Remington 700 Clone action help

does the rail on the action really need to line up perfectly with the forend rail?

When you see "Rem 700 clone" it refers to the receicer to chassis mounting interface only. The scope to receiver will likely be different.

I ran into a similar issue with my ESS. I’m running a Curtis Axiom SA which has a 60° bolt throw. Some of the holes didn’t line up and the MOA cant of the scope base wasn’t going to line up level with the forend rail, it needed to be higher in the front but didn’t have enough material.

I ended up basically building a “form” around the bottom of the scope base, like pouring concrete, and filled it with JB-weld. I *scored* the bottom of the scope base with a cutting wheel before adding in the JB-weld, kind of like scoring two pieces of clay before attaching them to each other when doing ceramics, with the thought that the JB-weld would fill in those cuts and bind to the base even better. Whether it did or not I have no idea but it stuck and hardened and is super solid.

After it hardened I took it to a local machine shop and had them machine it down to the exact fit matching the top of my action and at the correct angle to line up perfectly level with the forend. They also drilled the correct holes to marry up the scope base with my action. So it basically ended up being like bedding and marrying your action to a rifle stock, just on the top side.

Now I know this may seem like a lot of work, and you may be asking why did I go through all that work. Well I had the action I wanted to use, the look/setup I wanted, and didn’t have to buy a new action/barrels/chassis. doing the JB-weld thing took maybe 30 min, I ended up spending relatively very little (maybe $150-200 + a case of beer) for the machining and it’s been running flawlessly since. And it’s exactly what I want. So it was worth it for me but may not be for you, but that’s just my experience so I thought I’d share. Obviously the machining will be the most expensive part so you may have to shop around, bring a case of beer to bribe a buddy who has a machine shop, or do it yourself if you have the ability.