Hi All,
Quite a few of you will have seen that I am not enourmed with this free floating barrel thing. I love classic rifles and have a few, none of which have free floated barrels. Now the difference as I see it is costs and quality of materials and workmanship.
Wood as you are all aware can and sometimes does move, however the old guns with proper air Dried walnut stocks seem much better at staying stable than the new stuff using the Kiln dried method. As an old carpenter told me, years ago when you went into a wood yard you were offered the good stuff which was all air dried then the chep stuff which was Kiln dried............... now it's the supposedly good stuff which is kiln dried the other is more like green
and we wonder why it warps. This is why good quality custom stockers and gunsmiths will not used a wood blank until they have had it for at least 5 years just to make sure it's dried correclty and stable.
The blame is aimed right at the :-
Great God Excessive Profit
Yes I have a couple of more modern rifles which have floated barrels, they also have modern kiln dried wood
Oh and free floating is nothing new, certain target rifles had free floated barrels back in the 1930's, funny thing is that the most popular small bore target rifle of the time the BSA Martini din't have a floted barrel and one the majority of the competitions
