New .20 practical

[Cpl Snafu]

I just got this back from Matt Stewart, of Stewart Rifles (Oklahoma). I sent in all the parts for the barreled action, including the reamer. He trued the action and installed the barrel. The turnaround was about 3 weeks. Heck of a nice guy, and excellent with communication. I plan to have him build a hunting rifle for me in the near future.

The rifle is just a mish mash of parts. Tactical precision is my typical game, and I had most of this stuff already. Just had to get a barrel and a reamer. I sent a dummy round to PT&G using lapua brass and a 39 bk. The reamer has a .235 neck, .075 freebore, and a 1.5 deg lead.

Here are the details:
Remington action, trued.
Remington trigger, 2 lbs.
Krieger #7, 1:9 twist, 26".
Tactical solutions pinned recoil lug.
AICS stock (no bedding).
Nightforce 4-16 ATACR F1 (not a varmint scope, just what i had. Top notch scope though)
Seekins scope rings.
Feeds from Accuracy International AICS .223 magazines(10 round).

[Cpl Snafu]

My friends .204 ruger got me all hot on .20's for our yearly prarie dog shoots. I wanted to use my AICS .223 mags. .204's work in those magazines, but you only get 6-7 of them in there. That's how I decided on the .20 practical.

I used 39 and 32 blitzkings with h322, lapua brass, and br-4 primers. This is at 109 yards. Group sizes are in moa. All groups are three shots. This is all virgin brass as well.

These are the first three rounds down the barrel from a bore sight. I was aiming at the center of the paper, and they hit in this box. Off to a good start!



Fast forward a few days, i shot a micture of 39's and 32's.

Here are the 39's. I shot this bullet on It's first outing, up to 25.5grains of h322. It exceded 3900 fps and stopped reading on my chrono. 25.5 is a max load. 24 gr had good accuracy and ES/SD of 9fps/4fps so I decided to investigate that a bit. 24 gr goes 3675 fps. This load is a total creampuff, and fired brass easily chambers with some headspace to spare.


Here are the 32's. Since my chrono tops out at 3900, i never got readings at 26 gr. The 25.5 grain charge read once at 3934 fps. 25 gr was 3880 fps average for the six shots.


I have a bunch of 32's so I decided to do a seating depth test today using the 26 gr charge. Like everyhing previous to this, it doesnt seem to prefer anything in particular, and everything shoots well.



Since I can't get velocity spreads on my chrono, im going to re-shoot todays loads at distance to see what the vertical spread is like.

[csterner]

Looking good so far! Nice rifle!

[ab_bentley]

Originally Posted by csterner

Looking good so far! Nice rifle!

Give benchmark a try. Made a huge difference in grouping for my rifle. Also it got the speed up, 3855 with a 40gr Vmax.

Nice rifle btw.

Adam

[redrock ranger]

H-4198 is a good power to try also.

[andy221]

Looks great, I think a 20 practical is in my future.

Also, I don't know if you plan on doing anymore seating depth testing, but moving the bullet in smaller increments (like .003) has been necessary for me to find the sweet spot.

I've also found .3 grain increments necessary for load testing in small cases like the 223. The nodes just seem so narrow.

[Bill K]

Looks very nice. I took my 20 Practical one step further and had it opened up to the 20-223 Ackley. It is also shooting very well and I gained some FPS.
You will enjoy that rifle, it really does look nice and well put together. Bill k