Not to rain on your parade, but you had a generous gunsmith friend.
Without this factor your cost to your wallet would have been significantly higher. Kind of puts your project into a special niche, I would say.
Well, in my post I essentially conceded that the value of the parts was nil. My entire estimate of the value of that rifle derived from its performance. I think that if you substituted the value of the gunsmithing, you would still reach the same price estimate. And let's consider for a moment the value of the parts themselves. The old, used Donnelly barrel. How much was that worth? Maybe $50 or $60, on a generous day. The stock? Well, at the Vancouver gun show I have seen (and personally bought) similar used stocks, taken from old target rifles, for $15. What about the action, an old Eddystone '17, cobbled together from mixed parts? Again, I have personally paid less than $75 for these complete actions at gun shows (and that includes receivers with the ears ground and holes drilled to emulate a Winchester 70 for scope mounting). The fact remains that huge numbers of these actions are floating around there with the necessary gunsmithing already done. Lots of old timers have been trying to unload this old "junk" at gunshows for the last 20 years (indeed, that's how I became interested in these actions). Therefore, it pays if you check out the gunshows and have a bit of patience.
So this gives us a total parts value of about $150? About the only expensive thing I added to this rifle was a Timney Trigger. It was the absolute basic model of trigger, however. That probably added about another $80 to the parts value.
I bedded the action myself, and the whole Remington 700 style recoil lug addition was purely an experiment. Most of my rifles built on these actions do not employ a 700-style recoil lug, and they shoot comparably.
I still maintain the value estimate that I quoted, including gunsmithing.
Was I lucky? You bet. Did I get special favours from friends who wanted to encourage me to get into target shooting? Yes. Would it be possible to build a competitively accurate rifle for under $750 today, if you look around carefully and are prepared to settle for components that todays experts consider outdated? Yes, I still maintain that it would be possible, but it would be a stretch. Certainly, $1,000 is possible. I paid less than that for the rifle I took to the World Championships in Ottawa last year, and that includes the value of a brand-new McLennan Palma barrel AND the gunsmithing to have it mounted. (The action is a CIL 950-T, a solid-bottomed Savage from the 1970s.)
As for mackillan's request for a hunting rifle: your Sendero is more than enough. If you are not happy with the barrel, buy a new barrel in something like 6.5-06 (more long-range, accurate 6.5mm bullets out there than .25 cal bullets), or, if you want to follow other guys on CGN, you could try a .280 Ackley Improved (basically 7mm Rem Mag performance out of a .30-06 sized case). With a premium barrel and proper bedding, and carefully crafted handloads, you should have a rifle that will be capable of dropping Mule Deer with one shot at 600 metres, assuming you're capable of reading the shifting wind in a hunting situation at that range, and you have a steady rest and time to think your way through the shot. Personally, I'd be leery of shooting at that range, but I recognize that some guys can do it.
If you feel the need to shoot at animals much further than 600, and have the ability to do it, then get another Sendero in something like .300 Winchester Magnum (or if you can handle it, .300 Ultramag), and use a 180-grain Nosler Accubond. That's it. You don't need anything more than that.
