I love my 77 mk II .338, but it weighs too much. ( I haven't weighed it, but it feels like about 9 lbs without the scope, very thick barrel & laminated stock )
I got some great feedback on my post about syn. stocks, but what else can I do ?
The gun shoots very good, so instead of replacing the barrel, I'm thinking of haveing the barrel turned down a bit.
Any other ideas to reduce the weight without spending more than the gun is worth ?

You might want to cut the barrel an inch or two ,mostly for balance with your new stock . Personally , I think the Ruger contour is about right for a .33 bore , and I think you will find the gun light enough after switching stocks......also , you could take a hard look at which scope you are mounting , it is real easy to save a half pound with the right scope.......

Recontouring the barrel can be a good idea. Often a rifle feels even heavier than it is due to forward weight bias. Recontouring the barrel can change this.
In your case, reducing the muzzle diameter by about.075 and tapering this to about a .040 dia reduction at the point where the barrel tapers up to shank diameter, would make a major difference in the way the rifle felt.
Laminated stocks are heavy and some weight can be saved by judicious hollowing of the butt and forend. Just be sure and seal the hollowed out places with varathane before reassembling the rifle. Regards, Bill.

Laminated stocks have about 1 lb of glue holding the layers together. Removing wood reduces weight more than with a regular wood stock. Just be sure to remove it from both the butt and forend to keep it balanced.

Anaconda,

A couple of things to keep in mind when entertaining the option of recontouring your barrel. The act of firing a weapon induces stresses into the barrel by way of pressures, vibrations and heat. All weapons experience this. When you take a barrel that has been repeatedly heated and cooled and subjected to the pressures of firing, and you start peeling the layers away by either fluting, reboring or by recontouring, you begin to relieve these stresses and you run the very real risk of losing the accuracy that you now enjoy.

I have seen some barrels which appeared to shoot better after contouring, and I have seen those which lost their original accuracy and who's groups opened up. The odds are not in your favor. Since I cannot guarantee to my customers that this type of work will not harm their weapons performance, then I do not offer this service. I have seen more negative results than positive results to involve myself in this game of chance.

There are those who will claim remarkable accuracy after having their barrels recontoured and this is probably true in some cases, however this is not always the result and you need to be aware of this before you throw the dice. Look for other ways to lighten your rifle and play the barrel option last.

Good luck,

Malm

I bore out a lot of wood from the butt and cut some deap, but short, channels under the barrel. you want to leave a couple of "webs" across the forearm for stiffness. I remove weight from the barrel from the breach end. recontouring it like a Winchester Feather Weight but leaving the long forward taper the same. this way the barrel is not thin and "wippy".

rebore it to a 458!!!!!!!!!!!!
woofer

I had the same issue with my M77 MKII LH .300 Win Mag. I took it to Jim West of Wild West Guns, Anchorage, AK and he cut the wieght by over 3 pounds: Synthetic stock (Brown Precision I think), fluted barrel, skeletonized and hollowed the bolt handle, trimmed just a little metal off the receiver. Cryo treated the barrel and had the barreled action hard-chrome plated. I realize that for a lot of people this is an awful lot of custom work to do to a Ruger--after all it's not a Mauser or a pre-64 Winchester, but the rifle suits me and shoots tiny little groups.

I have a MkII in 338 that weighs 7#6oz loaded with 3X9 scope. I had the factory barrel cut to 22" and recontoured. Then put a 1# stock on it. Either Brown, or High-tech would work. Also removed the floor plate went with a blind box and used a ADL trigger guard. Shoots about 1.25" groups. Match Grade Arms in Houston did the barrel work.