Some say the standard Remington 700 action is not strong enough to support a heavy 1.20-1.25 diameter target barrel. I have heard stories of gunsmiths gluing the Heavy barrel section to stock. Using only the forward receiver screw to clamp and free floating rear tang of receiver. Are there any gunsmiths out there with good advice on gluing barrel to channel.
Here is my new Mcmillan HBR Tooley stock. It is milled for Remington receiver.
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many of the top br gunsmiths hang out on * benchgrest.com * ... they have an extensive searchable library ...
i have an opinion for cast br guns ... i think pillar bedding and 8 inches ahead of the receiver is good for 1/4 inch and up ... and a lot handier than glue in.
more important is to ” blueprint ” your action ... you don't need to go overboard ... a $400 job is not needed... just jig up the action concentric with the bolt ....true cut on the action face ... true the existing threads ... face the action lugs ................ jig up the stock bolt and face the case seat face ...and the back of the bolt lugs .......... a final cheap touch is installing a setscrew down thru the rear ring ... this is your ” borden bump ” to keep the bolt from rising when you pull the trigger .
if your action is fairly new, check out the timing after you do the facing ( do minimal facing btw ) ...
for the first 20k shots you don't need an m16 extractor and bolt face bushed .
these are my opinions, ; i like the pillar bedding because you can play with the chambering with less hassle .
oh, you can shoot 1/4 groups with a factory trigger set at 1.5 lbs ... save $300 ...
and yep i have done glue-ins ... use marine-tex . or sig hobby poxy from a hobby shop .
at $700++ you might think about buying a used nesika/kelbly from bob white's shooters corner . especially if it comes with a jewell trigger . if you spend $900 for a used nesika..... you can sell it for that later ... a used remmy ” unknown smith blueprinted ” will lose value .
just some thoughts ... oh, love your stock !!!
ken
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Thank you Ken. You and TomG have been very helpful in the past.
I chose the Tooley stock because of the extra long forearm length.
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Ken, I was thinking that the most important subject when shooting “cast bullets” is getting the bullet perfectly aligned in throat before firing. Bullet to throat fit and centered to bore is far more important than action truing. Taper bumping to exact throat taper and/or perfect circle bore riding helps accomplish all of this. I think I will just square up 700 receiver face/threads and let it ride.
My biggest concern is preventing shifting groups because of poor bedding (barrel shifting away from scope centerline).
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yes i think the chamber job is nearly everything .... but the reason i like pillar not glue bedding is then you can easily remove the barrel and try another scheme ....
well, everything after you have a stable gun assembly ...how about ...not blueprinted .... but LOW-VIBRATION action ...
i leave about a foot of straight barrel at the breech end for that reason .... set back and rechamber with the next scheme ....
sounds like a fun project ...
ken
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i have an opinion for cast br guns ... i think pillar bedding and 8 inches ahead of the receiver is good for 1/4 inch and up ... and a lot handier than glue in.
these are my opinions, ; i like the pillar bedding because you can play with the chambering with less hassle .
just some thoughts ... oh, love your stock !!!
ken When you say 8 inches ahead of receiver, do you leave a gap between receiver and bedded area of barrel? Or bed entire first 8 inches of barrel?
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i have always bedded front ring and lug and barrel right up to the ring . i think that will give more support for the front action screw pressure if you go the pillar route. if you go the glue-in route i think a gap won't hurt . the action just floats and the barrel only is bedded .
the whole bedding idea is to have everything the same every time you shoot.
actually that includes the action parts and even the way you hold the rifle each time ::: the same .
keep us informed . oh ... what caliber ?? gonna go smallbore.... 6 mm ??
ken
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I was thinking .224 or 6 mm. Less vibration and jumping around on bags.
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I built a long range Varmint match rifle similar to the one you are building. I used a Tooley MBR stock and had Mc Millan make it with heavy resin all the way through for rigidity. It's really heavy and the finished rifle runs around 19 lbs.
I chose the MBR for the wide forend and the extra length forend. It allows me to put my bipod way out which increases the length between the rear bag and forend.
I used a Remington mid length action and sleeved it with a 10 inch Davidson sleeve. The sleeve is flat on the bottom and has a 5 deg. draft angle on the sides so it goes in and out of the bedding without shaving any bedding material. I completely trued the action and bushed the bolt before glueing it in. I call it my poor man's Stolle action. It's got a 40 X trigger on it set at 4 oz.. The top has a dovetail that takes Kelbly rings.
