Fancy a change,(downsizing)

wildfowler.250

Well-Known Member
Hi, I am currently using a sako 75 .270 but I am strongly thinking of downsizing to a .243. Primarily due to the fact that its 95% roe on the place I shoot with the odd red knocking about. I was just wondering what everyones general opinion on this was as I am fairly new to stalking. I was thinking about picking up an older tikka 595 or similar or possibly and older sako and potentially rebarreling the gun?

My first question is whether or not going from a sako 75 to a tikka 595 is a step down in rifle quality or not?


My other one was...if I was lucky enough to find an older sako, if its shot out and has a battered stock will the rifle be worth buying for using the action? I was thinking I could put a new barrel on it and a new stock, (probably for cheaper than getting something like a sako 85) and actually end up with a better gun? How much would I be looking to spend if I was to purchase a tatty old rifle? I appreciate that these will always hold some value purely because they can be rebarreled ect.


Sorry about all the questions but any help would be really apprecitaed!



ATB!
 
Check the price of re-barreling ;)









And once you have picked yourself up off the floor have a cuppa and think it through carefully. Getting an older rifle does not mean it's going to be a dog that is shot out and had been dragged across a ploughed field behind a landrover. even a .243 with moderate care will last much longer than some "h-experts" claim. Oh it does not have to be tatty just because it's older. Oh and why would it need a new stock?

I am beginning to get the drastic plastic feeling here :-|.
 
Thanks for the reply! How much damage should I expect for putting a new barrel on the gun then? Is it worse than getting a new sako?


ps ideally I would avoid a plastic stock if I could but at the same time some of the McMillan stocks are pretty nice looking :D



Thanks again!
 
Points to ponder.
"The odd red knocking about." What weights do they go up to ? Do you get hinds in your patch and do stags compete for them there during the rut ?
A lot depends upon the bullet you might use, but a big rutty stag might be a bit of a handful if not hit exactly in the right part of the engine room - or neck. Shot placement at certain times can be quite important to your post shot activities.

For many years the only rifle I had was a .243 and it served for everything. I had no complaints about it despite the fact that I carried all sorts of larger medium bore calibres about for guests during the stag season, and used them all at times.
Some people even claim that a .243 will create more carcass damage, but then I expect that it depends upon angle of shot and bullet type.
One of the bigger assets for either calibre as regards finding what you might believe to be YOUR Roe cartridge, is the ability to reload for your rifle. I am a bit out of touch with factory cartridges these days as I have been reloading for a long number of years, but I'm sure that there will be someone on the forum who can inform you of what they believe to be a suitable factory round in either calibre.
There will be those who will scoff and other who will sympathise, but at the end of the day, it's what suits you as regards how comfortable you are with your rifle, and how confident, in order to produce constant good shooting.
There must be plenty excellent second-hand rifles out there as quite a number of stalkers - part-time and professional - like to change and try something new every so often, so it's not always a case of getting rid of a worn-out rifle.
 
Thanks for the reply! How much damage should I expect for putting a new barrel on the gun then? Is it worse than getting a new sako?


ps ideally I would avoid a plastic stock if I could but at the same time some of the McMillan stocks are pretty nice looking :D



Thanks again!

Steve Kershaw quoted someone whilst I was there to re-barrel a Sako that had been left wet and the chamber had rusted inside so it was knackered. I mean deep pits that jammed the rifle up when a new factory round was fired as the case filled the pits and locked the bolt shut. The quote was if memory serves £600-£650. Border barrels it's about £700. Noman Clark charges about the same. You need to check with them and check costs.
 
A mate of mine has just had his Tikka 695 (I'm almost certain it's a 695) rebarrelled with a factory Browning barrel for a lot less than that. And unless you want to competition shoot with it a factory barrel will be plenty accurate enough for stalking.

I can't remember who did it but it's a company who take a lot of rifles for their actions and rebarrel them for keen shooters who feel that the factory barrels aren't up to it. So they're often left with unfired barrels to get rid of!

Sorry it's a bit vague but if you do take that route send me a PM and I'll give my mate a ring to get you more details. I'm sure he paid under £400 fitted and proofed.
 
