Barrel bedding and M1903A3

[Allen Humphrey]

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.

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[Badger]

Nice shooting ..

Thanks for posting pics ...

Regards,
Doug