Glad to read it's going well for you. You're right about the bottom metal, that's a super-strong design. But sometimes it's got "tolerances." If your front action screws freely down to a "hard set" without any movement that you can feel at the stock/metal join, you've got a good thing going. In most cases for me, I've had to hog out the screw hole and dress the internal recess with an end-mill bit. Or just make a pillar that fits in the bottom metal cut to the proper length for that nice "hard" seat to torque.
As for the barrel channel, that sounds pretty smart, too, should be really effective weather/waterproofing. I've put a skin coat of "wet" liquid 24-hour epoxy in all my stocks where not bedded, used a heat gun to make it "super wet" and have never had a water issue after doing so.
Have fun, if you get some good targets of before and after, show us.
