Up there in the Basics forum I mentioned a Remington that I may get rebarreled. I know it's fairly common to have the smith true up everything on the action before installing a shiny new barrel, but how crucial of a step is this? What kind of accuracy are we talking about here...an extra 1/4 moa? 1/8? This is a hunting rifle which I would like to get shooting 1/2-3/4 moa consistently. Is it worth the extra bucks to throw down on squaring the action or will a new barrel get me where I need by itself?
This is just my opinion, but an accurate rifle is the combination of all good parts and components. Any one of these parts or components can hurt accuracy if not done correctly.
To give you an amount of accuracy loss is impossible because there are so many reasons for a poor shooting firearm.
Sometimes poorly machined parts can cancel each other out, but most of the time they only compound the problem.
Example; You can have a perfectly machined barreled action with a custom barrel of the finest quality
and If it is placed in a poor fitting stock or fed poor ammunition It still won,t shoot well.
The best approach I have found is to use the best barrels, blueprint the action, Install a good quality stock with pillar bedding and then start working on the ammo/loads to get extreme accuracy.
I have found that if you have all of this done correctly the firearm seems to be very forgiving, repeatable and will be very accurate if fed good ammo.
It is much better to eliminate questions about what you should have done in the beginning by doing
it right the first time In my opinion.
J E CUSTOM
