Well close. Don't know that I've ever had a bad barrel but do think I had a bad chamber one time. 223 and smallest group's I could get were right at 3". Nothing I did would get it to shoot. Mod 7 Rem when they first came out. I have a 1903 custom right now with a barrel wasted by use of corrosive primer's. Holds 180gr Hornady spire points right at 1 1/4' and has taken three elk for me with three shots. Manufacturer messed up, any can do that including Cooper. But I can pretty much guarantee you that simply a good barrel is not what makes a rifle shoot well. Good maybe but if your relying on the barrel alone to pull it off you just may be disappointed. Benchrest shooter's do not buy a rifle off the rack and take it to a meet, they take it to a gunsmith! Very possible that the Cooper you spoke of with a bad barrel did have a bad barrel but Cooper makes their money on accuracy I think and Rather than have that floating around out their I'm pretty sure they would have fixed the problem even if it meant a new barrel! Company's like Cooper that charge the premium prices Cooper charges simply can't afford to turn their back on something like that. I suspect there's more to this story than we heard. A barrel alone will not make a rifle neither will bedding of blueprinting. To create a rifle in that class take more than just throwing good parts together! I have to believe Cooper does quite a bit more than that or they would not have their reputation and would not have a market for rifle's in that price range!
Bet you never made a poorly bedded rifle shoot like a well bedded rifle either. Bet you take your off the shelf rifle to a good gun smith and have it accurized he'll do more than lap the barrel and send it back. One part does not make a rifle! Wonder what you'd find in a Cooper action if you wanted it blue printed? Now I wouldn't spend the money blue printing a rifle, I'm a hunter and most my rifle are far better than needed for hunting.
Had a guy come out where I was shooting years ago and pulled out a 40X and was bragging all over it. Claimed he could shoot one shot and put the second shot into the same hole. Needless to say he did not! In fact he didn't even come close. Was it the rifle of the shooter. Ah maybe it was the barrel!
The first sentence by the OP mentions Sako. If you think your average Sako would benefit from being blue printed, or leaves the factory today with bedding problems, you don’t know what you’re talking about. Furthermore, most manufacturers are doing most of their machine work with CNC machines now. Everyone’s tolerances are pretty good. Most stocks are either CNC inletted, or are molded in very good molds now. The majority of the bedding from every manufacturer today is pretty good. The difference is that the small manufacturers like Cooper are not using hammer forged barrels, primarily because they can’t afford the equipment.
I find it difficult to endure that I posted a group that would be a new world record if it had been five shots in a sanctioned match, and you had such a lack of understanding that you asked if perhaps the rifle would shoot just as well with cheap brass and cheap bullets if only I tried enough different combinations of bullet and powder, YET you pretend to know what makes a gun shoot and what does not. As a side note, that rifle was built on Remington 700 action that has had zero work done to it.
You’re right that the barrel isn’t the only thing that Cooper does properly, BUT most manufacturers are doing most things right these days and the primary thing separating one from another when it comes to out of the box accuracy is the barrel.
You’ve had more than one bad chamber in your life, even if only one of them was bad enough for you to realize it. It’s possible to forge in a short chamber, then finish it with a reamer, and that’s often done with a pilotless reamer to avoid trashing the throat if the forged in chamber was out of line with the bore(they usually are). By going very very short, snd using a pilot, the reamer will correct the poor alignment to a large degree, but the closer to finished they forge it the more the manufacturer has to choose between a rough throat or letting a pilotless reamer follow the existing chamber whether it’s in line or not. The majority of factory barrels will be improved by rechambering them.
While it’s never a bad idea to epoxy bed an action, especially in a wooden stock, doubly especially in one that was not CNC inlet, THATS NOT THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN SAKO AND COOPER.
Stop babbling on about benchrest. When is the last time you shot a benchrest match? It was probably 2006 for me and I won it...also with a Remington 700 action that had zero work done to it.
