Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Single Shots #1 screw torque

Those of you who follow a protocol of tightening fore arm screws with a torque wrench, what setting do you use? Is there a factory recommendation?

This is something I copied almost 20 years ago on the subject of the No. 1 forearm.

GreatBasin

Now for MY basic comment on first time owners of # 1's. They tend to be finicky. Personally it's why I like tinkering with them. If it was simply a matter of grabbing any old ammo off the shelf and shooting sub MOA, why bother. Select the ammo you want to work with. Remove the forearm, doesn't matter if it's a # 1-B or a # 1-S or a # 1-?. Now rest the ACTION on the forward bag. What this does for starters is eliminate all the argument and trouble about free floated barrels versus a little fore arm pressure and the pressure exerted on the barrel by the forearm and forearm hanger. The one thing that # 1's are "REALLY" sensitive to is barrel harmonics. Some loads and bullets simply won't work in an individual # 1. If you find ammo that is shooting reasonable groups at 100 yards, then put the forearm back on. At first simply take the slack out of the screw. The group shouldn't change much if at all. Then slowly increase the pressure on the forearm by tightening the screw in 1/4 or 1/2 turn increments. At some point the groups are likely to decrease. When they quit decreasing, stop. Back the screw out and VERY carefully count the turns till it's free. This is the forearm pressure your # 1 likes. Re-attach the forearm. If the rifle is shooting sub MOA (1-inch groups @100 yards) 3 shot groups and this is a hunting rifle, you’re done. Go kill something.

Also this from back then. This may or may not be of help.

"This is my Ruger #1 in 25-06. At the time of purchase I was not able to slip a dollar bill under any portion of the barrel along the forearm. I didn't want to put a pressure screw on the barrel so I thought I'd try something I read using a rubber pad. The objective was to get repeatable point of impact without vertical stringing by "floating" the forearm. This is somewhat of a misnomer as the forearm has a contact point you can't avoid but you can avoid random contact at different locations along the forearm.

I hand-sanded the forearm using fine sandpaper. Not a lot of material comes off with fine sandpaper so you sand and fit, sand and fit, until you get what you want. I attached a piece of hard rubber that came with pressure sensitive adhesive at the front of the forearm where the stock makes contact with the barrel. The rubber is 0.060" thick and is used as a high-pressure gasket material. It compresses to 2/3 its relaxed thickness or about 0.040" (1mm).

I also put the rubber pad on the near end of the forearm where it contacts the action. The tape shown in the picture was used to hold the rotating nut in place. It falls out and is easy to loose, Ruger could have done better with that design.

This is how I trimmed the excess pad that squirts out when the forearm is fit to the barrel and action.

It makes a good fit and does not detract from the looks of the gun.

The results were obvious, the barrel does not come in contact with the forearm except at the front where it is designed to do so. The paper in the picture is about the thickness of a business card. Shooting results have been very good. I have exercised it twice at 50 yards and print small clover leafs. If this "fix" fails or doesn't remain stable I can always bed it at a later date. This was very easy to do. With this 25-06 I have my primary varmint/secondary deer rifle.

Update since the post was written.

This target was 200 yards. I was shooting my handloads with 100 grain Nolser Ballistic Tip bullets.

It's been two years since I made this accuracy modification to the gun. It hasn't changed point of impact or suffered accuracy degradation. It's held up really well and stability of the rubber pad has not been a problem."

I like that approach, except it drives me nuts to not have a screw tightened. Thankfully mine is torqued down like I would any fastener on a firearm.

My old B in .22 250 is at 15 in lbs.

Interesting. Hopefully you guys are using blue loctite on those sob's..