• Winner! Quick Shot Challenge: What’s the dumbest shooting myth you’ve heard?

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Gunsmithing Factory 700 action?

Like you'd expect from mass production, varies in my experience but I'm sure many here deal with larger volumes than I...
Personal opinion, is that if you want/need "trued", just buy one of the many capable clones and you'll be ahead of the game unless you already own the action, and/or will be doing the machining yourself.
 
Yes I agree with that but I am just doing a budget upgrade on a 700 308 factory rifle I never shoot. I found a cheap take off 65 bartlien and was going to throw it on there. Just didn't know if Remington's qc got worse with cerebus sucking all their blood out or better due to modern cnc manufacturing
 
I do a mess of these things. Likely, more than anyone and I have the instrumentation/machinery to see a before/after.

From what I've seen, a typical RR prefix S/N M700 lives within about a .006" window for true position and axial concentricity. The biggest fluxuation I see is the bore size differential between the front ring by the feed ramp and the rear bridge. I use a single stroke diamond hone from Sunnen fitted to a Sunnen MBB1290 honing machine. You can tell a "tight one" from a "loose one" instantly based on the tool pressure.

When you consider that they make the action in less than 15 minutes and the price point they are offered at, it's a bargain imo. FWIW, I know for a fact that Illion just had a $2.5million upgrade in machinery. The receivers I get now (OEM direct) are nicer than they've ever been.

FYI: For the 1st time in the 57 year history of this product, Remington now offers them out of the box, fully tuned up, direct as an "action only" from the Custom Shop. Their shop is literally about 200 yards from where I'm typing this and its run by a guy I've known for over 15 years. Remington has woken to the fact that the game has changed.

Hope this helps.

C.


 
Another one that is nice IMHO are the old 722's. A local gunsmith several years ago said he liked them more for custom builds than the 700's as he also thought maybe they were better made. I had a .222 that was very smooth and nice also. They can be found pretty reasonably priced on gunbroker .com etc. in some of the less popular cartridges with dinged up stocks or whatever.