Before I say anything, I want to make it clear I'm an avid Rem 700 fan, nearly every rifle I own is a Remmy of various flavors, with the exception of a Howa 1500 22-250 that I took possesion of at a rediculous good price and judging by the way it shoots, an extremely good bargin. I also own a couple winny's, but all in all, Im a green through and through Remmy fan.


To my question/observation.

I have not purchased a new Remington 700 stock rifle in a couple of decades. I have however purchased a few Remington bare bones actions to build customs from. These custom rifles always served me well and shot to the standard I would expect from the quality of parts, and craftsmanship I acquired from my hard earned dollars. I just never in atleast 20 years purchased a complete rifle with the intent to shoot it.

A couple years ago, my wife after 30 years of marriage decides to catch the hunting bug. She wants her very own hunting rifle, so to start her off we make a trip to the local gun shop to pick her rifle. After sholdering a few different models, she decided the Remington 700 compact .243win with a 22 inch barrel felt the best to her. So we make the purchase, buy 4 different brands of ammo and set off to mount a leupold vx3 3x9x40 and zero that sucker in. The very best I could get was around 2 inch groups at 100 yds, and that was with federal fusion ammo. I should note that before we shot the rifle, I ran a patch soaked with some bore solvent followed with a few dry patches through the barrel, loosened the action screws and insured the recoil lug was seated firmly against the pocket and retightened the screws. Also made shore all scope rings and bases were torqued.

After trying several handloads, we finally got her to shoot 1.7 at 100, but Im not happy if I can't get her to do 1 MOA at 100 yards.

Second incident with a brand new Remington 700 came a few months ago when my nephew purchased the new sendero in a 25-06. It was much the same thing. We could not get that rifle to shoot any better than 1.5 at 100. We tried several different ammo, handloads which he doesnt want to do, he would rather shoot factory ammo, but I tried anyway because I was sure the rifle would/should be able to shoot tighter than that. But was unable to squeeze much more out of it. I suggested he send it to a competent smith and have it bedded, and new trigger added, and check the crown. He finally got his rifle back a couple weeks ago and is reporting the rifle will shoot in the 7's with the occasional .5 groups when he does everyrthing right. I believe he said he was shooting win Supreme silver tips.

I can remember my last factory rifle I paid for which was a Remington 700 stainless synthetic in a 7mm magnum not being anywhere near that difficult to get to shoot.

I guess my question is has Remington fell off that much in the quality of their barrels? I have to admit Im not at all a fan of their stocks, and offten felt they have slipped a bit in their quality control, but I guess my last two experiences with a factory offering by them has been a little dissapointing. Since then I have shot a TC in a 270 win, and a howa in a 6.5 creedmoor, and a savage axis in a .243 and all them shot well for factory sticks. Can not believe the Remington's I've shot recently have'nt shot to the same standard. I know my sample size is quiet small, but I figured I would throw it out there and see what your experiences were on the matter. If I were for whatever reason to decide to buy a factory back up to my custom, I would like knowing that after spending 800.00 dollars on a rifle, I wouldnt need to spend another 800.00 or so in barrel work to make it shoot 1 MOA.

The newer Remingtons seem to be hit or miss.A few years ago I bought a Remington Long Range 30-06.It was long throated and shot lousy.I sent it in for warranty repairs and after 5 months,I got it back.They replaced the receiver and the barrel.It shot a little better,but not that much better,about an 1.5-2" average.I got tired of burning up bullets and powder,so I sent it off to JES and turned it into a 338-06 and it shoots really good now.Last year I bought a Remington Long Range Stainless Steel in a 7mag when they had the rebates going on.I paid about $600 after the rebate.That rifle is a great shooting rifle.A friend of mine bought one too in a 300 Win Mag.He's very happy with his too.It also shoots .75" or less.This is how my 7mag shoots.

