Freefloating

[jd3006]

New member here and my first post. Hope I can make many new friends here.I've read that most Remington rifles come with a hump in the stock near the end of the barrel and that many Rems. shoot better with this hump removed allowing the barrel to be freefloated. If I remove this hump and seal the wood where I sanded the channel would the action need glass bedding also or can I just reattach the barreled action to my stock and have a freefloated barrel and hopefully a more accurate rifle? If its true that Rems. tend to shoot better freefloated then why does Rem. insist on producing rifles with this hump?

[skeet]

First off let me welcome you to the board. Hope you can add a bit of spice to it. Lots of nice people here.

Just wondering if you have shot the Rem yet? If the accuracy isn't what you expect..before you take anything out of the bbl channel try a card or two up near the forend tip. Once that ol wood is gone..it be gone. If the accuracy gets no better. then you can try the scrape the bbl channel trick. If the rifle is a little older just make sure the guard screws are tight and start scraping the forend. If ya get her all free floated and it shoots better. then ya go ahead and seal the bbl channel. I haven't ever had to free float a rifle completely yet and never glass bedded one of my own. Not hard to do but you really have to be careful that you get release agent on EVERYTHING that might stick. Rocky can probably give you a bit more info on the rifle side of things. Again..welcome aboard!

[Jack]

Jd, welcome to Huntchat!
I think Skeet has given good advice.
One of the most difficult rules to follow when tinkering with guns is "if it ain't broke, don't fix it".
A lot of gunsmiths do a lot of work salvaging firearms for people who forgot that rule (you can ask me how I know this, but I ain't talkin.... )
How well is the rifle shooting now?
I know it is accepted wisdom that free floating improves accuracy...and often it does- but far from always. Many sporter barrels shoot as well or better with that contact point right behind the forend tip. Why else would Remington put it there?
(Ruger does, too, btw)
In answer to your other question, free floating a barrel does NOT require you to glass bed the action. The 2 jobs are frequently done at the same time, but they don't have to be.

[Gil Martin]

These folks have given solid advise. I usually free-float the barrel channels on my bolt action rifles. Just a personal preference thing that works for me. It depends on what you prefer and works. All the best...
Gil

[jd3006]

I think my rifle's inaccuracy is probably more me than it. I completely agree " If it ain't broke don't fix it". I was more curious than anything else and thought I'd ask about the freefloating without glass bedding. This rifle shoots pretty good now, at least minute of deer, (2 shots this year yielded 2 bucks in the freezer, 1 at 40 yards and 1 at 270 measured yards). It just doesn't look too good on paper sometimes. I'm guilty of reading too many articles by all the "experts" that seem to shoot 1 inch or better groups with every rifle they touch, knowing all the while that it is a whole lot easier to shoot with a keyboard than a rifle. I'm new to the forum but been shooting/hunting for 40 years. Thanks guys.

[L. Cooper]

Honest "minute of angle" hunting rifles are a lot fewer and farther between than appears on boards such as this. In a standard sporter type rifle used for hunting big game, 1" groups are just not important.

However, I do free float all the barrels of my rifles. It has seriously helped accuracy in a couple, done nothing I could measure to a few, and seriously hurt the accuracy of one which I sold after I put the pressure back with fiberglass.

So I don't do it for accuracy. The reason I do it is that I find the point of impact changes far less with floated barrels. I like wooden stocks, and it seems to me that floated barrels are less prone to point of impact changes due to extreme temperature and moisture changes. I live in Saskatchewan, and my rifles get used in temperatures from over 30 C to below -30 C. Perhaps synthetic stocks would not create problems, but I don't like them, so I think floating wooden stocks makes sense for me.

I also glass bed everything, and that has produced accuracy increases in every rifle I have done it to. Sometimes not very much increase, but it has never hurt any rifle I owned. Bedding is not complicated, but be sure, as Skeet suggests, that you don't end up gluing the action to the stock. I understand that the bench rest competitors think it can make for good accuracy, but I need to take my rifles apart sometimes for cleaning and drying.

