I realize folks are at SHOT this week, but I feel like I need to throw this out there.
So this is really bizarre. I just returned to New Zealand after being in the States for the better part of six months (cancer treatment at the VA sucks donkey balls) and first chance I got I went and picked up my SRS from the local smith along with a couple conversions he'd been working on for me. When I got to the range I'd decided to warm up on my old 6.5 barrel and just practice the fundamentals. But right off the bat I wasn't getting on paper, which is odd to me as I know this barrel well and it's only a 0.5mil elevation and windage offset, yet at 100m I was seeing dust about a full meter to the right. I was able to get on after dialing the maximum windage on the scope.
So it's obviously been a while since I shot, so I decided I'd give the 16" .308 a try and this time, as I installed it, I noticed it was ever so slightly off axis from the receiver. If you look at the picture above you can barely see how the gap between the brake/barrel and receiver is slightly smaller on the right side than the left. Thinking maybe the barrel somehow got bent, I slowly rotated it in 45 degree increments to check if it change, but no luck. How can this be? I ran through all six conversions that I have and they are all shooting way off to the right at 100m. Mind you, I shot a comp with this rifle back in August and everything was good, so it would seem that something happened between now and then.
Next I thought it was the scope and mount, but a quick check with allen keys and my torque wrench showed that it was fine. So I pulled the buttpad off and slid out the bolt, trying to do a quick boresight. With the scope zeroed out it was obvious that there was an alignment issue. I had the scope on target, but the bore was pointing off the target to the right quite a ways.
I came back the next day with a mount and scope from a different rifle and sure enough, same thing! So at this point I'm curious if anyone else has ever seen anything like this before? I just can't see how the receiver could have gotten bent like that? I tried playing around with torquing the barrel down one screw at a time to see if it somehow revealed the bend, but no luck. I'm pretty much at a loss as to what happened now.
It's a Gen 1 rifle from the first batch that went out and I hate to think that it's somehow deadlined. I can't really send it to DT to have a look as I'm on the other side of the Pacific, but I suppose I'll just have to bring it with me when I'm back in the States later this year.
Any thoughts on what I could do in the mean time?