eh !@## happens, here is the best group of the day, right under an inch

and the worst, a little less than 3 inches

i don't know why this picture only shows up upside down.
while this barrel was done on a cheap green mountain blank, I would expecta bit better than this, so I'll go and recheck everything (already eliminated the optic by trying a couple while I was out at the range.) shoot it with the muzzle brake off, borescope the barrel and make sure the crown wasn't damaged somehow, look at the throat to make sure it was cut square, etc.
it simply could be it doesn't like the factory hornady load or maybe just the bullet weight I'm shooting (though the diagonal stringing is a bit of a head scratcher). on my precision .223 barrel it absolutely hates my 75 gr hpbt load that shoots well in just about every gas gun I've ever done, but loves 53 gr v-max bullets. So I'll try some other bullets as well.
one thing I did notice was some pretty significant denting of the brass on loading, so I'll look into getting that fixed at a minimum.
not giving up on it just yet
