rem 700 swich barrel?

[Mike Casselton]

Originally Posted by trotterlg

Well Mike guess you have never head spaced a Savage. You put one of your rounds in the chamber and close the bolt, screw the barrel in tight and back it out 1/16th turn. Tighten the barrel nut and you have it right. And the recoil lug is keyed, so you don't have to hold that in place either. Larry

At all. I happen to own 6 Savage rifles in various calibers and doing the switch barrel thing is no big deal for anyone with experience such as yourself or me.

When I spoke of doing the Remington switch barrel, I mistakenly assumed the rifle would use a properly ground and pinned recoil lug as I and most others have done on their rifles. Switching barrels on my Shilen action is also a simple matter of spinning off the old and tightening the new one. Headspace cannot change if the barrel is properly torqued.

Please don't get me wrong. I think it's great for anyone to want to do barrel swaps on their own guns. The thing I hesitate to recommend is modifying the setup where people begin gouging out their stocks to add Savage's ugly barrel nut to an otherwise clean setup.

I've never liked the barrel nut and the way it looks. Hasn't stopped me from buying and shooting Savage rifles

[RJM]

"A few of the Remington 700 recoil lugs that I have taken off were warped and would give incorrect headspace measurements when rebarreling. The numbers did not match up, hence finding the lug being bowed."

"Index marks I have observed are usually on the barrel shoulder and the receiver. In the 700, you have the recoil lug to look at between the two marks."

My experience (40 yrs) with Rem actions is that I've never found a Rem recoil lug that bad, nor have I ever seen a witness mark on Remington barrels or actions (or Savage).

Neither Savage nor Remington time or clock their threads in the receivers, so it's completely random where the threads start in either action. If you take a Rem (or Savage) barrel from one action & screw it on another, the stampings on the barrel can (will) wind up anywhere but in the right position. This is because the stampings are rolled on the barrels after the barrel was headspaced on that particular receiver, not because of any problem with recoil lugs.

I do only a few Savage barrels, but my impression is their recoil lugs are thinner than Remingtons. On the 1 older Savage 110, and the 1 recent short action I've done, both lugs appeared to be of stamped sheet metal & I used replacement recoil lugs. On the 2 Savage singleshot target actions I've re-barreled, the recoil lugs were thick & appeared to be ground.

If you want a surface ground recoil lug, they are commercially available cheaper than I would true them up on the surface grinder.

Your mileage may vary....

Regards,
Ron

[rick w.]

I guess I was not very clear, I have never seen witness marks on a factory 700 either. If one tried to use the witness mark method on a conventional 700 for alignment purposes, the receiver and barrel marks would be distant across the recoil lug and probably would not work very well for the user, at least I don't think so.

No 40 years here yet, years of experience sometimes is meaningful but not always; but once you are run around in the brush with a less than perfect recoil lug, you kinda get the notion to do some checking before hand. I am not sure why that one was bowed slightly across the bore line, but it added to my time on that job. Much younger then, never expected such. Yeah, the aftermarket lugs will spoil you; they are nicely done.

I really do not worry about stampings on factory barrels, they are never reused. Gotten spoiled with aftermarket blanks I reckon.

[Tim Anderson]

Well Mike guess you have never head spaced a Savage. You put one of your rounds in the chamber and close the bolt, screw the barrel in tight and back it out 1/16th turn. Tighten the barrel nut and you have it right. And the recoil lug is keyed, so you don't have to hold that in place either. Larry

That's just fine and dandy. Thing is if you don't back barrel out to the same spec each time you change it you change the size of your brass when you shoot the gun. End result is over worked brass and most know what that means..

As for Rem. switch barrels I have two rifle set up for it, both have new or reground lugs and also pinned to the action with two pins. My barrels are cut the same dia. so stocks don't need to be changed. I either place stock and action in padded vise and remove barrel with a rubber strap filter wrench or take action out of stock and place barrel in padded vise and use a action wrench that is the same as the bolt and has a socket head on it.. No big whoop changing barrels and head space is a non issue.

[Tim Anderson]

[Alan in GA]

No.
It's a fun time in the lathe if you have or have easy access to reamers. Also fun if you have take off barrels to play with. It was my 'play and learn' experience with my own first machinery.
However after building a few switch barrel rifles and collecting enough barrels to fill a small golf bag, I believe the USEFULLNESS of a switch barrel setup is... minimal.
Why? I wind up with a gun(s) that seem to always need a trip to the range for sighting in AGAIN. You can follow a system of using 'this scope, or scope settings, for this barrel, and this other scope or scope settings for that barrel. However anytime I change something on a rifle I will use on a game rifle, I want to be SURE it is exactly ON before hunting with it, which means another trip to the range/bench if I've changed barrels.
I LEARNED a lot fitting new and take off barrels on the lathe. I get excellent accuracy from 'hand snapped on' barrels. But after all is said and done I prefer having my rifles ready to go with no 'changing around' of barrels rendering them a 'needs to be checked for sight in' before they are hunt ready.
Just my experience. I should add that several of my bolt guns have hand tightened barrels in them, but I prefer to leave them as is, and not be switching barrels around.
They are ready to hunt!