Early Christmas!
Posted: Mon Dec 02, 2013 5:13 pm
Today I decided that I had been such a good boy that I deserved a bit of early Christmas.
I'd hate to have to defend that conclusion - but that's what I decided in any case, and I ordered some new gun stuff to mess around with.
I ordered a "barrel kit" for my Savage bolt gun that will allow me to remove the original 24" stainless "magnum weight" barrel in .243 for a standard contour blue barrel in 7-08 Remington.
The new barrel is 24" long but thinner and lighter than what I have. The gun currently weighs ten pounds, so it could be a little lighter with no ill effect.
The kit comes with the barrel, a Savage barrel-nut wrench, GO and NO-GO head-space gauges and some chemicals, bore cleaner in a tube and a small bottle of gun oil.
They say that all I need is a barrel vise to do the job, so I have a barrel vise on the way from Brownells. Since my rifle has the new style smooth barrel nut, I also have a grooved barrel nut on hand that will work with the special wrench.
The smooth barrel nut comes off with a pipe wrench and is never quite the same, after that. There is a special wrench for the smooth barrel nut, but it looks kind of dubious to me so I'm going over to the old style nut that has grooves on it. - The smooth barrel nut will wind up in the metal scrap box, with my welding stuff.
The Savage bolt action is the easiest bolt gun to replace the barrel on. Doing this will prepare me for the more involved task of re-barreling my 98 Mauser.
I've never owned a 7-08 rifle, and expect to have a lot of fun shooting it.
I figure that if I get tired of it, I can always put my heavy .243 barrel back on, or maybe try something different.
The story I get is that once you have the tools on hand, switching barrels on a Savage action only takes ten minutes or so. In the future, all I'll have to buy will be the barrels for my short action Savage. From what I can tell, most of the cartridges based upon the .308 case use the same headspace guages.
I'd like to try 6.5 Creedmoor and .338 Federal one day.
In a week or so when I get all the stuff, I'll post some pictures of the barrel swap process.
The gun will look kind of funny with a stainless action and blue barrel with lots of room around it in the stock. Maybe it won't be too bad, though.
I'd hate to have to defend that conclusion - but that's what I decided in any case, and I ordered some new gun stuff to mess around with.
I ordered a "barrel kit" for my Savage bolt gun that will allow me to remove the original 24" stainless "magnum weight" barrel in .243 for a standard contour blue barrel in 7-08 Remington.
The new barrel is 24" long but thinner and lighter than what I have. The gun currently weighs ten pounds, so it could be a little lighter with no ill effect.
The kit comes with the barrel, a Savage barrel-nut wrench, GO and NO-GO head-space gauges and some chemicals, bore cleaner in a tube and a small bottle of gun oil.
They say that all I need is a barrel vise to do the job, so I have a barrel vise on the way from Brownells. Since my rifle has the new style smooth barrel nut, I also have a grooved barrel nut on hand that will work with the special wrench.
The smooth barrel nut comes off with a pipe wrench and is never quite the same, after that. There is a special wrench for the smooth barrel nut, but it looks kind of dubious to me so I'm going over to the old style nut that has grooves on it. - The smooth barrel nut will wind up in the metal scrap box, with my welding stuff.
The Savage bolt action is the easiest bolt gun to replace the barrel on. Doing this will prepare me for the more involved task of re-barreling my 98 Mauser.
I've never owned a 7-08 rifle, and expect to have a lot of fun shooting it.
I figure that if I get tired of it, I can always put my heavy .243 barrel back on, or maybe try something different.
The story I get is that once you have the tools on hand, switching barrels on a Savage action only takes ten minutes or so. In the future, all I'll have to buy will be the barrels for my short action Savage. From what I can tell, most of the cartridges based upon the .308 case use the same headspace guages.
I'd like to try 6.5 Creedmoor and .338 Federal one day.
In a week or so when I get all the stuff, I'll post some pictures of the barrel swap process.
The gun will look kind of funny with a stainless action and blue barrel with lots of room around it in the stock. Maybe it won't be too bad, though.