I would appreciate your informed advice on this. I recently bought a CZ 550 Safari American in .375 H&H. Initially, groups were huge. I found out what the reason was: the barrel channel was exerting quite a lot of pressure on the barrel. (The .375 has a second recoil lug about 4-5 inches from the tip of the forend, and the forend is anchored to the barrel with a screw in that location. However, in my rifle, the last 4-5 inches of the forend, ahead of that screw, was pushing upwards quite hard against the barrel.) I cut that part of the barrel channel about 1/16" inch deeper using one of those barrel channel cutters from Brownell's. Even that much deepening of the barrel channel did not free-float the barrel. I still can't slip a piece of paper between the barrel channel and the barrel in that last 4-5 inches. I guess that tells me that the forend was exerting an awful lot of pressure against the barrel before I modified the barrel channel.

My question is this: should I keep going until the last 4-5 inches is free-floated? Or should I quit now, while there is still pressure against the barrel?

I think I'd remove the bolt that goes thru the stock into the barrel lug and see if that frees up the barrel and then shoot it and see what happens--if it shoots better then you have your answer-free float-if not then I'd figure out how to put some spacers in (temporarily) to get that barrel free at the end and see what happens when you shoot--hopefully your screws/bolts will be long enuff to try this---you are welcome to borrow my hog back stock to see if it fits better and see what happens also---I'm free floating my CZ 375 in my McMillan stock, but others haven't fyi---chris

csutton7: Thanks for those suggestions. I think I will try your idea of putting in a temporary spacer (maybe a washer of some kind?) around the bolt where it screws into the barrel, in order to free the barrel from the barrel channel, and see whether that helps. That way, the barrel will still be anchored to the forend at that location, and the only difference will be that the barrel is no longer touching the barrel channel.

Big Brass, for spacers (temporary or permanent) I use an old plastic 12 guage shotgun shell. I cut approximately 1 inch out of the middle of the shell. This leaves a "ring". Then I split it and cut off what it needs to fit. I mentioned permanent because I do things "temporarily" that seem to become "permanent". Good luck, Mike

Hull! Not loaded shell!! Sorry, Mike