Have recently bought a short action which I intend to have built into a 6.5-284 L.R. hunting rig. I've found a benchrest rifle 'smith who is prepared to do some work, but he knows nothing about these actions, and hasn't seen one before. His initial reaction to my request to 'blueprint' was that a CRF action will have limitations. What advice can I pass on to him? Ideally I want this thing to shoot 4 inches at 500 yards. Is this action going to need much in the way of work to get exactly 'straight'? Are the tolerances good enough? Thanks in advance for any assistance you can pass on.

It really depends on how lucky you got. Some of these actions are dimensionally very sound, others need some work. The actions are useable as they come from the factory, but they were built to allow the gunsmith or owner choose the level of finish he is looking for.

It is definitely possible to have a gun built on these actions meet the accuracy requirements you site. I have seen several which would consistently shoot around .5 MOA. Needless to say, the final outcome will depend on many factors - both in the metal and stock work.

- mike

I agree with mho, great actions, but the do require some work to suit your liking. Although I hade MRC do the entire barreled action and work the reciever to how I like it, ie smoothness, trigger pull, etc, for a minimal charge. Now I am told by one of the sales reps that they do the finishing work on all the actions before they leave the facility. And I have 6 rifles built on 1999's and all shoot better then 1 MOA and three of them shoot better than .5"!

Working the Montana '99 is not really different from any othet flat-bottom action. Measure it and see what it needs. The ones I've worked didn't need anything but polishing.

tgwh5,

I bought one on the initial charter offer back in 2001 (mine has a single digit serial number). Here's what I posted back in 2005 when my gunsmith got my action for assembly.

Oh mine is also chambered in 6.5x284 that shot a 2.6" group at 500 yards last month. I've killed prairie dogs out to 798 yards and got a coyote at 732 yards last September.



As received the action looked good, the upper half was polished lightly with no waves or rounded over lines. Below the stock line the action was as-cast but still didn’t look bad. The bottom metal showed a little roughness from the casting on the exterior but surprisingly the interior was very smooth and clean looking. The stainless mag box is just a folded piece of heavy stainless sheet metal but the lips fit closely under the bottom of the feed rails with even spaces on both sides.

My gunsmith said the front ring and threads were the best he had ever seen on a production gun. He barely skim-cut the front ring and it was dead flat, perpendicular to the threads and the threads were straight to the bore. The rear ring was not perfectly aligned with the front so he made a smoothing cut inside it to make the bolt travel easier.

The bolt he said was a major pain as the lugs were making 20% contact on the left and not touching at all on the right. The contact patch on the left lug was a high spot because as he lapped that down both lugs immediately started making contact and lapped to about 90% contact relatively easily. The bolt face was perpendicular to the bore after the lugs were lapped and the face was flat so he didn't have to touch that at all. The sliding surfaces of the lugs and the rails were rough as a cob but the rails were flat and straight.

I don’t like the looks or feel of the action screws as they feel rough and have regular flat screw heads. The scope mounting screws lined up well. I laid two steel yardsticks through the edges screw holes and the yardsticks stayed parallel and equidistant from the barrel all the way to the muzzle. The screw holes themselves felt rough and some holes felt tighter than others. I ran a tap down each hole just to clean them up and they felt fine after that. The tap moved easily through the holes and didn’t feel like it was doing any cutting, just cleaning the holes.

My gunsmith really liked the trigger. He’s a big fan of Winchester triggers and he thought that the components in this action were as nicely made as any Win trigger he had seen lately. He said that the engaging angles were cut correctly and the surfaces required minimum polishing. It adjusted easily and required no changes to the geometry of the mating surfaces. He did not have to reduce the sear engagement to any worrisome level to get it set at 2 Lbs, 4 oz with a crisp break. It actually feels lighter than that to me but we tested it 10 times on his electronic trigger scale and the highest reading we saw was 2 Lb, 6 oz, the lowest was 2 Lbs, 3 oz.