Two years ago, a local(Los Angeles) smith built me a 7 wsm. He came recommended and a few people I knew shot his guns with success. He was cheaper than having it done by RD precision and took significantly less time. I supplied an RD precision brake to be installed at the time the gun was chambered. I also supplied a new Krieger barrel with proper twist, new Manners stock, new Defiance action and bolt, new Seekins DBM, etc.
When I came to pick the gun up, it wouldn't even chamber a piece of brass. We called Glenn at Defiance, who said it was chambered wrong. The smith claimed it had the wrong extractor and Glenn was extremely helpful, and said fine, he would send a new one. I spoke to several people at that time and even brought it up here I believe and the universal opinion was that the chamber was cut wrong. Whatever.
The new extractor allowed it to be chambered but it wouldn't extract properly. I talked to the smith about this and he basically said he didn't know why and that I was on my own. Between Glen and I, we tweaked the extractor enough that it ran right or at least mostly right. Sometimes I still have to manually remove the case from the end of the bolt nose.
The next problem arose when I could not even get published loads to shoot without major pressure signs. Right at this time I shot my first match and only about half of my rounds would fire. I asked the smith and he blamed this on firing pin protrusion, primers, the tides, etc. I sent the bolt back to Defiance Machine and he fixed it and sent it back saying the bolt had been put back together wrong and the firing pin spring was bent. Ok, weird, but whatever.
Then, I went through two hundred rounds on this barrel burner trying to get it to shoot before calling the smith up and asking him why he might think this was the case.
He tells me, "Well, I used a match reamer and that chamber is going to be really tight" This was news to me. Luckily, RCBS made a small base die in this caliber and I was able to get it running. Then, I could not get it to shoot for love or money. When I would pull the brake it would shoot dramatically different and actually group ok. I took the gun to Randy at RD precision and he tells me that the brake was not installed far enough on to the barrel and he designed the brake to work a specific way. Ok, fair enough. I had not provided the instructions to the smith when he put it on, so maybe that was partially my fault. I called up the smith and he turned the shoulder and installed the brake further down the barrel. He also mentioned that maybe the bullets weren't stabilizing at the 3 and 400 yards I was trying to group it and to try for 600 yard groups.
The gun shot better at this point but I still had unexplained flyers(4' at 600 yards) during matches. To say the least, this was extremely frustrating. I lost a match shooting 10's and x's when one round went off the paper on a 6'x6' target.
I lived with this problem and the fact that the gun would have these issues until last May or so when I got to about 700 rounds. Then the RD Precision brake broke while shooting at a thin part in the brake. I again took the gun to Randy at RD who showed me that the barrel threads had been cut too small for the brake. When threaded on, the brake could be wobbled back and forth a thousandth or two and Randy clearly showed me why this would cause undue stress in the brake and it snapped. Stand up guy that Randy is, he tolerated my whining and replaced the brake for free. He made the point to me that if I have that many problems at one end of the barrel, what problems might there be at the other end?
Life got in the way and I lost my job, got reemployed, wife got pregnant, got violently ill, blah, blah, blah. I went to shoot my first 1000 yard match in 9 months or so today, only to find that my target was not getting pulled. The guys in the pits said that there were no holes in the target. So, some folks started watching me shoot. I would get an X, then be off the paper, then in the dirt 20 feet in front of the target. Then the guys video'ed me and noticed my bullets were literally exploding about 100 feet out of the gun and flying in ten different directions shot after shot. I pulled off the brake and looked at it. It didn't appear that anything was hitting the brake but I decided to shoot without and had the same issue. I packed it in and came home very, very frustrated.
Some will be inclined to say it was the ammo. I am a commercial reloader and do a lot of reloading. I won't say it's not the ammo for sure but it was new Win brass and I was shooting 180gr SMK's at 2900 FPS and I've loaded a lot of rounds since I took this up, somewhere in the neighborhood of 50k rifle rounds.
I have been very patient. I tried not to out the smith who built the rifle but it's basically been nonstop problems since I picked up the gun. I tried to chalk some of it up to the shooter, but I have several other rifles and don't have these problems. It now has 1200 rounds downrange and maybe has 3-500 left in the barrel.
Randy Cain has been extremely helpful to me and has been very righteous about not putting down another smith. He has bit his tongue a lot when as a professional, I think he would have been in the right to say this gun was built like crap.
