Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters gas handling Kimber 84

I am curious if anyone can tell me how the Kimber 84 rates in the event of a case failure with regard to gas handling? Though I always wear polycarbonate glasses when I shoot, I would like to know, and haven't seen anything about this in any articles on the Kimber. I would really appreciate it if Mule Deer would lend his knowledge here.

Here ya' go.....I wouldn't stress about it.

http://revver.com/video/998465/kimber-montana-8400-rifle-torture-test/

Thanks for the link....interesting video.

The big problem with any bolt action is usually escaped gas going down the left raceway (on a right-handed action), directly into the shooter's face. There are generally ports in the front receiver ring to allow some gas to escape toward the side, and on the underside of the bolt to allow gas to escape into the magazine. The Kimber 84 has the standard receiver-ring port on the right side, and two ports in the bolt. There is also a little flange on the left side of the bolt shroud, but it is inside the rear receiver ring, not outside as in the 98 Mauser.

My take, however, is that with today's brass and ammo, escaping gas is incredibly rare, unless we are truly careless in handloading. Also, if this were really an issue almost nobody would ever fire a pre-'64 Model 70 Winchester.

Mule Deer---Thanks for the input. I was not too worried, but was curious. Most bolt action reviews talk about the gas handling features of the rifle, but what I've read on the Kimber (not an exhaustive literature review) hadn't mentioned that. I'm glad to hear the flange is present.

I still have a great deal of steel in my right thumb from a total blow-up with a Kimber of Oregon Model 84. Shrapnel bothers me a lot these days.

Steve

Dogzapper, what happened there? Gun failure or bad ammo, or both? I hope you weren't injured any other way.

Are the Kimbers 84's of NY different from the Kimber 84's of Oregon in safety?

From this picture, which is supposed to be a Kimber 84 of Oregon, they don't look the same.

Stupid engineering staff and no gunsmith in the entire plant.

The rifle was the first prototype 6PPC and the chamber was cut with a reamer that required a turned neck. I was sent to the range with a hundred rounds of factory Sako ammo and asked to bring back 20 five-shot groups.

As we all know, the case neck requires some clearance, in order to release the bullet. There was none.

The rifle blew up on the first round.

The receiver split in two, lengthwise. The barrel flew about twenty yards downrange. Some gas was diverted straight down from the hole in the lower locking lug recess, but when it hit the laminated stock, it split ... opened ... and closed on my left hand. The bolt shroud shattered and I have lots of it in my right thumb. With the receiver splitting, the scope mounts failed and the scope flew over my right shoulder.

My face was totally blooded by the tattooing of a thousand small pieces of steel and brass. The pad at the base of my right thumb had a three-inch deep cut. The end of my right thumb looked like a bloody stubbed-out cigar.

My glasses were like sand-blasted, but they saved me from being blinded.

The Lord basically saved me from total idiots like Greg Warne and his band of morons. I was badly hurt and bloodied, but I finally saw the light. I stopped helping them a few weeks later.

The company eventually failed. Greg ended up with a .45 bullet in his brain in the Costa Rica rain forest.

Steve

I had my own encounter with the lack of gun-making know-how with the original Kimbers some years later. I restocked an original 84 in .223 for a guy, who the next year traded it to me for another stock job.

For the first couple of years I shot it only on hot-weather prairie dogs shoots, but then early one spring I went out and the rifle wouldn't go bang, due a VERY sluggish firing pin fall. I took the bolt apart and found it FULL of axle grease. I mentioned this to Steve Dogzapper, and he explained that one of the older guys who worked there had a theory that bolts should be greased inside, so that's what he did: pumped them full. And that's the way many original 84's came, right from the factory.

Of course I removed all the grease and the rifle worked even better....

Literally ALL Kimber of Oregon recoil lugs were "glass bedded." Jim McKinley and the crew used 5-minute epoxy, for pity's sake.

The reason? It was faster and easier.

THAT is a fact!!!!

Steve

Yup, Johnny, you are totally right.

I about friggin' crapped when I saw the automotive grease pump come out in the assembly area. No gunsmiths, no guidance and no technical leadership results in some really strange things.

After damned near blowing my azz up, I decided not to put my face behind them. Not in experimental ones, anyway.

Steve

PS. The earlier 22s, Model 82s, were chambered with a reamer that was chucked up in a quarter-inch electric drill. First, the barrel was clamped hard in a vise and then the assembler drilled away. If you look at the fired cases, lots of chambers have flat sides ... caused by tightening the vise too much.

Idiots.

Amazing! And yet, among some "aficionados" those original Kimbers are known as such top-grade firearms....

Okay, you guys - PLEASE tell me they got it mostly right by the time they started making left handers!

I have a Model 82 .22 and a Model 84 .223 with matching 3 digit serial numbers LH13X. The .22 retired all other .22's I owned as it is the most accurate rimfire I ever owned. I won a lot of .22 silhouette matches with it.

The .223 is really accurate as well, an honest 3/4" five shot grouper, but it will only hold 4 in the magazine. Put 5 in and the 5th one pops out when you work the bolt. The bolt is getting hard to open and close but I figured it's probably because I haven't cleaned it since I got the rifle in 1983 or so. (cleaned the bore, just not the bolt except to wipe it off)

How do you disassemble the bolt? There is a small allen screw on the striker but I'm afraid to unscrew it as tiny pieces will inevitably fly out into the 4th dimension.

My friend, some fabulous wood went through the shop. Both the wood and the metal finish were world-class. Everything that showed received the utmost attention.

Under the stock and things like the quality of barrels ... well, that was a different matter.

Greg told me once, "Steve, it doesn't make any difference. Most of the Kimber rifles are admired, lusted over and put in a safe. The majority are never shot. And what's the difference if a guy returns a rifle that shoots like schit? We'll just screw on another $6.00 barrel and we'll ship it back to him."

Jeez.

Trust me, anytime I got a Kimber, I bedded it correctly and I shot it before I took possession of it. One out of five rifles shot like a demon ... three out of five rifles shot OK ... one out of five rifles shot like crap. That's what 5-minute epoxy, green wood and a $6.00 barrel buys you, no matter how friggin' pretty it is.

Steve

Yeah, I had some encounteres with the wood and bedding too. That .223 was restocked because the original wood split as it dried. I also once restocked a .22 rimfire 82 and got to examine the "bedding" first-hand. (This was for a certain well-known gun writer that we both are well acquainted with.) I told him that with the new stock it would shoot better because it would be bedded correctly--and it did.

The wood mostly came from Cal'ico and George Petersen.

Remember the flood of Kimber BGR rifles that were for sale on the cheap? Greg hadn't paid his Cal'ico Wood bill for quite a while, so one day the BIG Cal'ico truck shows up at the front door ... along with several BIG, serious looking guys. The wood bill was paid in Kimber BGR rifles. Lots of freakin' BGR rifles.

It was a little hard for Greg to sell BGRs for a while because Cal'ico and associates were selling them to the public for 20% less than a Kimber Master Distributor could buy them for.

Steve

Aha! I wondered about that. Also wondered why the BGR disappeared so quickly after all the hype.

That's the truth.

Steve, not that any of this is inherently funny but the way you tell it.........

By the way, very seriously, I'm glad that pipe bomb they sent you didn't do more damage. Good grief!

And to think I had a little, early Kimber M84 in .17 Remington (I did glass bed it) that shot very well. It was a great little fox getter.

Best,
George