Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunting Rifles The MONTANA project

Another Montana thread, why not?

I recently received a second-hand Montana in, you guessed it, 308. All the trick moves have been applied with the exception of bedding.

I shot it for the first time this morning with a pet load. I have a tendency to put a bunch of shots in a group so that you can see what the heck is going on.

The lower group was the first, and with the action screws at 65 in/lbs. It immediately started walking horizontally, seven shots was enough.

My experience has been that bedding problems manifest themselves with more torque. I re-torqued to 45 in/lbs, flipped the target, and made a 4 click left adjustment.

10 shots were fired in rapid succession, no barrel cooling or any crap like that.

45 in/lbs produced an encouraging, more consistent group. I have hopes that a bedding job will settle it down even more.

Stay tuned!

Did you check it for repeat-ability? If you re-torque to 65 will it begin to walk again or was that not tested? Just curious.

I did not.

I have a feeling I'm gonna want that rifle back.

I have a feeling you might be right

Might be worth reading before you start slinging goop.

Gooping a Montucky.

Bedding is done. JB Weld matches! Mixed it last night around 7:30, cleaned up the overrun with toothpicks at 10:30. Popped it out and cleaned up at 5:30 AM this morning. I'll let it cure another day and ring out another 10 tomorrow.

I put several layers of tape on the bottom of the lug only. Front, back, and sides are tight.

Great looking bedding job.

John

Have a buddies Montana 300 WM sitting in bedding right now. Be curious to see how the different torque amounts effect yours. This is the first Montana I've went through and didn't find any mag binding, or the front Talley screw bottoming out. Only thing I found that I didn't like was the barrel sat a tad off center. A little relief in the stock and some centering tape at the forend will hopefully take care of that.

That's a great looking bedding job. I'll be following your thread to see how it works out for you. A 308 Montana sure is tempting to me!

Just ordered a 84L. Should be here next week so I am also curious as to your torque amounts as well.

up

Did you bed the tang also? I would and did on my Montana and what I found is that I simply hand tighten as tight as possible and not worry about it. I don't measure torque and the rifle shoots great. in my opinion, when you combine the high quality stock of the Montana with great bedding material (I use Devcon 10110 mostly) compression issues simply vanish. YMMV and it looks like you are off to a good start but I would give the tang a good once over before you bolt it back up.

Bedding didn't yield any better results.

The tang bedding was already clean, smooth, good contact. I did a dial test on the bedding and its spot on, no stress.

I'd like to see a three shot group. If 1-2-3 all hit POA, you are in the high cotton.

Seriously? Why? It could be any combination of the above.

I edited my post as to why. How many times are you gonna pop off more than three rounds in a light weight hunting rifle?

It's hard to tell by the target and pic; what's the 10 shot group measure?

10 shots is the best indicator of where the first three will land on any given day. Overlay your various "cold" three shots groups and the answer you will get is in the 10 shot group.

SAS, the 10 shot group in top/first pic is about 1.75". The bottom/bedded pic is a little over 2"


Five shots at 350 yards yielded roughly the same results, about 1.5 - 1.75 MOA, roughly measured with my hand (about 6").