Floating barrel

[Guest JohnGalway]

Hello folks,

 

As far as I was aware before purchasing my new rifle a floating barrel meant that the barrel shouldn't touch the stock until it reached the reciever. I bought the Tikka T3 Varmint in .223 with it's heavy barrel. I took a picture today after cleaning it to show how far a normal sheet of paper will travel up the barrel, as you can see it won't go as far as the reciever.

 

What I'd like to know is this, are there different 'levels' of floating barrels? Do some go further up than others.

 

Would a barrel that didn't touch the stock at all until it reached the reciever shoot more accurately? (or is that a piece of string question).

 

I'm still trying out different ammunition makes, weights, tips (reloading is still illegal over here, roll on next year), and also practising although in this weather it's a bit difficult. Adjusted the trigger from 4lbs to 2 lbs this afternoon, I think this will make my shooting better as I found the 4lbs left me with too much time to think on recoil (I know there isn't much it was anticipation of it) etc.

 

I'm not going to do any work on it until I'm satisfied that I've tried all the ammunition I can get my hands on but until then it'd be nice to know what the experts views on floating barrels is

 

 

 

Thanks for reading