I've shot full length bull barrels on it and others that tapered to .75” at the muzzle and never saw any difference in accuracy. In my opinion, the weight of the barrel has little to do with the inherent accuracy. I've worn out maybe 5 barrels on it and most were Hart, Lilja, Shilen and H&S brands. Chambered in 6 MM Rem. Ackley Improved it shoots the 215 gr. Tubbs into 1 inch at 300 yds. That's the average of 4 five shot groups and all shots counted.
I think that a heavy barrel taper shoots just as well as a straight cylindrical barrel and is a lot easier to handle. You will get less droop with a tapered barrel. When I had a straight inch and three eights barrel on it I built a support about 4 inches in front of the sleeve and bedded it into the stock. It was like a big scope ring spit horizontally to clamp on the barrel. It never shot any better with it as when fully floated. It's the quality of the barrel not the weight. I use a separate throater to cut the throat and the freebore dia. is .0003” ( three tenths) larger than bullet dia..
I never bed any of the barrel. I want it to always vibrate the same from shot to shot with minimum influence from the stock. I don't like to bed the reinforce end of the barrel because that is the part that heats up and expands in diameter. This can create tension when it does and can cause the action to raise up ( unseat in the bedding) slightly as it get hot. Never let the bolt touch the stock as well as the trigger. It will influence the vibrations. I once had a CB benchrest rifle that was acting up a little and found the Jewell trigger touching the stock. When I relieved it the rifle went back to shooting again. When a gun is properly bedded with a floated barrel it should vibrate like a tuning fork if you hold it by the wrist of the stock and then strike the forendl. If it sounds dull and doesn't hum, it's not bedded properly.
I occasionally switch barrels on this gun to fireform brass, etc.. I've found that I can remover the scope, remove the action and change the barrel back to the original and the gun will still be sighted in within one quarter minute click. That's tearing it down and reinstalling the good barrel and scope and it will not change point of aim more than a quarter inch at 100 yds. When you can do that, you know all the surfaces are true and the bedding is correct.
When I bed, use Devcon F1 or F2 aluminum Epoxy, I forgot which. I'm wintering in Tucson so I'm not near my shop. It has a low shrink rate and if you wan't to really get it close, you can do a second thin skim coat to take up for the initial shrinkage. I use alum. pillars under all action screws of 5/8” diameter stock. This makes the rifle not sensitive to screw torque as it's compressing an alum. pillar and not the stock material.
This is getting kind of long but I thought I'd throw out a few ideas on what I did that worked well for me.
Your mileage may vary.
Tom Gray
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in mj benchrest the varmint wt class shoots the same groups as heavy ... so if you are building this rifle for your own no-competition use, you might choose a varmint wt barrel .
i am a cheepskate, so i like to buy the takeoff high quality barrels from the mj br guys ... they get shorter but for cast bullets that isn't too bad a thing. and 6mm are the most common . hey i got a shilen varmint wt in 222 rem tight neck if you want to save a few bucks ...threaded for rem was still shooting good when the guy went to 6 ppc. pm me if .
oh, there is another method .... the barrel clamp ... like tom grey's device but everything else floats ...
ken
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I did build one rifle for a customer that was barrel block bedded only. We found a huge BR style stock that was wide enough to accommodate the barrel block. We used a 1.5” dia. barrrel 32” long.
The bedding block was about 10” long and was spit in two pieces with the bottom half bedded in the stock. The rest of the barrel and action floated. I used a 1.5” ball end mill to make the barrel hole in the block halves so it was not too hard to make. The owner insisted in mounting the scope on the action against my recommendation. I wanted him to keep it clean and mount the scope on top of the block. This gun didn't shoot any better than a conventional pillar bedded action with a varmint weight barrel.
As an aside, apparently the barrel maker used 1.5” stock to make his barrels. The barrel cleaned up OK but the hole in the muzzle end was visibly off center. This was caused by the cutter drifting off a little over the length of the barrel when they deep hold bored the barrel. I think they all drift off and the barrel maker just turns the barrel OD concentric with the bore to make it look like the bore was right in the center of the barrel and perfectly straight.
