Great to hear, that the weld worked and it functioned flawlessly. For accuracy, I have found one a couple of my M-100' s (I have 6, four .308' s and two .284' s) that a forearm pillar and bedding has improved accuracy dramatically. What I did was make a pillar bushing to fit in the forearm between the forearm screw lug on the barrel and the screw anchor in the stock. I am not of the exact deminssions of the bushings, but I made them out of 1/2" round stock and I believe they were about 3/8" long. I drill them out to allow for the screw to pass thru with plenty of clearance, then drilled the end that mates up with the screw retaining lug on the barrel out to match the taper. I then opened up the area around the screw anchor in the forearm of the stock, to allow room for the pillar. What I wanted to do, was to get the pillar to mate up with the lug on the barrel and bottom out on the anchor in the stock at the same, while allowing the barrel to just clear the stock in the bottom of the barrel at the forearm tip by a few thousandths. Once I got the fit that I wantedwith the pillar, I went in and opened up the forearm tip, that last 2" or 3" that is solid where the forearm screw is, by sanding it out until I had approximately 1/8" clearance of the barrel. I then bedded that section of the stock with the pillar and barrel in place. Then afterward, I opened up the stock side rails until I had approximately .050" clearance on both side rails of the stock and the barrel. It helped the accuracy on a couple of mine that were absolutely horrible, like 6" groups at 100, now they shot in the 1.5" range with loads they like.