I am thinking about buying a brand new Savage Target action. It is one of those single shot Right port right bolt large shank with the accutriger 6oz. Are the any good Or do you still need to true them up. Or should I just do another Rem. 700 and the have it trued. Any experience would be great.
Brian
Short answer: Yes, they're good and so is the trigger.
Long answer: First put things in perspective. Are you planning to win the World Championship in F-Class in the next few years? If so, get out your wallet and spend the big bucks for a fancy action if for no other reason than essentially all the winners are doing just that. Good equipment is certainly nice to have. Unfortunately, like most things in life, the really good stuff is expensive. At the really sharp point of any kind of competition, the winners show up with good/great equipment.
But if you're lower on the food chain, especially if you don't have a lot of extra money, the Savage Target action will do just fine.
I've got a couple of them and I regularly shoot against guys using guns costing three times as much as mine; four times if you count their really fancy scopes. I beat them on a regular basis and when I don't win, I have NEVER felt that I would have won if I had a "such-and-such" fancy action. Admittedly the matches I shoot are pretty far from World Championship matches, but I can tell you that plenty of my competitors take it quite seriously, as do I.
True, the Savage action doesn't look or feel like it's made like a fine watch. It's a bit on the rough side, but it also isn't very expensive. Want to save even more money? I bought one of the Savage guns with the target action; used but in the box and never fired. It had the older stock and I got a good deal on it. It was a Model 12 LRVP if I remember correctly. I took off the never-fired barrel and stock and sold them. I ended up with a target action and trigger for around $300. I added a good barrel and stock and had myself a fine rifle for not too much money.
My current project is to do the same thing with the ultra cheap Cabelas Savage Model 12 FV. It doesn't have a target action. It's a small shank with an Accutrigger which requires some fiddling and a spring change to duplicate the Target version of the Accutrigger, but that's easy enough. A barrel and stock swap will give me another nice target gun. I'm going with a top of the line Bartlein barrel on this one, partially because Cabelas had a sale on those rifles for $319 with a hundred dollar rebate. Once I sell the never-fired barrel, I'll have a suitable action and trigger for 75 bucks or less.
By the way, I have a replacement barrel for my Savage .223 F/TR gun arriving today. I'm gonna' remove the old barrel, put on the new one, and start load work up tomorrow. The ability to swap barrels myself means my gun will be out of service for less than a day. I don't have to wait for a gunsmith to put me on his 3 month waiting list.
Don't look for me at the World Championships, but you might find me at a local competition having lots of fun and winning my fair share of matches without breaking the bank.