Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunting Rifles Kimber Montana .223 Arrives Today.

I went in to pickup my Montana in .223 today. Obviously looks like any other 84M. Went home and did my usual prep work. Adjusted trigger to 2 3/4#'s, cleaned up excess oil, degreased the scope base screw holes and cleaned the barrel. The max. mag. oal is 2.300" as is the Pro Varmint. I put a VXIII 3.5-10 x 40 on it held with Talleys. The scale shows it to be at 6# 8 oz..

The inside of the stock is date stamped 11/08 and the s/n is in the 16XXX range.

It looks like the weather is going to nix any range work until sometime next week. Anyway, they are out and a lot sooner than I would have bet!

Any way to lengthen the magazine box, ala spacer removal?

Anxiously awaiting the range report ...

I keep bouncing back and forth between one of these and a pro varmint in 223 ...

It looks like the weather is going to nix any range work until sometime next week. Anyway, they are out and a lot sooner than I would have bet! [/quote]

Quit worrying about that weather and man up and get out and shoot that rifle!

I'll need a full report when you're done. Try several bullets, weights, seating depths and powder charges. Shoot it with a cold barrel, hot barrel, and everything in between from ranges from 100 to 1000 yards in everything from still conditions to hurricane force winds. I'll also need to know how it behaves for you in every imaginable field position, off hand, as well as off sand bags. Please feed everything possible through it and let us know how that goes.

Is it already dark up there? If so, I guess in the morning will be soon enough...Take it easy on the coffee - don't want to blame the rifle for your caffeine overload...grin.

As you can tell, I've been waiting patiently for some feedback on one of these...Glad you got yours in - thinking hard about one - really need a 223 in one of these as much as I'm shooting my 7-08 and 243...

DJ

Whoop, I had heard the 223's might come with a black stock... assuming it's Kimber Grey?

Should be a neat rig...

Bigwhoop - What's the twist on that rifle? I decided a while back that I needed a .223 bolt gun (got a couple AR's and a Mini-14)for called coyotes/deer/truck gun/whatever, and started shopping around. I wanted a 9 inch twist or faster (I don't often use anything less than 60 grain bullets in my .223's) and some of the rifles I considered looked pretty good but either were twisted too slow or I couldn't find out what the twist was. I finally settled on a Remington 700 XCR compact tactical. Dealer tells me the gun's arrived, just waiting for the scope (VXIII 1.75-6 w/custom shop finish to sort of match the rifle.)The Montana was on the short list anyway. Let us know how it shakes out so I'll know if I should regret getting the Remmy.

As to the questions:
1. There is a spacer in the magazine box. It could be removed and would give you about 1/2" more OAL. Didn't study it that close as to how it is attached.
2. Yes the stock is the same gray - it looks like the .308.
3. The twist in this is an advertised 9 inches.

Of course the culmination to the whole thing is subsequent range testing. I didn't want to get too carried away with the glass power, although I set the 6-18 on the Talleys, but it looked out of balance. I wanted more than 8 power and so settled on the 3.5-10.
I'll try both the 50gr and 55 gr BT's along with 52HP Bergers and Sierra 52 HPBT. Varget works nice in the Pro Varmint although so did H-380 and Benchmark. I use Varget in the .308 and even the 7x57 so it'll be my "go to" powder. I try to keep the collection of powder bottles to a minimum.
If this works, I may have to get another 84M in between this and the .308. Hope that Obama check gets here soon!

How long did you have to wait? I ordered a .260 montana over a month ago. Called Kimber yesterday, they said the barrels were backordered. Maybe, maybe not. Could be they are filling orders for the 223s and 257s first.

Good luck with it!

Sounds like a very nice rig.


Travis

I waited about a month - no more. I was quite surprised when they said "your Kimber is here". Normally we get these announcements and its anybodies guess when the goods get shipped.

get yourself some 75 amax and some CCI 450's and tip the varget jug. That will tell us just how good the new attempt by Kimber really is. I don't think I've ever been this cranked abouot a factory rifle before!

Varget is my go-to for the .223, also serves me well in .308 and .45-70.

Just found out today the custom shop Leupie will be 7-8 weeks. That's okay I guess, didn't really plan on doing anything with the new rifle until spring anyway.

I'd run '15 or TAC for the heavies, 335 for everything else. Varget meters like Lincoln logs.

Are you going by the feel when you operate the measure or have you checked out the weight statistics for sets of thrown charges.

I recently ran a few trials with my Redding BR-30 and for a typical 308 size charge the sample standard deviation for Varget was only 0.02 grains higher than that of Reloder 15.

BTW I like RL15 in my 223 as well.

Takes up too much case space also......

I can drop charges mucho faster with ball powders.

Put up some cardboard out in the apple orchard (honeycrisp) to fine tune the .223 and to see how it felt. Oh boy, this one is going to fun. After six, I was happy and went into the shop to clean 'er up. Can't wait for the next nice range day.
I like Varget cause it adapts to a lot of calibers without giving up a lot. It is temperature insensitive too. The Pro Varmint likes it so I imagine this one won't be much different.
Like I said, I just try to limit the collection of kegs. Trying to resist R-17 for the 270 and 300 wizzums. H4831SC works very nice for both. I hear you on the ball powders but 27 grains of "V" drops fast enough.

All I really need to know is how it likes 69 SMKs over TAC and Federal spark plugs in once fired LC cases? If it'll do 5 into a no BS 1" I'll take it

Varget doesn't meter as smoothly as ball powder, for sure, but accuracy-wise it does well in my BR-30 too. For some reason it seems to meter more smoothly than a lot of stick powders.

Varget, Benchmark and H-380 all have done well in my 22's. I'll see what the first formal range session looks like. We had 4" overnight and now a heavy NW wind - it'll be a few days.