So I guess tax season can be a curse to some and a mixed blessing to others.

I was offered a Remington ADL .223 that had been put in a Choate stock and had a Redfield Revolution 3-9x50 mounted on it. I turned it down the first couple of times he tried to sell it to me since I'm not a fan of Choate stocks or Redfield scopes and would only want the ADL for the action. The third time he offered it to me his price had come down enough that I asked him to bring it by and let me look at it.

Well he shows up a few days later and I give it a quick once over. The stock is in good shape with just a couple of small handling marks. The scope looks like it's brand new and appears to track well enough. The big negative that I found was that the trigger wouldn't reset every time. Not a deal breaker for me, just another way to get the price down further.
I offer him $400, he counters at $475 and we settle on $450.

I get the rifle home and take the stock, scope and trigger off. I was already planning on selling the Redfield and Choate but was curious what was wrong with the trigger. It turns out that he had gotten some type of heavy oil into the trigger and it had gummed up so after soaking it in acetone and some minor adjustments it was breaking at 34 oz. with zero creep and very little over travel.

Three days later I have the scope, rings and bases sold for $175. A couple of days more and the stock is gone for $175 and the guy threw in a factory plastic ADL stock. I now have all of $100 in the rifle,cheap enough to strip the action down and build a semi-custom or close enough to free for a rifle if it will shoot.

I have a set of Talley bases and rings along with a 3.5-10x44 Zeiss Conquest that have been sitting in the safe for at least three years so now the .223 has some glass for it.

After a little load development I found a combination that works well enough with the components I already have. The only shortcoming is I can't get the velocity I was hoping for.

Here are the results from today.


And here is how it turned out.


I think I'm going to leave it alone for now and see how well a $100 rifle works out for me.

I'll give you $150 for the rifle

I like deals like that.

And all it took was $800 in labor.

Dontcha have something a little faster burning than Varget to push those 40-grainers?

I cut myself a pretty good deal and did it all for eleventeen dollars.

As for the powder, I tried H322 and H4198 but Varget was the most accurate and consistent plus I already have 18#'s of it & I didn't want to buy a different powder than I already have.

Huh. I woulda suggested 4198, but if it's not working then it's not working. Oh well!

You came out smelling like a rose on that deal. That barrel is doing a fine job!

I have always found Varget to be accurate but once I checked velocity always changed. I haven't tried to get 28.3 gr in a .223 case with Varget. Does that take a drop tube?

Sa-weet!

I have a nearly identical 223 in the factory tupoware stock with a $100 simmons on it. The gun shoots amazingly well.

I paid more for mine though

Forget the Varget. Get some H335.

that rifle will get the job done for sure. Nice work!

I'll give you your hundred back!

To make that charge work I had to borrow an 8" drop tube. I'm not looking forward to having to use a drop tube to load but I'm going to go ahead and load 250 rounds and see how long it takes to go through them.

The scope is the only thing I may change in the future. With the Rapid-Z 800 reticle and the parallax focused at 300 yards it's a little overkill for a spare truck gun.