I'm currently thinking of building a rifle from my current 700 AAC-SD, i was wondering if anybody here has built a rem 700 with a 1.250" straight barrel, in 30" length.
My main question is i was told the action might not like having a huge barrel at the end and is not made to handle that much weight. Is this true? i really don't care about the weight of my rifle as it is only for bench shooting. Other than the looks of a straight barrel, is there any difference between a straight barrel and a straight taper to .900" in terms of heat, accuracy?
Ps. .308 Cal.
Thanks, any input is appreciated!
The problem you are referring to regarding the action not liking the weight is that in reality a Rem 700 action is not very stiff, compared to some other actions. If you take a good look at the action with the bolt removed, you will notice there is not really much steel between the front and rear rings. The ejection port is completely open and so is the opening for the magazine. This lets the action bend like a banana.
For what the rifle is intended, it's stiff enough and can work "reasonably" well, but you are not using the rifle for "what it was intended" so "reasonably well" depends on who your peers are.
Now when you compare to an action like this Savage, you can see there's a lot more steel, so it wont bend like a banana under the weight of a heavy barrel.
So from a technical point of view, a heavy barrel on the 700 action will sag, then jump upward under recoil and cause vertical stringing.
So what are your options? Depending on the stock, guys will glass bed the first few inches of the barrel along with the action. The idea here is to make the stock help support the barrel rather than just the action. What you would find with this arrangement is a rifle that will shoot good groups once in a while and then go funky for no apparent reason, and the zero is likely to wander from time to time.
The reason is the bedding becomes critical and action screw tension will have a sweet spot that may change with temperature, humidity and the mood of the gods on any particular day. That barrel bouncing is like a lever prying on your bedding with every shot.
Now I'm not trying to force the Savage action pictured above on anybody, I'm just using that particular action as a basis for discussion. There are lots of other actions that have the steel across the top of the ejection port. Strictly speaking, my advice is to avoid any action that does not have an integral picatinny rail.
So to answer your question, I guess I'm saying that just because you can put that barrel on your remmy, does not mean you should.
There is one more option for you...
Using a barrel bedding block takes the action stiffness out of the equation. This picture is not a particularly good example but you get the idea.
Since the action can re-index on the barrel threads, mounting the scope on the bedding block would eliminate that as a factor. If you want to read about that, just google Secrets of the Houston Warehouse. I think I read about it there, but maybe not. Either way, it's a good read. Here's a link.
http://www.angelfire.com/ma3/max357/houston.html
I'm curious though, what the rifle will be used for. You said off a bench, but for what? Is it just for fun or competition? How far do you want to shoot?
Do you insist on building the gun around the Remmy? If you do, I will make a suggestion... I figure the military has quite a budget for rifle development. When they specked out the M40A1 sniper rifle I gotta assume they tested different barrel weights and lengths before settling on a standard. So if you want to build around the remmy, you might want to consider that barrel contour as your base line. If you google up the specks on the chandler version of the M40A1 I believe he made the barrel a bit longer and the consensus is favorable. BTW Chandler uses Hart barrels. I believe the military is using Gary Schneider barrels these days. I've had one Hart and two Schneider barrels. They are both excellent and hard to say which is better. I've had others but I will only use these now.
