CRNA
Well-Known Member
I'll make this as brief as possible.
The barrel on my Savage (McGowan) got loose and I took it to a friend's house this week to re-headspace it and tighten the barrel properly. We used all the right equipment and he is very knowledgeable in this area. Bolt closed with the go gage, and didn't with the no go. So we tightened the locking nut down and off I go.
I decide to measure my distance to the lands tonight with my Hornady LNL tool, as I suspected that if the barrel had been working it's way loose with successive firings, then the distance to the lands would be INCREASING. Right?
I looked at my notes and found that my distance to the lands in November was 2.720". When I measured this distance again this evening if found that the distance is now 2.913"
I used the same tools in my measuring process. The only variable that was not exact was the bullet that I used was not THE bullet that I used to measure back in November. Both measurements were with the same bullet (Berger 168gr).
Help me wrap my head around how this is possible. It seems very counter-intuitive for me. If I assume that the barrel was properly headspaced before, and it is properly headspaced now, then how is there that much difference in the distance to the lands? If the distance would have been a few thou of an inch, then I could have chalked it up to different lots of bullets, my measuring, Jupiter's position in the solar system, something. But a difference of .193" seems HUGE to me.
The barrel on my Savage (McGowan) got loose and I took it to a friend's house this week to re-headspace it and tighten the barrel properly. We used all the right equipment and he is very knowledgeable in this area. Bolt closed with the go gage, and didn't with the no go. So we tightened the locking nut down and off I go.
I decide to measure my distance to the lands tonight with my Hornady LNL tool, as I suspected that if the barrel had been working it's way loose with successive firings, then the distance to the lands would be INCREASING. Right?
I looked at my notes and found that my distance to the lands in November was 2.720". When I measured this distance again this evening if found that the distance is now 2.913"
I used the same tools in my measuring process. The only variable that was not exact was the bullet that I used was not THE bullet that I used to measure back in November. Both measurements were with the same bullet (Berger 168gr).
Help me wrap my head around how this is possible. It seems very counter-intuitive for me. If I assume that the barrel was properly headspaced before, and it is properly headspaced now, then how is there that much difference in the distance to the lands? If the distance would have been a few thou of an inch, then I could have chalked it up to different lots of bullets, my measuring, Jupiter's position in the solar system, something. But a difference of .193" seems HUGE to me.