Remington 700 5R Milspec - Part 2

Continued from Part 1:

As I mentioned before, these rifles are produced in limited yearly quantities. In the spring of 2005 I had my name on a waiting list at snipercountry. I was late getting in line, and while several people I know ended up getting one from that batch, I did not. Dissapointed, I bought a 700 Police model from snipercountry.

To be clear, I was not unhappy with the 700P. It was a solid sub MOA rifle, I had multiple targets like this: half an inch at 100 yards with 168 Sierra BTHP match.

For a while, I figured I'd just keep the stock rifle and be content. These shooting results were very good, and I figured the rifle would outshoot my abilitites, but I wanted it to stay that way. I also continued to read about finer details of accuracy shooting, as well as military sniper rifles, and I was always drawn back to the 5R. I didn't care as much about the "easier to clean" benefit, but I really liked the ability to shoot a heavier bullet, and everywhere I turned I was reading about match rifles with 1:11.25 twist rates. Finally, for some reason, I'm a huge sucker for the term "milspec".

At this time, I'd "discovered" http://www.gunbroker.com/, and while there were no current auctions for 5R rifles, I saw that there had been some recently. I kept checking back, and bid on the next one that came along (only a couple weeks later).

One thing of note here - the company I bought the rifle from had just done an inventory and discovered that they had several 5R's which had been on layaway, and never paid for. I mention this because it was right at the time that Remington started selling their "X Mark" trigger systems. While a bit that I read seemed keen on the new triggers, it was clear that they were not to be as easily adjustable as the old 700 triggers. I had modified the trigger on my 700P (*voids the warranty - do this at your own risk) and was easily able to take it from the very heavy 7 or 8 pounds, to 3 pounds exactly, with no takeup and no overtravel. I wanted to be able to do the same thing with the 5R, so I was happy to have an "older" model. Your preferences may vary here. All that to say, keep your eyes on gunbroker for good deals on 5R's - if there is not one for sale now, there will be soon.

I had also called HS Precision to make sure that both versions of their stocks were interchangable. I was assured that they were exactly the same. I ordered a Wheeler FAT wrench to make sure I could measure the torque settings correctly (Stock screws are to be set to 65 inch-pounds).

When the rifle (finally) arrived, I was ready with a game plan: Dissasemble, adjust trigger, swap stocks, reassemble, temporarily mount scope, break in the barrel, dissasemble again, paint, reassemble, DONE! Phew, if that's not self-inflicted punishment, what is? Well, choosing the perfect bullet I guess...

Thankfully, due to the magic of the internet, you don't have to live through that with me. If you want the details of the DuraCoat process, though, see this article.

If not, here is the setup after all the work - please note though, that none of this work "accurized" the rifle any further, so for all intents it is cosmetic:

Stock - swapped with larger black HS Precision Police stock.
Bipod - Harris benchrest model with swivel
Scope base and rings - Tactical Precision steel, 30mm short, mounted on zero MOA solid picatinny base.
Scope - Supersniper 10x from http://www.swfa.com/
Stock pad / pouch from http://www.eagleindustries.com/

There you have it, a fully built, broken in .308, ready for accuracy tests. Here are a couple pictures:

Yet another side note - the reason these shots are taken in the back of my truck, is because I treated parts of the stock with Herculiner - a super cool stock treatment that worked great.

Back to Part 1, forward to Part 3 - shooting results or to Pictures
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