Boyds Rifle Stock

[charlesb]

After getting the bedding in, I checked and found that the barrel was touching along the left-hand side of the barrel channel. I have a special tool for barrel channels made by Gun-Line, a 3/4" barrel channel scraper. So I put in half an hour scraping the barrel channel, and putting the barreled action back in every now and then, to see how much further I had to go.

Now it has just enough clearance for the paper around the bottom and both sides, all the way back to the shank, the first two inches of barrel out of the action. The barrel shank is bedded, so the paper won't go there. I'll probably relieve the barrel channel a bit more all around tomorrow, in the interest of more rapid cooling at the range.

Now to shorten the barrel to 18", give it a target crown and then new bottom metal that takes 5 or 10-shot steel magazines. - Then it will be done.



The next project will be a .308 exactly like this .223, with a short, heavy barrel and a thumb-hole stock, etc.. I'll have to pick another color combination for the .308.

I'll wind up with a 17HMR, a 223, and a 308 that all share the same general feel, good accuracy and handling qualities. Stubby bull barrels are pointable and swing smoothly, but are still capable of fine accuracy. With the thumb-hole stock, this is the design that I seem to do the best with for offhand shooting. - And most importantly I guess, the design is really good at the range too.

[Bullseye]

You should also test the barrel clearance when the barrel is thoroughly heated after some range use to ensure that there is no contact with the stock when the barrel flexes under normal operating conditions. Metal tends to get a bit more elastic when heated that plus the stock may expand a bit too. It is this tendency that can cause accuracy issues from contact.

R,
Bullseye

[charlesb]

I never heat them up much... Generally I will fire a five-shot string, with the shots a minute or so apart - then I take my time about looking at the group with the spotting scope so that it generally gets at least five minutes to cool between shot strings.

I will definitely check though, as the clearance on this stock is not much, just about enough for a dollar bill to slide through.

Thanks for the tip!