Accuracy improvement by truing 700 action

The way I understand it is that your greatest accuracy improvement is by installing a quality barrel. Most people have their action trued while having the new barrel installed. Truing should increase repeatability of your fired round.

I don't know of anybody who has trued their action and put the factory barrel back on.

Take this with a grain of salt. I am no expert!!!!!
 
Pretty tough question to answer.

Accuracy depends on so many things... but the action is the basis where it all starts... and the more true the action is, the better this basis is. Part of the problem with mass produced factory actions is they vary a lot, they are not consistent in their tolerances when manufactured. Truing can make the bad things good. The when you add a quality barrel and bed it properly in a quality stock and mount a good scope you know there is nothing left to do but work a load... there is nothing else to do.

If the action has not been trued, I recommend truing it if you are having a barrel fitted to it... it is a one time procedure. I don't think it is worthwhile to pull a factory barrel, true the action and then refit that factory barrel...
 
It's hard to say, but it will depend a lot on how good/bad it was in the first place.

The closest I came to a real test was mostly by accident. I had bought a new XR100 in 22/250 with every intention of instantly building a 22/Middlested on it. I did shoot it once or twice thinking that if there was some obvious problem, it was better to find it while it was covered by warranty. There is always the chance of an out of the box screamer too.

Anyway, the gun shot a bit better than an inch with Whitebox Winchester and some random handloads. Satisfied that nothing was going to fall off I took it to my gunsmith with a 1-8" Lilja barrel. He trued it up and fitted the new barrel, then removed it and refit the original barrel chambered to 22/Middlested so I would have a throw away fire-forming barrel to get my cases formed. Well the long and short of it was that the original rechambered barrel shot 1 holers and it was about 5 years before it came off again. How much of that was due to a clean chamber, how much to my handloads and how much to the blueprinting is impossible to say but there was a day and night difference in the rifle with essentially the same pieces that it was shipped with.

I believe biggest accuracy improvement is just getting a good barrel screwed on, but the few bucks to square things up while youre doing it is cheap compared to the price of the project.
 
I am guessing that just truing the action would be considerably cheaper than replacing the barrel as well. So from a cost perspective is it worth it just do the action?
 
I dont think it's worth truing the action if you're not going to be installing a quality barrel. The have a smith true your action you're probably looking around $150 or so.

Speaking of which. Dennis, I going to have another action for you this week if you're still accepting actions to true.
 
The other thing to consider is that if the action isn't true from the factory you may have to recut the barrel threads to get it to fit the trued action. If you're going to have to go through that effort you might as well put a match barrel on it.
 
Underthegun said:
I am guessing that just truing the action would be considerably cheaper than replacing the barrel as well. So from a cost perspective is it worth it just do the action?
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It's worth it. Some Rem 700 actions I examined were having the receiver face cut with zip disks (!) and out of quare up to .004". Fixing that, lapping the bolt lugs and setting back the original barrel one thread with cleaned up chamber is very cheap fix IMHO and improoves accuracy of most bolt action rifles sometimes remarkably. This might not transform it into benchrest rifle but will be plenty accurate for even most demanding long range hunting. High volume factory assembly line requires quantity and good outside apperance not the attention to internal details. GR8
 
I have a model 700 sendero in 7MM.that I bought in 98. It had a rough cut chamber when I got it new and the brass was hanging up on the machine marks when I fired it. I would have to hammer the bolt with my fist to pop it open... I bought it from a store who was closing out so my only option was to call remy... They put me in touch with a factory authorized smith and off it went... Now this gun was fired a max of 8-10 rounds before I called remy. And it was very accurate with cheap ammo, so all I really wanted was the chamber cleaned up... Then I got a call from the smith who offered me some other sevices... He said he could do a trigger job and true the action while he was in there and that the factory heavy barrel was good enough if I couldn't afford a match barrel. Well I had just dumped all my cash into this gun and could barely afford the trigger and tuning work so I said do what he could for 300 and use the factory barrel.... I didn't get my sendero back.... It sure looked like my sendero, but this thing could shoot lazer beams.... No matter what ammo I put in it, its a tack driver... However, its very fond of 165 sierra game kings. I make shots with this rifle that my pals lose money on and i have never had a hickup with it... if you have a good factory barrel,and your not a mad reloader with precision 1000 yard shots as your goal, it should be just fine. My advice... Up your optics game with the cash, then if its not cutting it, do the barrel when you can afford it... I see too many guys putting a 300 scope on a 1500 gun and crying about the performance... My rule of thumb for a beat around gun is your glass should be at least 75-80 percent of the cost of your gun... On high end stuff, the glass equals, if not exceeds the cost of the gun. Have a great night.....
 
shoot it first see how it does, if it aint performing provided u do ur part then talk to the smith, it aint gonna break ur bank to get the gun all fixed up
 
Well - Chances are the rifle will shoot better than you will out of the box - so you become the limiting factor as far as attainable accuracy is concerned. Practicing your technique, and taking up reloading would achieve the best results. A bit further down the road, you'll be able to make an assessment of the capabilities of the rifle, and any potential accurizing steps.
 
