The odd thing about it is that on the 452/455 models they used a nice finish that let the wood grain show, why they went to the mud finish on the 457 is beyond me. The only reason that I can come up with is that they are saving manhours by not filling pores ands hoping that the mud finish will make it less noticable.
I have looked at six 457 American models and they all exhibited the same finish as yours - it's too bad that they are cutting corners on the stock finish.
drover
If I find a Premium stock before start unmuddying this one, I won't even bother making this one look normal.
Today I braved the weather just to see how well this rifle would shoot. It was 22 degrees.
Not normal temp. for this area, oh and that was the high for today. I only took out two loads. RWS Subsonics, my favorite, and Sellier and Bellot subsonic. I use the Sellier's to get on paper normally when setting up a scope because I never have much luck with it shooting small groups. First thing I noticed is cold fingers don't work so well inserting the magazine and the mag. is not very forgiving like the Sako or Kimbers are. Then that trigger
I will definitely have to work on it ........a lot. It was so spongy and 3.5 - 3.25lbs. is way to heavy for me.
Now for the main event, accuracy........Nada. Could have been the weather, the trigger, or me, but my oh my this one has a long way to go. Feeding and ejecting were flawless so that is a plus.
I was shooting at 50yds. and only snapped a photo of the groups, so no writing on the paper. The left group was the Sellier and Bellot and the 2 groups right of it was the RWS. I shot 5 shot groups.
![[Linked Image from i.imgur.com]](https://i.imgur.com/GwTosfn.jpg)
