I have two Weatherby rifles both in 7mm-08 and haven’t found factory loads that shoot great in either gun. My dad is friends with an old gunsmith who does glass bedding. Should I have him do that to my two rifles, or should I turn my attention toward building a good hand load? My neighbor has reloaded 7mm-08 so he has most of the things Jim has listed in either the beginner or intermediate reloading materials.
How committed are you to these rifles? If you are having accuracy issues this could be due to a lot of different factors. It may be that all you need is proper load development, but, if you have some other misalignment issue somewhere, the load development may not fix the problem. Bedding the stock, lapping the rings, adjusting the triggers, etc. may play a part as well. It’s really hard to say until you start troubleshooting and eliminating the variables. I recently saw a fun video by a guy who played “Used Rifle Roulette” and threw as many “best practices” and good parts at it as he could, and it worked out for him in the end. I think if you are committed to the rifle, then putting some of that work into them is probably worth it. But that would be up to you to decide.
Here is that video I mentioned: USED RIFLE ROULETTE: Model 70 Extreme Weather - YouTube
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Here are the questions I’d first ask a friend if they came to me with this problem.
First, do you own any rifle that you can sit down and produce a half inch group on demand? Not to question you at all, but I know we have people of all skills levels on Backfire Plus and so if there is ANY chance the limiting factor is the shooter, let’s address that first. If you have a gun you can always shoot half minute with, you can guarantee it’s not you.
Next, have you absolutely TRIPLE CHECKED that the scope is PERFECTLY mounted and all screws properly torqued? Checked action screw torque settings?
Then, what is the AVERAGE group size you’re seeing from the factory loads? If a gun is averaging 1.5 minutes with everything, I lean toward load development. If the gun shoots some ammo at 1.5 and others at 3, then I lean toward replacing the stock or trying glass bedding.
Adding to Jim. What is the nature of not shooting well? This can tell you a lot about the issue. Inconsistency comes from loose things including shooting technique. Open groups as he said more likely ammo.
Wood stocks I assume? Probably not messing you up in a single session but could be weird across time due to warpage and pressure on barrel. But bedding wood stocks if not done is good practice anyways. But the last thing I would suspect would be the action and barrel unless 100’s of rounds have been down it. With work I bet you can make them usable.