choosing a bolt action rifle to help me get better at shooting bolt action rifles

[OlongJohnson]

And a robust bolt stop. The Mauser is king here. Vanguards and anything else built on Howa actions have problems.

Okie John

Saving myself some typing by quoting old posts. Guess I've said it a few times now.

It continues to be a problem. It's the one wart on Howas. The [bolt stop] screw is defectively designed with a stress riser, and then made on a lathe of some kind (screw machine likely), putting circumferential grooves parallel to the stress riser. You can expect them to break.

One of the minor projects in my queue is to make a shoulder bushing and then use a rolled-thread, grade 12.9 socket head cap screw as the fastener. The additional protrusion will require inletting the stock for clearance, but I'm confident it will solve the strength issue.

I'm kinda surprised there isn't someone out there with a lathe selling this solution in kits for the low, low price of $35 or so, like the plugs for S&W revolvers.

Yeah, that factory screw is a BS defective part, the only wart on the rifle. It's designed with stress risers, and is additionally made on a screw machine (fancy lathe). It is subject to have circumferential tool marks to add "crack here" lines to the inherently bad design. There's a solution, though. Just needs a shoulder bushing machined for use with the appropriate metric socket head cap screw, which will be grade 12.9 with rolled threads and a proper underhead radius. Many, many times stronger than the OE setup. The stock would have to be inlet for the screw head. A little fiddly, but not difficult if you have lathe access.

I have one of those "Lightning" models in .223.

One slightly goofy detail (of the rifle, not the stock) is that the inner and outer surfaces of the bottom metal are approximately parallel, but the bottom metal is installed at an angle to the bottom of the receiver, which means the screw heads bear on the bottom metal at an angle. Totally bogus to a mechanical engineer who cares about threaded fastener joint design. The solution is to counterbore the bottom metal so the screws have seats that are perpendicular to the shanks. That situation is actually common in the industry; it's not unique to Howa.

If you're going to run the bolt really hard and fast, you may break the bolt stop screw. It's the one real unique wart on the whole rifle. It's a poorly-designed part and most of them are defectively machined with "crack here" rings all around them. I have designed an upgrade for that ("designed" = buy a properly-manufactured screw and make notes for dimensions of a shoulder bushing), but it's a low priority given the status of the rest of my project at this point.

If you go down the rabbit hole, there are two or more companies now making "Howage" barrel setups with a barrel nut so you can swap barrels yourself, as with a Savage.

If you click through to the original posts, I also discuss stock fit and optic mounting. Tikka wins on all three points.

Current status: My Howas went down the road during the dempanic cleanout. Sold three Howas, bought one Tikka Superlite stainless in .223 as an understudy for a T3 Lite stainless in .308. Interested in a T1x shorty in .22LR, but I already money-pitted a Savage that is essentially the same thing, so that's hard to justify.

[flyrodr]

Last year I bought a Bergara Ridge SP in 6.5CM, and enjoy it. I recently wanted a cheaper-to-shoot practice bolt gun (have other .22 semis), and got the Bergara BMR, planning on it serving double duty as my grandson's trainer in a couple of years. It is (was) small and light (5 lbs), until I put a 6-24X scope and bipod on it; now it's closer to 8 lbs. Still, it's serving its purpose very well.

Ammo is available, from bulk to match, and I can easily compare one to the other, both in group size and placement. And, the local county indoor range has a 100-yd bay, so I can shoot there all winter, for free (Bless the county fathers. Local LEOs needed a new training area, including classrooms. Some land was available, there was lobbying to make it available to the taxpayers, and the county was "progressive" in a good way.

Anyway, the .22 (and some local competitive shooters) has helped me fix problems I didn't realize I had, such as consistently loading the bipod, consistent hand/thumb placement and pressure, same for cheek, and particularly so for the trigger press, something I thought I had down pretty well from pistol shooting. As the saying goes, "Learning has occurred." And, by golly, shooting a .22 is just plain fun.

Best group ever today, with SK Rifle Match ammo, at 100 yds. If I used Ballistic X correctly, it was 0.441"