I don’t own the universe of M700’s, but based on my first data point, I wonder if the accuracy complaints about M700’s are due to poor action bedding.
I own a M700 classic in 6.5 Swede. I conducted load development and found the thing was not necessarily a tack driver. At 100 yards it did shoot under 2”, which I consider perfectly acceptable for deer hunting. If the rifle shoots 2 MOA, then it will hit within four inches at 200 yards, six inches at 300 yards. That is plenty good, considering that I don’t hold much better with a lightweight rifle off the bench.
I have couple of "before glassbedding" targets. Everything is at 100 yards. If you notice the wide horizontal dispersion with 140 SMK’s. Sierra match bullets are in a word, superb. In a match barrel they will shoot bug hole groups. This side to side movement indicated to me that something was wrong with the bedding. The action, or the barrel was moving left and right in the stock.
One thing I found was that this rifle, and someone else confirmed their rifle was similar, Remington created a raised area in the barrel channel which created a pressure point. I like free floated barrels. When a barrel heats up it will expand. If there is a pressure point, or a bearing point on the barrel, as the barrel expands, the pressure against the barrel changes. This will cause a change in a point of impact.
So with stock channel tools, I scraped the barrel channel, removing the pressure point, and created a clearance so the barrel no longer touched the left side of the barrel channel. I suspect the left side of the barrel touching the stock created a lot of side to side movements. But not all. If the recoil lug is free to slide around in the stock, the action will shift during recoil.
I “pillar” bedded creating columns of Bisonite, and then I routed a humongous amount of wood forward of the magazine recess, and filled that with Bisonite. The final bedding looks awful, with voids, and it is not completely filled out around the recoil lug recess. But I was tired and grumpy and wanted to shoot my rifle, so I put it back together and took it to the range.
In my opinion it shot much better. These targets were fired fast, about five shots under a minute, maybe two. I racked the bolt and shot if the crosshairs looked good. The barrel was hot enough to be uncomfortable to touch.
Anyway, just bedding this rifle changed its group size considerably. These lightweight rifles are hard to shoot, they are twitchy, they kick hard, and they are very sensitive to stock weld and shooting position. Still, this rifle might shoot under 1 MOA, which is excellent for a deer rifle.
I had fun busting red clay pigeons at 200 yards with the thing. Just had to hold at the top of the red dot, and the pigeon shattered.
This improvement so encouraged me, that I bought a new stock for my other M700. It is a 30-06 in a Remington "tupperware" stock. I am going to put it in a laminated stock, and I am going to pillar that. I hope that I can get it to shoot under MOA.
Why? Complusive behavior I guess.
