Quote:
Yes, Roy Weatherby did. Here's why.
I used to shoot rifle matches with the stock maker who designed and made Weatherby's first fancy stocks used on their Mauser style and later Weatherby actions. This stock maker also made stocks for competitive high power rifle shooters; they were used in winning most of the matches and setting most of the records for years. He also made custom stocks for hunters. Most custom stocks he fit to a rifle were epoxy bedded and the barrel totally free floating. He was also one of the first stock makers to use epoxy bedding.
He told Mr. Weatherby that the way those stocks were machine inletted for those actions, the shape of those actions would never fit the bedding perfectly for best accuracy. They needed to use hand tools to inlet each action perfectly; an expensive way to go. So a pressure point under the barrel at the fore end tip was suggested and that would probably be a cheap and reasonable fix for hunters. It would allow about 1 to 1.5 MOA accuracy from customers and that's good enough for the customers buying them. So, Weatherby stock had a pressure point on the barrel at the fore end's tip. Mr. Weatherby did not want to add the cost of epoxy bedding the barreled actions to the cost of the rifle.
This solved the accuracy problems with many of Weatherby's rifles which pleased him. So Weatherby had his shop make a couple of single shot actions for this stockmaker to use in his comptition rifles.
Other rifle makers have had their stocks shaped to put a bit of pressure on the barrel at the fore end tip. With receivers poorly fit to the stock, this typically helps accuracy. This has been known since the early 1900's.
|
Did he ever mention barrel whip, or anything else, when he spoke of this? If I remember right, that was one reason they did that years ago. They did the same with the 52 Winchester, where they had the two adjustable rests in the forearm tip.