Gun Porn: “Finished” 700 Edition

When I made my initial post about the ARFCOM Hometown shoot, I realized that I hadn’t posted any updates about what I did to the Remington 700 AAC-SD I bought in January, despite having taken several rounds of pictures.

Bad blogger. No cookie!

So here goes:

The first thing I did was get an EGW HD 20 MOA scope base. The HD model is steel instead of aluminium.

Next up was the YHM Muzzle Brake that fits my suppressor:

Fun Fact: I called three gunsmiths to try to have one install this for me. Each one said a version of “Really? Any idiot can install these. Why would you pay me do to this?” (Hint: Because YHM says to have a qualified gunsmith do the install)

Then came the scope and rings. My original plan was to get something in the $600 range for the scope, and about $100 for the rings. The money didn’t end up working out, so I got a Millett TRS-1. I got the .1 mil version, because FarmDad told me not to get a mildot scope with MOA adjustments, because it’ll mess with you. The scope gets “good for the money” reviews pretty much everywhere. It’s got fanciness like locking target turrets and a side parallax knob, and comes with a sunshade, flip open caps, and an illuminated mildotbar (not to be confused with mildot, which I did confuse it with). I’ll do a more in-depth review of the scope later but the short version is that about 10 minutes after I took it out of the box I decided I that while I won’t be returning this one, I likely wouldn’t buy it again.

For the rings…. well, due to the aforementioned budgetary problems, I wasn’t going to have rings by the time the ARFCOM shoot was scheduled so my friend James lent me some Warne 214M rings:

Now, when mounting a scope the idea is to get it as low as possible. With a 50mm objective that’s still going to be pretty high. The idea was to take the Warne rings, mount the scope, take some measurements, and then order some lower rings. When I mounted it all up, I got this:

Ignore that there’s only one ring.

The distance between the bell and the barrel is about 6mm.

But the distance between the rail and the magnification ring is, well, the ring actually sits lower than the rail. That means that this is as far forward as the scope can go with these rings. I didn’t think that was going to be a problem based on some measurements I took, but the first time I fired the gun i got scope to the forehead. More on that at a later date.

After I got the scope loosely mounted, I did the same procedure to raise the comb that I did on my 10/22 (using another Allen Company Buttstock Shell Holder and Pouch), minus drilling holes in the stock. Not doing that ended up biting me at the ARFCOM shoot. After that I tightened down the scope mounts, added the rail from the cheap chinese bipod I bought last summer, and packed everything up to go shoot it:

Wait. Something’s missing:

Ah. That’s better.

I titled this post “finished” because as we all know a rifle is never, ever, actually complete. It’s a continuous improvement process. Because of the dismal performance last weekend (which, again, I’ll post more on later) at least one part between the barrel and my eyes is probably going to need to be replaced. That bipod is completely temporary until I get a Harris HBLS. The screws aren’t torqued to spec. The rail isn’t bedded. I need a better stock but that’s not happening until I can outshoot the rifle. I’d like a scope level. But all those things can wait for now.