Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Gunsmithing excessive headspace on a 280 Rem. rebarrel job

338 AK
I am sorry for jumping on you the other day. I was thinking back to when I had a difficult customer in the past. It was not right for me to take it out on you.
I have never met your gunsmith, but I keep thinking he might have a drinking problem.
It must be very frustrating. You could order books and tools from Brownells and work on your own rifles. Hopefully you have another rifle to shoot in the meantime.
I am sure you could UPS it to one of the gunsmiths on this board and they could do a better job than your EX gunsmith.
Nobody likes to finish a project that was started by somebody else because you end up starting from scratch and cannot assume anything is correct.
If I were you I would ship it to someone competent, and you can build your next project after you have the proper tools.
Good Luck ,
whelennut

Malm, I just mic.ed 2 of my factory lug's on rifle's that have never been apart, and they are .190 to .191 , pretty close to the .187 you refer, I can't negate that , but you can,t negate the fact that I was able to get 2 + peices of blue masking tape on the back of a go gauge and close the bolt and you can't negate the stretch on the brass in the picture's , I know your arguing the 10 thous. , you know what 5 day's ago I didn't commit that demension to memory, I should have it would be offly handi right now, I admit I was under the impression that .200 was a factory lug , with 2 thous. ground from each side that would have given us the .196, perhap's he did use a aftermarket lug I honestly can;t say, I remember him telling me he didn't use them, but you know what if he did, that would give us the extra 10 thous., he may have use one on this build, easy enough to do when your a guy doing multile build,s each week and there's part's from multiple build's laying around the shop, you know Malm your starting to make me feel as if I might of been a little hard on the guy , starting to See the Err in my way, You know at first I was pist, but, it really wasn't my intention to come on here and bad mouth a smith, I wanted you guy's to see what I had going on and give me your honest opinion as to what you thought it might be, I wanted to show you picture's of the brass and ask you about the amount of tape on the go gauge issue, Bottom line is I probrably should have called him and sent it too him to fix , but man that just gave me a BAD feeling and that's where you guy's came in, not to worry they on their way to Doctor for some TLC,

338AK I cannot figure what your measuring, probably because my description of wht to measure is lacking.

Here is what you want.

You want the bolt nose cut out to be equal or up to .005 more than the bolt nose.

You want the length of the barrel tennon, minus the thickness of the lug to be about .005 shorter than the distance from the front of the lug in battery to the action face.

If there is .060 between the front of the bolt lugs and the end of the barrel I would probably not shoot the gun. Are you sure ou do not have the .690 and .635 transposed. If you do I would say it was unsafe with .060 of unsupported case. I am going out in the shop to take a couple pics where you will inderstand what I was asking for.

Measure from boltface to front of lugs.



from back of recoil lug to end of barrel.



There should only be about .005 difference between these two measurements. Sorry for the crappy pics.

I'm of the school, if something isn't right, contact the one responsible, FIRST! Instead, if you take it upon yourself to try to correct the problem, especially with something potentially as serious as headspace, without the slightest clue of the steps and equipment required to do it correctly, all the while ranting about the guy, you get no sympathy from me.

Let me add this, so you don't think I'm too heartless, I am sorry to see this stuff happen within our trade. Professional gunsmiths should never let anything out of their shop without making sure it is right. Gunsmiths should stand firmly behind their work, but we'll never know whether this guy had it in him or not. Good luck!

Eddybo , do you mean from the action face to the front of the bolt lug,.707 to .710 is what I got, and the other from the action side of the recoil lug to the end of barrel is .695 to .705 dependent upon where you measure due to the thread growing as you turn the barrel , I used the back of my micrometer for these measurment's just now . a little more accurate than last night , they seem to be right, bolt to bolt face .152 to .155, barrel recess for bolt nose .155 to .165 measured off the front of the barrel thread's so it changed as the thread grew right or barrel turn and measurment from diff, location's on barrel, top, bottom, sides, of barrel ?? front bolt lug to bolt face .155 to .160, hope these help, from what you say they seem to work out , I just checked the lug again and it's .186 to .187 pretty good

Malm, I am not looking for sympothy and yea I was hard on a guy who I feel took me for a ride, but, really all I did was manipulate a $ 25 part that I was willing to sacrafice to see if it was a quik fix to an issue that has plagued me for the last 2 + year's, as you can see I have done no harm to myself or the rifle, I have gained an education from some of the best in the industry out their , Thank you Gentelman, Mucho Gratitude,---- and if you were in my shoe's I don't think you would have sent your stuff back to him either , although you may have called him and had your moment of therapy !! --

I think your okay. Measure the greatest OD of the barrel tennon and tell me what thickness you want the lug to be, PM me an addy with that info and I will mail you a surface ground lug gratis. I am not doing any work right now because of health reasons, but surface grinding and opening up a recoil lug is not gonna hurt me none.

