My "Budget" Build Experience
First, shout out to u/aero-precision for the help getting my Solus chassis issue straightened out. Second, I know, I need to paint the room just havent gotten around to it despite having the paint lol.
Now, for the bolt gun. I'll start off by saying I should have bought a complete action, the Weatherby 307 Builders to be exact, as that would have run me $600 flat but figured I could do it for cheaper if I pieced it together. I was wrong.
I ordered a Remington 700 stripped barreled action from Brownells for about $264 and an Outlier 24in 6.5CM barrel for about $290. I knew i wasnt keeping the remington barrel because i wanted a 6.5CM. I get the barreled action from my FFL and get home to take the barrel off. To my surprise, it is incredibly difficult to get off but i manage with some minor scuffingnto the barrel's bluing. The first three pictures show what I saw upon removing the barrel. The TL:DR is Brownells offered to take it back but I opted to keep it due to the barrel bluing being messed up.
I cleaned up the action and removed the rust best I could, which are the next three pictures. Bownells said the action could be cleaned up and still usable. I then blued the threads (next two pictures) because the thought of the rust had me freaking out.
Once all that was taken care of, my Outlier barrel came in. I ordered a Solus Competition 17in chassis ($739), Timney trigger ($130), MDT 0.315" recoil lug ($40), and a Nightforce 20moa rail ($59) from Midway. I also bought a Christensen Arms complete bolt assembly ($350) off Ebay.
I finally had everything I needed to get going and then I had an absolute nightmare with the shimming for the Solus but made it happen. I happen to have thicker shims I bought so I used a total of 4, 2 on the front and 2 on the rear, for the action screws. The optic, Athlon Argos BTR Gen 3 ($300), i had on a different bolt gun i am not using so I used that to "compete" the gun. I used a Truglo bipod ($55) to finish it off and the last picture is the result. I have a Trybe muzzle brake ($53) on the way from OP to top it off.
I couldn't get the ejector out of my CA bolt assembly but I have a Remington 308 rig so I grabbed the bot out of there and started the headspelacing with that. The CA bolt assemblies drop into the Remington actions and didnt require any fitting. I had a mother of a time getting the headspace right as it was closing on the no go gauge i had so i did a field gulauge and it checked out with that.
So for a grand total of $2280, a metric crap ton of sweat, tears, and worry, my "budget" build is complete.
The Solus chassis is REALLY nice and you get a good chassis with no hidden costs (i.e. buttstocks, grips, etc.) like you do with other chasses.