Bed a barrel for accuracy?

[mattri]

Have an old Stevens 325C (Savage 340) in 30-30. The rifle shoots well with handloads. Just for a fun project I've stripped it down, re-finished the stock, re-blued the action/barrel and am getting ready to put it back together.

This rifle only has one action screw, with a barrel band near the front of the stock. There isn't room on the action to drill and tap another screw so eliminating the barrel band and floating the barrel is out.

So would bedding the entire action/barrel be better for accuracy?

 

[BoydAllen]

A long time ago I worked on one of these in .222. (Actually, it was a 340 Savage) I ended up deepening the mortise that the barrel band is drawn into and touched up the stock to barrel contact so that it was symmetrical. As it was the bar that the screw threaded into would bottom in the mortise, keeping the band from properly tightening properly on the barrel.) This allowed the barrel to be drawn against the forend and bear evenly on both sides of the centerline,sort of like a V block. I did something similar just behind the recoil lug, and made sure the action didn't touch the stock to the rear of that contact. After that, it shot really well. To be clear that only place that the barreled action touched the stock was just adjacent to the screw that tensioned the barrel band and the one that screwed into the bottom of the recoil lug. Everything else floated.