I have several rifles out of the Marlin X7 line and I keep bragging on them and no one seems to pay attention. But, I'm going to do it again. In the same trade that I picked up the savage fcp-sr I also picked up another Marlin. A XL7 30-06. I tried to convince the friend to keep it and get rid of the mossberg 270 and cheap center point scope but He is stuck on it for some reason. He wants a good deer gun for under 300 yards. Anyways back to the Marlin. I typed this up for my two buddies who I am 3 way chatting with. Both have been asking me tons of questions about accurising guns and what to buy, what to do, does it really help and so on. So beat in mind I'm copying and pasting this from them and not typing it for you.
_______________________________
This is where the rubber meets the road with using quality components (notice I did not say expensive components, I said quality) and putting in the extra effort
I took that 30-06 Marlin and gave it a good look over. The bore looked pretty clean, like less than a box of shells clean but I pulled a bore snake thru it 6 or so times. I sanded out the forearm to float the barrel. I bedded the action this morning. Then I torqued the action in, torqued the scope base on. Mounted and torqued the rings and scope into place. Burris Zee rings (steel) and that Nikon 4-12x40 I just bought for $123. Both are excellent quality at bargain prices. I snappy bore sighted it with a laser at 16 yards. I know from experience it usually takes two to three shots for all that stuff to settle when you assemble one with a torque wrench.
I just took it out and shot it at 100 yards with cheap Rem corelok off the shelf. I made an adjustment between shots one and two. Nothing between 2 and 3 because I wanted it to finish settling. Then made one last adjustment and shot #4. That is a 3/4" dot. I'll shoot it a few times tomorrow and fine tune it. But I just wanted to show you guys that the extra time spent does pay off.
Gun $359 (no cost to me as it was in trade I did, 4 guns for an 95 F150 I had sitting here)
Rings $25
Scope $123
Bedding $5
Less than $520 total cost
You don't need to spend a ton to shoot accurately. Just buy quality and take the time to assemble it properly