Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunting Rifles Tikka t3x 308 freebore

Flirting with converting one to long action stop/mag to run an efficient but functional trainer with heavies. Curious about CBTO/COAL y’all have seen in your rifles.

Thanks!

All you have to do is use a bolt stop from a 6.5 creedmoor and a 6.5 creedmoor magazine. That is stamped M+ near the follower. You will have plenty of room in that magazine to run any bullet you desire.. If you choose to use a long action bolt stop, that will work as well..

Modify your bolt stop.

There are plenty of tutorials online on how to do it.



Then use a 30-06/300WM magazine.

That is all you have to do.

Here is a pic of a long loaded .308 just for demo purposes. It is super simple.




It takes longer to take the barreled action in and out of the stock, and torque it back to a proper foot pound spec, then it does to do the actual modification.

There is nothing to it.

So what cartridges can be used after switching the bolt stop and mag?

It depends on what route you go. There is no 308win too long that it will not work in the M+ (6.5 Creedmoor) magazine. If the throat on your rifle requires a long action magazine, it's toast. IE: has too much freefore AKA Linda Lovelace throat. Also, some short action bolt stops are iffy on grinding because you run out of material:


The reason I suggest either a 6.5 CM bolt stop or long action bolt stop. As you can see in the picture above, they are hollow or webbed on the inside. You can only remove so much material. Another reason I suggest the 6.5 Creedmoor magazine is because a lot of guys already have a 6.5 CM rifle. I use those magazines for 6.5, 7mm-08 and my 308 winchester. They work great and have an internal length of around 2.975" approx.

Can’t help with .308 Win, but when I started loading the 150 Eldx in my 7mm-08 I wanted to load into the lands initially, in order to find the most accurate OAL. I couldn’t do that with 7mm-08 mags so I bought a LA bolt stop and used 30-06 mags.

I found accuracy beyond 7mm-08 mag length so the swap was completely worth it.

LA bolt stops are cheap and easy to swap.





P

I've often thought that this sounds like a great experiment to try with a an 8 twist 22-250 to shoot 88 grain ELD-Ms.