Did a way back purchase on a new Kimber 84 Varminter in 204 Rug. Nice looking rifle.
Had a card hanging off the trigger guard when I got it that said SUB MOA GUARANTEE. Gave me a warm tingling inside.
It did shoot SUB MOA ~ of a barn door. All the usual stuff tried to correct it ~ Throwing $300 in fixes at a $1000 dollar box gun, Meh whatever, had to try.
Nothing helped, until I dropped a PAC-NOR SuperMatch barrel on it. Awesome rifle now.
I caught a bad Proof Carbon barrel on a build. Jammed through everything imaginable to correct that as well. The builder came to the same conclusion, that it was just a bad barrel. New Proof slapped on the build, made it the shooting demon it was supposed to be.
Figure if you touch enough rifles, you will eventually find a lemon or two. While most can be corrected with fundamental changes, proper bedding, scope rings/bases, solid optics and tweaking loads. Sometimes the tube is just a hoser, and needs to be made gone.
I feel bad for the occasional rifle buyer, who hits the bad luck lottery on a rifle they had been wanting to own for a long time.
🦫
All true. My last 4 barrels are Pac-Nor, PN, PN, and Bartlein and have all been rock stars. I’m due for a dud. It’s lucky I’ve been getting good ones, because I’ve been doing my own chambering, so I would’ve suspected an error on my end over the likelihood of a bad high-end barrel.
What happened to me was kind of the opposite. The PN tube on my short-action “Sendero Lite” 7 WSM build, the 2nd rifle I chambered after my .223AI, is an astonishingly good barrel. I swear it even corrects my called flyers, lol.... I’d heard of barrels this accurate, but never experienced it. That’ll ruin you for just “good”.
