Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Gunsmithing Bent tang?

Evidently it isn't time for me to be nutting with rifles. First I bubba'd the stock on the Marlin 783, now ?????

Been going over a little 581 I picked up as a project rifle. Got everything done except a coat of Norrells and all was fine. I applied the Norrells reassembled the bolt and the trigger now the bolt wont go back in the receiver. It appears that the large diameter of the bolt is hitting the back of the tang. I disasembled the trigger and the bolt to make sure that I wasn;t missing something there, same problem. Only four explanations I can come up with.

1, the metal on the bolt swelled and didn't contract.

2, the bolt is bent.

3, the metal of the tang swelled and didn't contract.

4, the tang got bent somehow.

The Norrells bakes on at 300 degrees so I wouldn't think the would be enough to expand the metal to this extent. The bolt is so short I don't think it could be bent. The rifle did require me to smack the barrel on a padded bench to release it from the stock after spot bedding it and I was thinking that could have maybe bent the tang but then I remembered that I fired the rifle after that just to make sure that there was no feeding issues from the bedding. All was fine then.

What would you do?

The pics are a bit blurry but I think you can tell what I'm talking about. In the last pick you can see a bright spot on the tang where the bolt is hitting it. It is shiny on both sides of the groove but more pronounced on the left side.

Thanks.

The more I looked at it the more I was convinced it was bent. A few light taps with a 3lb hammer ans a small piece of wood straightened it right out.