Building A 260 Remington Ackley Member Clinten Neff
I always have wanted to build
a custom rifl e in an Ackley cartridge. The sharp shoulders, the blown out cases, and the call of doing something different has always appealed to me. I always fi gured my fi rst Ackley would be based on the little 250 Savage. That cartridge has had a special place in my heart and would be perfectly suited to hunt the gray ghosts of the Arizona des- ert. When I decided to build my rifl e, I not only had coues deer hunting on my mind but small groups and long-range performance dancing through my brain as well. I wanted the cartridge and the gun not only to be suited for hunting but also perform well as a long-range match rifl e. My brother Trent suggested we look into Ackley improving the 260 Remington. He said, “The extra case capacity should allow us to push the 140 class bullets at 2,900 fps or more, the sweet spot.” After doing a little research on the cartridge I decided the 260 Ackley was a perfect fi t for what I wanted out of my rifl e. THE BUILD
I decided to build on a Savage action for reasons of simplicity as well as performance and value. I contacted Jim Briggs over at Northland Shooters Supply who deals in all things Savage. I have dealt with Jim a few times in the past and have nothing but great things to say about his service and products. I called Jim to see what he had in stock for my 260 Ackley build and he didn’t let me down. I ended up with a 28" 8-twist stainless varmint contour Crite- rion barrel, a Savage Model 111 action with Accu-Trigger, heavy duty recoil lug, and a Savage low profi le varminter stock in brown laminate. I then fi nished it off with an EGW one-piece mount, a Vortex Crossfi re 6-24x50 mil dot scope, and some Burris Signature Zee Rings. We fl oated the barrel and glass- and pillar-bedded the action. I ended up with a deadly accurate piece of art that looks just as good on a bench rest as well as it does out in the fi eld. BEDDING
Bedding the action is probably
the most benefi cial thing you can do to accurize your rifl e, regardless of caliber.
For this particular rifl e we utilized a couple of different methods – pillar bedding and glass bedding. This par- ticular stock had pre-installed pillars so we went ahead and used what was there. The pillars allow for a positive lockup of the action to the stock with- out crushing the wood of the stock by over-torquing the action screws. To glass bed this action we started off by relieving some wood from around the pillars and inside the stock to allow a positive grip for the epoxy. Next we added a piece of tape to the front of the recoil lug that would give us about a 0.001" clearance between the action and the bedding material. We then coated the barreled action with a release agent such as non-stick cooking spray. An important note here is to spray liberally, including the action screws, so that you don’t accidentally stick the action to the stock. Another tip is to spread the re- lease agent with your fi nger to remove any air bubbles so they don’t transfer to your bedding material and cause a rough, pitted-looking surface rather than a nice smooth one. The bedding material we used was common epoxy found at your local hardware store, as well as some fi berglass additive to give it a little more strength. This is the method we used to bed around the front pillar and recoil lug. We like to bed each pillar separately, usually starting with the front. Something we have found out
about Savage rifl es over the years is that they also prefer to have the tang of the receiver fl oated as well, which brings us to the bedding of the rear of the re- ceiver. Because of the magazine assem- bly in this particular rifl e the rear pillar really wasn’t doing anything since it is located under the lip of the magazine assembly and the action was resting on just the wood of the stock. To fi x this and fl oat the tang, we added some bedding material to the stock using es- sentially the same method mentioned earlier – by removing some wood to allow the bedding material to grip the stock. However, this time we used some Quick Steel rather than epoxy. The Quick Steel allows for a hardened
surface for the action to rest on and essentially serves the same purpose as the pillar would and also allows for the tang to fl oat freely. CASE PREP
Case prep for an Ackley case, as
we all know, is quite an involved pro- cess and this one is no exception. The logical course of action would be to either buy some factory 260 Remington brass, neck up 243 brass, or neck down some 308 brass and fire-form. This would work fi ne, but the problem with a 243 or 308 case is that they are just a little too short, and after fi re-forming they become a bit shorter. The shorter cases cause excess throat erosion which affects barrel life, so we chose another option to help solve that issue. Trent had a small cache of 60
Lake City National Match 30-06 cases that he was saving for a rainy day and, lucky for me, he happily donated them to my project. We began by cutting off the ’06 cases at the top of the shoulder, annealing them, and then running them through a 308 sizing die, fol- lowed by the Redding 260 Remington die … producing a 260 case with an extra long neck. We then trimmed the necks to 0.0250 longer than the chamber length so that when we fi re-form they will shrink close to the correct chamber length and then allow us to trim the cases to 0.005 from the throat. This es- sentially eliminates the throat erosion problems found with the shorter cases. In order to trim our cases as
uniformly as possible, we modifi ed a standard Lee collet and trimmer by simply shimming the standard 0.260 cutter to the correct length and epoxied it in place. We then outside neck turned the cases for uniformity. FIREFORMING
Fireforming was probably the
most fun and rewarding step in the build process. There was just something special about chambering a normal case, pulling the trigger, and ejecting a formed case in all of its sharp-shoul- dered glory. To fi reform the brass we fi rst added a crimp to the long necks of the 260 brass we just made to allow them to chamber in the rifl e. We then
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