totoe

..I just trade for a remington bdl 7 mag,that was sitting
metal to wood,bad at the fore-arm area,but not now it
has a clear barrel,i free-floated it myself ive not even
fired it yet,Question did i screw the gun up?free-floating
before firing it?..it removed the blueing from the barrel
that how bad it was rubbing..did i mess up does free-floating
help??..

..JESUS IS COMING BACK BE READY...

stubblejumper

Free floating the barrel will almost always make for a more consistant point of impact but may or may not improve your group size.

hornetguy

In my experience, most guns will shoot more consistently (accurately) when the barrel is floated. Occasionally a barrel will need a little bit of upward pressure at the tip of the forearm to make it "work"... I think you should start out free floated, and if your groups wander around, then try the upward pressure. It's easy to do temporarily.. just loosen the front action screw, and put a folded up business card, or something similar under the barrel at the tip of the forend. Then tighten the screw back up, and shoot some groups like that. You want the shim to be thick enough to put pretty good tension upward against the barrel. If that works, then you just put some bedding compound out there, and you should be done.

"Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness..those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." Santayana

bigcountry

All of my rifles are free floated. I say you didn't hurt anything. If you took out too much wood, then you can always fill it with glass. That would make it more consistent anyway but it would still be free floated.

Melvin Forbes from New Ultra Light Arms convinced me that free floating has its advantages but is not needed if properly bedded in a very strong stock. He said, if you can keep everything consistent and keep the upward force on the barrel very consistent with equal pressure on all points, the pressure bedding will make your gun shoot all loads better. He explained it like a tuning fork. If you free float, there is alot of vibrations going thru you barrel. With that, one load might be great, another bad, or another good on a hot day but not on a cold. He explained that this is the reason ultra ultra lights are so finicky, because of free floating. But he puts so much time into bedding his ultra lights, that it is a perfect fit, but his ultra lights start at 2500 dollars. But He was showing, if its a perfect fit with no binds, the pressure bed will dampen that vibrations and be able to shoot all bullets and loads well. he claims that the slightest binds on one side of the barrel or another will cause flyers.

So for us working folks that can't ever afford 2500 dollar rifle, we will have to play around with our loads and free float to get by.

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Vapodog

There's a lot more to life than a floated barrel......but it's one of the majik things to do.....I free float all my barrels and do so without even checking first,.......it's a requirement in this house!!!