joelvca: Haven't found much either but I have shimmed at the rear of the receiver on several such that the cross-pin is fairly snug when it goes in. I've also felt it necessary in several cases to shim front and rear sides of the receiver. Where it gets interesting is in how you want to bed the barrel. Other forum members suggested free floating was the way to go and I've found a couple of my refurbs to be clearly and strongly floated as they came out of the crate. One of these, a former sniper, will do 1.5 inch groups at 100 yards with no difficulty, usually with 3 of the shots in about an inch. The trigger pull remains a challenge. On the other hand, the Chumak book doean't appear to mention floating in the section dealing with the supposed accuracy problems. It seems to imply the accepted barrel bedding was with up-pressure at the forend tip via the metal ring on the lower metal handguard. Chumak suggests the errant first shot problem was due to the lower guard not being firmly attached to the tip of the wood, leading to inconsistant pressure. I would say the majority of my SVT's came from refurb with up-pressure at this point which agrees with the book. As an experiment I took a regular '41 and first bedded it with strong up-pressure at the tip of forend and shot it for grouping then altered it completely to have full float (other than the junk hanging on the barrel, of course) and repeated the grouping. This is with iron sights but results showed floating to be slightly better with 2.25 inch best 5 shot group at 100 vs 2.7 inch 6 shot group for the up-pressure case. Not dramatically different and led me to conclude strong up-pressure or full float both work. What didn't work was the bedding as purchased which had the barrel barely touching the forend, loose receiver, and foot size groups. Hopefully more can be gleaned from Chumak by Russian speaking members who share their findings with us.
milsurpo
