Your competition doesn't have a problem designing and machining a chassis for Howa rifles with a full length (from tang to well fwd of the recoil lug) aluminum backbone.
After watching several videos today of shooters loading bipods on your 180-Alpha chassis, I could not help but notice the amount of flex on the plastic fore end. It was alarming.
Very disappointing
I'm here to eat crow, issue a retraction, and issue an apology.
I made those comments based on what I had been told and what I had seen in videos, not from first hand experience.
I like to know what I'm talking about so after some thought this Sunday I bought a 180-Xray for my Howa 1500. Since Brownells is the only place that sells them and their return policy is ironclad, I figured I had nothing to lose but a little bit of time and shipping both ways. It came in a few hours ago.
I'm here to say that the 180-xray exceeded my expectations. The forend was the first thing I examined and it was stiff as a board. Once I bolted the action in, squeezed the barrel and forend together and saw some flex, but I'm pretty sure it was mostly the barrel flexing. When I did the same test with the rifle in a Manners T, I saw the same thing to s slightly lesser degree. Whatever, it's nowhere near enough to cause any problems.
After bolting everything up, I got into my dry fire spot in the basement and it took no time to get the stock adjusted to me. What immediately struck me was how stupid easy it was to get truly straight behind the rifle with no tension. This is something I have struggled from day one with the more conventional (old school) Manners T. So I went shooting and once I had the scope rezeroed I shot a five shot group with three shots literally touching each other (two through the same hole), the other two were 1/2" away from the center cluster on a perfect waterline. I'm pretty sure that if I had been a bit more patient I wouldn't have shanked those two and would have had an incredible group.
Regardless of group size, this stock gives me the confidence that I can start making progress on drills suh as the dot drill since attaining a correct NPA is now a breeze. As I said getting a solid, stress free NPA with myself straight (really straight) behind the gun was something that was virtually impossible behind a more traditional stock design.
I am sold. Needless to say, Brownells is not getting it back.
So to Justin, I apologize for slamming the product before trying it. I have been humbled.
One question: what torque should I apply to the bolts that hold the forend together and hold it onto the backbone?