Barrel bedding and M1903A3

Made it to the range on the first day of the New Year to shoot my newly stocked and barreled Rem 03A3. My intent was to see if it had a preference for the amount of up force on the barrel at the end of the stock, so I could do the final inletting. Seldom do I get results that are this definitive. Everyone has claimed that the USGI barrels like a decent amount of tip force, but I was curious to see if this Criterion barrel exhibited the same preference. I’ll say without hesitation, yes.

The weather was cold (8 deg F) clear, and still. I had a limited amount of ammo, but all the shots were taken with 150gr FMJBT over 55.0gr of IMR4350 loaded at the same time.
The picture with the dime shows a 10 shot group from 200yd with a clean barrel. The force imparted to the barrel by the tip of the stock for this group was 5.5lbs. I didn’t waste any ammo looking for the center of the target, I just wanted to see a group, hence the location of the shots. All the drawings on the target are from my calcs to determine a 1.9” average radius. The maximum radius was 3 3/16” and the group diameter is 5.5” for those who believe in that measurement. Any way you slice it, it will hold the 10 ring no problem so long as I can.

The picture with the 15 shots was taken after re-shimming the stock to give 1.0 lbs of force at the tip when cold. After 10 shots I couldn’t see any kind of group so I took 5 more with no changes, and still no group. WOW that’s bad.

The last pic was after I went back to the 5.5lbs and fired my few remaining rounds I took a stab at the sight adjustments based on the first pass and was pretty close to center with my first 2, so I took the next three for record and covered the sighters with tape.

Moral of the story… Criterion barrel with tip force from stock in my particular rifle=GOOD.