There accuracy has pretty much always been hit or miss.
In the 80s and 90s a bud of mine and I had access to many M700s..ie a very friendly local gun shop.
We tested many used 700s.
Typically NONE were ever cleaned properly.
Once the bores were clean, some were good , some were very good and a very few were excellent.
By and large theres alot of hohum shooters out there.
The one thing we found in common was that factory M700 barrels are all rough.And all fouled..copper fouled, very quickly.
Once there copper fouled accuracy is less than optimal.
I just dont bother with factory barrels anymore.
lifes to short..

dave

Aside from my wifes .243, I have zero Remingtons with factory tubes on them. Your sentiment of life being to short is well observed.

I was tired of buying a new rifle only to have it rebarreled. Hence why I buy an action and have what I want built. I do appreciate the Remington action.

If you can't get it to behave, a takeoff 243 barrel on here is 75 bucks or less. Try again. I have had half a dozen Remington 700s in 243 and only one that didn't shoot great and that was before I reloaded my own ammo

I own several counterexamples.

I’ve had around 20, always great shooters.

I've probably had over 50! And for years I used a left hand Rem 700 action to shoot NRA HP events with and out of thousands and thousands of rounds fired, slow fire and rapid fire stages I never had a failure to feed or extract or firing pin problems! Won lots of prone 1000 yard sling matches shooting the same actions!

Here's the latest bought 18 months back:

Ten rounds fired from 900 yards I could cover with less than the palm of my hand; fingers NOT extended!!

308 Win/Remington M700 factory barrel/action by Sharps Man, on Flickr

I have had many Remington 700's over the years, some shoot OK some not so good. One thing I have found that makes any factory barrel shoot better and copper foul less is shooting a David Tubb abrasive bullet kit through them when new. you can see the difference with a bore scope and on the targets.
Most factory barrels are hammer forged and somewhat rough inside with Remington being among the worst, shooting some Tubbs bullets through them makes a big difference. When I got my bore scope I had to look at all my barrels and some of my friends and familys guns too. most of my factory tubes have been replaced now but the smoothest I have left are CZ barrels. I did some work on one of my friends rifle a couple weeks ago, it is a Browning A-Bolt stainless in 270 it has a button rifled barrel that is as good as any custom I have. I have seen this before on a random Weatherby. the worst barrel I have seen was my Remington 40X in.222 that barrel was made into a tomato stake years ago.

Try some Copper Creek ammo if you are not going to reload for it. Good looking rifle in your Avatar

I've been running Remington 700's among many other rifles for a very long time. Every rifle maker makes a lemon and Remington makes a LOT of rifles, so they are due to make a few lemons once in a while. Talk to gunsmiths and a rough barrel doesn't always equate to a bad shooter. Some very rough barrels sometimes shoot very well as long as everything else is in order- straight action, square receiver abuttment, square bolt face, and well cut chamber.

One thing to try to see if your barrel may have some stresses that has worked for me. I have a 22-250 700 Varmint that I couldn't get to shoot to my standards- which is under .5" with my handloads. Nothing was working, even though I got very close to that .5" mark. A buddy suggested putting some pressure on the barrel at the end of the stock so I started with a business card and added cards until I saw improvement. I think it was 3 business cards created enough pressure and that thing was shooting regularly in the .2's and .3's with my handloads. In fact, I'm afraid to remove the cards as something might change. I get some strange looks from my shooting pards until I smoke them at long range targets like rock chucks, sage rats, etc....

I've tried this with other rifles and some respond and some don't but it is worth a try and it's cheap....

My favorite 700 started out as a .17 Rem, which was a hoot to shoot and was deadly on coyotes and other vermin until I shot out the barrel. I had ITD put a .223 LVSF factory take off barrel on it and punch it out to 223AI and it is just a jewel now. Shoots better than I am capable of...

Bob

I have a Remington 700 Youth Model in 243, which would be comparable to the Compact. Bought it 6 or 7 years ago at a Walmart Black Friday sale. Put an old Weaver 3X10 on it, and it shoots 85 grain Sierra HP's into an inch at 200 yards.

