I rebarreled & stocked this remington 721 with a Douglas barrel I chambered in 7x57. The stock is claro walnut & came out quite well. The checkering took a very long time but is presentable. On its first range trip it was shooting roughly 3/8 groups for 3 shots. I'd expect that size to double or so for 10 shot groups. Unfortunately with the light barrel I see a 2 in POI shift with a hot barrel and the groups do open up some.
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Remington 721 re stock & rebarrel
- Thread starter moosesgunsmithing
- Start date
Nice wood! I always loved 7mm guns.
How'd you do the checkering? Did you use one of those carving jigs? Looks factory.
It's totally acceptable for a light barrel hunting rifle to heat up after a few shots. I don't think you'd need more than 2 to bag a deer or a blue helmet.
Nice work.
How'd you do the checkering? Did you use one of those carving jigs? Looks factory.
It's totally acceptable for a light barrel hunting rifle to heat up after a few shots. I don't think you'd need more than 2 to bag a deer or a blue helmet.
Nice work.
I do cut the checkering by hand with one if those fancy pants checkering heads on my foredom. I doodle a pattern on by hand with a pencil first though. The line spacing is set by the machine. After cutting master lines it's reasonably straightforward, but I'm not great at explaining.
I would prefer to see groups open up vs poi shift due to heat. It makes me think I don't have the barrel completely free floated.
Thank you. This is one of my favorite rifles I've worked on so far.
You explain perfectly, but I'm familiar with the process. A friend of mine is a woodworker and built some jigs to clone stocks and checkering, and I'm very aware of how many hours it takes to make it look that good.
I was going to ask if the action was bedded but thought the question to be rude since you obviously know what you're doing. But since you brought it up, can you fit a dollar bill between the barrel and stock all the way down to the action? Torque wrench action screws to spec and apply tq evenly? I understand that some actions just don't bed, you do everything right and they just have a mind of their own.
I prefer to fit a business card over a dollar bill. I do epoxy bed the action & trigger guard but I also fill any gaps in the barrel channel with epoxy. Masking tape provides the gap. The fore ends in figured stocks can move too much with the weather for a dollar bill to be a sure thing.
I never got into jig building for checkering. A cradle is enough and I do the rest mostly by eye. At worst I am one or two lines off which is easily corrected.
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It seems to work reasonably well. I went shooting again and got 9 shots in just under a one and a half inch group, which seems sufficient. It's shot at 175 yards.
What I see is two semi- distinct groups forming with one flier. The first were shot first, but what appears to be 3 shots was shot next with a warm barrel, then the flier.
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175 yards. I am struggling with the lack of parralax setting in this optic somewhat.
Factory. Ppu thunder 158gr. Long off the market but I had a box to burn. I've yet to reload 7x57 but the lyman manual is a good starting point for most things.