Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Gunsmithing "Pressure Point" for Rem 700

I broke the original stock (it cracked) on my Rem 700 and bought a B&C Medalist. Nice stock! It converted it from ADL to BDL. I shot it yesterday and found it to be at best 2" group at 100 yards. Not good enough. Having nothing else handy, I slid a few pieces of card board (from an ammo box) under the free floated barrel and wedged them in snug. POI came up 3" but group size shrunk considerably! 2 of the 3 shots were touching and the 3rd just 1/2 off to the side! Sporter barrels are just flimsy.

So I want to add a premanent pressure point under the barrel. Question is how to best do that?

I decided to take a look at the fit between action and aluminum block. Upon inspection (and after shooting it) it was obviously not perfect. Multiple high and low spots visible on the aluminum surface. So I have already glass bedded the action and tang area. For the pressure point I thought I would add some glass under the barrel about 2" from the end of the stock, reassemble, and let cure. Then just add a 2 to 5 mil shim.

I've done glass bedding before. But never a pressure point.
Will that work? Is there a better way?

Be sure the action is bedded correctly & that the barrel is full floated as the 1st step.

Add the pressure pad area of glass as you have suggested near the end of the forearm of the stock, but do not tighten the action in at this point.

Just put the action in, push firmly into place, & if necessary, wrap a rubber band around the action & stock to keep it in place.

Let it dry, take apart, trim up the pad into a nice square, put the action back in & tighten down.

This usually yields a more or less neutral pressure point.

If you want more pressure then, use shims under the barrel while drying so the barrel is resting on the shims..........when finished, you'll have more pressure than described above when applying a neutral pressure point.

Neutral usually works for me.

In the end, if you're not happy, you can sand it out & start over.

MM

add the shim under barrel before you glass bed it and you will have the up pressure you need.

Ed

Thanks all. Looks like I'm on the right path here.

Stocks are flimsy, not barrels.

Have to disagree. Sporter barrels are flimsy when compared to bull barrells. Sporters do tend to be "whippier" and sometimes require pressure points. Yes? Never heard of a bull barreled target rifle haviny my current problem.

Stocks are, of course, flimsier than steel barrles of any configuration.

If I do wind up needing a shim or two, what would be wrong with aluminum foil? Don't have any brass shim stock handy, but can get it if needed. Thoughts?

Gun Geezer: The sides of aluminum beverage cans work well and they are free. Just use a felt pen on the edges to match the stock. This works for scope bases too. Thicker than aluminum foil but stronger. Have fun, Mel

Milk jug plastic would be good, it will not corrode. When you find how thick you want it, make two stacks, epoxy bedding between them, when dry remove the plastic, now you have a bedded pressure point.

Improvement by way of shims only highlights a bedding problem. Shims do not fix the problem, only hide it.

I have yet to see a shimmed rifle that did not turn out to be finicky. Flimsy stock, poorly bedded will give you issues with where and how you rest the rifle.

I have found a whippy barrel bedded full-length will be far better than any scab in the channel.

How do you know how much pressure you need? Or did you mean after one experiements to find best thickness of shim?

Only way I know is trial and error, which means one beds the action first with free-float, shoot, then start adding pressure (and shooting) until one finds what doesn't work, and what does work, and bed pressure point to that. Bed- not shim. Use the shim to bed to only the pressure point part, not the receive.

Just finished 2, 700's - a .22-250 ( pressure pointed , but needed free-float), and my own .243, which for years (and many head of game) shot 2+ MOA. with original pressure point factory barrel, and also with my own built stock (free-float). Last fall, just for the heck of it, I folded up a grocery receipt to 4 thicknesses , stuck it under the free-float barrel and got .75 MOA., with two out of 3 factory loads. Pure blind luck! It is also the only rifle I have that wants pressure-point, rather than shooting best with free-float.

Then I screwed up and started playing with the receiver bedding - which wasn't quite right from the git-go, but I could have continued to live with the 30-year old bedding job for that kind of accuracy. Wasn't thinking, and needed something to do anyway.... Got that where it looked/worked right, but I was back to 2.5 MOA free-float.

