can a smith pull the barrel, square the action, and reinstall barrel? if so, how much? i was about to restock it and i hate to do that until barrel is straight.
To do what you want, assuming the action is the cause of the problem, it's a bit more complicated.
To square the action requires cutting a larger dia thread in the action. hence the barrel will then be a sloppy fit. The way to correct that is to cut off the threaded tenon on the barrel, rethread the barrel to the larger dia, then re-chamber the barrel. The problem is most sporter barrel contours don't have enough meat to allow that much of the barrel to be removed at the breach. So what you're really looking at is having the action squared and a new barrel fit.
BTW, I picked up a rem 700 .223 varmint gun with the same afliction. Some "gunsmith" had set the barrel back so I don't know if he cut the threads in the action crooked, or the barrel threads, or screwed up both. But the darn gun shoots, so I'm going to shoot out the barrel, then get it fixed.
