Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Gunsmithing Barrel Nuts

So if someone wants to do the Savage style barrel nut on rifles like a Model 70, or Remington or any other brand, to include a Mauser or Ruger....

how would one go about getting those?

would they need to be custom made?

inquiring minds want to know...

or is it easier to have a gunsmith thread the barrel for the Savage Nuts after the Remington or Win threading?

For the CRF M70 and the Mauser there would be no reason whatsoever to do a barrel nut. On the M70 the barrel would require gunsmith fitting due to the extractor cut needing to be placed correctly. On the Mauser the external shoulder is superfluous as the Mauser barrel breechface headspaces against the internal collar rather than the external shoulder against the receiver face.

Frankly I see no good use for any barrel nut and I like Savages.
Mine go nutless.

Big johnson lathes are probably ideal for barrel nuts, wouldn't ya think?

Sorry, someone had to say it.

I should have highlighted I was referring to push feed Model 70s...

I own both, but have a couple of push feeds, I'd like the switch barrel flexibility...

I know I can get them for a Remington...

thanks for the input on the Mauser Nsagam

A barrel nut would be feasible on a PF M70.

Whether having one would be cheaper or easier than having a conventional shoulder remains the question.

With a barrel nut a person needs to have a barrel vise, a nut wrench, and headspace gauges to perform barrel swaps. Given that there are no prefit nutted barrels made for the M70 you'd also need the services of a gunsmith to thread and chamber the barrel as well as make a custom barrel nut compatible with the M70 threads.
With a conventional barrel you'd need a barrel vise and an action wrench to swap barrels. No headspace gauges needed. You'd still need a gunsmith to thread and chamber your barrel but you wouldn't need to have the custom nut made.
I'd say that going with several shouldered barrels would be considerably less expensive than going the nutted route.
In addition, once you have the barrel vise and action wrench you can swap shouldered barrels even easier than you can swap nutted ones.

One idea I have....

The biggest pain of all is internal threading. Outside is not so tough if you have access to a good lathe.

A source of large nuts to use is a heavy-equipment dealer, lots of pivot pins need nuts. Many of these pins are fine-threaded, just right for precise fitment.
If you can thread to match the provided diameter pitch, you can make a working center and surface the outside faces, as well as putting in whatever spanner slots or holes you want.

Rifles are better with nuts. I love my savages. My buddy wants my opinion on what to get as first inexpensive, hunting rifle, an at $250 I see remington 742, one slightly beat down winchester 70, marlin 336 and a handfull of savage 110 (at a couple of local shops).

I lean towards the 110 or the marlin as a beginner rifle. A marlin 30-30 is just what the doctor ordered as a one gun tool, and the savage is more than likely going to shoot as well as anything that could be had up to three times the price - and if it soesn't $50 for another tube and we can see if it shoots better without a $200 trip to the gunsmith.

Anyway, that is the beauty of the nut.

Dave, nuts are made for barrels of most common pitch. One issue is that not all actions will have the same major as they can all be cleaned up differently. I can't imagine going to a nut system without squaring up first as only savage types have floating bolt heads. To nut a stock rem with a stock lug without a trip through the lathe could net a ultra poor shooter as easy as a good one.

Making a barrel nut for ANY rifle is no harder than doing ANY kind of internal/external threading...all you need to do is copy the barrel thread...Ruger and Rem are 16 TPI but have different OD and thread lengths...Savage is 20 tpi and has a couple of different OD and thread lengths...I don't have the exact specs, but it doesn't matter as you will have the OEM barrel and receiver to measure and copy.

I've done swap barrels for Rems, Rugers, Mausers with and without nuts many times. I turn the outside of the nut to a nice taper with enough diameter for either milling flats for a wrench or drilling a hole, out of sight on the bottom of the barrel, for stud to fit and then use a spanner wrench. I mill the side flats to match the Ruger receiver flats so it looks like just an extention of the receiver.

No you don't have to use nuts on ANY rifle including a Savage if you set a new barrel up...nothing different that doing any other non-nut installation.

You DO have to thread the barrels longer to fit the length of the nut, just like Savage if you do the nut job.

It isn't hard, complicated or any thing of the sort...just an external thread and an internal thread...and as long as the nut face and receiver face are square to both sets of threads the barrel will shoot as well with or without.

Luck

I agree with everything NFG said above.

It can be done.

My question remains, why?

I can see zero benefit in a custom barreled bolt action.

DOLLARS is one benefit.

From my perspective playing with shooters for a long time and having a couple of switch barrel benchresters WAY back, and 6 switchbarrel receivers today, it's 6 one way, half dozen the other...but not in a custom jobby...