Tom G
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heh... back when coyote hunting was my obsession ... i block bedded the barrel on my 257 wea. on an fn mauser/varmint douglas barrel .
my buddies laughed their ... butts ... off. it was ugly.
and shot just like the pillar bedded version.
but it is schematically straightforward ...mine just clamped the barrel with 6 capscrews in 8 inches ... no glue in the block , just glued into the stock forearm ..
the guy that just won a big 1000 yarder used a barrel block ... see www.accurateshooter.com
ken
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Thank you TomG and Ken...as usual you have very good informative answers. I have been working the last two days, which is why I have not responded sooner.
Do you think a standard Remington 700 SA action is capable of fine accuracy without being sleeved. I cannot find a sleeve anywhere for my 700 action.
Here is the rifle that won 1000 yard event. Shahene stock, Krieger barrel, Bat action
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i know a guy who won a regional mj benchrest match with a factory model 70 ... but only one time ...
yes from a remmy 700 i would expect under 1/2 moa ... but i would still do at least a light truing before sticking on a $400 barrel ... a little insurance against the action assembly twanging at the shot .
once you get under 1/2 moa it makes a difference where you put your elbow on the bench ... everything vibrates ...the trick is to get it all to vibrate the same way every time ...
ken
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I did a little search and found that Spencer Rifle barrels offers a custom sleeve. They didn't mention the price.
Ref: the photo, that barrel bedding block was almost exactly like the one I made. I even had the hex flats the same way with 6 hold down screws.
A really trued Rem. action can be as good as a custom action. Just keep the barrel weight reasonable. But, by the time you pay to have it all done right, you might as well buy a custom to start with. And as Ken mentioned, the re sale value is not that of a used custom.
When I was trueing Rems, I bored the boltways round and straight again with an expensive carbide cutter system to .705". Then I bushed the bolt with oval bushings to make it straight and tight in the receiver when the bolt was turned down into battery. I squared the bolt face and lugs in the same machine setup.
Every Rem. action other than a 40X that I measured was shaped like a banana. And the receiver threads were usually at least a half degree (30+ minutes) out of square with the boltways. So I recut (by boring, not tapping) the receiver threads oversize till they were straight. I then installed a heavier recoil plate and surface ground it flat. Simply squaring the face of the receiver isn't doing much good if the threads are crooked. The worst one I measured was almost a whole degree out of square with the boltways. With crooked threads in the receiver and the tapped scope mounting holes in the receiver being on center line with the boltways, when you mounted a scope on it the scope would run out of adjustment travel before it caught up with where the barrel was pointing.
With a loose bolt, it will slap every time it's shot as it is setting there with the rear being pushed up by the trigger before it goes off. Pushed up like that will unseat the top lug slightly. When it goes off the rear of the bolt will slap down as the pressure from the trigger disappears and the lugs seat in the lug recesses in the receiver. this causes unwanted vibrations that hurt accuracy. By sleeving the Bolt you keep the bolt tight in the boltways during the ignition process. This concept of cam shaped bolts was made popular by a gunsmith named Borden. They were called “Borden Bumps”
If you choose to use a loose bolt, lap the lugs in with pressure from the trigger holding the back of the bolt up. This still does not fix the problem of the boltface not being square with the ctg. head. If you ever saw cartridge heads that were beat slightly rounded, that was the result of the bolt face not being parallel with the chamber center line when it fired.
Some more things to think about.........
Tom G
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TomG and Ken, I have learned a lot by reading your posts. Also, thanks for the link.
A simple picture is worth a thousand words:
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Bullet swaging setup for taper bumping. I use a top punch and mallet to remove cast bullet from die.
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i see you have gadgets ... i love gadgets ....and pictures of gadgets ...
more gadgets ... more pictures ...
ken
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Those are not my gadgets. Those are pictures I copied from Spencers web site...making their jacketed bullets.
The Military M40/M24 sniper rifle was built on a Remington SA repeater action using a barrel contour that is very close to Heavy Varmint contour. Action/barrel was bedded 1.5” ahead of recoil lug. These 308 rifles were very accurate using max loads.
My Mcmillan stock is channeled for a Heavy Varmint contour barrel and Remington SA receiver. Gluing in a magazine follower to convert to single shot should help stiffen receiver.
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