I priced my Howa 6.5CM to a neighbor, never thinking he'd buy it, but he did. I replaced it with a new Model 700 SPS in 6.5, bought about 3 weeks ago. I had to replace that awful Xmark Pro trigger, but otherwise did nothing else to it. Now, I haven't shot it a lot, but it is shooting my handloads into less than an inch at 100 yards, and busting watermelons and pumpkins at 300. Which is good enough to me for deer killing accuracy, although I'm still not trough playing with it.

I've never had a 700 or 7 that didn't shoot good. I don't shoot factory ammo, I reload for every rifle I own, except some AR's, so maybe that has something to do with it. Whatever is the case, no complaints from me.

If you are happy with the way it shoots with the card-board shims, use them as a dam and make a permanent pad out of bedding compound to replace it. Your friend's funny looks will disappear if nothing else.

I've taken out a lot more pressure pads than I've put back in. Since most 700s have fore-end pressure in the first place it comes up a lot. It isn't unusual to bed and free-float just to find out that it shoots about the same as it did in the first place. At that point its easier to shrug and assume that it is more likely to hold zero, rather than concede that you have successfully fixed a problem you didn't even have.

Fore-end pressure can mask bedding problems, but it can also accent them. It sometimes will minimize cold shot errors on rifles, but may cause walking as it heats up. It can also do the opposite for the first few. One characteristic I've noted on Weatherbys that are typically pressure bedded is they have an uncanny knack of putting that first shot of the day exactly where it was supposed to go, even if they were just average shooters after that. That's the sort of thing that keeps taxidermists in business and freezers full.

Another thing I believe, but don't feel like going through the effort to try to prove is that pressure bedded rifles are more apt to shoot different loads to the same POI than barrels that are free to fly wherever they want.

Makes sense but I'm not trying to convince anyone this is the end all problem solver. This is a simple and inexpensive way to try to eliminate variables and get a favorite rifle to shoot as it should. More than likely if your pressure point is getting you where you want to be, accuracy wise, it means the barrel isn't screwed into the action as square as it should be or the action face hasn't been squared up to the barrel shoulder and recoil lug, IMO. My particular 22-250 shot fine in the factory stock and is an older Varmint BDL model before they started putting in the pressure point. After I built a thumbhole stock with a wide beavertail foreend for it for prone rockchuck shooting, it exhibited the odd behavior. I could easily replace the cards with an epoxy pressure point, but that rifle doesn't get shot much anymore since I built a 223AI, so I kind of have neglected it for the moment.

All in all, I've tried this on about 6 rifles that didn't shoot as well as I thought they should, given the components, and I think 2-3 of them reponded. The others pretty much shrugged at me and said "I told you so" .... Several of those went down the road except for one 25-284 I'm still playing with occasionally to see if I can win this one. It's just too nice to send it down the road and has great work and components on it , so it should shoot well, right?

Bob

I am no fanboy of any particular brand, and I have a couple of older 700s that shoot good. I wonder though,if the new ones are truly hit and miss for accuracy,why not look elsewhere. I bought my youngest boy a Tikka 243 and it shoots incredibly well. That seems to be a common trait to these rifles, and a couple other brands are in there too for consistent accuracy . Factory rifles have made incredible improvement the last 10 years. I realize any brand can, and do produce a bad rifle, same with customs, but why not play the odds?

Ha eddie...

Wonder where I picked that rifle up at? I handload for everyrhing I own... the wifes .243 not so much.. she's more or less happy it just foes BANG!

I've owned a lot of Remington 700 rifles, and ha e replaced the barrel on most. Every Remington I have in house now does not have the barrel it started with. If I have a rifle that refuses to shoot .5 MOA, then I have a rifle for sale.

