Rifle ingredients for Hunter weight

[Panhandle]

There are an endless number of ways to end up with a rifle that makes weight. Also an endless spectrum of preference as to how that rifle feels when done. I spent a good deal of time searching for the ingredients on the WEB that explained what folks had used to build their personal rifles and found little information. I was trying to get it correct on the first go which is the least expensive way to arrive at your goal. With that said my Hunter class HP rifle is complete and weights 8 pounds 12oz’s and has a muzzle heavy feel. The ingredients are: Remington Mod.7 action, Kreiger Light Palma barrel, Wooster Stock, Luepold FXIII, weaver rings and a one piece base. The barrel is 26”,threaded with a barrel nut system, the key is 2” of the blank length came off from the breach end (the heavy end). In a perfect world I would like the other 4oz at the muzzle end but will suffice by adding weight into the forearm of the Wooster stock. Better safe than sorry.

Note - if setting up a Remington action to use a Savage type barrel nut a lot of grief can be avoided by having a pin added to the action face to pin the recoil lug in place, that way it doesn’t move while setting headspace and/or switching barrels.

[ItsMe]

It's great that you're sharing this recipe. I wish more people would share their entire recipe because like you said there is an endless number of ways to make weight. I think the big one is what barrel contour should I go with.

[Lafleura10]

My HP built is very similar to yours. I went with a Benchmark Groups contour with a Remington 700 action.

My biggest inquires is what is the optimal balance point for a silhouette rifle. Mine seems to balance about 2,5” forward of the action which is ahead of where I hold the rifle.

When researching for building my PRS 22LR they want to have the balance point right at the mag well to help with balance, follow through, spotting your hit/miss and follow up shot. It makes me wonder if a similar though process would apply to silhouette. Would having a rifle that balances at your holding point be an avantage?

[Panhandle]

I agree it’s the barrel profile that you start with that’s key to getting things to weigh and feel the way you want. It’s also the part that the majority of use can’t do ourselves when it comes to turning that expensive steel pipe into a cut, chambered, threaded and crowned finished product. There are a few gunsmiths that have decades of experience building silhouette rifles. They are a very busy few I know. It would be a great service to the Silhouette community if someone that has decades of experience could produce and publicize / share a list of barrel profiles that are proven to meet our needs in this sport. A layman like myself can study profile lists and weights per inch provided by the majority of barrel makers, a few even have fancy calculators on there web page but in the end your best choice as a layman ends up being just a slightly educated guess at what the end product will actually weight. It doesn’t match experience.

The balance point is a very individual preference. My wife prefers her rifle to feel only slightly muzzle heavy. I prefer mine to feel as heavy as possible towards the muzzle so it feels like a heavier rifle at its Hunter weight. I believe it holds a little more steady for me this way and seems slower to react when I’m a little twitchy, most of the time. Thus maybe a little more forgiving.

[emietenkorte]

When I go about building a silhouette rifle, I start with the parts I want, and then pick the barrel that will fit within the parameters. My HP hunter rifle is a Defiance Single Shot Action, Kelbly rings, Leupold FX-3 scope, Bix'n Andy two stage and Wooster stock. I add up the weight of all of those parts and then I know how heavy my barrel can be. I mostly use the Lilja barrel weight calculator https://riflebarrels.com/barrel-weig...oured-barrels/ to figure out what I can do. With this combination of parts, I go with a Benchmark contour 5 finished at 26" and have no problem making weight.

[Panhandle]

For folks looking for a material list to build a silhouette rifle, “ emietenkorte “ would be a great one to copy. He is one of the best and copying the tool used by the winners is never a bad place to start. Thanks for the detailed post.