Gunsmithing Too much free float?

mzvarner

Sergeant
Full Member
Minuteman
Mar 7, 2013
510
379
Spokane, WA
So I picked up a slightly used B&C medalist for my Rem 700. The guy originally had a sporter barrel in it, so I had to open it up some so my heavy barrel would fit. Before I did this, I emailed the guys at B&C to make sure that was ok, which it was. I did a bunch of research on how to do it at home, and what I ended up using was a socket slightly larger than the barrel with some sandpaper. Now it is free floated all the way up to the recoil lug beautifully. However, the other day I came across some articles about free floating that say you don't want to free float the first 1-2" of the barrel from the action (chamber?). is this true? Did I remove to much?
 
Many of the new Mall-Ninja rifle stock makers have aluminum or plastic stocks where other than the action, nothing touches the barrel. I have a .25-06 long range rifle in a wood stock where other than the receiver ring, nothing touches the barrel. This allows the barrel nodes to do their thing with no restrictions. The rifle shoots very well.
 
anschutz sells pre-fomed aluminium blocks intended to host some of their ACTIONS ONLY_ I have one of these gizmos mounted on a benchrest stock, and for sure the 54match performances aren't lower than on the OEM stock, therefore the principle of what you've done is correct_
(and if you will be unsatisfied by the results, cheap & easy to adjust, too)
 
Well that's good news. I did shoot it yesterday and did not have great results but I think that was me and my bipod. I just could not get it to stay seated. I guess that I was not putting enough tension on it or the dirt I was shooting on was to dry allowing it to kick out from under.

But if I do need to fix it do I just glass bed the area?
 
My gunsmith (I ask him a bazillion questions every time I see him), told me that my rifle didn't need to be bedded forward of the recoil lug. It's a Remington 700 AAC-SD edition, i.e. 18" barrel, in a McMillan A5 stock.

His reasoning was the 18" barrel didn't need any support forward of the recoil lug. If I had a very heavy, longer barrel, then he would have bedded forward of the recoil lug a bit. I suppose now I'll have to ask him if he's going to bed my stock forward of the recoil lug when he installs the 26" Krieger barrel.
 
Thanks sentry. I have almost the exact set up. I took it out the other day and I had bipod hop issues so accuracy was hard to figure out. Hopefully it's fixed now and will see good results this weekend