April 8th….the Remington Project
Ok….so in my last blog I began a discussion on
accuracy. The great firearm expert
Col. Cooper once said, “…only accurate rifles are interesting”. He had a point. The fact is a rifle is only good if you
are confident that it will put a projectile on a target at distance. The degree that it is capable of doing
this reflects on the value of the firearm.
Firearms are produced one of two ways. 1) a committee of business people
identify a segment of the market that needs a firearm, and judges the amount of
money that segment is willing to pay.
Then they make a firearm to satisfy that demand at the established price
point. 2) Artisans…and I mean real artisans….build a firearm from the ground up
with no regards to cost, at the end of the endeavor they calculate their costs,
put a chunk of $$ on top of that figure for profit, and sell it to the very
very small group of market participants that can afford such a beast. This is why a Holland and Holland or a
Perazzi can cost over a hundred thousand dollars.
Now…when it comes to the first method…and these are all
indicative of mass produced guns…there are serious sacrifices that mass
production must make to create a competitive firearm. Not that these guns are not fine products….it’s just that
they could be a whole lot better if someone was making them by hand.
The most obvious result of these built in imperfections is a
reduction of repeatable accuracy.
A gun that shoots a group of bullets that can all hit a pie plate at a
hundred yards is an adequate rifle for most hunting applications, and therefore
acceptable to put on the market.
That said most riflemen and riflewomen would not, nor should they
tolerate this level of inconsistency in their shooting.
This is where the custom rifle comes in.
A production made firearm can be improved…in some cases
staggeringly…with a careful rebuild program.
A note about the relative value of accuracy: I was at the range a number of years
ago working up a custom load on one of my rifles. I was getting disgusted as my groups were larger then a MOA
(minute of angle…essentially a measurement of 1 inch by 1 inch….I have know idea how the hell this
measurement ended up as a component of “time” or where the “angle” concept came
from…but it’s what everyone uses….so I do too) Anyhow…this “old timer” came up to my bench and looked
through my spotting scope at my target.
He knew I was upset and could clearly see I was shooting 5 inch
groups. He asked me what I was
working on. I explained I was
developing a hunting load. He
asked me why I was upset and I told him my groups were too big. He looked back at them through the
spotting scope….”must be going after some pretty small game”.
Ok…he had a point.
The accuracy I “needed” was a pie plate. The accuracy I wanted was a quarter. That said supreme accuracy means
confident shots, and confident shots means quick clean kills. Anything less is unethical, and in the
worst case, potentially dangerous.
So here we are., in a long winded way….to the Remington
700. I won this gun at a Safari
Club fundraiser a few years back, and it sat in my gun safe ever since. I am not as a general rule a
particularly big fan of Remington rifles, ( I’ll explain why in a later blog). But a free gun is a free gun. I am also not a big fan of
synthetic stocks….all my rifles that I use in the field are wood. So this project will be to 1) break
this gun down, 2) Smooth out the action 3) lap the locking lugs 4) make a new
walnut stock 5) Pillar bed the action 6) Glass bed the action and barrel 7)
free float the barrel 8) reset the trigger to a 3lb pull 9) checker the stock
(not necessarily in this order!)
Anyway this is the gun we will be starting with:
here is the remington 700 as it was given to me...this is about a $375 dollar gun.....the goal is to turn it into a $1500 gun!
here is the same gun with the stock discarded and the bulk parts removed. In the next blog I'll be lapping the lug and smoothing the action.
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