All three of our sons are military officers and shooters. When the youngest returns from his overseas deployment in the next few months, he wants to build a long range precision rifle with me as some father-son time. He's decided a budget of $5K for rifle and another $2.5-3K for the scope. We've had many long discussions and emails concerning the specific parts and we think we have a good handle on those. The question we are trying to answer is how much should we try to build ourselves vs buying a custom or high-end production already-built rifle or have a custom builder do some work for us and we do the rest?
Given the 'Hide has an extremely knowledgeable shooter base; I thought I'd solicit some opinions prior to the build. The goal is to do as much as we can ourselves but we want to be sure it's smart to do this. I have some, but not all, of the tools and neither of us has layup experience for bedding the action and recoil lug. Knowing we might be able to get the barrel, lug, and action delivered already assembled and head-spaced; in a perfect world the chassis wouldn't require any bedding and we could just tighten the action screws to the pillars and be off to the races. However, we both know how important the fit of the barrel/receiver to the stock is for a 1300+ yard rifle and expect some bedding to be required. Because he's going to spend a lot of money on the build; we don't want to be the weakest link in the equation. I would expect we would need some expert help along the way to do it right given the quality of the build.
The parts we've decided on are: 6.5CM, Bartlein 26", 1:8, contour still undecided, Masterpiece Arms chassis or Manners MCS-series stock (folder preferred), Defiant Deviant or Surgeon 591SA action, Jewell HVR trigger, brake still undecided.
The goal is spending time together building a rifle that is "built like a tank and shoots like a laser". Is the money best spent doing it ourselves, on a used production, new custom, or somewhere in between? If you guys could give us a sanity check on our thought process; we'd really appreciate it. Thanks.
Given the 'Hide has an extremely knowledgeable shooter base; I thought I'd solicit some opinions prior to the build. The goal is to do as much as we can ourselves but we want to be sure it's smart to do this. I have some, but not all, of the tools and neither of us has layup experience for bedding the action and recoil lug. Knowing we might be able to get the barrel, lug, and action delivered already assembled and head-spaced; in a perfect world the chassis wouldn't require any bedding and we could just tighten the action screws to the pillars and be off to the races. However, we both know how important the fit of the barrel/receiver to the stock is for a 1300+ yard rifle and expect some bedding to be required. Because he's going to spend a lot of money on the build; we don't want to be the weakest link in the equation. I would expect we would need some expert help along the way to do it right given the quality of the build.
The parts we've decided on are: 6.5CM, Bartlein 26", 1:8, contour still undecided, Masterpiece Arms chassis or Manners MCS-series stock (folder preferred), Defiant Deviant or Surgeon 591SA action, Jewell HVR trigger, brake still undecided.
The goal is spending time together building a rifle that is "built like a tank and shoots like a laser". Is the money best spent doing it ourselves, on a used production, new custom, or somewhere in between? If you guys could give us a sanity check on our thought process; we'd really appreciate it. Thanks.
