Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters Ruger 77 Ultralight in 257 Roberts Accuracy Issues

Just curious what other members have done to get these Ultralights to shoot. I've only tried a couple of loads, but it sprayed them more than grouped for sure. I cleaned it down to bare metal, and then looked with my bore scope, and the throat is in pretty good shape. I'm guessing I'm fighting a bedding issue, but just curious what others might have done to make their Ultralights shoot?

Never had an accuracy issue with mine. I'd Google up guard screw torque for M77 UL and see what they say.

I've owned 2 .. 77 RLs. One was a "tanger", the other a "Mk II".

I fought the tanger for 2 years with no sort of success, then after losing my temper and just cranking 80+ rounds through it as fast as I could, actually getting the wood stock to smoke, it turned 180 degrees and shot as well as any rifle I'd owned to the time. Looking back, I suspect there was a pressure point under the forend which I burned out. However, for the sake of a good story, I say Rugers have to be bedded in charcoal. It went from a 2-1/2 to 3 inch gun to under 3/4ths of an inch for 5 shots with 4-5 different loads.

I fought that Mk II for 18 months or so. I even sent it back to the factory. They improved it from minute-of-grapefruit down to minute-of-orange ... in other words, from a 3-1/2" gun to a 3 inch gun, better but a long ways from adequate. Eventually I traded it for something or other.

Tom

T O M, that story of charcoal bedding is one of the best I've read in a long time! I wonder if maybe shooting it hot took some stresses out of the barrel metal as well?

I got a 77RL (tanger) in 257 Bob last year.
Bedding and barrel floated, it shoots good enough for a hunter.
I have a couple more loads to work on to fine tune it.

TOM,

You might have also "stress relieved" the barrel by shooting it really hot. In general, stress-relieving is done with finished barrel by heating them to around 1000 degrees.

Have seen this more than once with various rifles, especially prairie dog rifles. It's often attributed to the barrel "breaking in," but have also experienced rebored barrels shooting much better, and at least one reborer believes it's partly due to the heat of the reaming-out. Harry Pope, the famous barrel-maker, also advised target-barrel customers to bring their rifles back in a year or two to be rebored. After the barrels had been heated up by considerably, the rebored, they usually shot better.

There's a lot more knowledge (and precision) of heat-treating these days, one reason many of today's really good barrels not only shoot well but do so even when they get hot. There are also other factors involved, but a stress-relieved barrel can make an enormous difference.

I had a Ruger 77 RSI in 243 that I couldn't get to shoot worth a damn, so I had it rebored as a 260 and that made a significant increase in accuracy. I also had a Savage 99F rebored from 243 to 260 and it shoots better groups as a 260 than it ever did as a 243.

Full length neutral bedding has cured a couple for me. Others could only be helped by a rebarrel.

John, Are you the guy i traded with ?
Did you trade, a 700 BDL in 7mag For your ultra light ? One way or another Mine did not shoot real good till i tried H-414 under a 100 grain triple shock then i was happy. If you give up on her look me up. Maybe we could swap something else...tj3006

My tanger .308 would put 3 in about 1 1/2" inches, which was fine for the woods hunting I used it for. Now that I'm fussier and have time to futz with stuff, I probably would take a swing at improving it if it still lived here, but don't think it would affect its suitabilty for that purpose one bit. Killed plenty of stuff with rifles even less precise.

My Dad had an UL tang safety version in 270. I got it when he passed, and I cleaned it up and worked up some loads. I didn’t try out too many bullets, but it shot Sierra 140 gr BTHP extremely well - cold barrel and 3 shot groups. Honestly, I had not expected it to be so accurate. I passed it on to Dad’s favorite grandson.

I had a Ruger 77 Ultralight, tang safety in 257 Roberts that would not shoot, finally saw that barrel was not straight, Ruger Rebarreled it. Shot great after that.

I've gone thru 7 of them, each was free floated and bedded receiver and 2" of barrel, ....all ended up under !"! Presently playing with one in .250AI, now shooting 1/2"!!!

