Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters Broke a Weatherby today

Which is unusual because Weatherby rifles have long throats.

I’ve read on the innanets that folks have had issues with Weatherby Mark V’s. Vanguards and Howas had a recall some years ago I think.

However, I own one 6-lug Mark V, three 9-lug Mark V magnums, and one Vanguard magnum and have had zero issues with any of them and all 5 are very accurate. I’m not disputing your experiences, just sharing mine. And yes, they all have been fired quite a lot, no safe queens. Happy Trails

Never claimed to be baloney-free!

Cheers

just send the rifle back for warranty , chit happens sometimes . good luck ,Pete53

pete53 for the win...

About 10 years back I was driving out of the woods and was flagged down on a logging road by an acquaintance. He was looking for a rod to push a bullet out of his barrel. His story was very similar to yours. It was a well used Savage 110. He was using factory ammo. He shot a buck, jacked another live round in the chamber, which he said was hard to close the bolt down on, and then, with a ton of effort, pulled the round apart trying to get it out.

After pushing the bullet out, we cycled a bunch of full mags through and everything worked fine. Best we could figure was that somehow a factory round ended up with the bullet seated out too far. Guy wasn't a hand loader and never had anyone load for him, so there wasn't much possibility that he ended up with a non factory round.

Can't really comment much on the adversely affected safety, other than that perhaps it slipped partially to the on position and you bent something while pulling hard to extract the stuck round?

I've owned a number of Mk-V through the years. None gave me any trouble mechanically, but most seemed finicky. Had to usually mess around with loads and free floating barrels. I always felt like for the money they could do a little better. Wouldn't say no to another if they offer something that catches my fancy, but haven't brought one home in awhile.

Never liked Weatherbys. Over-hyped and over priced IMO. Any thing that requires a torque wrench isn't in my lot. My opinion is free of course....

One thing for sure is the 6.5 RPM does not utilize Wby style freebore, so typically MKV operation is usually under no over pressure stress with most Wby cartridges because of generous freebore distances from the lands.

Pressure on the 6.5 RPM is 65K psi, could be a tight chamber. Did you measure the max COAL to lands of your chamber? If so compare Wby ammo length cartridges to the found COAL to lands. You’ll need one of the 140 Interlock bullets for analyzing COAL to lands to make a comparison. Once found, the allowable should be found by backing off the lands by about 0.020”-0.080” (could have greater freebore) from the COAL to lands for a typical factory chamber or for most handloaders. Wby ammo should fall well short of the COAL to lands measurement. Just a place to start for some specifics and maybe a better understanding.

I was scratching my head on that too.

You didn’t test fire your rifle before hunting with it?

Yeah...that alone tells you everything you need to know.

Interesting. Please let us know what the final findings are.

That's impressive in terms of economy of ammo. I don't think it's enough shots to figure out the peculiarities of your rifle, though. In my mind, like driving a new vehicle off the lot straight home to load up your stuff and then leave on a 5k mile road trip.

Not sure what went wrong with the gun, but Weatherby's service department should be able to straighten it out.

I would remove the action from the stock and clean all the spilt powder out of the trigger/action/bolt.

^^^^This and check the ammo , sounds like a bad batch . These threads never fail to attract Weatherby haters.

I bought a rifle once. Zeroed it for one box of factory loads with a few shots and went hunting. Put elk in the freezer. Worked great. Still have it, still zeroed for the same ammo. And I hand load, and have a firearms collection.

People are busy sometimes.
Not like the deer are going to shoot back.
Just sayin'.

I doubt anyone posting on a gun board goes hunting without a backup gun. I don't.

Fix and forget.

I go on plenty of hunts with no backup rifle. I can drive the 20 minutes back home if something happens

Ain't like most hunts are high-dollar, far from home deals.

No one's life is in danger if my new gun fails 30 minutes from home. No reason to shoot it 200 times to make sure.

And for that matter, how many rounds DOES it take to make sure it's gonna work?

Better not overdo the testing or you'll wear it out and cause a failure lol

Six total rounds by 4 different people and you know its uber accurate ????? I think someone is trolling......

Yep, the Weatherby Haters and Leupold Haters are cut from the same cloth.

There are two kinds of them: Those who have Weatherby rifles and those who wish they did….

In today’s manufacturing and quality control environment, anything can be out of specs or faulty.

My 6.5-300 Wby has less than two full boxes of ammo through it, yet I have 100% confidence that it will go bang and the bullet will go where aimed. I always take a backup rifle on out of state elk hunts where I have a place to store my spare. I never leave a firearm in a vehicle for the thieves to pluck.