Removing action from stock?
 

How is everybody? Was at a local shop the other day looking at some scopes. Got to talking to some of the regular hang arounds .The question of cross bolts came up.I told the guy's that you don't normally have to have a special wrench to remove the bolt because it is there to keep the wood from splitting .That a gun with to cross bolts has one at the recoil lug and the other back around the action screws.Anyway one guy was talking about taking his gun apart.When he did another old guy almost had a coniption he went to ranting about "don't ever remove the action from the stock".He thenwent on to talk about a Sako in PPC that a guy took apart that was shooting sub 1/4 " groups ,after they took it apart it would not shoot a group.Thery were so adamant about it they have almost scared the hell out of me.I know some guns are funny about the toruqe of the screws but this is just to much.what do you guy's think?

RE: Removing action from stock?
 

Swamp...I know this is a little different gun than you are talking about, but I did take the action out of my Rem 7600 last year to "de-gunk" and clean the assembly.

I didn't touch a thing anywhere else in the gun. After putting it back together, it shot about 3" from where it previously did. Still consistant, but different. I simply clicked and re-shot and everything was fine.

Coincidence....I think not. LOL

RE: Removing action from stock?
 

I have read from several Ruger owners complaining their MK2 rifle was not as accurate after removing the action from the stock.
I suspect this is from the angled screw Ruger uses to hold the action to the stock not being tighteded properly

RE: Removing action from stock?
 

Many bolt actions are sensitive about lug screw tension. I count the number of turns it takes to remove the lug screw and mark the orientation before removing. Then replace the screw using the same number of turns and duplicating the orientation. Check your zero regardless.

RE: Removing action from stock?
 

I cannot entirely agree with the notion that one should NEVER take the barreled-action out of the stock. But after doing so, and putting the contaption back together, it may take a number of rounds to "resettle" the action & barrel back to the point that they are once again shooting as they were before being taken down. For example, in the days when the U.S. Army marksmanship Unit was using National Match M1's, they NEVER field-stripped the rifles for cleaning like tyhe rest of the Army did after a day at the range. The reason was that to do so disturbed the delicate relationship of the reciever group and the steel bedding of the stock. Resettling a National Match M1 required AT LEAST 20 rounds before the rifle was back to shooting small groups.

It also seems to me that if you take a bolt-action rifle apart, the point of impact, or even the grouping ability might possibly suffer unless all screws are retorqued to the same pressure as beforethe disassembly. This might apply particularly to the Ruger M77 due to the "down and back" action of the front guard screw.

I once had a TCR single-shot in .243 WIN that was starting to scattr its shots all ove the place. i removed the rubber buttplate, and found that the stocjk thru-bolt was slightly loose. I retightened it to what I thought was reasonable. Loand behold! Groups were back to where they had been before the problem showed up!!

RE: Removing action from stock?
 

You have to take the action out of the stock occasionally to prevent rust and/or clean out the dust and dirt. A torque wrench that measures inch pounds is a pretty valuable tool for reassembly - if you measured the torque before loosening. Also, stocks like the H-S Presision and the Remington VS/Sendero are real good about remaining constant after reassembly -re-torque the action screws to 65 inch pounds. They are almost always free floated in the barrel channel.

The tough one is a wood stocked gun where the owner has done a bunch of tweaking and shimming; fine tuning the stock bedding to tighten groups. Also, some bench restactions are permanently glued into the stock. In the lattercase, it is common to set the trigger up so that it can be dropped out the bottom of the stock (for cleaning and adjustment)without removing the action.