Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunting Rifles Sportsman's now has the Tikka SL in 7-08

I like my Tikkas, but I also didn't like having a short action cartridge in a long action. Since all four of the Tikkas I've owned had long throats, I decided to change the bolt stop and the magazine so I could load the bullets closer to the lands.

On my lite (7-08), I bought a long action bolt stop from a shop for $35, then I ordered the LA mag. Super easy and it works great.

On the SL I bought last week, I sold my mag here for $30. After shipping and Paypal I'll get $22 for it. Cheaper than dirt has Tikka mags on sale for $34. With shipping it was $39, so $17 difference/more. I went to my uncle's house last night and we put the bolt stop in the vice and took a file to it. Like in this video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e4rCsOohVks

I ran 20 rounds through the new SL with the filed bolt stop and a LA mag with no problems last night. (Just cycling at the house, not at the range.)

This group is from two days ago. We had almost no wind. It is with the 162 A-Max at 2.970" OAL (about .010 jammed). Ignore the three bullet holes on the right, they are from an AR. There are five shots in the group, the one out is the cold shooter, first shot of the day.



However, I'm not really sure why I changed to LA mag and bolt stop because that was exactly how the same lite shoots at short action mag length with the same load. (It's about 30 fps slower, though.)

Some bad picture. The 2.97 round in the LA mag:



What it looks like in the SA mag just for comparison:





I sold my T3 in 270 for no real reason. I ran 140 SSTs at 2880 in it with 59 grains of H4831. In my T-3 7-08 I can run 139 SST at the same speed with 49 H4350. The difference is that with the 7-08 I can run the 162 A-Max at 2650 easily and that bullet is a lot of fun.

In short, (too late, I know...), I really wouldn't worry about the 7-08 in the LA with the SA mag and bolt stop. But if you do want to change things, it is $17 (while the sale lasts)and 10 minutes with a file away.