I'm pretty upset right now and think at a minimum I'd like the original smith to get me a new barrel so I can get the rifle done right. I realize that it's buyer beware and if it sounded too good to be true, it was and I should have walked away.
Sorry for the wall of text. If I was your customer, how would you like me to handle this?
When I came to pick the gun up, it wouldn't even chamber a piece of brass. We called Glenn at Defiance, who said it was chambered wrong. The smith claimed it had the wrong extractor and Glenn was extremely helpful, and said fine, he would send a new one. I spoke to several people at that time and even brought it up here I believe and the universal opinion was that the chamber was cut wrong. Whatever.
The new extractor allowed it to be chambered but it wouldn't extract properly. I talked to the smith about this and he basically said he didn't know why and that I was on my own. Between Glen and I, we tweaked the extractor enough that it ran right or at least mostly right. Sometimes I still have to manually remove the case from the end of the bolt nose.
The next problem arose when I could not even get published loads to shoot without major pressure signs. Right at this time I shot my first match and only about half of my rounds would fire. I asked the smith and he blamed this on firing pin protrusion, primers, the tides, etc. I sent the bolt back to Defiance Machine and he fixed it and sent it back saying the bolt had been put back together wrong and the firing pin spring was bent. Ok, weird, but whatever.
Then, I went through two hundred rounds on this barrel burner trying to get it to shoot before calling the smith up and asking him why he might think this was the case.
He tells me, "Well, I used a match reamer and that chamber is going to be really tight" This was news to me. Luckily, RCBS made a small base die in this caliber and I was able to get it running. Then, I could not get it to shoot for love or money. When I would pull the brake it would shoot dramatically different and actually group ok. I took the gun to Randy at RD precision and he tells me that the brake was not installed far enough on to the barrel and he designed the brake to work a specific way. Ok, fair enough. I had not provided the instructions to the smith when he put it on, so maybe that was partially my fault. I called up the smith and he turned the shoulder and installed the brake further down the barrel. He also mentioned that maybe the bullets weren't stabilizing at the 3 and 400 yards I was trying to group it and to try for 600 yard groups.
The gun shot better at this point but I still had unexplained flyers(4' at 600 yards) during matches. To say the least, this was extremely frustrating. I lost a match shooting 10's and x's when one round went off the paper on a 6'x6' target.
I lived with this problem and the fact that the gun would have these issues until last May or so when I got to about 700 rounds. Then the RD Precision brake broke while shooting at a thin part in the brake. I again took the gun to Randy at RD who showed me that the barrel threads had been cut too small for the brake. When threaded on, the brake could be wobbled back and forth a thousandth or two and Randy clearly showed me why this would cause undue stress in the brake and it snapped. Stand up guy that Randy is, he tolerated my whining and replaced the brake for free. He made the point to me that if I have that many problems at one end of the barrel, what problems might there be at the other end?
Life got in the way and I lost my job, got reemployed, wife got pregnant, got violently ill, blah, blah, blah. I went to shoot my first 1000 yard match in 9 months or so today, only to find that my target was not getting pulled. The guys in the pits said that there were no holes in the target. So, some folks started watching me shoot. I would get an X, then be off the paper, then in the dirt 20 feet in front of the target. Then the guys video'ed me and noticed my bullets were literally exploding about 100 feet out of the gun and flying in ten different directions shot after shot. I pulled off the brake and looked at it. It didn't appear that anything was hitting the brake but I decided to shoot without and had the same issue. I packed it in and came home very, very frustrated.
Some will be inclined to say it was the ammo. I am a commercial reloader and do a lot of reloading. I won't say it's not the ammo for sure but it was new Win brass and I was shooting 180gr SMK's at 2900 FPS and I've loaded a lot of rounds since I took this up, somewhere in the neighborhood of 50k rifle rounds.
I have been very patient. I tried not to out the smith who built the rifle but it's basically been nonstop problems since I picked up the gun. I tried to chalk some of it up to the shooter, but I have several other rifles and don't have these problems. It now has 1200 rounds downrange and maybe has 3-500 left in the barrel.
Randy Cain has been extremely helpful to me and has been very righteous about not putting down another smith. He has bit his tongue a lot when as a professional, I think he would have been in the right to say this gun was built like crap.
I'm pretty upset right now and think at a minimum I'd like the original smith to get me a new barrel so I can get the rifle done right. I realize that it's buyer beware and if it sounded too good to be true, it was and I should have walked away.
Sorry for the wall of text. If I was your customer, how would you like me to handle this?
