I am looking for a .416 CRF bolt rifle and keep seeing the Guide Rifle. The original African model was a very good looking rifle but the latest version leaves me cold. I sold my heavy .416 RM Mauser and was hoping to replace it with a lighter rifle chambered in .416 Ruger.

I like the 20" barrel, the action, and the stainless steel approach that Ruger has taken. The stock with it's odd recoil pad angle and spacers to change LOP is very practical, but it is as ugly (to me) as the North end of a South bound mule.

An aftermarket stock is always possible I guess but if I am going to do that I might as well just start from scratch.

I have a guide gun on its way in the 416. It's not a light set up. With scope it will hit 9lbs. I am going to mill out the stock and maybe someday get a different one added on. The spacers in the stock now for me are awesome. I have a short lop so I'll take them all out and stock will look fairly normal. I can handle ugly if it shoots good.
My old 416
Was 7lbs with scope. But it also cost me 3000 to have built. Buying s 800
Dollar rifle and letting a smith have his way with it for a grand and you'll have a semi custom set up with a great little round!

A seven pound 416! That would give me a headache quickly.

My .375 African usually sits in a HS Precision stock that I ordered from Stocky's. It did not reduce the weight of the rifle but is a good stiff synthetic that is weatherproof and has a good recoil pad. It is the 23.5" barrel model and it weighs around 9.5 pounds with scope and sling.

I like the idea of a short barrel on a .416, but for my purposes it needs a walnut or laminated classic style stock, a good recoil pad, and a weight somewhere between 9 and 10 pounds.

I carried a .416 Ruger M77 Hawkeye Guide Gun around a shop for about an hour with the intent to buy it. Then, like your own ideas, I decided that it just wasn't QUITE the right rifle that I wanted - and that "Lamo Camo" stock was part of my motivation. Adding it up in my head, saving money on the base rifle for my semi-custom build was what makes the most sense...

So instead of buying the Guide Guns...

I bought two Ruger M77 Hawkeye All-Weathers in 300win mag and 7mm Rem Mag (stainless & synthetic), have a cheap economy grade walnut stock from Richards Micro-Fit gunstocks that I'm revamping as a pattern stock to get a pair of exhibition grade English walnuts duplicated by Macon Gunstocks. I have Shilen barrels getting spun up in #5 profile. Between the bedding, the dense walnut stocks, and the heavier barrel profile, I should bump these rifles that tip in just under 8lbs right now to right around 10lbs before the scopes.

Sure going to be a lot more expensive than the Guide Gun would have been, but I was after a custom/semi-custom build for these rifles. Blueprinting and setting the barrels back on the Guide Gun would have cost me some length also, since I'd have had to turn a full turn due to the rear sight being sweated AND screwed.

If I find myself with about a grand burning a hole in my pocket, I may need to buy an M77 Hawkeye someday soon too, but for now, I'm looking for a more classically styled set of safari rifles.

A friend of mine has a .416Rug Guide Gun, been over the pond twice with it and taken some very respectable game with it. Everything I have seen out of the .416Ruger is that it lives up to what it claims to be - a standard length action version of the .416Rigby or Rem Mag. Equally, the Ruger M77 Hawkeye Guide Gun, for what it is - meaning a fast handling, immensely powerful, budget-friendly safari rifle, is everything that it should be. I'd highly recommend it. Boyd's does a walnut drop-in stock for the M77, as does Richard's Micro-Fit gunstocks, either of these can be had for $70-200.

That sounds like a fun, exciting, and ambitious project. I guess one of your pair will be chambered in .416 Ruger, but what will the other one be? Are you going to put iron sights on or just go with slick barrels? How many recoil lugs and how many cross bolts?

It is really smart to start with a commercial action like the M77 instead of the way I started with old Mauser types of actions that had to be modified. Those older rifles that I had were ultimately expensive and really too heavy.

I do have a stainless Mark II chambered in .338 that I do not use very much, but was concerned about feeding issues if it was rebarreled to .416. Maybe I will learn something useful from your project.

"Ambitious" seems to be a very appropriate word for this 'twin rifle' project!!!

So... Kinda a long story...