I have an OLDER Howa 1500 in a 22-250 I picked up for nearly nothing. I thought the action would make a good doner for a build since I didnt have a lot in it. After it sit in the safe for well over a year collecting dust, I finally decided to mount a scope to see what it would do. I picked up a cheap box of remington 55grn ammo, and off to the range I went. It shot so well I'm talking in the 4's and 5's that I couldn't stand the thoughts of tearing it apart. Now it's my light weight yote buster. Trigger is aweful though with a ton of creep, but thats nothing that cant be fixed.

I have a rebarreled 30-06 I need to send to Eddie to replace the turd that I replaced the factory turd with. That was the first and last douglas barrel I use. I will stick with krieger. I know all barrel makers can make a bad barrel, but seems my hit/miss ratio with krieger has been quiet good.

The 30-06 has been sort of a problem child from the start. And before you ask, the barrel is not contacting the stock anywhere in the barrel channel, and it has been bedded, and it has a nice crisp trigger. But I have had shoddy work from smith's before.

Currently only have two M700s. First one I ever owned, is a 70s vintage walnut ADL in 25-06. Accurate from the git go, still is after.40 years. Also have a newer ADL synthetic in 223 that shoots pretty well. Best friend had around a dozen M700s and a 40XB in 7mm mag. All were accurate, especially the pair of M700 varminters he bought back in the 70s. A 6mm Rem and a 22-250.

If he ever bought a M700 that wasn't up to his standards, I never got to hear of it?

Around 1998 he picked up an ADL synthetic in 223 just for the helluvit. Like the one I have, it has a fairly stout tube on it. Got five boxes of American Eagle "for the brass" to reload. That thing shot so well with that stuff, he went back and got a case of the same lot number. Said he'd shoot that and spend his time loading for the other dozen varmint rifles he had

Only new rifle I ever recall him having issues with, was a M77 heavy barrel in 25-06. Never did find a load that it liked, got tired of tinkering with it and turned it into a 6mm-06 w/26" Douglass SS tube.

My experience and observation of M700 production the last few years is they tend to shoot very well. I have one friend who is having a hard time getting his 308 to shoot good though.

Remington SS barrels I have clean a easily as my custom barrels. My CM barrels in three M700 243's are fouling mutha's though (of course 243's have that reputation), and one of those is a pristine 1983 vintage rifle that does not like any bullet I've tried except for the 95gr NBT.

Long time Remington fan, myself. Most of my stuff has been re-barreled, though, because I wanted something Remington didn't offer.

Of my most recent 700 purchases.....
I bought a new stainless SPS in .300 Win Mag a couple years ago. I immediately chopped 2" off the barrel and swapped-out the stock. When I bedded it in the new stock, though, I realized that the recoil lug was off kilter (rotated a few degrees). I played hell getting the barreled action out of the stock, and after reassembly (more finagling), it shot ok, but nothing special. I thought about dumping it and buying a new one in AWR guise, but I kept it and decided to use it as a donor. As of this spring, it's still a .300 Win Mag, but now it now wears a Mullerworks barrel, TriggerTech Primary, Rimrock stock, a straight recoil lug (grin). As one would hope, after all of that, it shoots very well.

Back in May, I took a new stainless action and had it turned into a 24" .280AI in a Ti stock. I probably should have started with an ADL as a donor, though. I needed enough little parts, it would have been worthwhile.

I just picked up a new stainless ADL in .223 this week. I bought it with the intent on re-barreling it with a faster twist and finished between 16.5 - 18" for a suppressor. In the meantime, I plopped it in a take-off Ti stock and installed a Jewel trigger. I'm hoping to get out and shoot it this weekend, out of curiosity, more than anything. I just can't see keeping it a 1-12" twist.


I guess maybe I like 700s more for what they can be, rather than what they actually are coming from the factory?

Agree that the 700's have become a hit and miss proposition. From my experience, if you get one that is chambered straight, you're probably okay. Every one of the rifles that people could not make shoot well that ended up on my bench had chambers cut that were not concentric with the bore. The worst case was one that was so far off it had rifling on one side of the case neck.

