semi-custom bolt action builds

[MrFeetZ]

I?d get an Orgin action and go from there. Has 700 footprint and takes 700 triggers and stocks. Screw on latest and greatest caliber barrel at home and you?re good to go. I?m tired of buying complete rifles with no modularity. I?d rather be able to mix and match my parts and continuously evolve my rifle as my shooting interests and needs change. It?s waaay cheaper in the long run.

Orgin action 900$
Barrel 450-1000$
Trigger 250$

And buy a used stock/chassis.

Thanks for the input and suggestions. Ive spent the last few days researching a build like this and seems the way to go since starting from scratch. The challenge seems to be finding availability of components. Do have any online vendor recommendations?

[baih777]

Actions usually dont go on sale.
This is the company i order my Zermatt actions from.

https://northlandshooterssupply.com/actions/zermatt-bighorn-arms-origin-actions/

You need to pick your style bolt knob. And determine which bolt head you need. Caliber specific. With the Zermatt you can change the bolt head for a different caliber in your action length.
He sells them in nitride finish and bead blasted stainless.

Very customer friendly.

[baih777]

I posted in the Howa thread a link to the muzzle brakes still on sale.

[sigstroker]

Actions usually dont go on sale.
This is the company i order my Zermatt actions from.

https://northlandshooterssupply.com/actions/zermatt-bighorn-arms-origin-actions/

You need to pick your style bolt knob. And determine which bolt head you need. Caliber specific. With the Zermatt you can change the bolt head for a different caliber in your action length.
He sells them in nitride finish and bead blasted stainless.

Very customer friendly.

The best way to get a bargain is when a new design is introduced. They will discount it a few hundred a couple months before they have any available. I remember when one came out for 900 bucks and a few months later they were 1300.

[kriller134]

Thanks for the input and suggestions. Ive spent the last few days researching a build like this and seems the way to go since starting from scratch. The challenge seems to be finding availability of components. Do have any online vendor recommendations?

Check out this vendor. They?re on the hide and I?ve bought a barrel from them. https://frontrangeprecisionllc.com.

[ar15barrels]

For those recommending or even considering pre-fit barrels instead of gunsmith fit barrels, I'll leave this little short video for you:



If you want to dive deeper into the difference between pre-fit and gunsmith fit barrels, this video is decent:

[1859sharps]

ar15barrels, since I had planned to ask these questions in the near future anyway, let me see if I have learned what I think I learned about pre fits. The Apex video pretty much confirms my conclusions but going to ask anyway.

1. Don't bother for mass produced commercial actions.

I suspect that as soon as I said that some Savage or Tikka owner will disagree. BUT my thinking on that is, the tolerances allowed with these actions make the risk of it not working a caveat to take seriously.

2. Blue printed mass-produced commercial actions need not apply. The exception being if the smith who did the blue printing has the skill and ability to spin up a barrel off their notes, you can from that smith get a replacement barrel without having to send the action.

3. Custom actions that were designed from the beginning to take pre fit made to their specifications have a shot at delivering on the promise of pre fits. However, this does not eliminate many of the caveats that the Apex video brings up. The work around is to have a smith who has the skill, tools, and ability to keep accurate records of your action after having it in hand to measure and fit the first barrel. Then replacements can be "pre fit" barrels.

What I am seeing in the pre fit market, very narrow options just like the Apex video said. It is dominated by those who are looking for PRS type rifles. So, for off the shelf options, you are extremely limited in choices for contour, chambering, profile, weight etc, etc. Yes, some pre fit barrel companies do offer some custom services, but at that point why wouldn't you work with a qualified local smith?

My current bottom-line thought/conclusion/opinion. The pre fit idea holds promise. But currently only in a narrow use case, utilizing actions designed for this idea. Within that use case, you have a decent chance at better than mass produced results. BUT even the best result will not exceed that of a properly smithed custom job. A traditionally smithed job won't cost much more if any to have a barrel chambered, threaded, and installed to your action. It actually might cost less since you don't have to add in the cost of the action wrench and vise, blocks etc. Smith already has those.

[MrFeetZ]

Thanks for all the really great inputs…. Sharps, (and anyone really): if I understand you above, are your saying an action like a tikka wouldn’t be worth it as a starting point, unless one already has one? I don’t currently have any action to start from and will be starting fresh and likely take the advise recommended above and start with an origin action. My confusion is now what contour bartlein barrel to go with? I think preference is for a ss barrel over carbon fiber, as I’m not too concerned about weight savings and think additional heat dissipation would be more beneficial with ss over cf. When looking online for Barrels, I saw a website that had .264 cal barrel blank, 24” sentero contour with a 6 week lead time. Unfortunately, it was CF, but not 100% sure that .264 cal is correct for 6.5 CM.

[ar15barrels]

ar15barrels, since I had planned to ask these questions in the near future anyway, let me see if I have learned what I think I learned about pre fits. The Apex video pretty much confirms my conclusions but going to ask anyway.

