Most of the Savage F-Class does out shoot Most Other manufacture even some custom, floating bolt head is one of those great design, even remington New rifles have Floating bolt head, there is several company already coppying the Savage floating bolt head, and have great success.
We'll agree to disagree with the real-time performance of these factory rifles, as I said, I have competed against many of them and shot beside many of them, and know several that own them. Most of these guns are really very good, and on par with a typical customized equivalent. Like all factory guns, a few of them have been dogs too. If you look at the photos from the USFCC, there is a BC Shooter using a stock off a Savage F-Class gun on a Remington 40X . He got fed up with the action and mediocre performance and sold it off, but kept the excellent stock and had it painted in a cool Canada theme. (Do you actually shoot F-Class by the way? ) I will say this though, Savage has the best customer service of any rifle manufacturer. I think their F-Class and BR rifles are a terrific, safe, relatively inexpensive and easy choice for someone wanting to get into long range precision shooting.
Savage was hardly the first to use a floating bolt head, but they have stuck with it longer. Sportco was using it before Savage and the Lee Enfield system was arguably similar in function before that.
Personally, I consider floating bolt heads a cheap way around less than perfect machining tolerances, but they do a great job in that regard. I prefer a very small firing pin hole and a system of Borden bumps over a floating bolt head. If integral lugs and bolt lugs are perfectly true, you keep the bolt face absolutely perpendicular to the bore with good positive lug contact.
With today's excellent CNC technology, I am surprised that the achievement of better factory tolerances isn't there yet, although I hear Savage has started.
Instead of thrashing subjective opinions on receiver design to death in pursuit of nothing tangible, I revert back to my original assertion that rather than spending all the money and waiting all the time to collect components on a crudely made repeater action, one can purchase an off-the-shelf purpose built precision rifle and begin teaching themselves to be as accurate as their rifle.
I personally prefer to optimize my time where it counts the most: Training to become a better long distance precision shooter.
