CZ American barrel float project

[statelinerut]

For those of you thinking of buying a CZ American 527, you need to know that the barrel is not free floated from the factory. Having shot about 200 rounds down the tube already and getting so-so results, under an inch at 100, I went ahead and floated the barrel. I know this gun will shoot in the .5's at 100 because every now and then I can do it the way it is. I feel that it needed to be floated so I went ahead and go to it this morning.

I started off with a 13mm deep well socket with a 400 grain sandpaper wrapped around it. I took and ran the socket in the barrel channel starting from the action end. I did this until that socket fit completely in the barrel channel. I then moved up to the 14mm socket and did the same thing. It turned out very uniform and clear all the way up to the barrel lug area. It was actually easier than I thought it was going to be. I will take it out to the range this week and see the results and then put about 4 coats of tung oil in the barrel channel on the sanded area.

[MZ5]

Pictures are blocked for me so I can't see your work, but I disagree with your statement that 527 American barrels are not free-floated from the factory.  I just bought a 527 American in .223 Remington and the barrel is free-floating.  I have no idea whether CZ claims they are free-floating or not, but mine most definitely is.

YMMV

[statelinerut]

It may just be the 204 caliber then. I have not yet held a 223 to see, so it must just pertain to the 204 caliber and smaller. Maybe they have started floating the barrels now. That would be a very nice feature if they did.

[MZ5]

Now I'm in a place where the images are not blocked.  Nice work!

[jeclif]

my 527 carbine in 762x39 is free floated( a folded  bill will slide from the length of the barrel channel)

[statelinerut]

It has got to be the smaller centerfires then that are not floated. I have heard of other 17rem - 204 owners make the same claim. Oh well, it's floated now

I love the carbines.

[Brithunter]

Hmmm I think it may be just the American models are free floated seeing as how most Americans seem to be enamoured with free floated barrels. Personally I prefer a properly bedded rifle in a properly cured stock. My model 601 has a bedded barrel and is shoots very well of course this was made before Brno and CZ split.

My view on free floating is that makers had tried very hard to sell this idea as it's much cheaper to produce than a properly bedded stock and barrel. At least you have made a neat job of this unlike some seen and further more you seem pleased with it however I still think that too much is made of free floating barrels.

[MZ5]

If it's cheaper to produce, it's cheaper to purchase.  Savage rifles (for example) shoot extraordinarily well, yet are far, far less expensive to produce than most brands.  What's the problem with lower price and more consistently better shooting?

[statelinerut]

Hmmm I think it may be just the American models are free floated seeing as how most Americans seem to be enamoured with free floated barrels. Personally I prefer a properly bedded rifle in a properly cured stock. My model 601 has a bedded barrel and is shoots very well of course this was made before Brno and CZ split.

My view on free floating is that makers had tried very hard to sell this idea as it's much cheaper to produce than a properly bedded stock and barrel. At least you have made a neat job of this unlike some seen and further more you seem pleased with it however I still think that too much is made of free floating barrels.

Excellent points Brithunter. My next step is to bed. I have never done it before, but once I read up and feel comfortable doing it I will get with it.

[Brithunter]

If it's cheaper to produce, it's cheaper to purchase.  Savage rifles (for example) shoot extraordinarily well, yet are far, far less expensive to produce than most brands.  What's the problem with lower price and more consistently better shooting?

     Savage may be an exception however a low price often accompanies a low quality and whilst you might be happy with low quality there are otehr like myself who deamnd higher quality and far better fit and finsh on their firearms. Further more free floating a barrel does not always equate with better or more consistant shooting. This is an often claimed and quoted yet has never ( at least to me) been prooven, in fact my most accurate rifle has a tightly bedded stock and barrel using no fillers just careful hand fitting and i fact is chamered for a cartridge not reknowned for it's accuracy potential. The reason for the normal poor accuracy of this cartridge is the poor rilfes it's normally chambered in. This cartridge is of course the old Winchester 30-30 and is normally associated with lever actions which are of course not renowned for their accuracy but in a good bolt action this is what the cartridge is capable of:-



  Of course I doubt you would have considered this rifle as you could have brought a whole battery of Savages for the price of this one rifle, however it caught my eye and is a one off so with some trading I brought it. No I am not wealthy but I am very happy with the rifle even if it will not shoot factory Winchester ammunition with any degree of accuracy. The target shown was shot at 100 yards at Bisley's Short Siberia range using a handload with a Hornady 130 grain Spire Point bullet ovver a charge of H-335 powder as worked up by Petersen publisher for their Rifle Shooter magazine. Of course this load produces much too high a pressure to be safely used in a weak lever action rifle but is a bolt action like this which would have normally been chambered for something like the 243 Win it's fine and further more the Winchester brass I am using has yet to fail one piece which only goes to proove the old claim of weak brass is more hot air rather than fact.



   The rifle with a nice Muntjac Doe that made fine table fare!

Excellent points Brithunter. My next step is to bed. I have never done it before, but once I read up and feel comfortable doing it I will get with it.  

    Hmmm seeing as how your already getting fine accuracy what comes to mind is the old "addage" :-

If it's not broke why fix it?

