Action work with barrel change?

[J E Custom]

I had a similar case with a Savage that shot real well and my friend wanted to change calibers so we dissembled it and started the blue printing process. the first thing was to check the recoil lug and it was way off so a replacement was in order.

Next I set up the action for truing, and found the action face was also out of square with the bolt buy an even larger margin. surprised that It would shoot as well as it did I then checked the barrel threads to bore for concentricity, and It was also off. all of this inconsistency added up to a lot. Everything I had ever been told and seen, told me that it should not shoot very well.

Having all of these errors, i decided to reassemble everything marking the minimum dimension side and the maximum dimension side of each error. (Hoping to understand why/how it shot so well)

It became clear after reassembly, with the parts assembled in the same place, all of the errors had fallen in the right place to cancel each other out. the total error assembled was less than .002 thousandths. The odds of this happening are/were astronomical but it can happen.

I am not willing to except/hope for those odds and that Is the reason I blueprint everything. (Buy the way,the rifle will now shoot 1/8th MOA with everything square and centered).

Something else to think about when deciding whether or not to blueprint, All of us that load our own ammo and strive for concentric ammo, shoot for .000 to .002 max run out for our ammo. Why would we not want the rifle more true so any error is in the ammo that can be corrected.

If you don't reload, blueprinting can only help with factory ammo.

J E CUSTOM

 

[jrock]

Thanks for all the input

 

[tim_w]

You can check some things quickly. To really check an action takes about 5 minutes less than it takes to true it. You have to dial it in to measure the surfaces, at that point its only another 5 minutes to make the cuts. So far as custom actions... most are not either. And most smiths arent checking.[/QUOTE

I recall Kirby Allen speaking about this a number of back when he was on here reg. He mentioned he had to clean up all but a select few custom action manf recievers. Not sure why it stuck in my head but he spoke highly of Borden's recievers. Saying they were always consistently with very tight tolerances.

Today with so many new players making receivers it makes one wonder just how tight they are holding things these days. I would be interested in what the Stiller TAC338 are holding as they are quite popular on here and represent a good buy cost wise.

The issue is whenever smith's start talking about what they see and its a negative about a particular brand someone always seems to take it personal and gets their panties in a wad over it. I am betting many of the high quailty smiths are cleaning up a fair share of custom recievers as part of the build process.

With nitriding from the manf had become more wide spread sure makes for issues if things are a bit loose. Nothing like having to use carbide tooling and high wear rate not to mention ruined case surface hardening and protection.

 

[Alex Wheeler]

Im not going to get on here and post anything about actions. If a customer wants to know I'll tell them, but its not cool to do online. Its here forever, and things change. Some are working to improve, some know about issues and aren't. However, Borden is a safe bet

 

[J E Custom]

Im not going to get on here and post anything about actions. If a customer wants to know I'll tell them, but its not cool to do online. Its here forever, and things change. Some are working to improve, some know about issues and aren't. However, Borden is a safe bet

Spot on !!!

You will never hear me talk bad about any action because of just what you said. All actions are not created equal and some are near perfect and others are not. custom actions are no different in the fact that they can have one that fell through the cracks and needs some attention.

That Is the reason i believe in checking "ALL" actions before the build starts. Of all the barrels I have used, I only have one that has never had a rejection. Of the others, some have more than others but have been good barrels as long as they were checked and rejected. Most of the barrel makers were happy to exchange there barrels with no cost to me. Others were not so friendly and they are not on my buy list because of there customer relations.

I have not found an action I couldn't save, so checking and truing not only saved the action, in many cases they performed exemplary. I was taught that If you cant say something good about someone, don,t say anything.

I have better luck with certain actions than others but that doesn't mean that all the other actions are bad, just that I have found actions that have consistently better machining tolerances. (at least On the ones that I have worked on) other builders have found other actions that they prefer because if they buy 50 actions and find only one that is poor, they are happy, If I buy 50 of the same actions the number of rejections may differ. I may find 5 that are less than they should be OR none. (The luck of the draw).

If a person finds/has a barrel or action that does not perform, there could be many reasons why that realy have nothing to do with the quality of the barrel or action.

I don't expect to find every barrel or action perfect so i recommend checking everyone of them. No one is perfect 100% of the time.

J E CUSTOM