Kudos to Choate for great customer service.
After emailing them about the looseness of the action when open after I replaced the factory forend with a Choate standard forend, Choate told me to send them the one I'd bought and they'd send me a longer one.
They did just that, and it took less than a week! The new forend makes the action just a little bit tighter than with the factory forend, but the slop and side-to-side play is gone. We'll see how it shoots.
Suggestion-- if you decide to send in a stock or forend, use U.S. Mail-- I put the forend in a padded envelope (the same way I received it from Midway), and UPS charged me 8 bucks to send it standard ground, ouch!
Rick