TJ, I actually picked up the rifle from my local gun shop. (Are you in Portland Oregon?) They know I have an affinity for old cartridges in nice wood guns, so they called me when they saw this Bob come through the door. It's a pretty nice MK-II.

I admit I probably didn't look hard enough at it before I shot my first groups with it. I pulled it out of the stock tonight and it looks like the front action screw is broken off in the hole. It looks like it broken about 2/3's of the way towards the end. I'm wondering if the broken part of the screw is putting stress on the underside of the barrel web?? I'm gonna reassemble it and try shooting it the next calm day we have. If it doesn't shoot again, I'm going to take it to my local gunsmith and see if he can't get the broken screw out of the hole, and then I'll bed the action. It's fit in the stock isn't that great, and I'll probably bed the entire barrel channel while I'm at it, and see what happens.

It's a pretty little rifle, but looks like it may be a bit of a project!

I bought one last year and was absolutely stoked as I've been looking for a good one for years. This was advertised as 'PERFECT' condition. When I got it, it looked liked it just left the factory yesterday. It shot three to four inch groups with 100gn Ballistic Tips and when I cleaned it, I noticed a small thread of cotton caught at the muzzle. On inspection there was a tiny bit of corrosion in the bore. Damn. I took it to my gunsmith to have a couple of millimetres lopped off and recrowned but he put his bore scope up it. There was corrosion all the way along the barrel. The previous owner had probably fired a box of ammo and put it away uncleaned for several years.

I put a new barrel in it but went .257 AI instead. It shoots under an inch now.

I have two other Ultralights. One is a tang safety in .250 Savage that shoots under an inch (3 shots) with a bedding and trigger job and the barrel fully floated. The other is a MK ll in .308 that didn't shoot all that good from new. I had it bedded, barrel floated and a Timney trigger installed but it still wasn't a real tack driver but better. Then I read a Craig Boddington book about applying a bit of upward pressure in thin barrels at the fore end, so I packed some strips of bike tube rubber about 1cm x 4cm between barrel and wood and groups shrank to around an inch with 130gn Speer HPs and 150gn Hornady SPs. I've always meant to have the forend pressure bedded with something a bit more permanent but the rubber strips are still in there 15 years later.

So my .250 shoots well with a free floated barrel but the .308 needs a little fore end pressure to shoot, maybe because of less steel in the barrel walls with a bigger .30 cal hole. Something for you to consider maybe.

https://rugerforum.net/ruger-bolt-action/93323-m-77-accuracy-tip.html

Ruger accuracy issues are usually caused by binding or pressure either on the action or the barrel. Read the post at the hyperlink at it gives you a good way to test with the mag box out. You can also test with free floating or increasing the pressure on the end of the barrel. I've turned a few scatter guns into 1/2 MOA shooters just by doing a close inspection and removing the friction.

And the advice to make your barrel glow is bad advice.

Was struggling with the lightweight barrel on my Kimber Hunter. I pulled a piece of tightly woven chord between the stock and barrel about half way between the barrel action taper and end of stock. Went from a 1-1/2" gun to 3/4" or less rifle. Easy enough to try. I keep thinking I need to bed this rifle but it shoot so good now I don't think I'll mess with it. My theory is that lightweights can benefit from a pressure point giving the barrel some stability and a consistent starting point.

You guys could be right. I thought about that ... but only jokingly. I didn't know what the temp threshold was and I really have no idea how hot that barrel got. "I guess I'd rather be lucky than good."

Tom

I'd do the credit card shim thing to see if floating will help it.

Here's the link to Ruger bedding posted a few years ago. (It's a sticky in Hunting Rifles.) I did the bedding and floating on a standard weight .270 that was a ho-hum shooter at best. I believe that there is advice in there to crank the front action screw down to 90ft-lbs. I know it appeared somewhere. At any rate, after doing this work, the rifle turned into a solidly consistent 1" shooter. I've never gotten better accuracy with pressure on the barrel, and I have several with light barrels in different calibers. BUt, if it works for you, run with it. Each is a law unto itself.


https://www.24hourcampfire.com/ubbt...14/diy-bedding-m77-pic-heavy#Post3003214