Can you buy a spare bolt for a gun

[jordy]

Got this off a Savage forum from another member, (take it with a grain of salt) apparently .006 is industry max margin of error for headspace?

That sound right to you, Apollo?

[1290]

Moral of the story; DON'T lose your bolt and don't consider a 'spare' unless you size the spare exactly to the original bolt - bearing face of lugs TO bolt face dimension, assuming of course the original bolt is head-spaced within tolerance.

Replacing the bolt will involve re-fitting the barrel to the bolt, unless the rifle uses the barrel nut system of Savage (now used by Mossberg, Remington Ruger Marlin) in which case the basic chamber is reamed in the barrel then you simply screw the barrel in toward the closed bolt until headspaced (contacting the Go gauge)....

[Apollo]

Got this off a Savage forum from another member, (take it with a grain of salt) apparently .006 is industry max margin of error for headspace?

That sound right to you, Apollo?

That would be an absolute maximum but could still cause ploblems, I'd be more inclined to think half that dimension.

An example....

I had a Tikka T3 Action trued by my Gunsmith. He shaved about 0.0035" off the face to square it true then fitted a custom chambered barrel. My original factory barrel is now shy that much headspace. Two choices I have, one is to have the barrel fitted with a washer like a seperate recoil lug in front of the action but pinned to the barrel, now I have an extra factory barrel so both would have to be done then that is set up so it regains the proper headspace OR as I am doing I custom size all my cartridge cases and knock the shoulders back and additional 0.0035" to get back to normal headspace which in my case is about 0.002".

One hickup I now face. This is a .243W and I just received 200 new Lapua Cases, they are all about 0.004" too long. They will chamber but it is a very tight crush fit closing the bolt. I don't accept a crush fit chamber as it puts extra stress on the locking lugs and risk gawling them so I have to full length resize all these 200 cases before proceeding further. A better way is to use a Body Die to bump all the shoulders back without working case necks so I'm waiting for that to arrive from the USA.

Funny thing, I grabbed a couple of factory rounds a mate has and they are so short they will chamber easily. From a proper headspaced chamber the factory cartridges are about 0.006" shorter.

[jordy]

Interesting, cheers Apollo.

[morerams]

Headspace tolerance varies with different cartridges, old ones often having nearly double the difference between the go & no go gauges, typically modern cartridges have .003" between go & no go and there is another .003" to the larger 'field' gauge.

The go & no go being manufacturing tolerance and the field for in service use in that if the bolt closed on the field gauge then the rifle should be withdrawn from service and repaired.

Generally you can buy replacement bolts, but they are not cheap, for a centrefire rifle most will be over $500.

[kurl]

$500

Talk about gouging people because they don't have another option.