17 Remington Mystery

[hinton03]

I recently purchased a used 700 BDL is 17 Remington for Coyote hunting here in AZ.

The rifle is in great shape and shoot very well as you can see by the attached 100 yard 5 shot group. The issue is that in 80 or so hand loads I have fired through it 2 bullets did not stabilize as seem in the attached photo.

It is curious to me that the rifle is capable of .5 MOA with no indication of any destabilization and then throw out one or two badly destabilized projectiles?

I think I will move out to 200 yards and see if all the rounds show some form of destabilized.

 

[tulsamal]

It can be a tricky beast to reload.

The one photo of the sideways bullet... looks like it is way at the bottom of the paper. Turning sideways killed the velocity and it started dropping fast.

Tiny variations of powder can affect velocity in this round. Could be those two rounds didn't have enough powder to get the velocity needed for the range?

I'm throwing that one out there as a possibility but it seems more likely to be the typical problem with these rifles. They foul very fast and weird things happen. The bullets are tiny and a fouled barrel can damage them enough to cause them to tilt or even just go "poof" in the air. Come apart before they get downrange. You need to start a range session with a squeaky clean barrel... no little copper streaks at all. Use a good copper cleaner. Then you need to figure out how many rounds your rifle can fire before it needs to be allowed to cool and totally cleaned again. Depends on how smooth your barrel is... might be as few as 20-30 shots. Also depending on the bullet itself. Some may work better in your barrel than others.

They are temperamental. One of the reasons they were never that popular. But I like loading .17. Loading those little bullets with reverse tweezers always make me smile. Each one is a bit different but figuring that out is half the fun of shooting and custom reloading.

 

[hinton03]

Tulsamal,

Thanks for the reply; I had noticed the fouling and cleaned the barrel before this range session, the destabilized round was the 9th round fired after the cleaning.

The gun is used so I have no idea how many rounds were fired from this barrel but I don't see any erosion with my bore light and the near perfect condition of the stock and bluing leads me to believe it was fired very little.

I have been using Sweets to clean the barrel, would you recommend something different?

 

[rcmodel]

What bullet brand and weight are you reloading??

rc

 

[hinton03]

25 Grain V-Max.

 

[627PCFan]

They have thin jackets. Maybe you seated 2 off center damaging it? As others stated, those high velocities play hell with bullets

 

[hinton03]

Do you think moving up to 30 grain bullets would help?

 

[Gordon]

I go for the fouling in the early Remington .17 Rem barrels, standard proceedure was to clean every 10 shots MAXIMUM , and then it was with a brush to remove the metal fouling. This is the reason the .17 Mach IV and the smaller .17s were popular despite being wildcats. I went back to .17 K hornets and the problem kinda went away all though they still are hard to clean the copper fouling out .

 

[MachIVshooter]

Loading for .17 caliber requires extra care due to charge weight sensitivity and relatively delicate little bullets.

 

[Gtscotty]

Not to thread jack, but does the 17 Hornet build up copper fast, or is it mostly the Remington that is so bad about fouling?

 

[MachIVshooter]

Not to thread jack, but does the 17 Hornet build up copper fast, or is it mostly the Remington that is so bad about fouling?

None of them are that bad today, with the advances in metallurgy (both bullet jackets and barrels). I have never found my 700 LVSF .17 Rem to exhibit expanding groups during a day of shooting without cleaning, and we're talking a lot more than 10 rounds.

 

[hinton03]

MachIVshooter,

Given your experience what do you believe causes a bullet to destabilize right after shooting a .5 MOA group?

 

[MachIVshooter]

Most likely a defective or damaged bullet

 

[Offfhand]

Defective bullet, as posted above, is right. Probably no core in jacket.