Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Gunsmithing Bolt face question

I need some help one a future build. Remmington M700 short actions.
Can anyone tell me if the only difference in short actions are the bolt face and the barrel of course.
A .270 and a .308 bolt with both be interchangeable even though you need the correct barrel.

Long action bolts are longer than short action bolts.

Bolt Face?

You can interchange short action bolts with 233, 308, or mag boltfaces yes. The feed ramps are the same, but you have to re barrel of course.

Also no long action cartridges in a short action.... that isn’t an option ( 270 is a long action cart. - it has the same bolt face as a 308, but not the same action.)

The hitch is the cost of a second bolt or modifying the one you have. Typically if you open a bolt face they put a M16 style extractor on it, or you buy a new Remy bolt with that bolt face you need.

A short action barrel will screw onto a long action and vice versa.
You CAN buy extra bolts with different bolt face diameters for the same action, so you have different barrels, but you would also need different followers to suit each cartridge.

Cheers.

Remington's short action is quite a bit shorter than their long action, which is a true long action, capable of handling cartridges nearly 3.7" in length. If you buy a long action 700, you can use the same action, bolt and magazine for 270 and 308. You'd just need a properly headspaced barrel for each, and a way to swap barrels. In Remington actions, I don't think you even need a headspace gauge on a Remington action, once the barrel is properly chambered, just a torque wrench to tighten down the barrel to the proper torque.

Don't know how much difference there is between feed rails on a factory long action magnum and say an 06 based receiver but the feed rails on a short action for 223 is narrower than feed rails on a factory 243/308. I know because I used a 223 based receiver for a while barreled to 6x47 Lapua. Cartridges would bind up about 1/2 the time. This even after I removed a bit and polished them up. Finally got a 243/308 based receiver and screwed barrel on it. Feeds 100% now. Used the first 223 receiver for a 223AI and with the bit I removed off rails and being polished it works much better now. Used to have a pic with the 2 recievers side by side but photobucket now has it for ransom.

And then there is the Fireball action...

Feed rails on a "standard" magnum action and a "standard" .473" based cartridge are the same width.

However, the Ultra Mag action feed rails are wider.

This would be used as a single shot but I was more concerned that other than the bolt, certain short actions had some other measurement that was different.

Remember the 40X was always a short action, but could be bought in 6.5x55, 7Rem Mag, 30-06, 30-338. and 300 Win mag. These were all single shots. The repeaters were only made in short action receivers. Yes, The 40x receivers were the same as the 700 and pulled off the line and roll stamped separately.