Remington 700 SPS - 7mm STW - Part 2

Part 2 – The build

A simple fact – It’s always a good day when the big brown truck brings you parts  and you get a call from your FFL saying your transfer has shown up.
  

A few details to share after doing quick inspection on the rifle:

• The barrel is a 26” tube, great for taking advantage of a large amount of slow powder.

• I was a bit disappointed to see some grunge/funk built up around one of the optic mounting screws.  It looked like corrosion, but wiped off with some CLP easily.  Odd to have that in a new in box rifle.  

• Per an inquiry with Remington, the twist rate is 1:9.  Perfect for stabilizing the longer new Accubonds when they are available.      

•        The X-Mark Pro trigger was not bad at all and much better than the last one I had on a new rifle.  A few passes over my trigger gauge showed it to be just a hair under four pounds and very consistent.   It broke cleanly enough, that I’m going to hold off replacing it with the Timney until I get some range time.  I have to wonder if it was a random anomaly or if Remington is putting more effort in, now that a fair number of factory rifles are shipping with adjustable, decent triggers.

•        Typical Remington fit and finish – or about what I’d expect from the Remington assembly line. 

The stock I've selected is the B&C Medalist Alaskan.  The action dropped into the stock, but did have a bit of a tight fit when putting on the bottom metal.   Good enough for a first pass at the range, maybe a bit of cleanup later on will be in order.   The action was torqued in place at 50 inch pounds.

As a side note, I’ve left the pressure pads on the end of the stock that put a little bit of upward pressure on the barrel.    I can always remove them, but I’ve had pretty good luck with accuracy on sporter weight barrels leaving them in. 

A past project, moving a free floated laminated stock to a B&C Alaskan, actually showed better groups with the pads.. even if it did cause a 5” upward shift in the POI at 100 yards.

Just a few notes on mounting the Trjicon aimpoint. 

One of the few things I've found helpful when mounting a scope, is to do a setup run before finally torquing down the bolts.   I like to just loosely assemble the scope, base and rings to the rifle, to make sure everything lines up the way I want and that the eye relief is correct.   (And this is where I was glad I had a spare set of medium height rings on hand, since the low version wasn't viable.)

I used 25 in-lb for the base screws and 20 in-lb for the rings.   I did not Locktite them in, as I've not found issues with quality mounts ever having an issue coming loose.   I do use a set of levels to make sure that the scope is level before tightening it all down.  

Here's a shot of the optics mount, showing the limited clearance of the power adjustment with the Talley medium height rings.

The completed rifle - ready for the range:

(7 STW + Lucy)

Next up - Part 3 – Load Development