Advice Please - Model 1917

[4570guy]

I have a MILSURP M1917 I purchased about 3 years ago. Bore slugs .309. I've never been able to get accuracy better than 4MOA out of it off a bench and usually worse than that. "Groups" are more like patterns!

1. I have tried shimming and not shimming the stock.
2. I have bedded receiver and first couple inches of the barrel in the stock and ensured the barrel was free-floating to the last inch or so of the fore-tip. (BTW - the stock is a WW2 replacement and not original. I would not have done anything to the stock had it been an original.) When I bought the rifle, I noticed the stock was cracked at the recoil block. It has the typical 1917 stock pin through the stock block and I added some thick CY glue for strength. The crack has not grown or changed since I've owned the rifle - but this MAY be part of the problem...
3. I have ensured it takes several pounds of pressure on the muzzle to raise the barrel off the fore-tip of the stock.
4. I have shot it with hand-guards in place and removed.
5. I have tried both the Lee C310-300-1R and the Lee C312-185-1R cast from 100% WW. (I have had great luck with the C310 in my 03A3 and the C312 in my Krag.) I have shot bullets sized both .310 and .312.
6. I have NOT varied powder type yet. All loads I've attempted to work up have been using SR4759 which has worked well in everything else I've tried it in. The best "group" has been with 22 gr of 4759. I've thought about trying 3031 and going to a higher velocity.
7. Finally, this rifle does not shoot factory ammo all that well either (4 MOA using Winchester 150 gr factory loads).
8. The next time out, I was going to try some of my full power 150 gr handloads that have proven to work very well in my sporterized M1917.
9. Oh yes, the muzzle crown looks fine.

What am I missing? Any ideas? Should I try a completely different cast bullet weight? I really don't want to sell this rifle as it is a very nice looking mix-master (WW2 park'd).

[Adk Mike]

I shoot one all the time. I have a Group Buy Bullet 311041 that cast at .312 and I size it .311 with 13 unique. Shoots good. I'd try a bullet that sizes .311 and give it a try. It took some time to find what mine likes but it was worth it. Mike

[Bret4207]

Have you cleaned the barrel? 85 years of jacket fouling will do in the best of barrels. And while the muzzle may look fine it may pay to get a magnifier and take a closer look. Worn rifling can cause what you describe easily.

[atr]

very strange,,,,,I have a 1917 also and it is a very fine shooter with both cast or with J's

Bret has a good suggestion about making sure the barrel is clean... a friend brought over an old 1917/P14 his dad gave him and it took alot of work getting the barrel cleaned after many many years of shooting straigh J's and of not being cleaned.....

[Larry Gibson]

"7. Finally, this rifle does not shoot factory ammo all that well either (4 MOA using Winchester 150 gr factory loads)."

There's the clue. Clean the barrel well as suggested. The crown may "look fine" but it may not be as mentioned. The rifling may very well be worn on one side by unjudicous use of a cleaning rod. I would also try free floating the barrel.

Larry Gibson

[4570guy]

I have confirmed the barrel is free floated to the fore-arm tip. Did you mean try floating it off the tip?

The barrel has been meticulously cleaned using a mixture of Butch's Bore Shine and Kroil. When I first got it, I also cleaned it with Sweets 762 to make sure Copper fouling was removed. I cleaned until the patches were no longer turning green. I'll try Sweets again and see if I can get any more Cu fouling out.

Thanks for the replies!

[Bret4207]

If the barrel is truly clean than I would double my inspection of the crown and muzzle area including the last 2-3" of the barrel.

[4570guy]

On the cleaning suggestion, I tried soaking the barrel in Sweets for 30 minutes at a time (I usually only leave it in the barrel for a few minutes). Guess what? LOTS of blue came out. I repeated the process a second time and got a good bit more out. Its now on its third soaking. Obviously, I didn't have it near as clean of Cu fouling as I thought! Lesson learned! Hopefully this will do the trick in the accuracy department. It IS a very nice rifle and I would like it to shoot just as nicely.

[Echo]

When I had my 1917 put together, my smith found that the bore wasn't concentric with the OD, therefore the crown (indicated from the OD) wasn't true. Counterbored about 1/8", and it is a tack driver. Might be your problem, too. Crown looked good, but...

[Ben]

I'll go with Larry on this one. Metal cleaning rods used by people with IQ's of 50 and less can do a lot of damage to a good barrel.

