[Tomcat088]

It looks like you're building a nice rifle. As you stated, the SPS Varmint rifle is pretty much a 700 PSS in a crappy stock, if you're gonna change it out in the first place, don't even worry about it. Any good gunsmith will tell you that you can make any Remmy 700 shoot. I haven't seen that particular stock, and it's quite interesting. I personally think that the Accuracy International stocks are ugly, although they are reliable and rigid. You can a stock that will be just as accurate and rugged from McMillan if you haven't seen their stocks. Alot of them would actually be cheaper and would have a custom paint job or color scheme that you might like. I like them because they're clean style, reliable, and they have a lifetime warranty. On the custom rifle I'm soon to build, I'll probably put a McMillan A5.

Andrewmyers: Andrew did have a point with what he said about optics. I personally HATE scopes that are already trajectory compensated for a particular load. When you order the scope, you have to tell them what weight of bullet you will be shooting, the speed of the bullet (in case you have a particular load), etc. The scope will only work perfectly for this particular load. Now you might find another load that you shoot that coincides with some of the points, or is very close to the other load you use, out to a certain distance, but you're pretty limited. It's seriously not that hard to figure out drop of a particular load and then dial it in on a mildot scope, so that you can use any weight of bullet that you wish. Some people also zero their gun for a particular distance and have the mildots make hits at 200, 300, etc.

Crownsnest, if you can afford the Leupold VX IV, it's good glass. Some will tell you that for the same price you can get better glass, and start recommending some scopes in the Zeiss family, etc. I won't go into brands right now, but I will say that you DO NOT want that duplex reticle on a distance gun. It's not a very good reticle for distance shooting, and it means you'd have to have a range finder or be shooting at known distances to be able to dial it in. With a mildot or ballistic marked (1moa & .5 moa) reticles, you can be much more effective at long ranges. I'm guessing that you're building a distance gun from the specs and your products, so please reconsider your reticle. Other than that, best of luck to you, looks nice.

Edit: Are you considering a different barrel?