Cost of rebarreling and truing

[WildRose]

Kevin, I think you will agree that when re-barelling and replacing the stock, one is junking a substantial part of the rifle. The market for factory barrels and stocks is pretty bad. However, if the rifle is sold as a complete functional unit, one is able to recover whatever the market price happens to be.

If one has a particular affinity for that particular action and is prepared to take the financial hit with junking the barrel and stock, that is a different matter altogether. What I was saying in a nutshell is that it seldom makes financial sence. People do things for all sorts of reasons, but from my experience, building a precision rifle from a remington with a factory stock and trigger is not the least difficult way of doing things and requires a very good smith if it is to be successful, whereas starting with the Savage action, there is more work that one can do yourself, with less risk of a bad outcome at the end. This can save time, money, nerves, hairline, marriage etc etc. If my wife knew how much I spent on the last 2 rifles, neither of which worked a **** out of the box and which I have slowly been improving, I would be in deep doo doo...

I this evening found this video on Youtube while researching bedding the action.
‪Remington 700 SPS varmint bedding therifle action part 1/9‬‏ - YouTube
It is a familiar story, only worse in his case since he has the truly crappy plastic stock... Watch the video of the impact point shifting as the action moves in the stock..

If one is buying a cheap factory rifle and expecting to have a precision rifle out of the box one is going to be disappointed more often than not.

There's a reason that precision customs start at around 2,000.00.

It only takes about 2-3 hours work to do a good free float and pillar bed job on a rifle like yours.

It will take you about an extra hour to put in a good aluminum bedding block like Whiddons and the use of a router or chisel.

Start there and you'll probably improve the rifle's performance dramatically.

It won't help much with the recoil though. For that I'd suggest routing out a deep channel below the barrel in the forearm and installing a 12-16 oz mercury recoil suppressor.

With a caliber known for heavy recoil in a light sporter barrel of the length of yours recoil is just going to be pretty rough.

You can also install another one in the butstock.

That and a better muzzle brake will make it much more tolerable, and my bet is it cuts your group size by half or more.