Anything stopping you from putting the wrong bolt in a rifle

[heeple]

Hi all,

Can someone tell me is there anything stopping you from putting the wrong calibre bolt in a rifle?

The reason I ask is I was at my local store yesterday and the guy was swapping the stocks on a pair of rifles and had the actions and bolts out. One of this mates checked with him that he had got the bolts right for each action and hadn't mixed them up.

So is there any stopping you from using the wrong bolt? For example does Ruger use 1 lug for .223, 2 lugs for .243, 3 lugs for .308 or something similar?

Doesn't have to be Ruger, just using that as a made up example.

Is there anything stopping you from firing the rifle with the wrong bolt in if you somehow did it?

[Chronos]

Not usually. Most bolts from the same. Company are the same, possible different in length bit say a .243 bolt and a .308 bolt from Remington for example should fit in the same rifle.

It's your responsibility to ensure you have the correct bolt in your gun. I've seen people turn up to the range with the wrong bolt in their gun.

Also you should know that most cartridges formed from another are designed so at to stop one being chambered in another. For example a .308 round will not chamber in a .243 rifle. This is a deliberate safety feature. However a .243 round will chamber in a .308. Not desirable but nowhere near as unsafe as the other way around

Chronos

[RealNick]

For the most part no, especially if your talking calibres from the same family where the only thing that changes is the neck size.

e.g. Ruger Hawkeyes in .308, 7mm-08 and .243 will all have the interchangeable bolts. The size of the .308 bullet would stop you chambering it in the .243, but the smaller calibres would chamber in the larger ones fine.

E.g. the .243 cartridge would feed and fit in the 7mm-08 and .308 chambers and you could fire it in either rifle. You wouldn't notice until you pulled the trigger and it all went wrong...

[Broom]

Magnums would be a bit different.

If you tried to chamber a magnum round in with a short action bolt there wouldn't be enough space for you to close the bolt, so that would be an obvious give away.

You could fit a short action cartridge in the chamber with a magnum bolt though. It's possible the bolt could grip it enough and strike the firing pin, but I expect the cartridge would more likely rattle around lose inside the chamber.

[Brute]

Nope, it's on you to keep track of it.

The only way I can see people turning up with the wrong bolts though is if they're not paying attention. If you've got enough gear that you could potentially be mixing parts up you need to take the time to only work on one at a time, not pile up parts everywhere on your work space at the same time.

How hard is it to walk back and forth from your safe half a dozen times instead of piling up all your stuff on the bench at once.

[5Tom]

Common sense prevails.

[Baldrick314]

The bolts of most of my rifles came with part of the rifle's serial number engraved on them

[yoshie]

Me and a mate bought howa and weatherby 223s at the same time, out of interest one spotlight trip we tried each others bolts in our rifles, the Howa bolt fit in the weatherby but not the other way round. I have no idea why??? Maybe a slightly larger lug maybe??

[chacka]

Yep, the desire to keep all your fingers stops you from doing it

[heeple]

Yep, the desire to keep all your fingers stops you from doing it

That's motivation enough for me

Fingers = Good.

Wrong bolt = Bad.