[509thsfs]

this may help, dunno but....the 1917 is my favorite milsurp rifle to shoot. I own a couple of them. One thing I found after trying many different jacketed slugs is that 1917's prefer slugs with a long bearing surface. Most "hunting" style jacketed as well as FMJ's never did better than 3- 4" @ 100 yds. Once I tried Sierra 150 and 168 Match bullets the groups shrunk right down to 1.5" or so. May need to find a cast boolit that has a lot of bearing surface as well. I've never shot cast in any of my 1917's but do remember reading in an old casting book of certain cast ones that were reccomended due to the driving bands covering most of the boolit and ensuring the nose was riding the lands. That's the best that I can remember. I'd have to dig up the old antique books (from `40 &`50's) and see if I can find the recommended molds. not sure they woul even still make them.

[Le Loup Solitaire]

In the old NRA Reloading Handbook, Col. Harrison did quite a bit of research on the 30 calibre rifles mainly the 06. For the 2 groove barrels (03-A3) and the 5 groove barrwls (1917) he strongly recommended choosing cast bullets with long bore-riding noses(and short bullet bodies so that the long noses would ride on top of the lands and be guided by them. The reason given for this is that in those particular rifles/barrels the lands occupy at least 1/2 or 5/8 of the circumference of the bore. Actually a lot of folks have gotten good results using designs where 1/2 of the bullet length is bore-riding, but longer would do better. The diameter of the nose should be .301-.302" and the body diameter should be .309-.310"; if the dimensions are not up to those you probably will not get good groups. LLS

[4570guy]

I finally got back to the range with this rifle after a serious cleaning with Sweets 7.62. Accuracy was considerably improved - going from about 4 MOA down to 2.5-3 MOA. Still not stellar, but notably better. Accuracy stayed decent for about 30-40 shots or so and then suddenly went to pot again. The barrel appeared somewhat leaded (very grey just inside the bore at the muzzle end).

I brought it back home and cleaned thoroughly with Kroil and finally got all the grey/black out. Bullet size with this rifle is "correct" by the book - 0.001 over sized. These same bullets at the same velocity do not lead my 03A3.

The barrel on this '17 is the original WW1 barrel and I guess its a little rough (although it shines in the light). Not sure what to try next except maybe another bullet.

[RayinNH]

What charge range have you tried? Try around 19/19.5 SR4759. Have you tried the classic 16grs./2400...Ray

[Buckshot]

I finally got back to the range with this rifle after a serious cleaning with Sweets 7.62. Accuracy was considerably improved - going from about 4 MOA down to 2.5-3 MOA. Still not stellar, but notably better. Accuracy stayed decent for about 30-40 shots or so and then suddenly went to pot again. The barrel appeared somewhat leaded (very grey just inside the bore at the muzzle end).

I brought it back home and cleaned thoroughly with Kroil and finally got all the grey/black out. Bullet size with this rifle is "correct" by the book - 0.001 over sized. These same bullets at the same velocity do not lead my 03A3.

The barrel on this '17 is the original WW1 barrel and I guess its a little rough (although it shines in the light). Not sure what to try next except maybe another bullet.

.............A gray wash at the muzzle isn't necessarily leading, but is usually an indicator that your lube is giving up. Lee designs are all modern ones and don't carry a lot of lube. In a somewhat worn or peppery bore more lube and a larger slug may be what it needs.

Slug the throat, and also measure the inside of the caseneck of a fired case. If you used a roll crimp be sure to stick the inside jaws of your caliper past the remnant of the crimp. One of my 1895 Chilean Mausers has a worn barrel that has obvious corrosion pitting. The lands are rounded and fairly indistinct at the muzzle. The bore is rough enough to eat up a copper brush, and you can see the copper dust it generates in the Hoppes on the rod.

It will shoot the Lyman 285405 Loverin 150gr sized .286" (essentially lubed 'as cast') very well up to about 1600 fps. When I clean it, the first patch after some bristle brush work will push out a big black thick glop of lube and powder residue. Looking at it in the sun you can see some lead dust 'sparkelies' in there too, but it maintains it's accuracy all day long so long as I don't push it. No dry gray bore at the muzzle.

..............Buckshot

[Bret4207]

I finally got back to the range with this rifle after a serious cleaning with Sweets 7.62. Accuracy was considerably improved - going from about 4 MOA down to 2.5-3 MOA. Still not stellar, but notably better. Accuracy stayed decent for about 30-40 shots or so and then suddenly went to pot again. The barrel appeared somewhat leaded (very grey just inside the bore at the muzzle end).