If the reason you are changing from a .270 to a 243 is simply because you are using it mostly for roe then what is wrong with a .270? if it's a recoil thing then spending some cash on some reloading kit and working up a bit milder load would be another approach, same thing if it's down to meat damage. if you just fancy a change then or having a go a building a semi custom rifle then if your like me, nothing anyone on here says will change your mind. By the time you buy a shot out Sako and re barrel it and re stock it you will be getting very close to the price of a new Sako. I started with a .270 and have swapped around and changed calibres over the years but i have now ended up with the same 3 calibres that i started with .22lr .223 .270 I dread to think what it's cost me to swap rifles and calibres over the years just to end up back where i started.
Have fun, Ezzy
 
What I would like to ask is, How on initial examination would a rifle be declared shot out?......... you would need the original owner to tell you that was what was wrong, or spend some considerable time trying to group with it, or maybe take the word of a gunsmith who has the borescopes & the related knowledge to declare a bore as trash, I have personally been down this route, & would never bin a rifle on someone elses say so, many shot out rifles have been brought back to at least m.o.a. capable, some even better, with very little work.
 
Like a few of the other members have said I would keep the 270. You could get a moderator for it, in which case it will recoil as a 243 and probably improve accuracy wise. Or as mentioned if you homeload make up some reduced loads, you dont need to be running the 270 full whack. Any of the "big" rounds 270, 308, 30-06 can be downloaded, it's harder to get the smaller rounds to do a job above them.
 
A mate of mine has just had his Tikka 695 (I'm almost certain it's a 695) rebarrelled with a factory Browning barrel for a lot less than that. And unless you want to competition shoot with it a factory barrel will be plenty accurate enough for stalking.

I can't remember who did it but it's a company who take a lot of rifles for their actions and rebarrel them for keen shooters who feel that the factory barrels aren't up to it. So they're often left with unfired barrels to get rid of!

Sorry it's a bit vague but if you do take that route send me a PM and I'll give my mate a ring to get you more details. I'm sure he paid under £400 fitted and proofed.

I think I know who your referring too and I spoke to the person about rectifying a bedding problem that was causing poor grouping. The "gunsmith" straight away said it would need anew barrel. of course he didn;t litaen nor ask any questions the barrel was knackered and this is over the phone with out even seeing the rifle :-| Once o could get a word in I pointed out that the barrel was fine ad certainly not shot out as the rifle was brand new just out of the box :eek: Just because it had been in a warehouse somewhere for a decade or so ;). The "gunsmith" then said it would need careful examination with a bore scope... Errr OK fine but all I need is the bedding sorting. I did the test shooting and found out it likes a pressure bedding for the barrel. Without it it shot patterns Adding card shims under the barrel at the forestock brought the groups down to MOA.

No it has to be free floated :banghead: or it won't shoot. Hmm are you listening we tried that and it shot patterns. like a 6"-8" group at 100 yards.. With the shims it shoots about an 1". No it MUST be floated or it won't shoot. At this point I realised that this so called gunsmith did not know who to do traditional pressure point bedding so i just said thank you but I know what I want a need if you cannot do the work then fine I'll find a proper gunsmith who knows what he is doing and can do the job.................................. and that's what I did. I saw that he had advertised a lot of new take off factory barrels :rolleyes: It's obvious to me he want to put one of these cheap button rifled barrels on in place of the nice new hammer forged one it came with. So instead of the nice polished blued barrel it would have a bead blasted cheapie with the bill board size warning roughly impressed into the surface................................... No thank you.

Since then when I once asked on here about this so called gunsmith i was contacted by a member who had problems getting his rifle sorted after said "gunsmith" fitted new barrel and blueprinted it. Took two years to get it sorted it seems. It seems my impressions on the phone were right.
 
Thanks for all the help! After reading through all the comments I think if I possibly reloaded for the gun that would be the way forward,(a milder load does seem like a good idea). Since I started this topic I have got onto a new place with Red and Sika so I will be needing the punch of the .270 after all,(luckily I never sold it :rolleyes:).
On a slightly different note I was shooting a friends blaser 30-06 with factory ammo and my first two shots with the gun were just about touching at 100 yards in low light. So to cut a long story short it maybe isn't necessarily finding the milder round that Im after...just an accaurate one and put up with the 'kick' :-|

if you just fancy a change then or having a go a building a semi custom rifle then if your like me, nothing anyone on here says will change your mind. By the time you buy a shot out Sako and re barrel it and re stock it you will be getting very close to the price of a new Sako. I started with a .270 and have swapped around and changed calibres over the years but i have now ended up with the same 3 calibres that i started with .22lr .223 .270 I dread to think what it's cost me to swap rifles and calibres over the years just to end up back where i started.
Have fun, Ezzy

That sounds very similar to me. started with those three and it was going to be a .223 changed to a .22-250. Then it was going to be .22, .22 hornet and .243. Maybe I should just stick with what I've got :lol:





Oh and sorry for not getting back on sooner, I haven't had much access to interenet lately!