I'm no Professional Gunsmith, but i do build my own rifle. I get my Tenon length length by measuring with the recoil lug laying on the front of the action and measuring from the front of the recoil lug to the front of the bolt locking lugs and then subtracting .015 from this measurement . I then get my head-space measuring from the front of the recoil lug to the front of the bolt face. I then get my bolt nose recess depth by measuring from the front of the bolt nose to the front of the locking lugs. Works for me.

Eddybo you are the Mott's , the Digity bomb , thank you my friend, but I am going to send them to a smith back east and have them cared for, You know it's one thing for me to shade tree mechanic something I own, but when it come's to my wife handleing something I put in her hands, it need's to be right, cause when she pull's the Hammer on that first buck or bull , it will all be worth the effort made today, and believe me it's gonna happen ! your a kind soul God bless

I know what you mean it has gotta be right for mamma. I let my wife shoot her first buck with one of my light weight long range rifles. I forgot to dial the scope back down to the 100 yard zero after I shot a bobcat at 960 yards. I caant recall but think I was 18MOA off of zero. Of course she missed a super buck with the gun in said condition.....I will never hear the end of it. To make up for it I let her shoot my buck on that trip and mounted her first deer for her, still I hear it. I built her two rifles in the last two years and I do not touch her 6x284 or 25x284 except to clean and load her rounds.

Eddybo your wife is a wealthy lady, she got a bo that build's, load's and point's out game , she must be one heck of a cook , I know the feeling, after getting your fair share it's nice to introduce and do for other's along the way, my last mrs.'s got the same treatment and went on to take a world class grizzly 22 15/16 skull, drew a buffalo and dall sheep tag in the same year up here and took both, buff was a dandy , shot blacktail deer on Kodiak and blackbear with a smokepole, then moved on to greener pasture's , sometime's you can't do enough , oh well life goes on , but I learned from that experience if your gonna introduce a women that your gonna live with for an extended amount of time you better get her, her own weapon or 2 or 3, this way you mitigate any risk of blame and keep the piece , My new and last bride is just getting started and already had her on a nice black bear hunt on prince of wales last year and put her on a nice 6 1/2 ft'r with a big mellon on him ,but at 120 yrd's she couldn't get confortable with the shot and gave me the go ahead, one through the boiler room and we had our first big game animal together, sometime's in doing for other's the reward is as great or greater,just glad she was there to share the experience, bobcat at 960 that's some fine shooting , I don't think I can see that far, go to hear from you Eddy, what other rifle's have you built and how long you been doing it ??

Lost track because I do a lot of free work for some guys from another forum....actually all I can do is free work. No FFL and no intent to ever charge anyone for gun work. I only do this as a hobby but get pretty involved in my hobbies.

That's awesome, great hobby and your helping people make memories that will last a lifetime, a guy can't do much more than that, Cudos to you, only wish I had surfed this site before I met the other guy, probrably would have been better off

I jsut got back from a trip and started to read this. I am amazed sometime at the stuff some guys will attempt just to "get the experience" of the thing. Did you read what Butch Lambert had to say about this. You are missing his point about the bolt nose/barrel clearance. you took .010" off the recoil lug and didn't do anything about the counterbore in the barrel. What do you think you have for clearance there now?

I'll tell you what, I have a few extra original unground or unaltered recoil lugs laying around. If you send me that barreled action and enough money to return it to you, I will fix it for nothing, no labor charge, just shipping.

Jim

Very nice.

Jkob that's very nice and from your credential's, your definitly over qaulified for this clean up , I think their may be more than just an issue with recoil lug, this 280 really need's to be looked at, a good overhaul, the guy I am sending them too is going to put an oversized lug and obviously going to have to recut the shoulder for that and god's know what else, good thing I brought these gun's in with enough barrel shank to do these Mod's, I really do appreciate the offer , I just want to get them cleaned up ! Thank you

nsagam I think if I did many of these I would have a bunch of lugs each surface ground to different thickness. That way if the chamber was to shallow or to deep you could easily fix it? Or not?

Just remember that when you do this you are changing the distance between the bolt nose and the end of the barrel. You need to check this also.
Butch

Butch if you took the average measurements he has about .0085 clearance. On the high side he has .012 on the low .005.