Accuracy and reliability are two totally different things. Feeding and going boom does not equal accuracy. I would be interested to know how the varminter shot when it did feed; was the accuracy improved over the cheaper rifle?
I disagree. If the gun doesn't even go boom, then it's neither accurate nor precise.
Anyhow varminter.............I don't shoot it a lot but it's a 1:7 twist. I built it to shoot 70+ grain ammo. 55 sucked and 70+ wasn't encouraging, however it is still so low in the round count that conceivably it's still in the break in period. 62 grain soft tip, bulk reloads however were pretty friggen tight. I would say 1/2 to 3/4 moa..............better than me in other words.
sounds like its a headspacing issue?
but that to me is the difference between a "home" build and a build by the high end companys. yes the parts might be the same... but for whatever reason yours didnt go together properly...
the guys at noveske or larue put it together... it messes up... they fix it untill it IS reliable...
see you just gave up and didnt try to fix it..........................
Wasn't headspacing, it was case a sizing issue. The gun was put together properly, the issue is that the chamber on the Shilen barrel is so tight that the reloads did not work, but they worked in my AR. The barrel comes with a matched bolt............that tight.
So yes same exact ammo, the expensive fully operational varmint gun was outshot by the cheap AR. As I said before there are a lot of issues with the general "this is always better than that" argument and especially with regards to firearms. As I said before some guns like some ammo better than the rest. Right now the varmint gun loves 62 grain soft points. As the barrel breaks in I expect that to shift to 70+ grain ammo. One more item about precision shooting (precision meaning repeatability and accuracy meaning how close you get to your intended point of impact), there is a huge amount of that tied up with the ammo and what that particular firearm likes. So even with the same ammo, if you change the bullet overall length (playing with how close.touching the bullet comes to the rifling in the barrel)/powder charge/type of power, you can get wildly different results. So IMHO the same ammo argument doesn't really hold water.
Don't be trapped into the $$$$ = high quality argument.