Mine was pretty smooth, not like it made me go wow this is gritty. The only thing I did was lightly oil and work it like 300 times. However after I dry fired it and then worked it, as it was cocking, it was very tough to lift. That's the one part I didn't like. I hear that fred does some magic there to lessen the bolt lift considerably which is going to be great. I was actually going to go with Nat Lambeth as I hear he does amazing savages because I read so many horror stories about the customer service and promised wait times not being met from SSS, but what do you know, 2 emails and voice mails and still to this day no response from Nat Lambeth in regards to doing my action.
Much to my surprise Lisa was very helpful and promised it would be back before my long range clinic in April. Sounds like it will be. Although it took a few days to get a response via email when she said she would call me she did call at that time to get a prepay!sent to hold my reservation and get my authorization number, so that was good.