreds of rounds can sometimes be fired establishing data on bullets, brass, and powders.

One such occasion was Laurie's evaluation of the 243 WSSM (Winchester Super Short Magnum) cartridge. The WSM and WSSM cartridges were launched a few years ago. Some have gone on to set records and become established favourites with the F-Class and benchrest crowd - even though they were initially introduced as hunting rounds. Others have indeed found favour with the hunters, but some have proved to be - well let's be kind - less than popular. The 243 WSSM certainly falls into the latter category and I am already aware of problems that shooters have experienced with rifles chambered for this round, usually in the form of difficult extraction and poor accuracy at times.

On paper, the 243 WSSM cartridge ticks all the right boxes, with a short fat case, long neck, and plenty of powder-capacity. But in reality it just doesn't live up to expectations - to put it kindly! Poor Laurie has spent many an hour on-range trying to get the damn thing to shoot some respectable groups but eventually he had to admit defeat. Laurie had started off his testing using a brand-new Winchester Model 70 Stealth - a fine rifle. By the end of the test, the barrel was just about shot out and there was little to show for it! That comes out of Laurie's own pocket by the way - he will not be reimbursed by Target Sports.

Laurie was left with two choices - palm off the dud Winchester on some unsuspecting shooter, or chuck it in the dustbin. Of course, decent chap that he is, Laurie chose the latter and fortunately the lid just happened to open on my ‘dustbin' and I graciously accepted the ‘sow's ear'! Now for the silk purse bit.

I lost no time in dismantling the Winchester into its basic components, so let's run over just what there is to play with:

A fibreglass stock with aluminium bedding-block made by HS Precision. A Winchester factory action with magazine cut-out and magnum-size bolt-face. A 6mm factory barrel - which is now junk!

Two triggers - one the standard factory item and a replacement by Riflebasix, which Laurie never quite got around to fitting, such was the short life of the rifle. A Ken Farrell Picatinny rail with 20 MOA taper.

The fibreglass stock appears to be a very good product in every respect - we will definitely keep it. The barrel goes, of course, and we will replace the Winchester factory trigger with the Riflebasix item. The Farrell rail will certainly be needed. Not only are the Farrell Picatinny rails of excellent quality but the one-piece steel rails are also very strong and, if we screw and glue it in place, it will add a bit of much-needed stiffness to the action. So what about the action?

Factory actions have their strengths and weaknesses. The big ‘downer' in this case is the magnum bolt-face which could restrict our choice of cartridge. Otherwise, the bolt is good, with a sliding extractor and fixed ‘case-kicker'ejector. However, only one lug is making proper contact and some galling has occurred. The firing-pin is a good close fit in the hole and the sliding extractors are usually strong and reliable. Bolt-to-body fit is unusually good for a factory action, though I might get rid of that bolt-mounted safety. Safeties are not used on competition rifles - the only way to make a rifle really ‘safe' is to remove the bolt.

The action itself is 8" in length, has a flat bottom and incorporates a built-in recoil-lug. Overall stiffness is helped by short cut-out for the integral box-magazine and the equally short loading/ejection port. However, the ejection port cut-out removes almost half the metal from the cross-sectional area, which really compromises stiffness and with it, accuracy potential. Why do some manufacturers make the ejection-port so large when half of it is hidden by the scope anyway?

Are they so totally out of touch?

Well done Savage Arms for addressing this anomaly with its latest ‘target' actions. I reckoned the first job was to give the action the once-over, checking for trueness and doing my best to improve it by re-facing the lugs and action-face. The barrel came off easily enough with the help of a large hammer. I have sawn off the tenon, thus demoting the barrel from ‘part of a firearm' to a useless lump of steel that can be safely scrapped. I did have a look at it with the borescope and Laurie was dead right. The first 9" of the barrel were blackened and severely fire-cracked - as bad as I've seen - and the cracks were ingrained with copper. This barrel was certainly beyond delivering what Laurie would call ‘accuracy'. Although I've not settled on a calibre or cartridge, it's obviously not going to be another WSSM or WSM so the bolt-face will be a problem. Bushing a magnum bolt-face to, say, the popular 308 face is not too difficult even for me. Our Winchester bolt-face is a bit of a problem, though, as it is a legacy of the old ‘controlled-feed' Mauser-style bolt, where the cartridge is captured under the extractor as it is picked up from the magazine. Bushing is not a simple option in this case; we will either have to buy a new bolt or come up with something ingenious to use a smaller cartridge.

A quick search of the internet killed the new bolt idea. The WSSM action is a dedicated short action so the bolt from a 308 Winchester Stealth would be too long. Should we stick with the magnum cartridge? The internet also offered some theories as to why these WSSM chambered rifles don't work too well and it centres around the reduced thickness of the barrel-tenon and receiver-ring, due to the large diameter of the WSSM cartridge.

The action allegedly expands significantly on firing and so does the brass of course. When the action contracts, it grips the brass case tightly. This is because we have exceeded the ‘yield' strength of the brass and it doesn't spring back, making extraction difficult.

What effect this must have on the scope one can only speculate but it certainly won't help accuracy. If we are to get this rifle to function, we clearly need to put some ‘meat' back into the chamber area by using a smaller-diameter cartridge. Winchester clearly recognised this problem and to help, the company has used a finer thread on the tenon. Normally a 16 or 18 tpi is used but this one is a tiny 28 tpi which is only half the depth, thus leaving more ‘meat' in the chamber area.

Incidentally, if this theory seems a little far-fetched, I would point you towards a fascinating book called Rifle Accuracy Facts by Harold R Vaughn.

Although it has some good points, the stock's design is again typical of our out-of-touch manufacturers. What is it supposed to be? The ‘beavertail' forend has a distinct ‘flat' on the underside which would assist if shooting benchrest-style but who would buy this rifle to shoot benchrest? It has none of the attributes of a tactical stock - like McMillan's A5 for example - and the wide, flat forend takes away any pretence of a hunting stock. We have some work to do here.

We still have to decide on a cartridge and that's going to be a problem. I had an urge to try a 260 Remington as this is becoming popular with tactical shooters but it's far too long for this action. The alternative would be one of my current favourites, the 6.5x47 Lapua, but take a look at the photograph - even this is ½" longer than the squat 243 WSSM. The WSSM measures just 2.2" - I think I'm about to build my first 6BR! And why not? The little 6BR is a cartridge I'm always raving about, yet I've never owned a rifle chambered for one. Loaded with a 90gn bullet, the 6BR typically measures around 2.3", a fraction shorter than the loading-port. Hopefully we can just squeeze this in - though my fantasy of a detachable box-magazine must remain just that.

PROJECT RIFLE: SILK PURSES AND SOW

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PROJECT RIFLE: SILK PURSES AND SOW

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