      When I was younger and believed  alot more of the gunwriters and their articles I too fell for the "Free Floated" hype and actually did this to a sporterised Swedish Mauser that I had just thne obtained. Although I didn't have access to proper beddign compund I found that a certain Car Body filler worked and the rifle is nicely accurate. However a few years later I noticed that it's accuaracy had dropped off and on close inspection discover that the tang was now no longer tightly bedded as it once was so this I corrected. thinking back on it now I am sure that the stock wood was still drying out being a new stock and most likely of the Kiln dried variety. The rifle was a commercially sporterised conversion so the wood is not of the best quality, and no I do not know who did the conversion, but it's a very workman like job and required only a couple of modifications to make it far better. The first being a replacement sporting bolt handle which was fitted very neatly by  Norman Clark of Rugby and I softened then striaghtened out the trigger to bring the blade further back in the guard for a more comfortable position before re-hardening it.

    This free floating barrel business I am convinced is due to improperly cured wood and cheapness of production because several antique rifles I have have tightly fitted stocks including barrel channels yet after 100 or so years the sights are still in regulation which of course means that the stocks have not moved at all. The wood used back then was of course properly air dried and does not warp unlike these kiln dried stuff foisted upon us today.

[alsaqr]

The barrel on my left-hand CZ 527 American in .223 is fully floated.  Checked it out with a business card when I bought it.  The gun has the best set trigger I have ever seen on a rifle.   

[MZ5]

That looks like a very fine rifle, Brithunter, and I'm sure I'd be as happy with it as you are.  I do, in fact, like a well finished firearm very much more than a poorly finished one.  Please leave your assumptions about me at home.  They're off-base, out of place, and impertinent.

My point (which seems to have been lost?) is this:  Any given thing, be it accuracy, fine fit and/or finish, or whatever, can be accomplished in more than one way.  I have yet to see a compelling argument that a more expensive means of achieving the same end is 'better.'  If the same fit, finish, accuracy, and the rest of what you like about your rifle could be achieved for 1/2 the money it took to make yours and if no one told you the differences in manufacturing, you'd love the resulting rifle just the same in both cases.  That leaves very few explanations on the table for taking the more expensive route.

There are a couple of things that are true in general regardless of specific individual examples:

Free-floated barrels are more consistently less-expensively accurate than fully-bedded barrels.
.30 WCF (aka .30-30 or .30-30 Win) brass is relatively weak and will fail sooner than, for example, .243 Win at .243 pressures and reloading techniques.

How one decides to look at individual examples vs. the overall numbers is a personal matter.  Separately, I'm curious: how many times have you reloaded .30-30 cases which have always run at .243 pressures?

[Brithunter]

Sorry for the delay in replying to your question, I did try to reply but ran into a small computer problem which stopped my posting. Now as to my hand-loads well I brought  three boxes of Winchester factory 150 grain HP's and found them to be not accurate enough for hunting with beyond 75 yards so I started hand-loading them. Since then I brought some more Winchester factory in 150 grain Silvertip but again found the accuracy to be poor in this rifle. These are the cases that I have been using for hand-loading but for some reason have not recorded how many loads have been in each case, some have been loaded more times than others. I think I am working with about 50 or so cases but have others once fired awaiting in the wings. I do know several cases have been loaded 5 times with no signs of stress. No web thinning has been detected but I think part of this is the tight chambering which of course limits the case expansion so so working of the brass whilst sizing is kept less than if the chamber was larger.

One day I hope to locate some Winchester 170 grain factory loads as I am told this is the ammunition that the rifle was regulated for when built but 30-30 is not that popular here and so as yet I have not seen any for sale in any of the shops I have been in. It might mean resorting to ordering a few boxes to try them. I am not expecting them to match the 5/8" the handloads give but do hope they will vastly improve upon the 3 1/2" groups that the 150 grain factory loads produce.

[MZ5]

Yikes!  3.5"?  Is that at 100 yards?  That would indeed be difficult to tolerate.  Glad your handloads are working better for you.

[Brithunter]

No actually it's more like 80 yards when I think back. I shot the rifle the first time in the small paddock and not on the range and we cannot get 100 yards clearly there. The first shots were with open iron sights but fitting the scope didn't improve things much if at all. That's when I went and brought the dies for hand-loading. I have tried the rifle at several different times at different ranges with the Winchester 150 grain ammo and it always shoots about the same well over 3" groups. Our local range is only 75 meters which is about 82 yards. I moved here two and half years ago and before that shot a lot at Bisley Camp which of course has ranges out to 1200 yards so my testing with hand-loads was mainly done at Bisley's Short Siberia range which has 100 & 200 yards tagets.

I eliminated the 150 grain bullet weight as being the problem as I brought a box of Sierra 150 grain Flat Point bullets for the 30-30 and hand-loaded them and got very good accuracy with 3 shot groups of around 3/4" and did use this load to take a Young Muntjac Doe however I have not had success as yet with Hornady's 150 grain Round Nose bullet. Why this should be I am not sure. Perhaps the barrel is choosy about bullet bearing length?

[MZ5]

Hmm, that is strange.  Tell me:  Did you ever have really large groups with the Sierras?  Not on purpose, I realize, but even during load development, did you ever have anything near that 3" spread?

[Brithunter]

Nope I was really lucky in that I took the load straight off the data in the magazine article and got small little clusters right off. Never did that before and as they worked so well I didn't alter it. Tried the Sierra's and got almost the same result so stayed with the load. Did try increasing the powder charge after a year or so as no high pressure signs were showing but accuracy dropped off slightly so went back to the original load. Now with the 150 grain round nosed bullet from Hornady and the few Speer ones I tried gave not good accuracy  but not as bad as the Winchester factory loads. May need to try another powder as perhaps the burning rate of H-335 does not match the longer bearing surface of the round nose bullets. This is the only thing I can think of really as the loads I tried with these bullets groups in about 2". 1 1/2" I could live with but I think 2" is too large especially from a scoped rifle.