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Free Floating

Posted: Sun Mar 15, 2009 8:15 pm
by xdguy
I have a remington 700 VLS Thumbhole and was wondering how to free float it. I have sanded down the pressure point that is in the forearm of the stock, but it seems that it has created a not so much free floating situation. Also the barrel seems to be touching the right side of the stock when i tighten it in the stock. Any ideas would be nice.
thanks

Re: Free Floating

Posted: Sun Mar 15, 2009 9:21 pm
by darchell
Below I pasted video on how to free float the stock. I have found in the past that a piece of sandpaper around a dowel has worked well. I am not sure what you mean when you said it is not so much a free floating situation". I would guess you are saying the barrel is still making contact with the stock. If this is the case you need to sand more. As for the barrel touching the stock this is where you need to sand. Hope it helps

http://www.wonderhowto.com/how-to/video ... le-204317/

Re: Free Floating

Posted: Mon Mar 16, 2009 10:50 am
by Rick in Oregon
xdguy: Free floating a barrel is not a hard task at all, and I'm sure you'll do just fine. Here's a couple of tips you may want to consider:

* Use girlie lipstick to coat the underside of the barrel, then put the barreled action into the stock. The lipstick will show any points the barrel is touching the stock so you can remove the high spots.

* When the job is done, use Tung Oil or Spar Varnish to seal the exposed wood in the barrel channel to avoid moisture getting in and causing the wood to swell, creating another pressure point and ruining your floating job.

As this is a HB rifle, you may also want to consider later to bed the action and about 2" of the barrel shank under the chamber to support the heavy barrel and not put stress on the action with all that weight hanging off the action. This has been proven to relieve action stress, and as a result, improve accuracy of the rifle.

Good luck with the project; the rifle will shoot better as a result. :D

Re: Free Floating

Posted: Mon Mar 16, 2009 12:06 pm
by Wiiings12
Howdy! I just recently free floated my barrel, I'll admit it isn't the BEST job out there. But you have to be looking pretty dang hard for mistakes to find them. All I did was got something around the same size as the barrel (a highlighter in this case) and wrapped her up with sandpaper. Slid it up and down the stock for about a minute, and then would check my progress, and do that again and again until I was satisfied. Then I just threw on some rub on polyurethane and was good to go!

I actually didn't wrap the sand paper around a highlighter, which is why I made a few screw ups. Thought of it just now and it seems like a pretty dang good idea! haha!
Hope that was of some value to you!
-Graham

Re: Free Floating

Posted: Tue Mar 17, 2009 7:39 pm
by xdguy
Well i got it finally, it seemed like i had to sand forever. thanks for all the help. going to the range on thursday to shoot. i got a pressure series worked up for with some 32gr v maxes and benchmark. Hopefully it likes it. thanks once again

Re: Free Floating

Posted: Thu Mar 19, 2009 5:58 pm
by xdguy
well went out to the range today and got decent results. i ended up with a .454 inch group, that was the best of my pressure series. i am hoping to get it tighter yet and should be able to. thanks for the help again guys.