Stevens 200 build finally finished
I purchased a Stevens 200 in .223 from Academy back when they were available for about 225 bucks if I remember correctly. If only I knew then what I knew now. I would have hit every Academy in a 3 state area and bought them all... lol. After making the purchase, I started looking around the internet doing some reading about the rifle and came across this site. Once I read about all the wonderful things you could do to these rifles, I got really excited and planned a build. About a year ago, I got started by purchasing a 9 twist Criterion varmint barrel along with a lug, nut and some tools from Jim at NSS. Then I bought a laminate thumbhole varmint stock from Stocky's and waited for everything to come dribbling in. I put it all together and that's when I hit a snag. I want to shoot some longer, higher BC bullets out of this rifle, and the ammo that I had loaded up for it, was too long for the chamber in this barrel. I shot an email to Criterion and they were more than accommodating. They told me to ship the barrel back along with a dummy cartridge of the ammo I wanted to shoot in it. They performed some reamer magic on the barrel and sent it back to me and didn't charge me a penny.
That brings us up to this weekend, when I finally got a chance to build this rifle... again.
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Here's the action already bolted up in the wrench, the barrel, lug and barrel nut. I used a little Moly grease on the barrel threads that I had left over from assembling my AR. Also pictured is my favorite rifle building fuel.
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I've tried this several ways, but I find the easiest way for me is to chuck up the action wrench in the bench vise and do all the work with the nut wrench.
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Here is my calibrated whack-o-matic torqueing device.
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And here is the finished product. A Timney trigger, Warne Maxima bases and rings, and a Bushnell Elite Tactical 10x40 round out the parts list. I'm not sure how I'm going to like the fixed power scope. I shopped for scopes until my head was ready to explode, and finally I just got tired and bought this one. I figured it's good glass, and if I don't like it for this application I'll throw it on my .17HMR or something. I am thrilled with the way this rifle came out. She's a tad under 12 lbs. Range report will be coming soon. I can't wait to get out and see how she shoots after all this time.