1. Don't bother for mass produced commercial actions.

I suspect that as soon as I said that some Savage or Tikka owner will disagree. BUT my thinking on that is, the tolerances allowed with these actions make the risk of it not working a caveat to take seriously.

2. Blue printed mass-produced commercial actions need not apply. The exception being if the smith who did the blue printing has the skill and ability to spin up a barrel off their notes, you can from that smith get a replacement barrel without having to send the action.

3. Custom actions that were designed from the beginning to take pre fit made to their specifications have a shot at delivering on the promise of pre fits. However, this does not eliminate many of the caveats that the Apex video brings up. The work around is to have a smith who has the skill, tools, and ability to keep accurate records of your action after having it in hand to measure and fit the first barrel. Then replacements can be "pre fit" barrels.

What I am seeing in the pre fit market, very narrow options just like the Apex video said. It is dominated by those who are looking for PRS type rifles. So, for off the shelf options, you are extremely limited in choices for contour, chambering, profile, weight etc, etc. Yes, some pre fit barrel companies do offer some custom services, but at that point why wouldn't you work with a qualified local smith?

My current bottom-line thought/conclusion/opinion. The pre fit idea holds promise. But currently only in a narrow use case, utilizing actions designed for this idea. Within that use case, you have a decent chance at better than mass produced results. BUT even the best result will not exceed that of a properly smithed custom job. A traditionally smithed job won't cost much more if any to have a barrel chambered, threaded, and installed to your action. It actually might cost less since you don't have to add in the cost of the action wrench and vise, blocks etc. Smith already has those.

A pre-fit barrel is basically just like a factory barrel in that it's machined to a spec to work in any of 1000's of copies of an action with no regard for the SPECIFIC action that the barrel is going to be installed into.
Factory barrels are typically $30 blanks (because they make 1000's of them in a run) while most pre-fits are more expensive and better barrel blanks than factory barrels.
This disregards how well the specific barrel is chambered and threaded.
I am only talking about the basic consistency of the bore/lands/grooves when I am comparing $30 class blanks to $300 class blanks.

The next thing we look at is the quality of the chambering.
Factory barrels have sloppy loose chambers because the lawyers have gotten the manufacturers to make them looser so they will be more tolerant of more types of ammo without ever causing the pressures to be high.
Pre-fit barrels made on $300 class barrels are hopefully being chambered better like a true custom fitted barrel is but most are being run on CNC machines where they are still having to accept some looser fitting than a gunsmith fitting a single barrel to a specific action because they don't want to stick a reamer in a bore from running too tight of a bushing.

Last is the quality of the threading to match the action.
Factory and pre-fit barrels have to be made undersized to ensure that they will fit into any action that someone wants them to screw into.
A barrel being machined to a specific action can be fitted much tighter.
This directly relates to how accurate the barrel can ultimately shoot.

If you want to dive deeper into gun mechanics on what makes a gun more accurate, seek out a copy of Harold Vaughn's book Rifle Accuracy Facts.
It's out of print for years but there are used copies floating around.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/176084656795

You can have a $30 barrel that will shoot just as good as a $300 barrel IF the $30 barrel is fitted tight in the action.
You can have a $300 barrel that won't shoot as good as a $30 barrel if the $300 barrel is not fitted into the action as well as the $30 barrel.
It was a common thing many years ago to take off a factory Remington $30 barrel and cut an inch off the rear, then cut new threads that perfectly matched the receiver and cut a new chamber that's perfectly centered in the barrel and a snug fit to the ammo and those re-worked $30 barrels shoot as good as $300 class barrels.
This is just to demonstrate that a $300 class barrel won't really help you as much as you think if you don't do ALL the other things needed to get full potential out of the barrel.

Full potential comes from having a consistent/correct bore/lands/grooves with a properly centered chamber of minimum dimensions for the ammo you intend to shoot and then threads that are cut to be as tight as possible of a fit to the specific receiver you will be using.

Beyond that, we get into actions being straight/square/true/snug-bolt-fit vs sloppy loose fitting $200 factory actions that were made sloppy so that any of 1000 bolts/barrels will fit into them.
When a receiver is trued properly, the bolt bore is enlarged and an oversized bolt is fitted to take up the slack between bolt and receiver bore.

A factory 700 bolt is typically 0.695" diameter while a factory 700 bolt bore is around 0.703".
That means the bolt can move around 0.008" in the receiver.
When we true that same receiver, we open the bolt bore to 0.705" and re-work the threads and lug seats to all be square/centered to the new 0.705" bolt bore.
Then we fit a bolt that's around 0.703" to 0.704" so there's only 1-2 thousandths clearance.
Now the bolt can only move around 0.001" to 0.002" in the receiver.

When you buy a $1000+ custom ordered action, you can normally specify how tight you want the bolt to receiver bore and you can expect that the whole receiver is true to the bolt bore centerline.
Then it's just a matter of having a gunsmith fit a $300 class barrel blank into it with a properly centered minimally dimensioned chamber so you can get the best out of the barrel and your expensive match grade handloads.