I brought it back home and cleaned thoroughly with Kroil and finally got all the grey/black out. Bullet size with this rifle is "correct" by the book - 0.001 over sized. These same bullets at the same velocity do not lead my 03A3.

The barrel on this '17 is the original WW1 barrel and I guess its a little rough (although it shines in the light). Not sure what to try next except maybe another bullet.

Do you have the ability to try +.002? Did you pull and measure any boolits after seating/crimping? Sometimes that will "size" a boolit down an easy thou'. Worth checking.

How are your jacketed rounds shooting? It may be blasphemy to some here, but unless I can get a good quality jacketed boolit to shoot, say, 1.5" groups I don't see much chance the cast will equal that. If the jacketed are still all over the paper you probably have a mechanical issue with the bedding or barrel.

[Larry Gibson]

I'd still take a hard look at the crown after cleaning, especially if the bore looks good and it still isn't shooting quality jacketed bullets well.

Quite a few years back I picked up a milsurp take off barrel of FN manufacture for a M98 in '06 for the best price of nothing. The bore looked very good but it languished in my shop for numerous years waiting for a "home". Recently I aquired a BRNO VZ24 (Russian capture - hardest barrel I ever tried to remove but that's another story) and am sporterizing it for a .45 ACP conversion. However, awaiting the conversion kit I decided to see if the FN barrel shot ok. It was thoroughly cleaned and it also had a bit of fouling. It' indexed with only a sliver having to come off the barrel face and shoulder and was free floated from the rear sight base (taken off) part of the barrel forward. Headspace was perfect. I had some heavy 165 gr hunting loads that shoot less than moa in my 2 other hunting '06s so I thought I'd try them. The first 4 five shot groups were very disappointing running 3 - 4 moa. When i got home I cleaned the barrel and put some Sweet's in it and it didn't green up more than 20 shots should have. It cleaned up nicely. On close inspection of the crown under magnification I saw that on land was worn down with another worn down on one side. I took 3/16ths of the barrel and recrowned with an 11 degree target crown. Under magnification all the lands were full height and square to the muzzle.

This is the target I shot with the rifle on the 12th with no other work done than the recrown. The ammuntion was the same. There was an intial 3 shot group off the target shown and after adjusting the Redfield base for windage to keep the crosshars close to center the next 3 shot group was shot as shown. A scope adjust was made for elevation and windage and then 5 shots fired with POA being the bottom tip of the paster. I didn't see the double at 2 o'clock and fired a 6th shot. That preety much had it zeroed with the crosshairs of the Bushnell DOA 4x12 scope. I had a target at 200 yards and put the 200 yard dot on the dot shown and fired 5 shots.

Obviously it is a very good shooter and the re crown was what made the difference. This is an example of why I mention the crown to you.

Larry Gibson

[felix]

Good show, Larry! The only thing I would like to add is that the 11 degrees is not all that important, but the squareness and smoothness of the cut is. We talked about that 11 when I visited Allen Hall back in the mid 70's at his home in Clanton AL. He had just played with that idea by re-cutting a good shooting BR gun to have various angles and could not improve or detract from the gun's typical grouping with anything reasonable. This being the conclusion, I have never been afraid of letting my local smithy use a hard on-hand bearing for a final shape. ... felix

[4570guy]

Lots of good suggestions here.

As far as the load I'm using, its 22 gr of SR4759 under the Lee 200gr bullet. I do need to go back and shoot some more jacketed with this rifle and see if the groups tightened up.

I hear you on the recrown and I don't doubt it would improve things. What about a counter-bore? Sure seems to work well on those Mosin Nagants! I'm not sure I'd want to do that to this full military 1917. Of course, if it turns it from a safe queen into a shooter, then it might be worth it. I paid $450 for it which at the time wasn't a bad price for a mix-master re-arsenal 1917.

[Larry Gibson]

Felix

I'm not stuck on the 11 degree crown, it's just what my cutter is and is quick to use. I've used the bearing and a brass round headed bolt with lapping compound with equal success. The Cutter is a lot easier though:-)

Larry Gibson

[OBIII]

I have an AK, that offers a similar situation. No groups, more like patterns. Took it to a gunsmith who discovered that the barrel has a slight bulge about 1-1/2" from the crown. No visible indication of this condition. Goes from .311 to about .312-.313, and back to .311. May be something to have looked at.