DIY - Freefloating barrel

[Ryanxia]

Hi all, I have what may be a dumb question, but I just watched a video on youtube that described free floating your barrel on your own. I don't have any experience with free floating barrels and I was wondering if it's just this simple.

Here is the video for reference

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g0snATO8iJw

I ask this because if we believed everything we heard on youtube the world would be very scary

 

[Telekinesis]

It's not too hard to free float the barrel on a gun with a wood stock. I floated the barrel on a mosin in about 15 minutes, and most of that was finding the right deep well socket to use to form the sand paper as I removed wood. You really don't need that specialty tool he used if you don't want to pick it up, you can just use sand paper. But I wish I'd thought of the masking tape idea, then again, it was just a mosin.

 

[dawico]

It is that simple, but there are other things to consider.

Some rifles shoot better with just a little pressure on the end of the foreend. This is somewhat common with thin barrels.

Cheap synthetic stocks need more room than just a dollar bill, especially if it is a bull barrel. The weight of the gun will flex the stock and still allow contact to be made.

This technique doesn't work well for autoloaders, especially piston rod guns. It is usually only for bolt action guns. The gas block on autoloaders ties the barrel to other parts of the gun, so floating the barrel doesn't do much really.

 

[Ryanxia]

Thanks both of you.

Telekinesis - the first thing that popped into my mind was my Mosin Nagant but wouldn't the wood on the top of the barrel (the piece that comes off when disassembled) also technically swell and cause a difference?

 

[Telekinesis]

It would. I solved that problem by just taking it off. It looked pretty weird, but it shot 1" at 100 yards

If I was going to do it again and try and preserve the look of the rifle, I would try to put some shims on the sides between the lower and upper hand guard.

On my rifle, the upper hand guard rested on the barrel (not on the lower hand guard) and no amount of sanding would get it to float. I didn't think about it at the time, but if I'd sanded the upper hand guard and then put blocks on the sides of the lower hand guard to lift up the upper hand guard, it might have worked. Basically making a tube for the barrel to go through. I'm not sure if the barrel bands would have fit though...

There's actually a pretty good how-to on Surplusrifle.com. It covers a bunch of things from floating to trigger work to replacing the front sight so that POI=POA.

 

[Ryanxia]

Thanks Telekinesis that's exactly what I was wondering. I'll certainly look into taking care of the top hand guard, I'm sure I can work something out with the barrel bands.
Although I know how to properly disassemble and clean/maintain all of my guns I've never done much other than basic restoration and am now just getting into newer DIY projects.

 

[Telekinesis]

Yeah, I think that's one of the great things about mosins. You can learn to do a bit of work on them without worrying about messing up anything to much. And if you do end up botching a trigger job or just want to go in a different direction, just spend $100 and get another rifle and use the first one for spare parts! They're great "first gunsmithing" guns.

 

[Ryanxia]

Definitely. I laughed my butt off when I learned that all I had to do to remove the bolt was pull the trigger! That's when I decided that the 1 gun in my collection that I didn't know how to disassemble needed to join the club.