Added some weight to balance my rifle

I recently changed out rests and my rifle has not been tracking well when shooting heavy bullets. It is fairly barrel heavy and I wanted to fix that so it will ride the rear bag better. I drilled 2 holes in the butt with a 9/16" bit and cut 2 pieces of 1/2" copper pipe to fit in them. I then filled the pipe with lead from melting fishing sinkers. After they cooled I used some epoxy to keep them in place. I also made another small piece of lead to fit in the recess in the butt pad. In total this added ~10oz and shifted the center of gravity back toward the action quite a bit.

http://imgur.com/CxTss4D.jpg
http://imgur.com/EgnM29D.jpg
http://imgur.com/CocHJXY.jpg
http://imgur.com/hpZMeeK.jpg
http://imgur.com/dvSkAST.jpg
http://imgur.com/F9Kpqno.jpg

Looks good - but still would be too heavy for me. How much does the whole rig weigh scope rings and all?

Stock design, more than weight would be more important as to how it reacts as for riding the bags.

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Originally Posted by yobuck

Stock design, more than weight would be more important as to how it reacts as for riding the bags.

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I decided to add weight because when I changed my front rest it put me needing a higher rear bag and I'd end up shooting slightly downhill more often. I've read that you can have tracking and vertical stringing issues with this.

I went out out and tested some different loads and changed my setup a little. The major thing besides the weight I changed was added more tension on the ears of my front bag to grip the rifle a little more. I did this because when dry firing I noticed my rifle was scooting in the bags before the trigger snapped and sometimes POA would change when the firing pin was released. I also stopped using rain-x on my corduroy bags for this reason. With these changes the rifle tracked much better today with the crosshairs returning within an inch of original POA mostly and many times staying within the orange paster. These are my best and worst 5 shot groups after the changes.

http://imgur.com/UtsPKfG.jpg
http://imgur.com/wQZqobX.jpg

Not to say one cant shoot well with the type stock you have.
But check out the stocks in the benchrest matches and you will see what im talking about.
Riding the bags well usually means the gun tracks straight back following a shot.
Often times shooters in 1000 yd matches never do anything but feed bullets after the first shot.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by yobuck

Not to say one cant shoot well with the type stock you have.
But check out the stocks in the benchrest matches and you will see what im talking about.
Riding the bags well usually means the gun tracks straight back following a shot.
Often times shooters in 1000 yd matches never do anything but feed bullets after the first shot.

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Yeah, I've thought about getting a better designed stock, but I decided to stick with this one for now and just adapt it as needed. I plan on doing a full out BR build in the future based off a Panda or similar and I'll get one then.