Free floating

[bowhunterforever]

Hey guys, how much does it cost on average to have a gun smith free float a barrel? Does it improve accuracy alot? And what else having the gun smith do will help improve accuracy? I dont know much about working on guns to get them to peform at there best! Any info helps thanks!

[Huntbear]

Getting the gun pillar bedded and free floated is a start, also a trigger adjustment will help a lot.  Short of pulling the barrel off and lapping the bolt lugs, truing the bolt face, and putting a better grade barrel on it, those will help the most.

[jackelope]

first you need to see if your barrel needs to be floated.
trigger work is one of the biggest accuracy improvers IMO.
replacing or reworking the existing trigger.
bedding the action to the stock.
floating the barrel.

[docsven]

What kind of shooting are you going to do?

[Bofire]

If it aint broke dont fix it. Many guns, not free floated, shoot wonerfully. I know some folks who free floated and had wonderful results, how ever I also know a number of folks who free floated and had to go back to a contact point because accuracy went to hell. I repeat, are you addressing a problem or just beleiving this is something you NEED to do?? If it shoots good now dont FIX it.
Carl

[Gobble]

I would do it yourself. Its easy to do. And yes it helps greatly. When a gun is fired the barrel acts like a whip. When it meets a point of contact it can cause it to jump. When you remove the point of contact the motion is fluid and consistant. Take a strip of masking tape and run down the outside of the stock the length of the barrel. Take 2 one dollar bills together and run them down the barrel and mark on the tape with pen where the bills stop along the barrel. take the gun apart and sand the inside of the stock to remove the high point. Put the barrel back in and tighten the screws down and repeat the process until you can run the bills all the way down the barrel. Its very easy to do. Make sure you use birchwood casey gun stock finish on the wood that you sanded off to make sure no moisture penetrates and warps the stock if it gets wet. You can find this at any gun store. The whole thing costs about $10 to do and a couple of hours max.

[docsven]

  If this is your hunting rifle.you really don't have to do too much.  Trigger work would make a big difference.  Is your barrel shot out.  What is the rifle?

[bowhunterforever]

The gun is a ruger m77 ultralight 204! It shoot some pretty good groups, i was just trying to figure out how i could make the groups better! I just use the gun for hunting. So you think i should put a trigger on it first to see if i shoot better with that? What kind of trigger, a timey?

[atomicjoe23]

I have never heard anything bad about Timney triggers. . .

an helpful hint when you are sanding the barrel channel to relieve it is to get a woooden dowel rod of the correct diameter and wrap the sand paper around it and use that to sand the barrel channel. . .that way you keep a nice round profile to your barrel channel. . .

. . .I just bought a Weatherby Vanguard Varmint Special in .22-250 and the barrel is not free floated. . .but the target it came with has a sub-MOA group. . .I'm gonna shoot it for a while before I decide whether or not to inlet my stocks barrel channel. . .

[FrankDown]

How close were the holes in your papr that came with your Vanguard?

[Gobble]

I have never heard anything bad about Timney triggers. . .

an helpful hint when you are sanding the barrel channel to relieve it is to get a woooden dowel rod of the correct diameter and wrap the sand paper around it and use that to sand the barrel channel. . .that way you keep a nice round profile to your barrel channel. . .

 

I forgot to mention that. Anything round will work, I used a felt pen (large highlighter) wrapped in sandpaper if I remember right. I did this to my Rem 700 BDL 20 years ago (actually the day i bought it) and I can cover a 3 shot group at 150 yrds with a quarter. Everything you can do to make your gun consistant is great. I've always had great coinfidence in my weapon except for a opening weekend hunt 3 years ago. We were hunting near Alta and I missed 5 bucks opening weekend (1 180" 5 x 5 , 2 150-160" 4 points and 2 - long tined 3 points) . I'm not used to missing, in fact I had never missed a animal in 17 yrs up to that point with that gun. Turned out the 15 yr old old loctite that I had used on my Leupold came loose from the magnum rounds I had been shooting the previous couple of years. I re-loctited the scope once I got home and nailed a buck the next weekend. I just about wrapped the thing around a tree after missing that 180" in buck though.

[jeepasaurusrex]

I used a large diameter sanding drum in my die grinder. Cleaned it out real nice.


Howa 1500.

[atomicjoe23]

How close were the holes in your papr that came with your Vanguard?

0.75" 3 round group at 100 yds. . .two rounds were in one hole and then the third put it out to the 0.75". . .without the third round it was less than 0.5". . .

[jeepasaurusrex]

I always seem to end up with the same type of group. Two in one hole, and one flier. I'm thinking its the barrel heating up. 

[Big10gauge]

Wooden stocks with fore end pressure = possible changes in impact with varying humidity and possible changes in impact everytime you remove the action if you don't tighten the screws to the same torque each time

Composite stocks with fore end pressure =possible changes in impact everytime you remove the action if you don't tighten the screws to the same torque each time

Free floating can lessen both these problems, you should still torque your action screws the same each time you remove your action especially if your action is not bedded

Just my 

[ivarhusa]

I got to checking my Savage Model 10, and noticed that the stock does make contact with the barrel at the very tip.  This is a plastic stock, and it appears (not having pulled the action off yet) that they cast in considerable relief under the barrel, except they left perhaps deliberate contact at the front end, only the last 1/4" or so.  I am concerned that when I remove plastic, the stock may twist and contact the barrel in other locations along its side.

It would be easy enough to shave that down to get clearance, but are there any good reasons why they design it that way, with contact at the tip?  The plastic stock twists (moves) with respect to the barrel with very modest forces.  It is flexible.  It isn't wood

I read Big10gauge's advice about torquing the attachment bolts properly.  Can do.

Is free floating ill-advised for such stocks?  I am wanting to free float.  Any good reasons not to?  The factory sent me a target with a 0.8" 100yd group from my coyote rifle.  Of course, I aspire to better.

Thoughts?

[atomicjoe23]

I got to checking my Savage Model 10, and noticed that the stock does make contact with the barrel at the very tip.  This is a plastic stock, and it appears (not having pulled the action off yet) that they cast in considerable relief under the barrel, except they left perhaps deliberate contact at the front end, only the last 1/4" or so.  I am concerned that when I remove plastic, the stock may twist and contact the barrel in other locations along its side.

Ivar. . .my new Weatherby Vanguard Varmint Special's stock is the exact same way. . .I thought about free-floating my stock/barrel too, but that was before I shot it. . .now I don't want to mess with it because of how well it shoots!!!

Is free floating ill-advised for such stocks?  I am wanting to free float.  Any good reasons not to?  The factory sent me a target with a 0.8" 100yd group from my coyote rifle.  Of course, I aspire to better.

Thoughts?

What do your groups look like. . .that would be the main thing that I would think about first. . .

. . .My grouping was way better than the factory grouping and I was using "cheap" ammo. . .

. . .for those that asked earlier about what my target grouping was and who didn't see my post on what I ended up with at the range once I got a scope. . .here are the results. . .

. . .the factory target was a .75" 3-shot group @ 100 yards. . .my 3-shot 100 yard group was .392" CTC. . .and my 5-shot 200 yard group was 1.9375" CTC. . .not bad for shoot the cheapest ammo in the store. . .it absolutely hated the more expensive stuff that I had with me so the only person that will probably shoot that would be my GF at paper. . .although that might frustrate her???

I've decided there is no need to free-float my barrel because I feel that my gun has the potential to shoot better than I can at the moment and I don't want to break what isn't broken. . .

. . .just my