Clark I have personal experience n of 3. A PSS, a VSSF (both HS Precision), and one of the grand daddies of the chassis rifles made by Zelenak in the late 80's early 90's. All three are/were mated to short action Remington's; two SA's and one 40x. Only the Zelenak shot wurf a flip. It is a V-block and is ugly as sin. If I had to devine a trend in your experience, I'd say that you should make your own blocks and not buy other people's!
Reading through the different experiences, my theory (which might have relevance for the OP) is that a factory 700 action is a crap shoot. Sometimes they work in a block and sometimes they won't. My friend at the USMC PWS took on the mission of extending time between rebeds of the M40 (A1's at the time), and played with bedding blocks. Part of his problem was that the receiver bottoms weren't always true (he thought they sometimes were warped during the heat treat). The most perfectly milled bedding block won't mate up if your receiver is not straight. Hence the positive experiences of the folk using custom Rem 700 clones (just my theory).
The rifle that leaps to mind in the Bedding block done right is the AI AW. I don't think there's much argument that Malcolm Cooper got it right with his chassis based stock 30+ years ago (same era my 2112 friend was chasing his tail). Closer to the core question, he even produced rifles with blocks mounted in a laminated wood stock for the 300M and Palma crowd in England.
Now even the USMC is going the way of a chassis rifle with the Mark 13 Mod 7 rifle and I can only guess that Remington or Crane improved the QC of those M700 receivers for that contract.
Someone asked about prepping the blocks for bedding. I didn't do mine because I thought I could get more money for them unmessed with. But friends that had success took a grinder (and drill) to the block to give the bedding compound something to bite onto.
To the OP, if RTZ is part of your purpose...make sure you buy a torque wrench.
Last edited by ChrisF; 04/26/20.
