Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Gunsmithing Shimming a 700 barrel

I have a 700 Mountain Guide. I've been thinking about free floating the barrel. I read something in another post about shimming the front of the action / back of the barrel to see if free floating would help without doing anything permanent to my stock.

So what would I use to shim it and how would I do that? When putting it back together, how tight / loose to I snug the action?

Thanks.

What's the gun shooting like now? Temporarily lifting the front of the action so the barrel is free of the stock isn't going to tell you much if anything. You need to maintain uniform support for the action and adding enough shims to free the barrel ain't the way to do it. That would be like painting your teeth black to see what you would look like with no teeth.

If you are seriously contemplating free floating the barrel, then do it. If you decide you don't like it, it is fairly easy to replace the pressure point.

credit card or posterboard will work (those laminated "membership cards" are great). this'll give you the idea of how it shoots (differently).

and it is easy to rebed/repressurize if you decide to with bedding compound.

OK, point made with the black teeth comparison, lol. I'll just skip the idea of shimming if yall will help with the free float job. What do I use to remove the extra material out of the barrel channel?

Right now the rifle is very inconsistent. I'm shooting around 3"-4" groups, and then a 2" group once. I've been letting the barrel cool between shots and that's indoors off a rest. I'm no wonder-shot, but I've owned and shot several MOA rifles.

I don't handload, but figure even good factory ammo would shoot better than 4". The trigger is great. Any suggestions?

I recommend for beginners to remove the barreled action, put masking tape down both sides of the barrel, reassemble the gun and with a ink pen, trace the profile of the barrel onto the stock. The masking tape protects the barrel from being scraped by the pen. Pull the barreled action and remove the stock material to the line. Coarse sand paper and a wooden dowel work about as good as anything except barrel channel tools. Good luck, and keep the paint off your teeth!

FYI, I believe that to get a good float with that particular stock, you might need to shim up the front of the action afterall, then bed it. That is the case with my Ti stock, and I believe yours uses the same stock. They build those stocks to put a lot of pressure on the barrel. Hopefully yours is different, but that is the word from B&C.

Sorry to disappoint anyone but the reason for the pressure point is to force a warped stock or crookedly installed barrel to center better in the stock, they sell better that way.

Set it FREE!!!