Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunting Rifles JB - Kimber of Oregon BGR's

John,

Did you ever do much shooting with them back in the day? I am fiddling with a 30-06. I just scoped it yesterday and when (if?) it ever dips below 90 degrees I will take it out. Just curious.

Not as much as with smaller cartridges--but there were problems that occurred with the Oregon rifles.

First and most common, they often didn't let the wood "cure" enough before making it into stocks. This resulted in stocks eventually cracking or warping considerably. I was also a stockmaker for several years, to augment my writing career, and at least three of the rifles I restocked were on Kimber of Oregon rifles that cracked and/or warped enough to be unusable.

The other problem you might run into is the Oregon employees often weren't trained much in making firearms. In fact even the owners didn't know much about it. One of the things I ran into with a .223 sporter was failure-to-fire during a May prairie dog shoot, where morning temperatures were in the 40s.

Took the bolt apart after getting home (which wasn't simple on that model), and found the entire inside of the bolt filled with heavy grease, like that used for stuff like wheel or drive-train bearings in vehicles. Found out from fellow writer Steve Timm, who worked with Kimber some during those years, that one of the assembly guys was was long-time auto mechanic who firmly believed any "inside space" should be filled with grease. So he pumped the bolts full.

But generally the rifles shot pretty well--once such problems were taken care of.

Thanks John. The wood issue was mentioned by another member that, I believe worked for them for a spell, so I will bed the rifle. I had a 82 S (quarter rib, etc...) 22 Hornet that had headspace issues many year ago. Beauty over quality was not uncommon it seems.

I hope it shoots as good as it looks!! Talley bases and rings??

Not a BGR, but I bought one of the Ultravarminter rifles in .17 Rem. and while it would shoot well enough, it would fail to grab the cartridge to eject about 50% of the time. Went to Remington 700 and never looked back.

Yep, I had a set of their low single screw rings and picked up a set of bases from Midway. Leupold VXII 3-9X I had in the stash. Looks great. It has to cool off so I can see how it shoots.

I bet it shoots well, mine surprised me