ATB
 
Damn!! I thought there was going to be yet another nice .270 going cheap on guntrader ;) The .270 seems to get a lot of stick and to be unfashionable at the moment, there are some lovely rifles to be had out there. I could not see the point of moving down both in calibre and quality from what you had. As the old saying goes, "you cannot get deader than dead".

ft
 
just keep what you have it will do it all. you could use milder reloads in it. i dont think you can have it rebarreled in to 243 because the 270 is a long action and the 243 uses a short action
 
just keep what you have it will do it all. you could use milder reloads in it. i dont think you can have it rebarreled in to 243 because the 270 is a long action and the 243 uses a short action

Jay, how does the Mauser MO3 work then? Thats a long action, available in .243. Isn't it more to do with the bolt face?

Surely you can go from a long case to a short case if rebarrelled, but not from a short to long, because of the magazine not being of adequate length?

ft
 
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just keep what you have it will do it all. you could use milder reloads in it. i dont think you can have it rebarreled in to 243 because the 270 is a long action and the 243 uses a short action

Of course it can be re-barreled to .243. The feed rails might need a bit of tweaking but it can be done. The Parker-Hales use a std length Mauser which is not a short action. The late BSA CF2's came in one action length. The bolt travel was controlled buy the position of the machined bolt stop on the underside of the bolt. often in a long action fitted up for a shorter cartridge a block is used at the rear of the mag well or magazine to position the cartridges a bit further forwards.
 
Of course it can be re-barreled to .243. The feed rails might need a bit of tweaking but it can be done. The Parker-Hales use a std length Mauser which is not a short action. The late BSA CF2's came in one action length. The bolt travel was controlled buy the position of the machined bolt stop on the underside of the bolt. often in a long action fitted up for a shorter cartridge a block is used at the rear of the mag well or magazine to position the cartridges a bit further forwards.
That's good to know! What other options would be worth considering if you were to change caliber from the .270? I'll stick with what I have at the moment but something like a .260 might beworth a look at :cool:


And thanks again for all the help, it's really useful to get opinions off people with lots of stalking experience :D
 
I had a McMillan stocked Sako Finnbear .270 re-barreled into .243 by callum Fergerson and it was fine, no problems with feeding from the mag. Best park culling rifle I've ever had, boringly accurate with 87grn V-Max even after 4000+ rnds and much abuse. Closest thing to a death ray that I've ever owned! JC
 
I had a McMillan stocked Sako Finnbear .270 re-barreled into .243 by callum Fergerson and it was fine, no problems with feeding from the mag. Best park culling rifle I've ever had, boringly accurate with 87grn V-Max even after 4000+ rnds and much abuse. Closest thing to a death ray that I've ever owned! JC

I think that's probably all I would need for most of my shooting,(it would have to be good with a 100 grain bullet but I guess a custom barrel would sort that anyway?). I'll see how I get on with the .270 and the bigger deer for maybe a year before any changes.
If you don't mind me asking, how much do the McMillan stocks go for? I was told by someone at a range recently that the sako 75 synthetic stocks weren't great and that it would be worth changing them,(he had one as well so he wasn't bias or anything :rolleyes:).

Cheers!
 
That's good to know! What other options would be worth considering if you were to change caliber from the .270? I'll stick with what I have at the moment but something like a .260 might beworth a look at :cool:


And thanks again for all the help, it's really useful to get opinions off people with lots of stalking experience :D

Oh I have far more experience with rifles than actual stalking as I got into stalking much later than actually shooting and collecting. Heck I am still learning about rifles let alone stalking and deer. It seems not many manufactures actually make a true short action now. All due to cost cutting under the name of product rationalisation :rolleyes: that's how the BSA CF2 evolved from the Monarch which evolved from the Majestic etc. The orignal model the Hunter came in short medium and long actions the CF2 had one = LONG. Tikka I believe make one action length in the T3 although it's rumoured that Sako still make long and short. I don't know enough about the Sako 75/85 to tell you for sure.

Plastic stocks I know little to nowt about, except i dislike them :stir: ..................... so over to you :p
 
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