Quote:What else should he do to it? A heavier barrel is one thing. He's got all the scope he needs. What else though? I'm curious? I know a couple of title holders. They might need some advice.
Specifically (besides floating the barrel and installing a 3lb trigger), stiffening (or replacing) the stock, pillar and glass bedding, including installing a better recoil lug, lapping the bolt lugs, "facing" the action and barrel to ensure proper alignment, sleeving the bolt/action to improve stiffness, etc, etc,.
If you're talking about our military sniper rifles, the first difference from "out of the box" is that they replace the stock with a McMillan, and then the armorers start working over every individual rifle for accuracy. Every U.S. military sniper rifle includes the civilian equivalent of many thousands of dollars of gunsmithing in order to make them accurate enough to do the job. In fact, (though I'm not sure how far along the procurement plans are) in order to avoid that factor and save money, there's plans for our snipers to switch to the
AI platform. That's a British $6600 "out of the box" bolt gun that basically has the gunsmithing included, and it's cheaper in the end than the Rem 700s our guys are currently using).
If you're talking about your "title holder" friends, ask them what their rifles cost them and what gunsmithing they've had done to them. I'd bet you dollars to doughnuts they have (many) thousands of dollars and extensive gunsmithing, probably most if not all of what I outlined above, into their title winning rifles, even if they started with a custom action and not a 700.
The question at hand isn't whether or not a bolt gun CAN be made to be more accurate than an AR, it unquestionably can be (see my previous post). The question was whether the normal off the shelf or out of the box bolt gun was more accurate than the regular off the shelf or out of the box AR...generally speaking...IT'S NOT.
That's not opinion, it's fact. For proof look at the guarantees of accuracy from the factory, bolts vs ARs.
That's not a slam on bolt guns, as I said previously I own several extremely accurate (1/4 moa or better) 700/40xs and love the platform...but they didn't come that way from the factory.
