Okay so I have sort of a happy and depressing, one step forward, two steps backward update. I did my first barrel swap on Thursday night at work. I swapped the 24" 110FP Varmint barrel onto my action with the NSS recoil lug and nut, using the NSS Action Wrench and barrel nut wrench. Also used my PTG go and no go gauges. I called Jim three times (twice for questions, once to thank him) during the process and he was more than helpful and very patient, not to mention it was pretty late in the evening and he answered the phone everytime which was awesome. Unfortunately, due to the fact I was doing it by myself, concentrating heavily and didn't want to make a mistake I wasn't able to document anything with photo's. I will say this, with absolute certainty, having the right tools and right gauges for the job made a stressful first time experience go very smoothly. Couldn't have done it without Jim. I was nervous at first but once I got the old barrel off and new barrel on it was smooth sailing after that. I'm very happy with the contrasting finishes, and although I was thinking of Cerakoting everything a matte finish I think I'm going to leave it. Here's some pictures of the rifle assembled in the factory stock, WITHOUT and barrel inletting which it desperately needs. That will happen this coming week hopefully.

















Heres the depressing part. My B&C Medalist Sporter stock came in finally from Midway. Opened up the box all excited, looked great. Then I notice this. Kind of disheartening. Was willing to overlook it.



Start to take the action out of the factory stock and set it in the B&C Stock. Here's where the problems start becoming extremely apparent. First off, when I removed my centerfeed magazine from the old stock and placed it into the new stock, it absolutely does not fit like its supposed to. Okay, so maybe its designed for a staggerfeed model, even though the listing on Midway made no mention of specifically what magazine design it was supposed to work for. Just that it was for a blind magazine. I thought, okay there's gotta be a way to fix that on Savageshooters somewhere, no biggie. Then I go to fit the trigger guard from the factory stock to the new one, its not even remotely close to fitting. Major clearancing needed to make it work. Okay thats strike two. THEN!!! I start tightening the action screws and low and behold I hear a click and the trigger locks up. Come to find out, the Accu-Trigger adjustment spring on the rear of the trigger group is contacting this block on the rear of the stock near the tang. You can see here in the picture where it was making contact.



Absolutely ridiculous. The rifle is rendered useless as soon as its screwed into the stock with the action screws and that's FAR too many modifications needed for what's supposed to be a drop in stock. I expected to have to inlet the barrel channel since its designed for sporter weight barrels, but to have to modify the magazine well, the trigger guard and clearance the rear tang block in order for the trigger to operate is just ludicrous. Not to mention the blemish in the tip of the for-end. Long story short, I'm calling Midway on Monday and returning it. Washing my hands of it. Now I'm back to the drawing board as to what stock to choose. I'm probably just going to open up the barrel channel on the factory Tupperware stock just so I can shoot it and do some load work up. I did give a call to Kevin at Stockade and was contemplating going that route but they currently have a 7 month lead time they're so busy. Just in case anyone's curious how awesome it WOULD'VE looked, heres some pictures of it just laying in the stock.











It never ends. Atleast the barrel swap went smooth and its ready to go now. I really had my heart set on this black and gray spider web color combo. I might just do a Boyd's Pro Varmint/Tacticool and spider web it the way I want. I don't know, my brain hurts right now I'm so frustrated. Sorry for the picture heavy post. To be continued.