Here is how I approach Remington rifles. No one cares, I know, but I have an opinion that smells worse than my farts, and I want to share it.

The tupperware stocks are no good, period.

With a good bed job the wood stocks are fine. Not too bad of a design, especially the ones with a Monte Carlo. I keep the scope as low as possible.

The H-S stocks are OK with a bed job. Every now and then everything runs staight and true, but don't count on it. The combs are too low for me, so I build them up with sleeping pad foam or one of the cheek-eeze pads from Brownells. The LTR parttern stocks are pretty nice.

The triggers are pretty easy to tweak. I don't go lower than three pounds, and if it is gritty I take it to my gunsmith. He is an artist with the stones and hones.

I favor Leupold QD scope bases and rings on regular hunting rigs, Leupold dual dovetail on scope only varmint rigs. Those dual dovetails are all you really need on a sniper type rifle of .308 caliber or less. That is from some retired NSW snipers with plenty of real world experience.

I do lap my rings with a Kokopelli brand accurizing kit to about 80% contact on the scope rings. I cinch the bases down with Torx style screws. A dab of medium loctite is ok.

Check the crown. If in doubt, have it freshened up. That is cheap enough to do. On my hunting type rifles I have a recessed crown cut for protection. Same thing on the target rifles. There is nothing magic about an 11 degree crown.

OK. You are bedded, crowned, lapped and lightened. How do it shoot? Good enough for whatever task you have in mind for the rifle? If so, go forth and have fun. If not, then the fun really begins.

The $64,000 question almost always boils down to what is going on with the barrel. Remington only has about $15.00 to $20.00 in each barrel. That does not make them bad barrels. They are seldom great, but lots of them aren't too bad. Go to the Lilja website and take the video tour of a factory Remington barrel. Obviously Dan chose a real stinker to compare with his fine product (and they are indeed fine barrels), but you'll get ill looking at the inside of that Remington barrel.

Where I thing things also go south is in the cutting of the chamber. You will often find one that is longer and looser than you would like. Seldom (never) will they be shorter and tighter. It is also not unusual for the chambers to be bored off center. Surprisingly, you can often get decent accuracy with an off center chamber, BUT, only if the barrel is otherwise pretty good.

So, the chamber is sloppy, and points to left field. What to do. The easiest (and most expensive) answer is to have the action trued, and have a good gunsmith screw on a good tube and do a careful chamber reaming job. When a Remington is all squared up and lapped in, they can really shoot well, day in, day out.

Sometimes if the barrel looks good otherwise (cultivate a friend with a bore scope, or learn how to push a slug down your bores), I'll g-e-n-t-l-y fire lap it, then have it set back two turns and a new chamber cut. I did that with a VSS in .308 about five years ago. Awesome results. That rifle is my oldest god son's most prized possession in the world (don't tell his wife).

What all this speaks to is that the large factories want to maximize their profits. They do that mainly by keeping costs down, using reamers as long as possible, and maintaining pretty loose tolerances. The rifles so produced usually are accurate enough to pop a deer at two hundred yards, and every body is happy.

When I buy a good barrel and have my gunsmith install it with a lot of TLC, what I am buying is time and skill. What I am buying is the time it takes to turn out a tightly spec'ed and hand lapped tube. Also the time for my smith to recut threads, rechamber or chamber, and put everything together so all the lines are straight and concentric, parallel, or perpendicular, as appropriate. I also buy some of Dave Kiff's time, because I get my own reamers from Pacific Tool and Gauge.

I have Remington's in .223, .243, 25-06, 270, 7mm Rem Mag, .308, and 30-06(2). Four have the original barrels. If I get one that's a shooter from the get go, well, I'm a happy guy. If it isn't, I don't feel put out. It's just another excuse to save some money, buy a nice tube, and have George build another hummer.

One other thing. I generally have the original bolt handle taken off, and have a replacement welded on. I pulled one off two years ago. I was kind of proud of myself.

JCN

Mine is a cobbled up lefty (took my 7mmMag action, took off the barrel, and screwed on a new .375H&H takeoff barrel purchased from a gunsmith). Cut two inches off the barrel to bring it to 22" and installed new sights. The thing took four elk last year with Barnes 210gr X bullets. Balances well, sights work, recoil feels better than I thought it would.