How many of you have found that to achieve the utmost in accuracy from your Contender or Encore, you have had to resort to the use of a custom forend which offers some form of floating of the barrel from the barrel channel?

I have found this to be the case when looking for the tightest smallest groups out of my Contenders and Encores, and have tried forends from Bullberry, Virgin Valley, and numerous versions of my own floating methods on factory and custom wood.

Here are some pics of a forend I picked up from another shooter over on Rimfire Central. I'd love to know who originally made this, as well as the grip which I picked up on Ebay.

The forend uses a two screw Pachmayr bedding bar to "float" the barrel from the solid aluminum base. The aluminum base has numerous holes drilled into it to relieve weight, and is mounted to the bedding bar using two screws.

This is the most consistant of all the forend variations I have tried for long range accuracy work, but is obviously limited to bench or at the least sandbag work, and also I use it with my Bellm 22mag 14" Rechamber barrel with an 8-32X rifle scope, rested on a Millett window rest for shooting Woodchucks and other varmints

Almost all of my Contenders are set up as varmint guns and I am a believer in the "hanger bar" setup. I just ordered a new foreend from Georgia Jims ....wide flat bottom specifically for bench/bags. I have never shot any of these barrels (VVCG, BB, TC ) without a HB so I would be guessing how well they actually work. Lets just say with the HB all of my varmint guns a very effective.

Sean

Very interesting.... I was have having the same idea the other day after shooting my custom 10/22 with aluminum surrounding the entire action and barrel (Volquartsen VX-2500). It is a very consistent shooter with that stock. I was thinking, what if I made something similar for strictly target shooting. The combination of wood and aluminum is an interesting idea. I had also thought of using some of these Pachmayr bars that I had lying around.

I have been approaching the idea of alternative materials for putting together forends. Woodworking I can do and have made plenty of forends, but metals and plastics are a mystery to me to experiment with. I had a few chunks of Corian countertop material, and thought it may have possibilites for working with other techniques to make a good forend material. Just not sure on machining it. I am sure bedding would be needed for any materials used.

Looks like I may have to start experiementing.....

BTW, very nice rig.

Rich Campbell

quote:

Originally posted by R. Campbell:
Very interesting.... I was have having the same idea the other day after shooting my custom 10/22 with aluminum surrounding the entire action and barrel (Volquartsen VX-2500). It is a very consistent shooter with that stock. I was thinking, what if I made something similar for strictly target shooting. The combination of wood and aluminum is an interesting idea. I had also thought of using some of these Pachmayr bars that I had lying around.

I have been approaching the idea of alternative materials for putting together forends. Woodworking I can do and have made plenty of forends, but metals and plastics are a mystery to me to experiment with. I had a few chunks of Corian countertop material, and thought it may have possibilites for working with other techniques to make a good forend material. Just not sure on machining it. I am sure bedding would be needed for any materials used.

Looks like I may have to start experiementing.....

BTW, very nice rig.

Rich Campbell

Rich,

Thank you for your nice words about my rig

The corian might be another viable material to use for such purposes: do you think it may be easier to machine than aluminum, and wood working equipement may possibly be employed to fabricate forends or at least a forend platform such as with my aluminum platform? It may have a lot of potential

Sean

I haven't investigated all there is to using Corian yet, but know that the scraps that I used cut very nice on a scroll saw and is a very popular practice. I had trimmed up the scraps with a carbide blade that I used for laminates and MDF. No splinters either! I think a router would do good if you took your time and cut a little more each pass. I know a lot of people who turn pens with it on their lathes which means to me that it would cut and sand well with sharp woodworking tools. It also sands pretty good and polishes also, and it will get very smooth if you wanted. I rounded the edges up pretty easily with it on a flap sander. I wore a full mask, since I don't think it would be good to breathe.

The downside that I found was that the largest thickness I could find was 3/4" and gluing it is a major issue since it requires a special mix. I think it is made of acrylics and is very stable to movement and heat, and resistant to lots of things. You can find pieces and the router bits on eBay quite a bit. I am afraid to run my carbide Freud router bits on it until I play with some others first.

Aluminum seems to be a good alternative, I just don't have the tools to work with it except for a drill press.

Anyway, all of this has got me to thinking about it more After I get the shooting bug out of me, I might start tackling some of these ideas.

Well, I rambled enough.....

Rich Campbell