Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Gunsmithing Question Regarding the Front Screw on a pre-64 M70 Standard

To avoid confusion, I asking about the front screw of a pre-64 M70 Winchester standard action. This is the action screw that is in the bottom of the lump on the barrel (where the rear sight dovetail is located). I recently replaced my factory stock with a semi-custom stock that did not have a hole drilled for this front screw. I have a few questions about this:

1. Do I need to use that front screw? This would require making a new hole in my new custom non-factory stock.

2. Would I need to use this front screw if I chose to have the stock bedded? It seems like it would be unnecessary to use this front screw in that case. An I wrong about this?

3. This may be an unnecessary question depending upon how the first two go, but this front screw seems like it keeps the barrel from free-floating. In fact, it seems like its the exact opposite of this. How do people normally deal with this screw?

Thanks for the advice.

My standard response to this situation has been to remove the screw, put it in a zip-lock bag with a note indicating which rifle it belonged to and move ahead with whatever minor modifications are necessary to tweak accuracy. If you are putting the barreled action in a custom stock, save the screw and the original factory stock--someone will want to buy them later...

No, not needed.



Correct, you're not wrong.



You are again correct about this. If you wish to retain the exterior appearance and not have an empty screw hole in the original stock, you shorten the screw and epoxy it in there, then provide clearance in the barrel channel to float the barrel.

Nothin' wrong here...