Well, I’ve just about exhausted the reading about how the Ruger No. 1 rifles were planned and put together and how some people have glass bedded their barrels, while other have installed set screws under the mounting bracket and how others have put a bit of pressure on the forward part of the stock etc. etc. etc.

I suppose to all the gun enthusiasts who enjoy this sort of thing that in the interest of putting bullets on top of each other at the range these things are very important.  As for me, I just want a rifle that will hit what I aim at consistently.

In all my reading one thing seemed to keep coming up and that is that nothing should impede the movement of the barrel when it is fired.  What that means to me is that the barrel must be completely free from contacting any part of the stock.

Yesterday a good friend stopped by and wanted to see my rifle.  The first thing he did was pull a dollar bill out of his wallet and tried to fit it between the stock and the barrel.  His first comment was…It ain’t floated!

We took the forearm off and this is what we saw.

It doesn’t take a genius to see that the barrel has been rubbing very hard against this part of the forearm.  The other thing to notice is the depth of the barrel chamber below this “Lip”.  That is a full 1/8 inch of lip on this stock.  Apparently, Ruger either intended for the barrel to have this wood touch the barrel, or the manufacturers of the forestock didn’t have their tooling set properly.

So, after all  my reading I found where “somewhere” someone said that Ruger had intentionally wanted to have a 12 pound “up pressure” on their barrel from the forearm stock.  That doesn’t make any sense to my way of thinking.  Maybe some pressure, but not 12 pounds!  And even some pressure would impede the barrels movement, I would think.

So, I went to work with my dowel and sandpaper.  Sanding a little and checking with a dollar bill.  Sanding and checking.  Sanding and checking.

Pretty soon I had the lip completely off.

And while checking with the dollar bill I had to keep sanding to get the barrel completely free floating and ended up sanding the entire barrel channel.

Back on the rifle it didn’t change the looks one bit, and I sure hope that the floating barrel will produce the kind of groupings I hope for.

Next week it will be back on the range to see if I ruined the gun or not.

Thinking of what I have done by removing that much wood and taking away that much pressure from the barrel.  My thoughts are that the rifle will shoot a whole lot lower than it did on my last range escapade.  Is my thinking correct?

Bears Butt

August 5, 2013

I’m sorry folks, but I messed up and deleted my images files and of course when I did that my pictures went with it!

Bears Butt

August 14, 2013