I recently became the proud owner of a new Weatherby Vanguard stainless in .308 Winchester caliber.
This is a bead-blasted stainless steel barrelled action in a synthetic stock. Whoever did the bead-blasting, they did a fine job of it, better than bead-blasted stainless from Browning or Winchester, for example. - High praise indeed!
Due to a series of unfortunate events, I was unable to shoot the new rifle for a week or more after taking delivery if it. - I had plenty of time to play around with it, and I noticed that the last inch of so of travel, drawing the bolt back became a bit rough and difficult, when the bolt head slipped into the raceways cut for it in the rear bridge. There was hardly any slop in the bolt when fully drawn back, because of the tight fit there.
I didn't think much about it, figuring that it would smooth itself out - but then when I went to shoot the rifle for the first time, I found that it was very easy to short-stroke the bolt, so that it does not pick up a cartridge.
As soon as this happened to me, I remembered a You-Tube video of a guy who had a new Weatherby Vanguard in .257 Weatherby... He never said anything about it, but I noticed that the first time or two he tried to shoot the new gun, he short-stroked the bolt and did not pick up a shell.
It was with a sense of veja-vu that I frowned, deliberately pulled the bolt back the full way, and then chambered the first cartridge.
When I got the rifle home I pulled out the bolt, got a flashlight and a magnifier, and examined the raceways cut into the rear bridge on my Vanguard.
There was a bit of roughness there, tool marks from the broach (or other tool) that cut the raceway. So, I got out a triangular India stone of the right size, and very carefully, very lightly cleaned up the raceways a bit.
There is still some resistance when pulling the bolt back the last inch or so, but not nearly as much and now the action cycles smoothly.
Here is the bolt head being pulled back into the rear bridge - a tight fit!
Here is one of the four areas in the raceways that I smoothed up a bit.
If you have a problem with this, show this post to your gunsmith.
Over-all, I am very favorably impressed with the Weatherby Vanguard. People say they are a bit heavy, but it seems about right to me. I even like the synthetic stock, which I had not expected at all. It handles great, and is accurate with a variety of bullet weights.
Has anybody else here noticed this issue with a Vanguard? - I'm wondering if it is a stainless-only issue. The guy I saw on YouTube had a stainless Vanguard too.