Hung 5 lbs weight on it to pressure point bed the forend tip, shrank it groups to 1.5 MOA. I had proven it could do better! Took that out and started all over dealing with the pressure point bedding, leaving the receiver part alone. Shot the rifle with various thicknesses of note paper, and wound up bedding to a much lighter pressure point (2 thicknesses of note paper - maybe a pound or two -) which has it down to 1 MOA - close enough!

This is the same procedure I used on the .22-250, when it wasn't shooting well with the factory pressure-point, which was going about 4MOA. Free-floated it is now well under MOA, as it should be. With each successive addition of pressure, the groups consistently got bigger.

Incidently- that third non-shooting factory load for my .243 is still non-shooting! about 3 MOA). Remington 95 gr. Accutip. Doesn't mean they won't shoot well in other rifles.

And, in my opinion, those who say a rifle needs X amount of pressure point don't know what the hell they are talking about- every rifle is different, but in my experience, nearly all will shoot best without pressure point at all. But not all, obviously.

Incidently, again- often the load will make a difference. My .243 likes 100 grs in Fed Power Shock and Hornady Whitetail, and Federal (maybe Winchester - I forget which) 80 grain.. It doesn't like Remington 95 gr, Accutip, nor Barnes 80 Vor-TX.

My .260 (Rem 725 with a 700 barrel) doesn't like anything but most any 140 grain bullets -that I have found to date- all factory loads. It likes 140's very well indeed!

Barnes 120 Vor-TX gave me the worst groups of the 3 Brands of 120's I tried.

A sample of 2 doesn't prove much, but so far, Barnes TX loads haven't exactly captured my heart......

All that screwing around when a simple stress-free bedding, full length would have likely done you better!

It didn't.... tetchy gun I guess. Has twice before however. What I try first if free-float doesn't work. Pressure point bedding is a major PITA!

I skipped mentioning the flb, which is what I did when I rebedded it the first time. Didn't work, so I free-floated the barrel again. Didn't work, then I went to the 5 lb, etc.

And sure like that full length bed I put on the on the heavy barreled Mauser! I've never had a rifle that shot better.

Had the same experience with a 22-250 Rem 700 Varmint. Best it would do with my handloads was around 1 1/2" @ 100 no matter what I tried- including bedding the action, free floating the barrel, full length bedding the barrel/action, etc.. all in my custom thumbhole stock in a varmint forearm configuration. One day, out of frustration, I started to stack business cards under the barrel at the tip of the forearm from a tip I had read years earlier. After about 2 cards it started getting better, at 3 it went to around ..25" at 100. To this day, I haven't removed the business cards as I'm afraid I'll change something and never get it back..... get some pretty funny looks when out shooting with my buddies until they see how it shoots. Funny, they start asking for business cards while we are shooting?

Bob

I'm back out tormoorow to see if pressure point with cards will help. Fingers crossed!

Any luck?

After bedding it and without "business card shims" it shot exactly the same as before bedding. Two 3-shot groups and still had 1+ inch group at 50 yards. Guess that B&C Medalist Stock is as good as bedding! So bedding at the lug, in front of the lug a full 2", and at the tang did squat.

I then added business card shims (.042" thick total) by sliding them under the barrel and wedging them in good and snug. Grouping did improve 50%, but POI was about 4" higher. Maybe to much shim or too tight?

Sliding in business cards and wedging them in "snug" is hardly and exact technique, so I'm thinking I'll go ahead and glass bed in a pressure point. I'm thinking of using about 5 to 7 lbs suspended from the front sling stud so there is a little pressure. That way I can shoot it, disassemble and add a shim, or disassembly and buff the pressure point down a tad. Play around with it till I'm happy with it. I'll be happy with a 1/2" group at 50 yards. Most people could shoot half my group size with the same or any rifle, so that'd be like 1/4" for most of you guys!

I've some work to do. But the fun is in the journey. For a while at least. My wife thinks I'm nuts.

I've had good results with 5 pounds on Rem. 700 plastic stocks but I'm far from an expert on the subject. I laid out electrical tape on the stock at a convenient spot to make a pad that goes from the top of the inlet to top on the other side, 3/4 inch wide (one tape-width, convenient to lay out). When the epoxy set up to rubbery I trimmed along the tape edge to make it look like I meant to do that.

In my modest experience changing the amount of upward force, plus or minus a bit, didn't make a noticeable difference. Didn't didn't do anything except maybe change the point of impact. But you never know...