Built on a Borden Rimrock stock and outfitted with a 3-9X Nikon Monarch variable, the rifle weighs seven pounds, two ounces.

The recoil lug and receiver face are true and square to the bore axis. The bolt is made to slide along its lapped raceways smoothly, its twin lugs locking tight to the receiver in complete contact. The bolt shank, too, is elegantly fluted in a spiral pattern along its length.

While this last feature is not all that uncommon anymore, the real benefit is not widely revealed. Depending on your taste, bolt-shank fluting is mainly a cosmetic enhancement. There are some gunmakers who tout such a feature as allowing the bolt the ability to clean itself as you cycle the rifle. I suppose flutes could carry dirt away from the receiver but with no greater ability than they have to carry dirt right into the trigger mechanism. If you have that much dirt gummed up in your rifle, you need to take it down and clean it anyway, fluted or not.

What the fluting does offer, however, is less bearing surface between the bolt shank and the receiver housing. This is indeed beneficial. As you slide the bolt to the rear of the receiver, a fluted bolt will cause less friction between the two parts, therefore providing a smoother, seemingly effortless bolt stroke. I like this feature, and I happen to think the fluted bolt shank looks good, too.

Unlike most accurized or custom rifles built on the Model 700, Reiley likes to modify both the front end and the rear end. Remington safeties are fine--"on" and "off"--but High-Tech guns feature a unique little enhancement. It comes in the way of a three-position safety that Reiley has been installing on 700s for about five years now. "It's the old Mauser style," he says about the New England Custom Guns version he uses. It's a color-cased unit that is both functional and attractive. "And it locks the firing pin, not the trigger sear, which is a great safety device," says Reiley. I've always been a three-position-safety fan, and this one certainly adds a touch of class to an already attractive rifle.

The bolt face on any Model 700 that comes out of the High-Tech shop also has been enhanced to include a large Sako-style extractor, especially on rifles chambered to dangerous-game calibers. Like the three-position safety, the oversize extractor is an added touch that beefs up the reliability factor of the rifles Reiley builds. Now, I've never had a Model 700 fail to extract, but according to Reiley, there's no point in building it any other way.

Mated to the .270's slicked-up action is a 24-inch Lilja barrel with a very slender taper measuring .610 inch at the muzzle, where a two-step crown protects the standard 1:10 rifling.

The matte-stainless metal rides in great contrast in a textured black Rimrock stock. At one time Rimrock stocks were built in the Pacific Northwest. Today they're built by Jim Borden of Borden Rifles in Springville, Pennsylvania.

A three-position safety is an unexpected touch on a customized Remington 700.

Borden, an accomplished competitive rifleman, is a mechanical engineer who quit his job in 1994 to build rifles full time. These fiberglass stocks are of the highest quality and durability and are available to fit most popular action types. With its graceful and classic lines, narrow fore-end and grip, the High-Tech .270's stock is what first attracted me to the rifle at the NRA convention. The barreled action is glass bedded, which Reiley has executed perfectly. No gaps or gouges--every line is smooth and snug.

With a 3-9X Nikon Monarch UCC scope and Talley rings and mounts attached, the rifle weighs seven pounds, two ounces.

You can imagine that I was eager to find out if the rifle shot as well as it looked. I shouldn't have worried. The A-Frame handloads containing 57 grains of Reloder 22 shot well under an inch with ordinary regularity. And with the 24-inch barrel, muzzle velocity hovered right around 2,893 fps.

So off to the Dark Continent I went.