Picked the rifle up last Friday, my thanks to the guys at Minuteman Armory.
The laminated wood stock is made for Savage by Boyds Gunstocks
http://www.boydsgunstocks.com/
You can see below after separating the stock from the barrel/receiver and trigger housing that, despite the QC inspection signatures, there were a just few stray bits of wood that really should have been cleaned up before they applied the lacquer (I gently knocked them down with some 600 grit paper). The laminating of the wood is clearly visible in the second of these two photos. BTW you have to remove the stock to this point, then remove the trigger housing from the receiver, and then slide the bolt out to complete the field strip (yeah a bit involved).
The heavy barrel is really deceiving when you look at the rifle side-on compared to seeing the business end and the actual .17 bore.
I decided on Burris "Signature Zee" rings with 0/0 inserts as you can see below, they were not torqued at that point. Was a good opportunity for me to use the Husky in/lb torque screwdriver I bought a while ago. As I mentioned earlier the scope I selected is a Vortex Crossfire II 6-18x44 AO and I would have to say it is a really good scope for the money.
I finally got it out to the range today. It looks nice, it shoots great and I am glad I bought it -- however, I do not think I could recommend it simply based on the magazine retention clip which is a pain in the ass to engage. The rotary magazine functions just fine but the clip on the front of it (not visible in this photo) is difficult to catch in place in the rifle's mag well.
(BTW I know the photo below looks staged but honestly that is just the way my junk was laying around, looked nice in retrospect)
It took I while to get the scope reasonably dialed at 50 yds the photo below is a three shot group from once I was satisfied. I then moved out to 100 yds where it remained true on windage but I had to bring the mark down a few clicks but I got very similar results. Sorry I do not have any photos at 100 I had to pack up in kind of a hurry.
(BTW in the photo below ignore the hole at 11:00 I was reusing a target that had just that hole in it
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