Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunting Rifles FN Model 70 teething troubles

Here's my regiment with a new Model 70.

Free Float barrel.
Adjust Trigger
Work up load.
Go shoot tiny groups.

There's your problem! LOL

Okay, I went and did it...re-bedded the rifle. I bedded the receiver from the rear of the receiver ring and the first two inches or so of the barrel, and the area around the square "pad" at the tang...only the half inch or so around where the rear action screw enters. I taped the front and bottom of the lug, to ease disassembly and ensure that the action is not bottoming solely at the lug's lower surface. Some recommend taping the sides of the lug as well, but I reasoned that the closest fit possible is desirable from a standpoint of eliminating ANY side-to-side play.

Hopefully the support the barrel now has will help it recover it's "whips" to the same point every time regardless of its temperature or other variables. If this doesn't work, I'm pretty much out of solutions and will have to look (or have the factory look) at whether or not the barrel is straight.

I've got a lot of different loads to try. If I "open fire" Saturday afternoon, that'll give the Acraglas (gel) about 44 hours to have cured. Is this sufficient?

Wish me luck!

Why did you whittle away at the factory bedding? Did you do this after you shot the rifle? How many different loads did you try? How's the moa trigger? You using a "proven" scope to verify accuracy. Loose actions in stocks don't cut it and that's what you achieved when you took the factory bedding out.


Generally (from my experience) the new FN's are bedded very well from the factory. Your grinding away at the factory bedding was kind of pointless unless you checked it with a dial indicator to conclude there was a problem with the factory bedding: IE, stressed receiver in stock. As far as your comment about the fwt's having pencil thin barrels that need support under them, I call bullchite. The fwt's have shot lights out (in my experience) with no bedding under the barrel at all, this includes under the chamber area. If you got a lemon from Winchester, re-glass bedding the rifle isn't going to make it shoot any better. If and when you decide it still doesn't shoot good enough, now you've added your own bedding and they will frown upon that and say it's not shooting good because of your tinkering.

He's already reached for the dremel. Or am I reading his first post wrong???? :




I also suspect that's why his rifle is shooting like chit..

Good rifles will shoot chit ammo better than a bad rifle will shoot good ammo...

I had a Remington that drove me nuts awhile back, had it bore scoped and rifling was partially missing and badly chattered. Remington rebarreled rifle free of charge.

Good post!!!!

Just to address some possible misunderstandings. I try not to fix things that aren't broken!

1) I "got out my Dremel" only after shooting half a dozen different loads (both factory and handloads, with uniformly mediocre results), sending the scope back to Leupold, attempting to put upward pressure at the forend tip, trying different combinations of action screw tightness, and reading quotes from Jack O'Connor to the rifle.

2) When I finally did grind away at the factory bedding, I did so cautiously, only relieving the areas around the lug other than at the rear of same. I didn't really remove much material until last night when I decided to re-bed entirely, incorporating support at the rear of the barrel.

I'm thinking that if I DO end up sending the rifle back to the factory, the defect will be so gross as to eliminate the possibility that the problem is due to my work.

The proof, of course, is in the pudding...I'll know a lot more after I shoot it tomorrow!

I have 3 M70 FN rifles. Two are featherweights and one sporter. A 7x57 shot everything I fed it well for hunting purposes. The 264WM took a long time to find the load. I finally found three that are well under an inch. Before that though I was having horizontal and vertical stringing and patterns not groups. So it was way more finicky than the 7x57 or the 30-06. The trigger was similar to the other two and the stock screws were torqued right and the bedding looked good. So it may just be finicky like mine.

I bet some good donuts if you send it back to winchester they send it back with a note warranty voided cause you took a dremel to it. I would bed it myself

Success!

The results of my afternoon at the range were satisfying; of the five loads I tested, all save one (the 110 gr.) managed to group right around an inch. Most groups consisted of two shots half an inch apart with the third opening things up to an inch, 1 MOA.

While my firing pace was hardly "rapid fire", I didn't make any attempt to slow the pace to allow cooling between shots. I did take breaks (during which I fired other rifles) between groups to allow some degree of barrel cooling. Tomorrow I'm going to consciously space shots out for longer intervals, just to see if letting the barrel cool between shots has any effect.

Next: Load development!

P.S. Another test subject performed nicely today. For years I've been contemplating glass (or, rather, epoxy) bedding my M1A, but fear of the complexity and the possibility of gluing moving parts together kept me from doing so. Well, a month or so ago I figuratively bit the bullet and spent the majority of a weekend on that project; I was pleasantly rewarded with a rifle that would disassemble just as it had before. Today I got to fire it, and the results were five shot groups of just under an inch with GI M852 match ammo using iron sights. I'm a happy guy!

I wait two minutes between shots and h4831 is the powder to use in the 270

Actually, my best load today was with RL-22; just a hair better than the RL-19 load. I wanted to get some H4831sc, but none was available locally so I settled for RL-22. I'm anxious to try some 4831; most people, like you, say it's the powder of choice for the .270. Do you use standard or magnum primers?

I use std primers with 140gr hornady bullets. Every now and then you will find the occasional oddball using 4064

I'm an odd ball. I use IMR 4350. Just loaded up some ammo a second ago for my buddy. He likes the sierra gk and IMR 4350 in his TC venture. The rifle prints 3/4" 5 shot groups with ease with this load...