I have read about shimming the action with pieces of plastic credit cards to get the barrel floated so you can run a test of what would happen when you actually do the free floating. You can also use the plastic to increase the fore end pressure by sliding a strip under that barrel as an experiment to see what pressure does in your rifle. If more pressure equals better accuracy, maybe free floating isn't a good idea.

I believe Remington applies barrel pressure because their statistics say lots of guns will shoot better with pressure, and it is cheaper to produce guns with pressure than with free floated barrels. I think most free floated and glass bedded rifles will be more consistent (I didn't say accurate) than the standard stock Remington.

[Cossack]

Aside from the great advice re free floating your Remmi, glass bedding allows you to tighten the stock screws more unformally, which can contribute to accuracy as well.
But a gun with a bad barrel will likely shoot poorly regardless of floating or bedding. So, check the barrel if you're not satisfied with accuracy, esp the crown.

[PJgunner]

L. Cooper said,"I have read about shimming the action with pieces of plastic credit cards to get the barrel floated so you can run a test of what would happen when you actually do the free floating. You can also use the plastic to increase the fore end pressure by sliding a strip under that barrel as an experiment to see what pressure does in your rifle. If more pressure equals better accuracy, maybe free floating isn't a good idea."

I've used that credit card trick for years. It works just fine, and most of the time, credit card shims work just fine. Usually, I kind of glue them in place with some nail polish. If the free float works, with them in place, I just leave them there. If they don't work, the nail polish as glue will let you easily remove the shims.

There is a method to my madness on leaving the shims in place if it helps accuracy. Some companies. Sturm-Ruger especially, will not repair a rifle that has been altered in any way. A good example was the M77 I once had that I'd purchased second hand. The previous owner had free floated the stock, and while the gun was a good shooter, the claw extractor would not extract. I sent the gun back to them for repair and was informed that I would have to pay for a new stock. I let them know that the problem was the extractor, but unless I paid for a new stock, they would not fix the rifle. I told them to send it back, bought an extractor for a mauser and fixed the damn gun myself. Why? Because the replacement stock would have cost more than what I'd paid for the rifle.

usually, one thickness of an old credit card plced under the action at the rear of the recoil lug and another of the same thickness cut to fit under the tang at the rear of the action will suffice. This will still leave enough contact by the recoil lug to do it's job.

The real benefits of free floating and glass bedding, should you go that route is the rifle will be more consistant under all conditions. I have a Remington 700 BDL that is a consistant 1.5" gun with the load of choice hitting exactly three inches high at 100 yards. The rifle sits in an early H&S Precision stock made back in 1981 when their plant was still in Prescott Arizona. I sighted the rifle in three inches high with the 180 gr. Winchester silvertip ammo, and then worked up 180 gr. loads using the Sierra Pro-hunter and Nosler 180 gr. Partiton to hit at the same point of impact. All this was done in 1981. Just prior to hunting season, I take the rifle out and fire three rounds at 100 yards to check the sights. I can take that gun out tomorrow and it will hit right where it was sighted in way back then and probably ten years from now, if I'm still alive, I figure it will still hit three inches high with a 1.5" group. It is the most consistant rifle I own.
I used to own a neat mauser in 30-06 that would do .375" groups all the time. The problem was while it was consistantly a tight grouper, it never put the groups to the same place. I still have it, but now it's glass bedded into a McMillan Classic style stock. It's good for one inch now, most of the time,and shoots to the same place consistantly. I consider that more important that super tight groups all over the place.
Sorry if I got too long winded, but I hope it helps.
Paul B.

[jplonghunter]

jd

Welcome to the forum. Always good to get another opinion. I can't really add anything except I glass bed all my rifles as I feel it eliminates barrel channel distortion in all kinds of weather. As everyone has stated,be sure to use release agent on all metal,otherwise you wind up with a one piece rifle or a stack of kindling.

jplonghunter