I have three questions.

1. How much clearance should there be between the barrel and the stock on a free floated barrel? I think I should open mine up a bit more. I wonder if sometimes the barrel touches the stock. A 0.009� thick piece of paper slides between barrel and stock but not totally freely. I can get that paper doubled up at 0.018� thick through but it definitely requires some effort to slide it in there. Is there any harm in opening up that gap other than esthetics and the possibility of other unwanted junk getting in the barrel channel? It is a 300 Win Mag big game rifle with synthetic stock (Rimrock) which has been glass bedded to the action.

2. As the throat erodes on a big game rifle have you noticed that you need to seat your bullets out further to maintain the same jump to lands as before in order to keep the same accuracy?

3. I had asked the gunsmith who chambered this Lothar Walther barrel to throat it to my specs based on a dummy round I sent him but he just had a minimum saami spec reamer and it ended up having a longer throat than I wanted (I had hoped that most bullets would touch the lands at 3.500� overall cartridge length and it turned out that most were touching at closer to 3.600�. My magazine is only 3.600� and the various bullets I have tried are shooting best 0.010� to 0.035� off the lands. In trying to come up with a good practice and big game load the throat has eroded 0.030� so now I am out of magazine box. This is why I emphatically asked to have it throated to my specs. The gunsmith indicated that he would run his reamer in and then use his separate throating reamer to extend the throat to my specs but it turned out that the initial reamer cut the throat much deeper than I wanted. So I am somewhat screwed. I am wondering if someone can recommend an exceptional gunsmith who has experience and comfort working with the Lothar Walther barrels. It is a harder steel which is harder to work with than the usual SS that most other barrel makers are using. Also obviously the gunsmith would need to have a 300 Win Mag reamer that had no throat and a separate throating reamer so that he could cut the throat to my specs. My thought is that I would like to have this rifle set back about 0.5� or so to clean up the throat and then rechamber it so that it would have a shorter throat. I live in the United States. Any thoughts or ideas?

Thanks, Rufous.

[ 06-15-2002, 02:08: Message edited by: centerpunch ]

Gapitis never bothered me so I tend to have canyons around my barrels. I basically open up the channel until I can't squeeze the barrel to touch the stock. On some synthetic stocks I bedded a piece of 3/8" drill rod or an engine pushrod, what ever was lying around loose, that helped stop some of the torque and added a little weight up front.

My thoughts were if I had a once in a lifetime shot I didn't want it ruined by an errant shot caused by the stock coming in contact with the barrel from me squeezing or a sling pulling. Besides a nice big channel allows for better cooling.

Another alternative is to have a good stock man open up the receiver and barrel channel about a 1/16" then bed in the receiver and barrel at one time and be sure the inside of the stock including the trigger and magazine areas AND under the butt pad is sealed with epoxy. I did a few stocks this way and they held zero over the time I had them. Definitely a messy job.

Many opinions about the "correct" way to bed. I think they all have merit. I just finished rebedding a laminated stocked 250 Sav Imp from front to rear about a month ago. I originally bedded it from the beginning of the barrel contour through the recoil area and even with the front of the magazine and the tang area and I relieved the area around the receiver by 0.030", when I built it about 35 years ago. It still shot OK but not like the first groups so I thought I would re-do to see what happened. It helped change the groups from vertical to round but I need to work on the loads some more. The newer components have had an impact on the group size and increased the velocity quite a bit over what I noted back then. Still, putting 5 into a quarter isn't bad coming from a whippy little #2 contour unless it put the same into a dime at one time.