Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Gunsmithing Bergara Barrels - Will Wonders Never Cease?

Having become addicted to assembling varmint rifles on new Savage Precision Target Actions, I became curious about using a Remington 700 Short Action to build a similar swap barrel rifle.

So I ordered a Remington 700 SA bare action through my dealer from Brownell�s. The action went off to Greg Tannel to have the bolt double sleeved, locking lugs faced and matched, the firing pin bushed and a .250� double pinned recoil lug installed. Then I ordered a Pac-Nor pre-fit barrel with Rem Nut in .22-250 A.I. with a muzzle brake in 1:9� twist. I set up a Bell & Carlson Medallist M-40 style stock for the action, and installed a Jewel trigger.

Pac-Nor is extremely busy, a good thing, so the barrel ordered in July has not arrived as I write this. So, curious to try out the assemblage, I did the unthinkable and ordered a Spanish made Bergara Barrel pre-fit from stock on hand. They had a S.S. Remington Varmint Contour 26� barrel in .22-250 with a 1:12� twist. The barrels come with a smooth barrel nut that installs with a strap wrench! The barrel arrived within a little over a week. So it was soon lashed up to the action, but with a standard Remington recoil lug salvaged from my old 40X. I�m used to using a Savage barrel nut wrench coupled to a torque wrench to install barrels, so I didn�t hold out much hope for accuracy with my Ridgid strap wrench.

Below are early load development results for the Bergara barrel. Each group is 10 shots at 100 yards. Each red diamond measures .550�. The shots outside the groups were aiming errors on my part. Two of the flyers in the Benchmark group were caused by rushing the last two shots during the last minute of the firing period. Primer strikes on the cases were centered on the primers, and cases came from the chamber surprisingly close to unfired dimensions � F.L. sizing is optional. The barrel cleaned up as easily as any of my other barrels from Shilen, Brux or Pac-Nor. Not bad for an off-the-shelf ready to install $367.00 barrel including shipping. I�d be happy to take this rig on a varmint hunt just as it is, even more so with a bit more load refinement. Then again, I�m always the last guy to discover these things.