I have already made my decision and went with the Nesika, but in one of my travels I got to talk to an older friend who is also into guns. I tried to explain the reasoning behind my choice, but never quite convinced him that there was not a huge differance in the price of a custom action and a completely blueprinted Remington 700.
I am sure I will someday build something on the 700 action since I got a couple of them, but being my first project I wanted it to be a special one

Anyway back to the disussion, does anyone see much of a differance between aftermarket actions and bluprinted 700's. (Not just in price, but also accuracy and overall value of rifle)

Sure. A blueprinted action makes the best of a pretty good action. A custom just starts out better, though whether that's important to you is a personal decision.

Most (all, except cast?) factory rifles are forged and machined before heat-treating, saving machining costs. Custom actions are machined either from scratch or at least after heat-treating. This is expensive on tooling and time-consuming, but yields an action that doesn't start out warped from heat-treating.

Can you tell the difference? I'm not good enough, but it is a difference. I don't think a straighter action makes your best load any better, but it does make load development easier.

Jaywalker

I think the only circumstance where a custom action is better from an accuracy standpoint than a properly bluepinted M700 is in Benchrest competition. In any other shooting situation, I doubt that you could tell the difference in accuracy, and then the difference would only be a tenth of an inch or less group size at 100yds.

The custom action are already blue printed and most are stiffer than an M700. If you look at what the BR competitors shoot, you will not find many M700s and M700s are almost non-existant in the winner's circle. An exception to this may 1000yd BR competition, but the M700s are becomming more scarce there also.

With that said, I have an M700 1000yd BR rifle that shoots competively, but to get it there, I had to sleeve the action to make it as stiff as some of the custom actions. By the time I did this, it would have been cheaper to start off with a custom action like a Nesika, Stolle, Stiller, or a BAT.

David: I very much appreciate your views and especially your attempt at "quantifying" the accuracy difference (other things being equal - like barrel quality, trigger quality, scope quality, bullet quality etc!).
I not only appreciate your view I agree with it completely!
I have a WHOLE bunch of Remington bolt action Rifles and the ones with custom barrels, custom triggers and were assemblled with an eye toward accuracy PROVIDE all the accuracy I need!
I think I have just 3 or 4 accurized (blueprinted) actions.
For instance I have a custom barreled 700 in 223 (with Jewell Trigger and 20 power scope) that has not had the action "blueprinted", that has shot 5 shot 100 yard groups as small as .162"! The action may very well be "warped" like Jaywalker alludes to but if it is - I don't care!
I don't plan on having any more of my Remington actions blueprinted as the accuracy with the ones I own is very satisfactory to me. Blueprinting is expensive and I see better accuracy returns on my investments in super high quality barrels, scopes and triggers.
CORNERSTONE did not say what uses he was interested in comparing the custom to the blueprinted Remington 700! Nor did he allude to what he was going to do with his Nesika Bay action. If he was going full bore Bench Rest 100 & 200 yard competing then he did the right thing! If he is gonna shoot Wood Chucks there in Pennsylvania then I would have gone 700 short action, Shilen barrel, Jewell Trigger and no blueprint job.
Best of luck to him and his new Nesika project what ever it is!
Hold into the wind
VarmintGuy

To make it short I expect my new rifle any day it's built on a Borden Alpine action. When I compared price, the Borden was cheaper than a maxed out 700, and the tolerences were also tighter on the Borden.

Dr B

Varmint guy,

My Nesika project is as follows:

Nesika T action
Jewel trigger
Shelin select match barrel @ 25"
10-twist w/ #7
High tech Specialties stock
Nikon Titanium scope
Talley bases and Rings

ALLUDE:: to make indirect reference <comments alluding to an earlier discussion>; broadly :

Cool word had to look it up. The rifle may be used to hunt Woodchucks (Ground hogs as we call them), deer, pigs, bear, paper targets and water filled milk jugs at long range in and around Pa.

VarmintGuy: I also have a 223 M700 VSSF, that will shoot an occaional sub .200 group, that is factory stock except the factory trigger has been adjusted to 2lbs and the rifle has been glass bedded in the original stock (I think built by HS Precision for Rem). But, it will only average between .5 to .6 inch groups. Good enough for shooting varmints out to about 300yds.
My blueprinted M700s will average just over .3 inch groups off bags on the bench. It may be that the blueprinted rifles shoot better because of the Krieger or Pac Nor barrels, but having the action blueprinted increases my confidence in the rifle and makes it more likely that the barrel will perform up to expectations and that makes it worth while to me. I would not have sleeved my BR M700 if I had not intended to use it for competition.
If I ever build another competition rifle, I will definitely use a custom action. They are a much less risky proposition, when extreme accuracy is the goal, than any built up factory action.