Once an action is blueprinted it's a joy to shoot one caliber for a while than change to another without having to do a complete rifle. If you get the barrels and receiver dial and lapped in you only need a action wrench to UNDO the barrel. Screw another barrel in to within half a turn and a quick, firm wrist whip will lock them together plenty good enough...I only torque my Savages to 25 ftlbs with a half inch torque wrench. The leverarm is ~20" so that ends up ~42 ftlbs on the nut.

But it might be a bit quicker, easier and cheaper from the point of view of having to buy a lot of barrels or pay for the smithing...there are several advantages to being able to mix and match and not build/buy a complete rifle whenever you want something new.

I did all mine just to play, more than anything. I think it is easier just to set the barrels up without a nut if I'm doing another "switch barrel" from a blank...it's quicker and easier to screw on another barrel to a mark than to fiddle around with a headspace gauge and nut...but it IS quicker and cheaper from a factory point of view not having to keep tolerances so tight and having "instant" headspacing and no fitting.

Part of the "why" is being able to do it and it work well...but points of view differ as to usefulness so it just boils down to..."whatever tickles your tush".

Luck

In a production environment a nut makes sense for keeping costs down.

In a custom job, especially with a non Savage or Marlin, it doesn't make sense IMHO.

I'm having a Remington 700 Barrel made up with the Rem Nut now at Pac-Nor Barreling www.pac-nor.com it's a bit more stylish than the Savage nut but uses the same wrench. They will make up any of their barrels for the Remington 700 with a barrel nut.

Their Super-Match grade SS barrels are superb, and accurate too. I just re-installed a Super-Match barrel on my Savage Dual Port Precision Action after testing another caliber. Chambered for .223 Remington this barrel is a 1:9" twist 24" with POLYGONAL rifling. It produced a .206" center-to-center group with Nosler 40 grain BT Lead Free bullets, that's was for 7 shots as I stopped when it became apparent I was wasting ammo.

Also if you want to try one without a lot of expense, try a Bergara barrel. www.bergarabarrels.com/bergarabarrels/drop-in-barrels/remington-700-rifle-barrels.html They are sold by (I think) Midway USA or Cabella's.

Some times you feel like a nut...sometimes you don't". That commercial jingle just about says it all.

Basically boils down to personal choice...what tickles some tushes just pi**es others off. Doesn't really matter much and "have it your way". I LOVE those commercial writers...

One thing for certain...having an adjustable barrel makes it much easier to fit the sizing die to the chamber as you can adjust out the differences in tolerances...unless you have a custom set of dies made along with the chamber and the 'smith does that work for you. I don't use a standard headspace gauge to setup my switch barrels, I use a piece of brass sized in the sizing die I expect to use and use that piece of brass as the gauge to set the headspace.

I also polish out the sizer to fit the chamber dimensions...that way I get the least amount of sizing needed and the brass "keeps going, and going and going"...

There is a ton of good stuff that gets missed when we humans lock onto something and forget there are many roads leading to Nirvana, Valhalla or the Dark place...if you believe in those places.

Luck

I just neck size and call it perfect.

I surely wouldn't "adjust" my barrel to conform with my dies!

Get a shouldered barrel and forget the headspace gauges. Regardless of what those headspace gauges are made from.

Yes, I agree. That is still the best thing about this country; we have choices, almost limitless choices. Each of us can tinker and try new ideas, or test old concepts.

I love to experiment. So the Savage, Remington or Shilen swap barrel with nuts fits my purpose to a tee. Oh boy, I can have it my way. Still, I have a number of old fashion smith built rifles, and they all shoot better than I can hold. This new rifle will be chambered in .22-250 Ackley Improved. Why? I don't know, I thought it might be able to speedily toss the 40 Grain Nosler BT Lead Free and 50 grain Barnes Varmint Grenades squirrel-ward with great prejudice.

Then I wanted to experiment with the Hornady hydraulic forming die and matching FL custom die. You know, fill a case with water place it in the die and smack the expanding pin with a dead blow hammer and reap a fully formed case. Then actually fire it in the rifle to sharpen the corners. What fun! I will use a headspace gauge just in case I want to shoot factory ammo. I can reset the headspace anyway I need it. If that doesn't work, I'll order another barrel chambered for something else, something rational, plain vanilla and totally sane.

At my age, it's gotta be fun, I've done almost everything else. Hmmmm, I wonder how the .20-223 WSSM works, can I get that without onions? Maybe that's not sane or vanilla.

This is a Win 94 barrel new old stock from Numrich [$15 + $5 shipping], screwed into a Mosin Nagant. The flat spots make it a nut.

.807" 20 TPI barrel adapts to .975" 16 TPI receiver and clocks the sight dovetail and headspaces without a reamer.

That was the first time, and maybe only time, I cut female threads on the lathe. But it was not the first time I did two equations and two unknowns [to get the clocking AND the headspace at the same time].

Now that's ingenuity and entirely elegant.