If you are going to go all-in and already know you are going to re-barrel then any standard short action will work. What I did with mine was went pawn-shopping and picked up a used Model 10 on the cheap... added new barrel, new bottom metal, new stock.
As far as the donor action... if you don't want to change bolt heads you can get anything based off of a .308 case and be fine... .243, .260, .308, 7mm-08, etc. will all work without doing a bolt head swap.
I would recommend staying away from one of the newer models with the plastic bottom/bottom bolt release as these are harder to find replacement stocks inletted for. If all you can find on the cheap is a blind magazine don't sweat it, changing to a DBM (if you want it) is as easy as getting a stock already inletted for the bottom metal, then getting either the stock bottom metal or an aftermarket one from AccurateMag or CDI.
To do the barrel swap you will need at minimum a barrel nut wrench; I would recommend getting an action wrench as well... Jim at Northland Shooter's Supply (one of the vendors listed on the site) sells good quality tools and the added bonus of being super awesome to work with. You may want to talk to him about a barrel as well... he regularly stocks Shilen and Criterion and while you live next door to Brux he has quite a few good sticks on the shelf already threaded and chambered in whatever you are looking for and pretty solid prices.
Boyd's (another site vendor) has a ton of laminated stocks... may also want to look at stocky's.
Hope this helps... I just finished my first build and waiting for glass; process was pretty easy and straightforward and after talking with a few other folks here and getting pointers was pretty easy. Keep us posted and start a thread in the "my build thread" here with pictures so we can all follow along!
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