A year ago I purchased a Howas 1500 barreled stainless steel action in 30-06. I also ordered a Bell&Carlson stock for it, the Vanguard type with FLBB and I replaced the factory trigger for a Timney.
When the stock arrived I noticed that the barrel channel was not completely straight with the barrel itself touching at the left side of the tip. There was no way of correcting this by sanding away material from the barrel channel without getting a wide gap at the right side of the channel. In this way I was disappointed with the fitting by B&C, but having waited 8 weeks for the stock to arrive from the US here in the Netherlands, I decided not to send the stock back, but to correct this failure.
Due to this failure there was of course also a great deal of uneven pressure on the two pressure points at the tip.
I decided to skinbed the area around the recoil lug, the two points at the trigger area, the first 1,5" of the barrel and the rear end of the tang. I used a two component glue, reinforced with aluminium powder, which bonds rocksolid hard.
When I laid the barreled system into the stock and the bedding material. I forced the barrel a little to the right with thin wedges in such a way that the barrel was now straight in the channel for the full length of it.
When the bedding material was cured, I took the barreled action out, cleaned it from release agent, put it back in again and tightened the actrion screws. The barrel was now indeed in line with the channel, but still touching a little here and there. I carefully sanded these spots down a little until the barrel was completely free, except from the two pressure points in the front.
I took the rifle to the range and fired some handloads that had proven themselves very accurate in other rifles I owned. The smallest 5 shot group I could get was a little under 2" at 100 metres, far from what I consider acceptable.
I decided to sand down the two pressure points completely, because these are not present in any European rifle brand I have owned and I have always believed in completely free floated barrels.
Back to the range and the groups tightened up to 1". So much for (uneven!) front tip pressure!
Then I started discussing this on a German forum where there is a guy who has done a lot of customizing on Howa barreled actions. My loads were rather hot, 57 grains of VV N160 for a 180 gr. Accubond, barely touching the lands.
He told me he had found out that for some reason he could not explain, Howa barrels don't like hot loads and do like a little free run , at least 0,08".
I followed his advice, backed down to 54 gr. of powder and this 0.08" free run
Back to the range again and I was stunned! The groups tightened to 0,5 inch for five shot groups instantly and a ten shot group delivered one big ragged hole at 100 meters!
I cannot say that this treatment will work for every Howa made rifle, but it did for mine.
As far as the Timney trigger; I have one on a Mauser in .308 and got used to the excellent characteristics of it. The factury trigger had some creep that I was able to take out, but every now and then it was back, due to too big tolerances in this trigger. When I put the Timney in and adjusted it to 1,5 Lbs and no creep, I was excited by the huge improvement the Timey added to this rifle.
I can only say: The factory trigger is not bad, compared to what other riflemakers offer, but the Timney is worth every dime of the € 90,-- I had to pay for it.