Not much point in putting a good match barrel on an action that hasn't been trued.
I've seen some Remingtons that should not have left the factory and some that I would not touch unless the barrel is worn out or simply won't shoot.
Most assuredly, any gun will shoot better once trued. There is no comparison to a well tuned and fitted rifle.
 
cosmic said:
Well - Chances are the rifle will shoot better than you will out of the box - so you become the limiting factor as far as attainable accuracy is concerned. Practicing your technique, and taking up reloading would achieve the best results. A bit further down the road, you'll be able to make an assessment of the capabilities of the rifle, and any potential accurizing steps.
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I can almost bet that the rifle will NOT shoot better than me out of the box. Also I have been reloading since 1994 so I have that part covered as well.
 
Just my experience - I had a Rem700P. Bone stock, with some novice reloading it would shoot .75MOA consistently with 175SMKs. Last year had a smith true everything up and throw on a Shilen Barrel from Mystic and now it does 185gr Bergers under .5MOA consistently.
 
GSoD said:
Just my experience - I had a Rem700P. Bone stock, with some novice reloading it would shoot .75MOA consistently with 175SMKs. Last year had a smith true everything up and throw on a Shilen Barrel from Mystic and now it does 185gr Bergers under .5MOA consistently.
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If you don't mind me asking what did that cost? Not the rifle, but the truing, and the barrel.
 
If you know a gunsmith you can trust, have him look at the action and check it for alignment. I had a LH 700 checked the the 'smith told me there was no need to do anything more to it. (Maybe there is more quality control at Remington with the LH actions) Put on Krieger barrel and it shoots one hole groups. Cost me nothing to get a professional opinion first.

Grinch
 
Grinch said:
If you know a gunsmith you can trust, have him look at the action and check it for alignment. I had a LH 700 checked the the 'smith told me there was no need to do anything more to it. (Maybe there is more quality control at Remington with the LH actions) Put on Krieger barrel and it shoots one hole groups. Cost me nothing to get a professional opinion first.

Grinch
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This is true. I've seen a few 700's that only needed a little bit of truing on the shoulder. Bolt lugs 100% contact, threads square. No charge for that.
Then I've seen a few that needed the whole 9 yards. I had one that needed the bolt handle retimed. One lug was nowhere near the recess lug. Must have been a Monday morning on that one.
 
700 action

Grinch said:
If you know a gunsmith you can trust, have him look at the action and check it for alignment. I had a LH 700 checked the the 'smith told me there was no need to do anything more to it. (Maybe there is more quality control at Remington with the LH actions) Put on Krieger barrel and it shoots one hole groups. Cost me nothing to get a professional opinion first.

Grinch
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am not a professional gunsmith but I have played around and when it comes to truing actions it takes longer to set them up in the lathe tehn to actually make the cuts. I am not sure how someone cut tell if the threads were square and true without dialing it in a jig in the lathe, once your that far the receiver face and internal lugs do not take long to cut, the threads take a little time. just my opinion.
 
asa said:
am not a professional gunsmith but I have played around and when it comes to truing actions it takes longer to set them up in the lathe tehn to actually make the cuts. I am not sure how someone cut tell if the threads were square and true without dialing it in a jig in the lathe, once your that far the receiver face and internal lugs do not take long to cut, the threads take a little time. just my opinion.
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I agree.. the time it takes to determine if the threads are out slightly or the locking lug recesses are out slightly take longer than if you just set up and true it all...

I have not seen a factory 700 that would not benefit from truing. And lapping lugs is not a way to true an action.
 
You guys are right about the setup part. I don't have a backlog to get so many rifles out a week, so I have the time to setup the action in my jig and check it out. Some actions are better than others and all require some attention. For production reasons the Manson system is a no brainer. I've most certainly exhausted my time on building an action spider similar to Gre'Tans model, but setup is tedious.

I agree Guntech, lapping lugs does nothing to true an action. It only laps what is already there, crooked or straight.
 
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