I have long wanted to get into rifle work and now I am tooling up to do blueprinting and accurizing on Remington 700's. I bought a test rifle and tooling to do my first one and even though this is only the first one, judge for yourself's and I welcome any constructive criticism or advice.
I already have more things in mind to do such as external bolt release and M16 extractor. But that will be on the next one or two down the road
To give credit where credit is due I have teamed up with a machinist friend and he has opened up a realm of experience and tooling I would not have access to without his help.
Together we are going to make this happen.
And yes I hope to gain some work from the loyal INGO members
Test subject and a walk through of my journey so far
I initially bought this with the intentions of seeing how much accuracy we could squeeze out of it with minimal effort and cost. We soon learned that we were not satisfied with leaving things un done.
Remington 700 AAC in .308 w/ threaded barrel
I bought an EGW 0 MOA scope mount at the same time since I knew I would be shooting it prior to doing any real work.
I figured I would go ahead and thread the bolt handle and add a Surgeon knob just because I could but that turned out to be a waste of time as you will see later
We did break in the barrel and sight it in and really did not get good consistent groups, I didn't like the stock could not get a good cheek weld but worst of all was the trigger it tested just under 5lbs
Now the fun starts.
After taking the gun apart first thing we did was face the receiver bolt logs with a tool that runs square to the bot raceway. you can see the receiver face has not been touched yet.
Now ream and true the threads to the bolt raceway
With the thread tap installed we chucked the receiver in the lathe and trued it to the bolt raceway and threads
At that point the receiver was faced
Then we lapped the bolt lugs and trued the bolt face
Minimal material removed
Surface grind the recoil lug to perfection
Set head space and reassemble. We worked on the trigger as much as possible but it was crap and could only get down to 3.75 lbs. At this point thought we would be able to adjust it down but times have changed I guess.
I upgraded the stock a little because this was an experiment and I was still being cost conscious I went with a MagPul Hunter stock and detachable magwell.
The Hunter Stock has an aluminum bed and does seem better then the original.
Took it and test fired the gun groups were better and easier to be consistent but still the trigger was poor. we managed to squeeze out some decent groups still but my ammo selection was poor.
Intentions were to put in a trigger and be done but there was one thing that was just not right and that we just couldn't get past and that was the feel of the bolt in the action. It would bind open and the end play was excessive.
So back to the drawing board. after much research it seem that there are 2 main ways to fix this and that is to either sleeve the bolt or buy a custom bolt and wait 12 weeks for it.
We decided to sleeve. But first I bought a raceway reamer that opened the raceway .005 over size and trued it. (In the future this will be the first step)
Once the raceway was reamed we indicated off the reamer and verified everything that we did before was still in alignment
and the face was true to the raceway which i found comforting about what we had done before hand
Next was to create a bolt sleeve. and first we had to take the old handle off and turn the bolt to a smaller size
I don't have pics of the bolt being turned but here is the bolt after the sleeve was made and install. Then it was ground true on a radial grinder.
no cocking lug or handle yet
Timing the bolt handle ( I will have a handle clamp next time )
after handle is silver soldiered on. End play is less then .010 and excellent engagement on extraction lug
Target crown
Reassembled
I refinished the bolt with Cerakote Micro Slick but eve as thin as that is the tolerances were snug. Nice thing is it allows you to see how well fit and machined the bolt and raceways are.. The bolt is smooth with no wobble.
The gun now sports a IOR 3x18 scope and a Timiny 1.5lb trigger We will be test firing it This weekend I will follow up with some targets....unless they are real bad Also the gun was refinished Tungsten Cerakote
I already have more things in mind to do such as external bolt release and M16 extractor. But that will be on the next one or two down the road
To give credit where credit is due I have teamed up with a machinist friend and he has opened up a realm of experience and tooling I would not have access to without his help.
Together we are going to make this happen.
And yes I hope to gain some work from the loyal INGO members
Test subject and a walk through of my journey so far
I initially bought this with the intentions of seeing how much accuracy we could squeeze out of it with minimal effort and cost. We soon learned that we were not satisfied with leaving things un done.
Remington 700 AAC in .308 w/ threaded barrel
I bought an EGW 0 MOA scope mount at the same time since I knew I would be shooting it prior to doing any real work.
I figured I would go ahead and thread the bolt handle and add a Surgeon knob just because I could but that turned out to be a waste of time as you will see later
We did break in the barrel and sight it in and really did not get good consistent groups, I didn't like the stock could not get a good cheek weld but worst of all was the trigger it tested just under 5lbs
Now the fun starts.
After taking the gun apart first thing we did was face the receiver bolt logs with a tool that runs square to the bot raceway. you can see the receiver face has not been touched yet.
Now ream and true the threads to the bolt raceway
With the thread tap installed we chucked the receiver in the lathe and trued it to the bolt raceway and threads
At that point the receiver was faced
Then we lapped the bolt lugs and trued the bolt face
Minimal material removed
Surface grind the recoil lug to perfection
Set head space and reassemble. We worked on the trigger as much as possible but it was crap and could only get down to 3.75 lbs. At this point thought we would be able to adjust it down but times have changed I guess.
I upgraded the stock a little because this was an experiment and I was still being cost conscious I went with a MagPul Hunter stock and detachable magwell.
The Hunter Stock has an aluminum bed and does seem better then the original.
Took it and test fired the gun groups were better and easier to be consistent but still the trigger was poor. we managed to squeeze out some decent groups still but my ammo selection was poor.
Intentions were to put in a trigger and be done but there was one thing that was just not right and that we just couldn't get past and that was the feel of the bolt in the action. It would bind open and the end play was excessive.
So back to the drawing board. after much research it seem that there are 2 main ways to fix this and that is to either sleeve the bolt or buy a custom bolt and wait 12 weeks for it.
We decided to sleeve. But first I bought a raceway reamer that opened the raceway .005 over size and trued it. (In the future this will be the first step)
Once the raceway was reamed we indicated off the reamer and verified everything that we did before was still in alignment
and the face was true to the raceway which i found comforting about what we had done before hand
Next was to create a bolt sleeve. and first we had to take the old handle off and turn the bolt to a smaller size
I don't have pics of the bolt being turned but here is the bolt after the sleeve was made and install. Then it was ground true on a radial grinder.
no cocking lug or handle yet
Timing the bolt handle ( I will have a handle clamp next time )
after handle is silver soldiered on. End play is less then .010 and excellent engagement on extraction lug
Target crown
Reassembled
I refinished the bolt with Cerakote Micro Slick but eve as thin as that is the tolerances were snug. Nice thing is it allows you to see how well fit and machined the bolt and raceways are.. The bolt is smooth with no wobble.
The gun now sports a IOR 3x18 scope and a Timiny 1.5lb trigger We will be test firing it This weekend I will follow up with some targets....unless they are real bad
Also the gun was refinished Tungsten Cerakote
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Awesome pics and congrats on the expansion!
