Blueprinting?
- Thread starter Groundhog
- Start date
Bedding the stock is only a portion of accurizing a rifle, but it isn't the same thing a blue printing a rifle. For most shooters a bedded action and free floated barrel will give us the kind of accuracy we are looking for. Blue printing an action makes all the parts fit together better with tighter tolerances than what was there before.
I'm not a gunsmith and this would probably be better answered in that forum. From my limited knowledge blue printing an action involves squaring the bolt face to the chamber, polishing raceways, lapping the recoil lugs, and a lot more stuff I don't know about. All this does is take out the rough spots and allows the action to lock up with greater stiffness because of the tighter tolerances. The stiffer the action the more likely it is to be a more accurate rifle.
Again glass bedding and free floating a barrel will probably give you the accuracy you are looking for. If you are looking for benchrest accuracy then a blue printing of the action will be necessary. The only other time I'd have an action blue printed is when building a custom rifle.
I'm not a gunsmith and this would probably be better answered in that forum. From my limited knowledge blue printing an action involves squaring the bolt face to the chamber, polishing raceways, lapping the recoil lugs, and a lot more stuff I don't know about. All this does is take out the rough spots and allows the action to lock up with greater stiffness because of the tighter tolerances. The stiffer the action the more likely it is to be a more accurate rifle.
Again glass bedding and free floating a barrel will probably give you the accuracy you are looking for. If you are looking for benchrest accuracy then a blue printing of the action will be necessary. The only other time I'd have an action blue printed is when building a custom rifle.
"The object is to make everything concentric to the datum of the action."
As stated by TPAW"s website, that was the very first line on the why. I have seen firing pins not in line with the primer, a trued up action with a trued up barrel will permit the action, bolt and barrel to be concentric and in perfect relationship with each other. Like glass bedding, if everything happens the same on each shot then your more than apt to get the same results at each firing. You are taking out any presure points on the action, such as taylorce1 is saying and in a nut shell making everything fit better and tighter and in a straight line to each other. So when the firing pin falls, everything is in perfect alignment, even through the recoil (it all happens the same from start to finish!) Factory guns have tolerances, but they dont have the time to hand finish them to a point a smith can, hence, the one lug touching Remington's. Hope his helps clear things up, but there is also more involved like trigger pull, bedding, crown at muzzle, and so on!
As stated by TPAW"s website, that was the very first line on the why. I have seen firing pins not in line with the primer, a trued up action with a trued up barrel will permit the action, bolt and barrel to be concentric and in perfect relationship with each other. Like glass bedding, if everything happens the same on each shot then your more than apt to get the same results at each firing. You are taking out any presure points on the action, such as taylorce1 is saying and in a nut shell making everything fit better and tighter and in a straight line to each other. So when the firing pin falls, everything is in perfect alignment, even through the recoil (it all happens the same from start to finish!) Factory guns have tolerances, but they dont have the time to hand finish them to a point a smith can, hence, the one lug touching Remington's. Hope his helps clear things up, but there is also more involved like trigger pull, bedding, crown at muzzle, and so on!
Blueprinting a rifle is just like blueprinting an engine....
You put blue layout die on mating surfaces and then assemble the parts and see how much contact you are getting. Usually, you lap or re-machine parts until they fit as well as you want.
You probably don't need 100% contact on your bolt lugs, 40% is plenty if it's balanced between the lugs and close to the body.....
-tINY
To 'Blue print" anything means to make every dimension "on the mean". On the mean means between the high and low tolerances. Thus a bolt diameter might be .875 + or - .005, but the actual dimension could be .880 or .870 and still be within tolerance. To "blueprint it would mean making it .875 exactly. To blue print a rifle would mean making every engineering dimension exactly on size.
Due to the large number of parts on a rifle, it would be very costly to blueprint it unless you made the rifle from scratch and cut each part to the mean.
Accurizing means to fit the rifle so that when fired, everything is the same on each shot. Bedding, crowning,chamber size,bolt fit are all part of accurizing.
Due to the large number of parts on a rifle, it would be very costly to blueprint it unless you made the rifle from scratch and cut each part to the mean.
Accurizing means to fit the rifle so that when fired, everything is the same on each shot. Bedding, crowning,chamber size,bolt fit are all part of accurizing.
Dfariswheel
New member
There are various terms used for this, including "blueprinting" "In-lining" "truing up","accurizing" and others.
What it really means is to put the rifle into blueprint specifications.
Since most factory rifles are not perfectly to the prints, the gunsmith re-works the action to get it in spec.
This means he checks and gages an action to find one that's as close as possible, then corrects anything not in specification.
The first step after gaging and selecting a good action is to clean up and make uniform the barrel threads in the receiver.
All other checks are based off the threads and use the threads to judge and correct the other checks.
Everything must be perfectly in line with the bore of the barrel, and that depends on the threads.
As example, rifle blueprints call for the front face of the receiver to be a perfect 90 degrees to the threads and perfectly flat and level with no waves or high and low spots.
After the threads are cleaned up, the threads are used as a base line to make sure the front face of the receiver IS flat, level, and at 90 degrees.
In short, if the blueprints call for the front face of the bolt to be perfectly at 90 degrees with the threads and it isn't, the gunsmith re-works it until it is.
The gunsmith goes over the entire action making sure it meets the blueprint specifications as much as possible.
What this does is eliminate as much variation as possible.
Variation is what kills accuracy.
In an accurate rifle, the rifle fires the bullet the same way, EVERY time.
When it doesn't, accuracy suffers.
The gunsmiths job is to put the rife in blueprint specs to eliminate the accuracy-killing variations of things not to specification.
What it really means is to put the rifle into blueprint specifications.
Since most factory rifles are not perfectly to the prints, the gunsmith re-works the action to get it in spec.
This means he checks and gages an action to find one that's as close as possible, then corrects anything not in specification.
The first step after gaging and selecting a good action is to clean up and make uniform the barrel threads in the receiver.
All other checks are based off the threads and use the threads to judge and correct the other checks.
Everything must be perfectly in line with the bore of the barrel, and that depends on the threads.
As example, rifle blueprints call for the front face of the receiver to be a perfect 90 degrees to the threads and perfectly flat and level with no waves or high and low spots.
After the threads are cleaned up, the threads are used as a base line to make sure the front face of the receiver IS flat, level, and at 90 degrees.
In short, if the blueprints call for the front face of the bolt to be perfectly at 90 degrees with the threads and it isn't, the gunsmith re-works it until it is.
The gunsmith goes over the entire action making sure it meets the blueprint specifications as much as possible.
What this does is eliminate as much variation as possible.
Variation is what kills accuracy.
In an accurate rifle, the rifle fires the bullet the same way, EVERY time.
When it doesn't, accuracy suffers.
The gunsmiths job is to put the rife in blueprint specs to eliminate the accuracy-killing variations of things not to specification.