In more than 40 yrs. of collecting and shooting/hunting pre'64 M/70 FWT rifles I have never found it necessary to do anything to the bedding of the barrel or action. Always have been able to find a handload that produced acceptable hunting accuracy.
Then you may never have shot one with the original factory barrel bedding--which was FAR from free-floated. Instead it was just kind of loose--just enough to have the forend vibrate against the barrel in various weird ways.
There's more than one review of the new Featherweight back in those days that reported schidt accuracy. Unless, of course, you consider 2-4" 5-shot groups "acceptable hunting accuracy," which some of the reviews generously did back then.
