I picked up a Ruger M77 Hawkeye Stainless with a laminated stock over the summer and was thinking of doing a few things to tweak it. I had been thinking of doing a little work to the stock to free float the barrel. I have heard good and bad about it and know some guns like it and others can prefer to have a pressure point in the stock. A friend told me to put a piece of paper about as thick as a business card under the barrel next to the forward portion of the receiver so the rest of the barrel "floats" and fire it to see how it likes it. Well, my groups went straight to hell and I removed the paper ASAP.
When you "float a barrel is this normal to expect. Should I have figured on working up a completely new load and would it still be advisable to float the barrel and start loads from scratch? Or with a laminated stock that shouldn't warp, just leave it as is and stick with my current fodder?
The Ruger M77 already has a pressure point put in from the factory and it generally works great. How did it shoot right out of the factory. Remember rugers are very tempermental when it comes to having proper torque on the action screws too. The first thing I'd do is bed it at the recoil lug and leave the factory pressure point and then see how it shoots. Good action screw torque is generally around 90 inch pounds on angled screw, 65 on rear and just snug on the middle screw (about 40 inch pounds).
