Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunting Rifles 700 Bolt Came Off

Just kidding. Gotcha again. Bwahaahaaha.

The stuff some folks will come up with to make their flea market crap look better is just too much.

Yeah ya did.

I wanted to know the aprox. yr. of manufacture.

Seriously, seriously, I've been owning, shooting, & hunting
700s since 1975. Never heard of bolt failure TILL I joined the 'fire'. I have seen the ONE pic about 100 Xs here.

You would have 'got me' if the thread title read: New Sako is my most accurate rifle'

How in the hell would a bolt come off any way. A bolt handle ya but a whole bolt that would take a special kinda stupid. .

It takes a "special kinda stupid" to think that a Rem 700 ANYTHING breaking is a common occurrence.

I did see one broken @ the weld but the guy fell on it and did see one 788 bolt that had been rewelded, or soldered.

In the 30-member hunt club I belonged to in the 80's, there were two bolt handle failures on Remington 600s.

Pappy348 - it happened to me on my M600 Mohawk (.308W). Broke off were it attached to the bolt. Sent the bolt in to Remington for repair and it was returned a few weeks later. Homesteader.

I had a 600 .308 for a while. $99.95 Fair Trade price at Sears.

When fired, it felt like it broke my shoulder and shattered my eardrums, but that's all. I wish I still had the ugly little cannon.

Back in the mid 70's I worked for a gunsmith while learning the trade. Did it until 1977 when the old boy died. FWIW,m we average two Remington 788's a month. Worst month that I can recall was five, all for bolt handles that came off. One of the better money makers for the shop.
I had a Remington 600 Mohawk, a 660, three m700s and even with some very hot loads with stiff bolt lifts, none ever came off. I still have a few of those rifles. Gave to 600 to a kid I was teaching hunting, shooting and reloading. A 700 ADL in 06 was sold off to finance some silly project I was working on. Don't even remember what the hell it was. I do remember all those handless 788's though.
Paul B.

Never happened to me but I've seen a few pics of them. The ones that fall off are funnier than the ones that break off.

Wasn’t sure if this was a bolt handle thread or a bolt ‘slicked’ right out the back end because of bolt stop failure. I wish both problems would just go away since they are known issues that could be resolved if Big Green would choose to do so.

We sure don’t want the flea markets to gain any traction due to a QC problem.

C'mon, it's more fun pretending it doesn't happen.

Are those 788 handles brazed into a hole in the bolt body or just end-butted against it?

The reason I ask is I have a 581 that looks to be built the same on a smaller scale.

I've personally had a 700 bolt come off on two occasions. Both were early 700's with "B" serial # prefixes. One was a 280AI, the other a 300 RUM. Both times I had the bolt welded back on (originally silver soldered it appears) by a machine shop that knew what they were doing....no worries since then.

Pappy348 - "and shattered my eardrums," . Amen to that. An 18 inch barrel gets loud!. Fired it a night site in session and you could've cooked a hot dog with the muzzle blast as well.
Homesteader

My first center-fire rifle as a kid was a M-600 in 308 Winchester. I called it "Thunderstick". When I fired it I felt like I had been hit by lightning, and my ears rang for a week. That light rifle with a hard butt-plate on a bony kid's shoulder with full-power loads really hurt. I loved it and hated it at the same time. I managed to kill my first deer with it.

That stubby S.O.B and I parted ways when I sold it to help finance a breast augmentation on my first wife (true story). It was an easy choice to make. Without selling the M-600 we only had enough money to do one breast. So I kissed the rifle good-bye.

It was the second-best deal I think I ever made.

The first-best deal I ever made was shortly after that the crazy woman got so into the new women's liberation movement that she decided she wanted a divorce, and her complete independence. (I soon found out that she had been cheating on me like crazy when I was out of town for work).

Then, to prove how much better she was than all those traditional, dependent women out there, she wouldn't take a cent of alimony or anything other than her clothes if I would just let her have our old, worn-out Chevy, so she would have a way to look for a job. I said yes. She was going through with the divorce either way, and it was the nicest thing she ever did for me. And I kissed the breasts good-bye.

I got a big envelope in the mail with the divorce papers to sign. I ran them by a buddy that was a lawyer. He said, "Wow, sign those papers quick and get them back to her before she changes her mind."

Now, these decades later I can't think of that rifle without thinking of the crazy woman, and I can't think of the woman without thinking of the M-600. Fortunately I seldom think of either one, but this thread brought them both to mind.

Fired at night, I swear the flames went six feet out of the muzzle of that M-600. It WAS good for that.

Oh, and I have been much more happily married to my second wife for 37 years. And while I own several Remington's, I have never wanted another M-600. And I have never had a bolt handle break off of anything.

...as common as a Sasquatch sighting

The bolt handle is a separate piece and I'm sure that a few have fallen off in normal use out of the millions of 700s made, but most broken off bolt handle stories seem to start with "I was trying out my super secret handloads and couldn't get the bolt open. The @#$#^&^ bolt handle broke off when I was hammering on the pipe I put over the handle to get it open.".

Yeah, certainly an old wife's tale...wouldn't happen in a million years... but maybe a million and one...







strictly had to be photoshopped, right?