I believe what GB was saying was that there are many things that make a rifle shoot the way it does. Free floating a barrel is not always the answer. Remington has been using pressure bedded barrels for many years and their rifles have usually done well in the accuracy dept.. Also I believe GB said you should remove the pressure on the side of the barrel but perhaps free floating was a bit much. Free sloating and pillar bedding have become a sort of mantra in the search for a better shooting rifle. Neither was really done to make a rifle shoot better!! The real reason to free float a barrel is to eliminate the movement that may have occured as the wood of the stock absorbed and released moisture.. Now every guy with a gun decides its the road to one hole groups and it usually doesn't help. Pillars were developed to stop the compression of the wood between the action and the bottom metal which occurs over time. Once the rifle shoots really well then to avoid the bedding 'going sour' or changing with time pillars are installed and the bedding should last nearly forever. They were not intended to 'accurize' a rifle.. The bedding should be taken care of, the load developed or a factory load found that shoots well and perhaps even the barrel recrowned(I've seen a lot of really poor crowns the last few years) before we get more drastic. Free floating a sybthetic stock is sort of strange to me. The synthetics don't really move all that much(at least with the good ones) so why did you free float the barrel. Pressure bedding helps control barrel vibrations and controlling or making them more alike is a real step to good accuracy. If your interested in how your rifle might perform with the barrel free floated a caard shimunder the action in the front will give you that condition and be easily removed. Actually many rifles prefer to have their barrels bedded tight full length. It really damps the vibrations.. I've a 300 Winchester down that way and it never moves point of impact from year to year and shoots most reasonable loads with the same bullet into the same group. Most high dollar european rifle will have their barrels done this way. To properly pressure bed a rifle require the action be first bedded correctly and solidly. This will allow pressure on the barrel to not effect the action bedding. Only then can pressure be applied to the barrel and it's affect evaluated.. There are 2 instances where a floated barrel may be an advantage, in military rifles where large numbers of shots must be taken without POI changing and in varmit guns that may be used in prairy dog towns, another high shot volume situation. Even in those situation though great care must be exercised or too many shots too fast will eat a barrels accuracy very quickly. You've not harmed the rifle. if it's not shooting to your expectations the place to start is with action bedding, crown, load developement, trigger tuning, etc... You may even, after finding a load that works well in your rifle, want to try putting pressure pads temporarily back to see how they affect the accuracy.. The only other thing I noticed was you said your groups were around 1.5 inches and a few were under an inch. What changed? Different load? Different brand or bullet weight?? What? When I find someone with some good groups and some not so good I usually suspect the shooter. The human is usually the weakest link in the accuracy chain. Tune the trigger and learn proper bench technique, and put in some trigger time.. If groups are fairly even and just vary in size, it's usually some type shooter error.. Lastly please understand, you bought the cheapest rifle remington makes, a synthetic stocked(blue steel?) ADL and 1 inch groups ain't all that bad.. Try the rifle and if it has some problem you would like help with we'll be more than happy to help! One last notem before I end this monster. The 22-250 is one of the rounds I've personnaly had the most trouble getting great accuracy from. The 222 and the 220 were usually the easiest and the Hornet the worst.. To get a rifle to sub one inch all the time will take a bit of work!
