Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunting Rifles Forend pressure points?

I've had several rifles that come with them. Most will start drifting shots after 2 or 3 shots.
I remove them with sand paper and things settle down.
This leads to a couple of questions:

1. Why do Mfg put them in in the first place?

2. How many of you remove them on rifles you own?

The points are to dampen the oscillation in the barrel. Depending upon the harmonics, that could be wise, but it could also be in the wrong place WRT the wave and it could be bad. It is probably best to adjust the tuning in some way, but that is generally beyond the scope of the average Joe out hunting. So a shoot from the hip solution is to attenuate. That should give decent groups with a broad range of variables, but not excellent groups dialed in for example something like reloading. So it is a conservative design. It is not done to be trendy, it is done because that is what is taught in engineering classes.

Their purpose is to shrink group sizes but they can and often do induce drift as the barrel temp changes and over time as the stock changes due to temp and humidity changes.

I eliminate all mine. While groups might be larger in theory, I haven't been able to notice the difference and the groups don't drift.