antelopedundee
Well-known member
Uhmmm....Never? What are you calling customizing? I guess almost anything you do is “customizing”. That’s not what I mean when I refer to a “custom action”. Are you comparing it to “custom” action companies? Trueing/blue printing, is just correcting any manufacturing errors that may have occurred. It does not fundamentally change the design of the action or bolt. You might consider reaming the bolt bore and sleeving the bolt a design change because you’re decreasing the tolerance below what was designed in. A custom action from Surgeon, Defiance, Stiller, Kelbly’s etc. is a different action all together. Even in their 700 “clones” you get a better bolt setup. Most of those actions, even when based on a Remington 700, have actual design changes that improve things.
I’m a big fan of Remington 700’s. I just wouldn’t spend much trying to improve the action before I’d go with a custom action. First of all, they’re fairly good as is. As mentioned, lap the lugs, have the smith square the face when he barrels it. I don’t know what a smith charges for that, might add less than $50 to the barrel work. I wouldn’t do much more than $200 extra work to a 700 action before I’d just get a custom action. A Defiance Tenacity has an MSRP of $885. It’s better than any “blue printed” Remington 700. The two might be equally accurate, but action is stainless, the bolt is far better than a Remington. The recoil lug us built in and standardized, so you can swap barrels from one to another. The resale on it is going to be excellent. A Stiller can be had at an MSRP of $975, again stainless, has an anti-bind rail for the bolt, the bolt is nitrided. I’m sure there are ton of other advantages as well. My last few Remingtons have had an anti bind rail from the factory...but they don’t smooth thing out like a custom action. If you ever get a hold of a real custom action and compare it to a 700 you’ll see the value. Like I say, you can make a 700 shoot as good as any thing else on the planet. You can get really close without even doing much to it. The difference is elsewhere. There is no amount of truing/blue printing that will make a Remington 700 worth spending the same amount of money in that you would a custom action.
I’m talking about the action. Not the entire gun. I wouldn’t hesitate to put a Krieger barrel($360 plus $200+ chambering and fitting) and a McMillan or Manners stock on one. I just wouldn’t spend much trying to improve the action itself.
I would think that bushing the firing pin, replacing the extractor, sleeving the bolt or even messing with the bolt release would border on customizingbecause they are modifications to the factory issue and not corrections or adjustments.
Here is a good discussion of Remington factory actions.
http://forum.accurateshooter.com/threads/the-buds-gun-shop-rr-remington-timing.3989540/
An interesting post from the thread.
"The fixture that holds the handles for soldering must be a real good one- nice, solid and built to last because they have been putting them in the same wrong spot since the 70’s"
Makes you wonder why they never fixed it right in all those years. Can't say that I've ever experienced the extraction issue. I currently have an action in the shop with instructions to true as needed and check the extraction.