Here is a hard question for Jim, @backfire . When you receive a rifle or any other product from a manufacturer, how do you know that it hasn’t been cherry picked or engineered to be better than the rifles off their standard production line? I watched this weeks youtube video and it was great. I was as excited as you seemed to be, but a little voice in my not so trusting head was saying… “If I owned a rifle manufacturing company I would make sure I sent Jim perfection, even if I had to hand turn everything on my extra special super accurate non production line machinery.” lol. I mean, the marketing guy would be a fool to not make sure you had perfection given your market influence.
I loved your layman’s statistical discussion on the validity of ammo grouping results, but that statistical validity analysis also applies to the rifle itself. I am positive they sent you a 4 or 5 sigma rifle, but I cant be assured they would send me one as good. I understand that it is impractical if not impossible to do the testing on a statistically valid number of rifles… It is what it is.
This is totally not a criticism of you or what you are doing, its more of an illustration of the potential for manipulating review results without the reviewer even knowing that its being done.
Personally I usually only trust reviews when I know the rifle was purchased without the manufacturer’s knowledge for the reasons stated above. I’m interested in your take on this subject.