Beautiful rifle and good shooting.
I see you have a Kepplinger trigger; have you tried shooting the rifle with the trigger set, and unset? I find that sometimes, some of my rifles shoot just as well, if not better when unset. Hard to figure, but may relate to the increased lock time and "bump" of the trigger when set.
Also, did you put a lighter "speed hammer" in the rifle? This will almost certainly shrink groups a bit, and certainly won't hurt your group size.
I'll defer to Steve Durren on the fore-end inletting advice. I'm sure he mentioned that the amount of pressure/contact at the fore-end/receiver face can be critical. A few thousands space between the fore-end and lower receiver "extension" can often solve a lot of frustrating flyer issues.
Good luck. A rifle of that quality in 222 Rem. should be shooting X's on a regular basis. ;-)
The Kepplinger trigger is set at a nice, crispy 2 lbs. (unset) and works well. However, this gun's purpose in life is match shooting and the few oz. set trigger works better. This is my 41st year of benchrest competition, mostly spent using 1-1/2 oz. Jewell triggers all summer long. I've had real problems getting my deer rifle, another No. 1, to fire (muscle memory) when it had the factory trigger and, eventually, I replaced it with a Kepplinger.
Steve gave me a list of things to try when I saw him Sunday and I will follow it exactly. If I'm not happy when done I will give the gun to Steve this winter so he can work his magic doing things I'm not capable of doing... like lightening the hammer. I have no machinery at all and do everything by hand... that is, unless you count a Dremel and a stand grinder.
Generally, I'm very happy with the way this rifle turned out. I've shot some really small groups with it out of a cold barrel. But, when it heats up, it starts to throw shots all over the place. I need to be able to shoot eight or ten shots accurately and, half an hour later, shoot another ten with no lose of accuracy. We do this five times in our matches and, so far, each succeeding group gets bigger.
