Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunting Rifles Browning Bar .308

New man here so greetings.
My Dad ,80 tears young got a hankerin for a Browning BAR a couple of years back. I found him one out in Montana. It is a great looking gun, made in Belgium , no Safari blah blah.
The trigger is great , it had to have been worked on.
Anyway we shot it at the range after he recieved it and it likes to vertically string the shots. I'm a bolt gun guy myself so I'm looking for posssibly some causes of the vertical stringing.
The scope and mounts are tight, we shot three different factory loads in it and they all performed the same.
I read about loading for the autos and picked up some IMR4895 ,set up and loaded some speer 150 grain bt's and Nosler 150 ballistic tips and some 165 ballistic tips.
Well life happened and we never got around to trying the loads I put together for it. I bought him a used Nikon scope for it and am wating on it to come in the mail to mount.

If it vertically strings the handloads what are some potential problem areas to look at . Should the forearm be "tight" or just "snug" I checked the bushing/washer at the base of the reciever and it was fairly pliable so I would think it is still servicable. IDK
Any and all help appriciated.

Just let it rip and see what it tells you. As far as semi-auto, they’re at the top of the heap for a hunting rifle.

I recieved the scope yesterday. Today I'm pulling the weaver bases and cleaning then reinstalling with blue Loc-tite 242. Cleaning the bore super clean , operating system , the locking lugs etc. Then I'm going to mount the scope.
Hopefully tuesday we can get to the range and try it out. I'm going to start with the forearm screw fairly snug and back off from there. It seems that from research 65 inch pounds is the magic # . But all rifles are different. The forearm is definately a snug fit on the barrel for it's entire length, and may have some bearing on what is going on. Not excited about floating it due to the forearm screw still being a pressure point .
We'll see what happens.

Had a 30-06 that shot 1 1/2'' groups , what size groups are you getting ?

How much stringing ?

Good Luck & welcome to the Fire' ! ! !

Welcome to the Fire. I bought dad a Belgium made Browning Grade 1 when they first came out back in the late '60's. One of our better days was the day we sold that rifle. The early ones had only one ejector in the bolt face and dad's stove piped lots of the partially ejected empties. Two different gun smiths couldn't make it work and different ammo did the same thing. I'm told that later BAR's have two ejectors in the bolt face to eject the empties and those seem to work just fine from what I've seen at the range.

Never owned a Belgium BAR only Portuguese assembled models. Never an issue, all shot consistently no matter what it was fed.

I would not be over tightening the swivel bolt more then snug. If the foreend feels excessively tight then it might be an issue. They should move freely on the barreled action but not with any slop.

As others have said top of the heap for a semi-auto.

Only negative on the Belgium guns is the rear stock screw, it tends to loosen.

65 inch pounds on the forearm screw is the sweet spot. Wasted alot of ammo, before learning this. Torque wrench paid for itself, quickly.

Andy3

Interested to know what torque wrench and bit you used ?

Tekton 1/4" drive, model #: TRQ-21101, with a 9mm crow's foot. Be sure to set the crow's foot 90 degrees to the torque wrench for accuracy (setting it inline with the wrench, adds to the developed length, and will not be exact).

I use an old swivel to hold the stud where I want it, while I tighten the forearm nut. Takes a little finesse, but go slow, and its not too bad.

For the record, my 4 BAR rifles are all Mark II generation. I don't know if this repeats with the other models?

Andy3

Got the scope mounted and the bore whistle clean. Checked the gas piston and it is free. Had no trouble unscrewing the gas port screw( WHEW!) whomever had the gun had it serviced correctly.
I was going to take it to the range early this week , but the wife shot a nice buck this evening and spent the better part of following a sparse blood trail that eventually petered out. Dang! She had already passed on two slickheads , a 4 pointer and a big cowhorn.
She shot the bigun' at about 45 feet . It went straight down, Sfter about 10 minutes it regained it' sfooting on its front legs and drug itself about 35 to 40 feet. Then got it's witsabout it and hauled buggy. she had another shot on him but realized she hadn't Changed out the primer in her muzzleloader.,

She is pretty upset. but sometimes it happens different than how you want it to be.

Done it dozens of times and I always keep it real snug, have never measured it with a torque wrench . Where did you come up with the 65 in lbs number?

I spent one day, with my 3 BARs, snugging up the forearm nut 10 in pounds at a time. Started at 30, then 40, and 50. Each group was different, with each gun. Horizontal stringing, then vertical stringing, then a more grouplike cluster.....with each 10 in pounds added. I got frustrated with all the ammo I shot, with little progress.

I went home, cleaned all 3 rifles, and then got on the internet. I found multiple threads addressing the subject, and 65 inch pounds was what was quoted, every time.

So.....the 243, 06, and 338 BARs went back to the range, after setting them to 65. ALL 3 guns shot sub 1", with most bullet holes touching, or better.

Made me a believer! I keep the torque wrench with my box of BAR magazines.

Andy3

Ar 10 may be sn option?

I've got an early '90s BAR in Rem 280 that I got new. Messed with the torques on the forearm screw a few years ago and it did help but the best I've ever been able to do with it is about 2" at 100 yards. I hunt with it exclusively in the woods and finally just decided there was no scenario where I needed it better than that and just quit messing with it.

Update... Made it to the range tuesday with Dad and his BAR.

I don't have a bore sighter so I bagged it up and sighted down beside the barrel @ 25 yards. My rifle club has large berms I was confident about not missing it. First shot was dead on for elevation and 4" to the right. I kept the gun in the bags and ran windage over to the bullet hole. The next three were about 5/8" of an inch. This was still @ 25 yards. ( I did zero out the adjustments on the new to him scope before we started shooting .( Nikon 3x9x40) .
,
We then moved over to the 100/200 range and started tweaking on it. We had my handloads , some Norma 150grain "Whitetail" and some Federal(I think) Non-Typical 150 grain.
The Norma stuff shot about 3 1/2 "s in a diagonal pattern, The handloaded 150 grain Nosler Ballistic Tips shot just over an inch woohoo!!! Also had some handloaded 165 Nosler Ballistic tips, they shot about 1 1/2 inches. The Non-Typical shot just over an inch also. Dad was going to shoot another group with the Non-Typical stuff but I noticed some "material" fall out of the magazine area when I dropped the floor plate to reload it. Turns out the nylon recoil buffer was disentigrating (SP) .

We stopped the shoot and came to the house. I called Arts Gun shop in MO. and ordered a new buffer.

After that range session I feel confident we can keep it around an inch, which is minute of deer all day here. The forearm was " Good and snug" and I never moved it. I also marked it for future reference. Some tweaking on it may yield some better groups but at the ranges my Dad would shoot at a deer it is more than good enough according to him.