If you are not using top quality handloads, most of the rest of this does not matter either.
You might as well just buy a factory rifle and shoot factory ammo if you are more concerned with saving money than you are with getting the peak performance possible from your equipment to actually find out how good of a shooter you are.

To cover your specific points above, here are my comments:

1. this is a personal choice as there is no right/wrong answer here.
Pre-fit barrels are just fancy factory barrels.
If you want a different twist rate or contour without spending as much money, pre-fit barrels are a valid option.
Pre-fit barrels won't make an otherwise stock $500 rifle into a magic lazer that shoots as good as a proper $3000 class rifle.

2. Blueprinting is the act of correcting an action to straight/square.
There are no mass produced blueprinted actions because blueprinting is the act of FIXING the problems of mass production.
There are custom made actions that are produced straight/square/snug from the beginning but they are not mass produced.

3. There are no custom actions specifically designed for pre-fit barrels.
What there are is custom actions where the manufacturer makes a specific effort to set the action/boltface depth very consistently which then allows for mass produced pre-fit barrels to be made with the proper cartridge protrusion to match the bolt face inside the action.
We call these pre-fit when they are more expensive (marketing/profit) and hopefully they are indeed made on barrel blanks better than $30 class mass produced blanks.
We would call these factory barrels if they were made on $30 class mass produced barrel blanks.

Fun fact; I have taken a 1960's 700 receiver and used a 2005 remington 700 bolt and a 2016 remington 700 factory barrel and recoil lug and screwed them together and they pass headspace checks just fine.
I put that gun together from scrap parts left over from other people's builds and it's my loaner heavy barrelled 308 that I bring out when someone wants to try longrange shooting.
I keep it zeroed with 168gr FGMM ammo and it's all you need to get started in proper target shooting.

We do all the extra work to build a $3000 class rifle AFTER someone has already mastered a $500 class rifle and factory ammo and they are looking to move to higher levels because someone just starting out is unlikely to see enough benefit from the fancier rifle.
Someone just starting out needs more rounds on target in the wind and some instruction to really learn to shoot beyond the performance limitations of a factory rifle/ammo.

[deckhandmike]

Are you reloading OP? If you’re serious about precision to the point of pre fit vs fitted barrels it might make your choice easier. If you don’t have great ammo it’s going to just be guess and check to see what load your rifle like regardless of how great it could shoot. I personally haven’t got into reloading and I’m starting to find the limits of factory ammo with a factory gun. I’m not seeing a point of spending more money till I fix the errors on my end.

[1859sharps]

Thank you ar15barrels for taking the time to supply more information.

[baih777]

Thanks for all the really great inputs?. Sharps, (and anyone really): if I understand you above, are your saying an action like a tikka wouldn?t be worth it as a starting point, unless one already has one? I don?t currently have any action to start from and will be starting fresh and likely take the advise recommended above and start with an origin action. My confusion is now what contour bartlein barrel to go with? I think preference is for a ss barrel over carbon fiber, as I?m not too concerned about weight savings and think additional heat dissipation would be more beneficial with ss over cf. When looking online for Barrels, I saw a website that had .264 cal barrel blank, 24? sentero contour with a 6 week lead time. Unfortunately, it was CF, but not 100% sure that .264 cal is correct for 6.5 CM.

For my prefits. I have using this company.
https://www.x-caliber.net/ they have sales on three day weekends. 20%
For 6.5 i have been happy with a 7 twist, 26 inch, Savage small shank bull barrel.
Lead time 2 to 3 months. And buy their barrel nut.
And they have a Zermatt specfic cut. Look under Bolt action prefit

[smoothy8500]

...because someone just starting out is unlikely to see enough benefit from the fancier rifle.

Someone just starting out needs more rounds on target in the wind and some instruction to really learn to shoot beyond the performance limitations of a factory rifle/ammo.

The smart use of that initial $3,000.....training and quality ammo.

[sigstroker]

Brownells's is posting a blog on bolt gun builds:

https://www.brownells.com/the-trigger-times/how-to/bolt-action-rifle-build/bolt-action-build-part-1---selecting-parts

[shark007]

The RPR is a great way to start in competition. You may want to start with a few upgrades, such as the trigger and a barrel upgrade, and spend the money on reloading equipment to get the most out of it (if you aren't already doing so).

If you are dead-set on a semi-custom, Long Rifles Inc. (https://www.longriflesinc.com/) is an excellent place to send an action and Bartlein barrel to be cut, with a turn around usually less than 30 days. There are plenty of good actions to choose from, the Origin or American Rifle Co's new Coup de Grace action are great options. Check out MDT or XLR for a chassis, lots of good options. Add a TriggerTech Special or Diamond trigger, a good brake and you are probably looking at about $2500 (excluding scope and rings).