I have learned that jumping the bullet .100+ often helps. Berger explains this approach on their website.

My best result using this method on a rifle with a crooked chamber made a gun (242 compact) that would not hold 1.75 inches at 100 yds a 1/2 gun but I was jumping the bullet .150.

Some rifles just plain would not shoot regardless of tweaking was done, new bedding included.

This right here...that was the problem with my 30-06. I replaced that factory barrel with a Douglas barrel. It shoots much better, but the douglas has another problem. The first two shots are relatively close. The third shot will creep up about and inch and to the right about an inch. Every shot after that will creep up and to the right a little further. If I wait at least 15 minutes between shots I can squeeze about .75 out of it. I still hunt with it sometimes because that first shot is going right where it's suppose to. Killed a pile of deer with it.

After this season, I will probably replace the douglas with a krieger.

I have owned several 700s and all have shot well. Two of the three that I own now, were re-barreled, not due to accuracy, but for caliber change. I have an sps 7 mag, that is a half moa shooter. I do, however, notice a difference in fit and finish and also the stupid trigger.

I have a friend that sent two upper-end 700s back to Remington, before finally getting a third one that shot correctly. One had a crown that was jacked up right out of box and the second, had action problems. Definitely a quality control issue.

How is it bedded? Douglas barrels are usually well stress relieved.

Rifle has been bedded. Will probably send it to eddie to see what he thinks...probably will swap out the barrel.

I've had a wad of Mod 700s, and 7's through the years. I'd say 2/3 shot very well with a little tweaking. The 1/3 that didn't got turned into customs or traded/sold off for customs. I have had several Adams & bennett barrels from Midway ( $99) that made excellent shooters! I've also used more Shilen's than any others, though I have had Kreiger, Pac-Nor, Lilja, Douglas and a few others too. I have used NECO firelap kits too, and it improved everyone I used them on. I think it gets down the luck of the draw. I've hears of fine custom rifles that couldn't hit a bear in the behind with a bass fiddle, have had commercial Mausers, Mod 70s that would not feed right, and so on. I've had better luck with Marlin leverguns than Winchester levers too. Had a couple Ruger #1s that were pure dippy doodoo. One just has to pick one and use it awhile.

If you call it a "Remmy", it will think its a beret wearing Frog!

IMO, it's all about the quality of the chambering job. I've used most of the brands of barrels through the years from very cheap (and the bore looked it) to the top end and all shot well if the threading, fitting and chambering were done right. Find a quality smith and get it done right and you will go a long ways to having an accurate rifle. Yes the bedding needs to be right and a good trigger helps for sure but if the steel is off, the rest will not fix it.

Did not read the entire post but three things come to the front of the accuracy equation from factory rifles. First overlooking a bad barrel will be: bedding, recoil lug contact and trigger. Fix these before buying a new barrel.

I just had a 7mm/08 built from the ground up. It started out as a mint 1985 700BDL .243 action.

Beautiful rifle...which stock is that?

As you know, there are so many variables that can affect a rifle's performance even to an experienced shooter. Bullet. Wind. Bullet. Wind. All the etc.s. Trigger. Pulling the trigger.

Liked my Remington 7mm Long Range so much, bought another a few serial numbers from the same lot. After they reached copper equilibrium, two cold bore shots and using only handloads am usually happy with the results, but only shoot 700-1100 meters and am just happy to hit the target at that distance. I never remove the copper as each subsequent bullet wipes excess copper fouling from bore.

You might have her try shooting it prone with a bipod and bag and see if results improve.

Although I no longer shoot factory loads, have found that many factory cartridges suffer from concentricity issues (runout) and varying bullet seating lengths and the usual other shortcomings of production.

Have a 700 in .270 that usually is .75" at 100 meters with handloads.

I have found that to be true, even with hunting ammo from a "high end" brand.