I've been building these for others for years but finally did one for myself. It's a Bula XM21 receiver which has no rear sights. The picatinny rail is part of the receiver and it was made to perfectly mate up to the top rail of the SAGE ALCS chassis.

The barrel is a Lothar-Walther 22" medium weight barrel in 308 that has been NP3'd. It also has a Shooting Sight EBR trigger that is made for pistol gripped M14's. The scope is a Vortex Razor 1-6 HD GEN II E with medium height Vortex rings. The ocular lens barely clears the picatinny rails. If I use a high-mag scope with a 50MM objective, I'll have to get high or ultra-high rings to clear the rail.

I also have the buttpad extender which moves the cheekpiece farther forward for a more natural head position. I should be able to test it this week.











The rifle weighs 16 pounds as-pictured with a full 20 round magazine. It's only 1 pound lighter than my M25 in a JAE chassis with a 3/4 heavy barrel and a Leupold MK 4 ER/T scope.

You definitely have to eat your wheaties when packing this thing around.

Tony.

That's a very purposeful looking piece of hardware! Very nice. Glad I don't have to carry it...

Nice! I’ll be curious to see what the groups look like. My buddy keeps trying to get me to get a Sage chassis for my M25, but I’m still holding out for a JAE chassis.

quote:

Originally posted by flesheatingvirus:
My buddy keeps trying to get me to get a Sage chassis for my M25...

Yes!

I took it out a couple of days ago and it grouped okay, around 1.5". It was difficult getting precision shots with the Vortex 1-6X. The reticle was just too thick.

I've got a Leupold MK5 3.6-18 FFP on the way and it should be here by Wednesday or Thursday and I'll be at the range next weekend. I've also loaded up a bunch of 175's, 168's and 125 TNT's to try out.

The Shooting Sight trigger is set to 3.75 pounds and breaks like glass! I still need a Sadlak vented piston, but they won't be available until October-ish.

Tony.

Well, I got a proper scope for it. It's a Leupold MK5 3.6-18x44 FFP with a CCH reticle on top of MK4 high rings. I might have been able to get away with medium rings, but I wasn't sure about the clearance of the front rail.



Tony.

Gorgeous. Love to see these builds.

Very Nice build..

Nice setup. Thanks for sharing

I got my new scope zeroed tonight and adjusted my barrel whip screw. With no pressure, groups were over 2" I added a little pressure and it didn't really do much. I added about 1/4 turn of pressure and the next group dropped 2" but shrunk to 1.4". It's the bottom left group. I was shooting at the center left dot. I was shooting 175 grain Nosler CC's under 43.2 grains of RL-15.

I centered up the scope and shot a decent 1.5" group and tried dialing it in a little more and the groups started to open up. I went back to the optimal setting and the group sizes from that setting were 1.5", 1.44" and 1.33". I was not impressed with the 175 grain FGMM as it produced a 1.78" group



I then tested some 168 grain RDF's and one load (42.6 grains of IMR-4064) produced a 1.25" group. The 43.0 grain load did okay at 1.4" as well. It would be nice if I can get those bullets to shoot well as JBM ballistics says the 42.6 grain load should still barely be supersonic at 1,000 yards.


I think I need to adjust the crush washer behind the gas cylinder as I believe it's causing fliers. I know a tight fitting gas system and a gas lock that times too early can cause flyers in the SAGE chassis. My magazines also fit in super-tight and it may be applying too much pressure to the bottom of the bolt and causing flyers. I'll adjust the mag latch fitment and see if that helps.

Overall I'd say it's shooting decently well with some room for improvement. At the end of the day I was able to produce five 5-shot groups that were between 1.25" and 1.5". I'm hoping that with some small tweaks to some components I can shrink the groups down to under 1".

I'll try some M118LR next time. I got my scope dialed in and adjusted the zero-stop for a 100 yard zero. I have lots of room in the scope for elevation.

Tony.

Tony,

Nice build, as usual. My EBR that you did for me is shooting about an inch. Better when I do my part. You da man, Tony.

Wes
Ardent supporter/admirer