Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Custom Rifles & Wildcats Mistakes made on custom builds??

I've only had gunsmithing done by one smith who gets it correct (the others have passed away). Then again, I have largely stopped using gunsmiths for builds, in favor of using factory Savage Precision Target actions; Remington 700 bare actions purchased new; Remington 783 actions disassembled from new rifles (a real sleeper action that even Remington may not know what it has); and AR-15 lowers and side-cocking upper receivers with custom Hart barrels. The others are barreled with custom made prefit barrels from Shilen; Pac-Nor; Hart (AR-15's); and Criterion. All are fitted with barrel nuts and precision recoil lugs so no lathe is needed, and I get exactly what I want. These barrels tend to be much faster twists for various copper monolithic expanding bullets, or those compressed powdered copper, copper-tin, jacketed varmint bullets. For example I use 1:9" or 1:8.5' twist for the .204 Ruger. I also prefer Pac-Nor's polygonal rifled barrels for their accuracy and ease of cleaning. That way I can also swap out barrels depending on what I am using it for. Hart made me a 1:9" twist 24" varmint barrel for the AR-15 without a gas port to make a bolt action rifle, and two 20" .223 Wylde chambered barrels with 1:8" twist, with no gas port also for bolt action uppers. All these shoot under 0.5" at 100 yards for 10 shots, and are great varmint rifles. It takes a bit of learning, and expense for hand tools, but now I am having as much fun building these things as shooting and hunting with them.