Initially when my wife and I conceived this "little project" for our new Safari Rifles, we were planning on pair of Ruger M77 Hawkeye Guide Guns in .338win mag and .416 Ruger. As I mentioned before, I ultimately decided upon building custom rifles instead. Since we don't really need another mid-bore and big bore rifle rotting in the back of our safes, we decided to build a pair of switch-barrel rigs. One rifle will be a 7mm Rem mag plus a 338win mag, the other rifle will be a 300win mag plus a 416 ruger and a 458win mag. I'm still debating fluting on the 7mm and 300wm barrels to shed a bit of weight. Planning 24" barrels across the board.

I talked to a few smiths, and did a lot of talking to Ruger about the differences in parts between the 7mm Rem Mag, 300 Win Mag, 338Win Mag, and 416 Ruger Guide Guns - they all share the same mag boxes, followers, bolts, etc. Same rifles except for the barrels.

The 7mmRM and 300WM barrels will be slick, but the 338, 416, and 458 barrels will have open sights - planning for 2 or 3 leaf express NEGC's on hand fit sight bases. 3 scopes, two Leupold VX-3 4.5-14x50mm's plus one Leupold VX-6 1-6x24mm, all on Warne QD rings. My wife and I use the Leup VX-3 4.5-14x50mm on multiple rifles, and will leave that on her 7mm/338 for plains game, with the 1-6x going on the heavy rifle for cape buffalo.

Right now, I'm not planning on any additional recoil lugs on these rifles, as I've had two Ruger Mark II's in heavy calibers (458 Lott and .416 Rigby) that did just fine with only the infamous Ruger factory cast recoil lug. I DO, however, intend to bed with Devcon Steel or maybe Devcon titanium, with an ample bedding depth for strength.

I do plan to add two "magnum cross bolts" to the stock, one behind the recoil lug, and one through the trigger bridge. I'll also be stealing ol' Larry Potterfield's trick from his "safari rifle" build on their youtube page, and reinforcing the stock grip-neck. I've broken two stocks in my life and ruined hunting trips, and I'd dang sure hate to have one break on the other side of the world. Probably unnecessary, but sure won't hurt anything either.

Since you mentioned Mauser type's, I'll also mention that I also have a CZ550 action sitting on the shelf waiting for a 416 Rigby barrel - apparently I had money burning a hole in my pocket and was placing a big order at Brownells, so I couldn't help myself! Can't fit a Rigby in a Ruger long action, and I miss having one in the safe.

I should have the barrels from Shilen by mid-summer, then I'll do the finish fitting on the stocks for the sight alignments and scopes, before the fitting stock goes out for duplication. Hoping to have them put together and roaring fire sometime around spring/early summer of 2016.

Barrel bands for the .338 and .416?

If I put together another .416 it will definitely have the second lug. I lost a walnut stock on a .375 African due to a split in the tang after 30 to 40 rounds - all fired from sticks. Recoil had compressed the wood in the recoil mortise and I had not gotten around to properly bedding the stock yet.

Do you already have a trip planned? I will probably only take my own rifles on one more trip (next season). It is getting to such a pain to travel with rifles and I think most of the outfits are keeping better quality loaners in camp.

Yup, bands on the mid and heavy bore barrels. I was/am VERY tempted to put sights and bands on all of the barrels, and I still might, but I know that I won't ever shoot open sights for the 7mm mag or 300wm, so I'll probably put that money to fluting instead of sights and bands. A #5 contour shilen is anything but a light piece of steel, so if I can cut down a half pound or so, that'll be nice for carrying them on the home side when the extra weight isn't necessary, or even wanted.

The first trip with THESE rifles is looking right now like Alaskan brown and caribou in 2016, if I can get them spun together in time, and we're working on Argentinian buffalo with some guys I work with in 2016 as well (a hunt I've done before, and am lucky to have an opportunity to go back).

The idea for these two is to be a "husband and wife" pair of rifles, hers in the lighter cartridges of the pairs, mine in the heavier. The downside is that we both have to compromise on stock fit such that we can share rifles, but the up side is that we can mix and match barrels to cover our bases wherever we might go. And of course, have access to a usable set of cartridges that are suitable for our "home hunting" which is most commonly whitetail deer and every few years another elk trip.

My wife and I have put a few memories on a lot of rifles over the 6yrs we've been hunting together, now we're looking to build a pair of rifles that we can put a lot of memories on over the next 25+yrs of hunting together...