Originally Posted by Aagaardsporter
Digressing from the powder questions. And raising the spectre of multiple variables impacting accuracy.

The back of the rib should clear the front of the receiver by, IIRC, at least .003". Otherwise the end of the rib might contact the receiver as the barrel warms up with adverse impact on group size.
When I first checked this, I was able to easily slide a .004 feeler gage between the receiver and the rib, for which I was grateful. Another issue I have found in No.1's is contact between the rear of the fore end and the front of the receiver. ( My 1B in .308 was bearing kind of tight in that spot. I relieved it with some careful sanding. The flat surface with, of course, a flat sanding block, the lower, radiused surface was done uniformly with some fine sandpaper wrapped around a 12 gauge shotgun cartridge. The amount of relief was visually imperceptible once reassembled, but resulted in much more uniform groups, probably half the size of before I did it.

My 7 x 57 1A would shoot vertical strings with little lateral dispersion despite waiting 5 minutes or more between shots. The first shot the next day would be spot on with the first shot of the previous day! There was no clearance between the back of the rib and the receiver. I pulled the rib and stoned the back end to provide some clearance. If you elect to do this, be careful removing the flat head allen screws attaching the rib to the barrel. Penetrating oil and some heat would be your friends. I broke one of those screws....Ruger was good about sending a replacement but getting the broken stub out without buggering up the barrel was tricky. Providing rib clearance fixed the vertical stringing.

I hear you with regard to caution when removing small screws that may have been in there a long time. Having begun my tool and die apprenticeship in 1974, I have had much experience in the intervening years in removing broken screws (and taps, and drills and.....) and am pretty good at it (usually.) That said, I would much prefer to avoid breaking them in the first place. I always start with Kroil and, if a half hour soak doesn't do it, I'm not opposed to letting it go overnight.


Also, older 7 x 57 Ruger 1A rifles had longer throats to handle 175 gr bullets. My 1A shoots 140 gr Nosler BTs better when the bullets are seated out further. I don't think my throat is overly long. I'm seating 140 NBT's .025 (or so) off the lands at 3.175. This puts the base of the bullet just about at the bottom of the neck. If this gives me acceptable accuracy when I hit about 2900 fps, all is well and good. If not, I'll start playing with seating depth a bit.

Finally, when was your No. 1 made? The very early ones had excellent Douglas barrels but Ruger used Wilson barrels for a while and accuracy varied with those. Ruger hammer forged barrels starting in ?1992 are supposed to be better than the Wilson barrels.
This is, according to Ruger, a 2000 gun. For what it's worth, I try not to pay any attention to Red Pad Rugers just because I don't want to have to deal with this issue. I only get the guns to use, not to collect, and I would prefer to only have to deal with a known and easily corrected set of potential issues (as we've discussed above.)

Thanks for taking the time to provide a detailed response.

Mathew 22: 37-39