My Remington Tactical 223 16.5" - PICTURES

[ashiha]

I normally don't like to toot my own horn, but I'm just so excited and can't help myself. I recently purchased a Remington 700 Tactical in .223 with the 16.5" threaded barrel. I bought it to be a gun that will solely be used to practice at the range, so up to 500 yards and no further. I did this because 223 was easy on the shoulder, cheap to load, and is the easiest caliber to find components for. It was also a bonus for me that the bullet can be carried quite a bit by the wind at 500 yards which would lead me to be able to practice reading the wind. Now, since the caliber is capable of well beyond 500 yards, I also chose to even find a lower node OCW charge to hopefully get even more barrel life.

The gun came to me with a freebore that was cut way too short. Even the 55gr FMJ Federal ammo from Walmart was being jammed into the lands. I was still kind of glad here because if it is cut too short, you can work with it, but if it is cut too long like most factory Remingtons are, you are stuck with it until you rebarrel. So I took the rifle to Keith Johns at Phoenix Custom Rifles (which I'm so glad that he is only a short drive away from me) and had him recut the throat and also put on his custom bolt knob. The lands now sit at 1.853" from head to ogive which gives me plenty of room to play with seating. The barrel is a 1-9", so I chose the SMK 69gr bullets. Currently, I only have IMR 4064 as I wait for my H4895. I found the OCW node to sit at 41.3gr in once fired RP brass, and Remington 7 1/2 primers. Since I have heard that SMKs do well with a little bit of jump, I chose to seat at the moment with around 3 thousands off the lands at 1.85" (I like rounded numbers). I will test into this further once I get my Forster Micrometer Seating Die.

Now, I'm not the best shooter; not by a long shot. You can easily tell that most of these groups were opened up with a single flyer which I can almost certainly blame on shooter error instead of the gun or the ammo.

Here is my rifle:

Remington 700 SPS Tactical 16.5" 223 (Model 85549)
Factory XMark Pro Trigger 3lb (more consistent than my Timney 510 on another rifle)
H-S Precision M24 Tan Web PST086 (Tried my hand at bedding. Bedding works, but isn't pretty)
Seekins Low 6/4 30mm Rings
Seekins 1 Piece 20 MOA Base
SWFA SS HD 5-20x50

Ammo:

SMK 69gr
R-P Once Fired 223
21.3gr IMR 4064
Remington 7 1/2
Seated 1.85" Base to Ogive

I just can't be happier. I'm learning very quickly thanks to a lot of people here, and this can take me to a much higher level of skill before I need to invest more money.

I also want to say thank you to the guys at PCR for helping me even with something that sounded so dumb. Honestly, who has this kind of a problem?

Thanks for reading. I hope to hear your feedback.

 

[Smithcollector]

Nice shooting and a nice looking rifle. My 700 5r actually likes IMR4064 better than H4865. That 16.5" barrel is cool!

 

[ashiha]

Nice shooting and a nice looking rifle. My 700 5r actually likes IMR4064 better than H4865. That 16.5" barrel is cool!

Thanks! I do have some Varget but want to save it to do a full comparison. So far, all my rifles have had great experience with IMR 4064 and it seems like the only down side to it is the size making it hard to get precise-ish drops. I use a Chargemaster with the straw mod AND the pen mod posted by elfster1234: http://www.snipershide.com/shooting...chargemaster-optional-pen-straw-mod-pics.html

The pen mod is great for being accurate on drops every single time, but I only use it for the 223 loads since it does increase drop time.

Also, I love the 16.5" barrel. It took me a while to decide on it when comparing to the 20" model, but I realized that since I do not need to push the caliber to its limits, I can go with a shorter barrel to save weight as well as increase rigidity. The stock I chose was made for short barrels so it makes the rifle not really seem as stubby as it is.