Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Gunsmithing Gas Cutting in Bolt face, Fix?

I picked up a JC Higgins FN Mauser at a gun show the other day and forgot to check the bolt face. Everything else looks fine but the bolt has a half circle of pitting/cutting around the firing pin hole. Under closer examination with a 10x loop the pitting looks to have been created by heat rather than corrosion/rust. The pitting also looks deep enough that polishing will not be enough.

Other than getting another bolt would welding/remilling the bolt face back to specs.(.473 case rim dimension) be easily doable or are we creating more problems, ie screwing with the bolt head/lugs heat treat?

I have and use a TIG and have welded bolt handles on without issue by going slow and using a heat sink but am a little leary of taking on the bolt face.

What are the thoughts of the experts here?

Thanks,
SBTCO.

If it's not too bad, it's ugly as hell, but doesn't affect the functionality, I wouldn't worry about it.

I've seen bolts with a moat around the entire firing pin from intentionally firing overly hot loads in competition and they were still using them.

But if it's bad enough to need fixing, you might send the bolt to someone who has repaired a lot of these and knows the best way to get it done.

Well worth the $50-100.

I have not had it done, but know people who have had it Micro tig welded and then of course the weld is dressed down. Pretty hard to tell anything had been done if it was done right.

If you ship it off somewhere, I would recommend Gre-Tan. Really good work that repaired the damage from Winchester primers.

i agree with boogaloo. i've a 270 721 with similar bolt face. had gun many years now it shoots fine. looks bad.

Ed

I either tig weld or skin surface plate the face and remill down to headspace, depends on how bad.

one way of fixing it is to have a firing pin bushing put in, here the smith drills a hole around the fire pin hole, makes an insert and put that in the center of the bolt face. this way you resurface, and get a nice firing pin seal.

betting [bleep] win. primers

Thanks for all the tips and info. I'll check out Gre-Tan too. It would probably be a good idea to check the firing pin protrusion too, may have been the problem in the first place.

I sent a Ruger M77 bolt to Gretan last year. Came back looking like new and pretty quick turn around time. Cost was around $130.00.

Had GreTan re-bush a M700 for me a while back & it's the only way to go.

Relatively cheap, very fast turnaround & outstanding work.

And you won't have the source of the problem anymore.

MM