about six months ago I issued myself a challenge to see if I could turn a
budget deer rifle into a long-range precision rifle for a budget of about
five hundred dollars and adding to the complexity of the build I could only use
new sorts of gear that you could get from a local sporting goods store or an
online retailer I wasn't going to go out and try to get good deals on used match
gear and this is the result this is version 1.0 and as you can see in the
video here it's actually pretty confident I was able to use this in a
600 yard F-class match and I posted a score of 497 out of a possible total of
600 now it's not a very high score but considering that this is a $500 rifle
and it was really its first outing I'm actually pretty happy with it and here's
what we're going to do we're going to work on a version 1.1 we're going to
take a look at the good things on this rifle and we're going to evaluate some
things that can be improved and we're going to continue to work forward so be
sure that you subscribe to the social or aggressive to see what changes we
continue to make on this rifle if you'd like us on Facebook you'll see some
goodies behind the scenes and in this playlist down here is for all of you who
might have missed some of the the past episodes where we did things like work
on the trigger and install the various parts do vetting jobs and all that to
make this into the rifle that it is today as we wrap up this version 1.0
build let's take a look at the various parts what they cost what the total
budget was and some of the things that we can do to improve the rifle the
foundation for this whole build is the savage axis this is not the axis to with
it's nice a cute trigger this has the original really bad trigger this costs
220 $1.28 and I really have no fault with the action I did have to do some
work on the trigger and that required some very inexpensive parts it did
require some time but the parts themselves were cheap I bought a three
pack of over-travel fasteners for $1.79 and I just had to use some little
bits that I had lying around my house and a little propane and that was a very
cheap mod of course if you want to upgrade your trigger as well you can
follow the steps that I use in the two videos that I put together
one deals with the creep and the other deals with over travel and pull weight I
dropped the axis action into a Boyd's pro varmint stock that cost 150 $4.99
and if you don't really recognize the shape that's because I did reshape this
you might want to check out that video I did this for some organ ama Crees ins to
make this fit my hand better I also did it just for some aesthetic reasons so
that it looked a little better you can see that underneath that black paint
that we originally had that this is a nice blonde laminate and as for
functional mods I also did a pillar bedding job at the the front and rear on
this and a full action betting job so that's going to help ensure the
precision of the rifle especially each time I take the rifle
apart and put it back together again the pillars that I used were just steel
spacers that you can get at your local hardware store and a package of those
cost a dollar 40 sitting on top of the rifle is a weaver base this is number
506 this cost $13 and 94 cents and some weaver rings these are quad lock rings
and these cost $11 and 39 cents pretty amazing prices for some parts that
actually quite like I especially like these rings I've used these before on my
other rifles and I I do recommend them they're very nice finally we have the
Simmons 44 mag 6 to 24 by 44 millimeter mil-dot scope it has that reticle in the
second focal plane and this cost $99.99 delivered so the total price on this
build is 504 dollars and seventy eight cents based on the match results I think
that we've pretty well proven the concept but now we can take things just
a little bit further I think there are some modifications that we can make to
this rifle and this will take a little bit of extra money but we can turn this
into a version 1.1 rifle that's even better than what we have right now in my
estimation the biggest problem that this rifle has is the glass this Simmons
scope has some things going for it like the reliability of the turret tracking
and it does have a nice reticle but it have some issues as well primarily
there's the glass this seems to be the main source of our problem the objective
lens it seems to have a really bad a stigmatism so as I start to use the
turrets to kind of click off-center so that I can take those long shots I'm
looking through a really really bad part of the glass and the image starts to
smear vertically now this could account for some of the variants that I'm seeing
when I'm taking shots at long range like out at 600 yards it could be some
velocity differences in the loads that I've worked up and we're going to
address that too we're going to check this on a chronograph to make sure that
the velocities are all pretty consistent but I do also suspect that lens instead
of just outright replacing the scope for now we'll get to that later we'll try
that but I'm going to try something a little bit less expensive I was going to
put on one of these 20 MOA bases anyway so we'll just go ahead and see if this
fixes the problem if I can get an extra 20 MOA out of this evolution gun works
base then we might be able to get in the sweet spot of the objective and still be
able to use this cheap scope to take these long shots we'll see how it goes
next we have some issues with the buttstock area and first step let's take
a look at the comb here this does not come up quite high enough for me to
comfortably get my face into the stock and see directly through the ocular lens
and especially since we're going to be putting 20 extra MOA and boosting up the
back end of this scope I'm going to need some kind of riser back here so we'll
figure that out one of the biggest issues however has to do with the butt
pad back here and there are two things that we can fix first off the overall
length of pull which is measured from the back of the buttstock to the front
of the trigger face that is 14 inches which is actually pretty darn good a
14-inch length of pull is very nice from a stock stock however I do need 14 and a
half inches so if I can get just a little bit of extra space back here
that'll be awfully nice and we can take out two birds with one
stone because one of the biggest issues with this rifle is the comfort during
firing some people were kind of making fun of me for complaining about seven
millimeter Oh 8 recoil and what they weren't really taking into account is
how thin this butt pad is this has Boyd's own logo on it and this is what
comes stock with the the stock when you buy it from the factory and if you're
going to buy a Boyd stock I recommend you go ahead and upgrade to one of their
limb savers or pok Myers because this thing is terrible especially when you
are prone and the rifle is nowhere to go you're not going to be moving it's just
gonna be shoving into you and this thing is it's a very firm rubber it's very
thin so each time you fire the rifle it's like getting a punch if you're
using something like a 22-250 or a 243 or something like that you don't
have to worry about it but for something in the more 308 range of recoil yeah
this is going to hurt quite a bit and thankfully I have a fix for both of
those issues and it is this it's a pokémon decelerator and this is going to
add that extra depth that I need that extra half-inch or so and it's also
going to be a lot squishier so when I'm firing this thing in the prone position
it should feel a whole lot better it's going to prevent any bruising and it's
going to keep me from developing any kind of flinch while I'm firing the
final issue with this Boyd stock is just instability this forearm is pretty well
rounded on the bottom it is not flat and if you're going to be firing a rifle
from a rest then you're going to want a nice flat area so that this can easily
sit and you don't get any can't or any weird wobble when you're firing or
before your firing and that was one of the issues that I was running into when
I was in competition I just really couldn't get this solidly planted it was
very easy for the rifle to twist and can't and kind of come off access so
what I'm going to do instead is I replace the the front QD stud that came
on this thing I took this one off but I left this one on and I will be using a
bipod instead I'm just going to cannibalize one that I have had on my
243 my varmint rifle for a while it's not very steady but perhaps at some
point we'll get something steadier on there like a Harris something that
doesn't include any can't in it there's just one last bit of equipment that I
need for this rifle in addition to that front bipod which is going to help
things out I think in the stability department I am going to come up with
some kind of rear bag for this I was using a regular sandbag back here and I
wasn't able to really get super solid I need something that's more like a
competition rear bag that's going to allow me to easily adjust elevation back
here and get a good height when I'm actually on the bipod upgrades and
improved performance are on the way make sure that you stay connected so you can
see what is effective and what is cost efficient
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