Monday, January 15, 2018

7mm-08 Project #1

The Beginning
One of my hobbies is building rifles. I started building guns years ago when I was into long range varmint shooting but could not afford to buy high quality accurate rifles. So, I decided to learn how to build them myself. 

This is a project that I did several years ago but I have lots of pictures so I decided to add it to my Blog. 

It started with a Remington 700 in 22-250. The rifle shot very accurately but I never used it. I had another 22-250 and this one just sat in the safe. So I decided to turn it into a deer rifle that my kids could use (someday if they show interest). 

I wanted something that was very flexible but not a lot of recoil, it was also a short action so unless I wanted to take on the challenge of converting it to a long action it would have to be a short cartridge. I have always wanted to play with the 7mm-08 so I decided this was the time to build one. 
In the past when I have built rifles I have bought the components as I went. For this build I decided that I would get everything together before I started. Here are all (most anyway) of my components for the build. 

The first order of business was to strip the Remington action down to its bare components. From there I started barreling the action. 

 Here is the barrel blank mounted in my Lathe getting ready to fit it to my action. 
 The outside of the barrel was trued up and then a tenon was machined in preparation for the threads to be cut. 
Here the threads have been cut and a tenon for the recoil lug has been machined as well. 
A steady rest is put on the lathe so I can machine the bolt recess and cut the chamber. This is why the outside of the barrel had to be trued up because the steady rest rides on that trued up surface. Here the bolt recess has just been cut. 
A chamber reamer (a reamer the shape of the cartridge) is used to cut the chamber for the 7mm-08 round. This is a critical and delicate operation. 
The action is threaded onto the barrel and the fit is checked. At this point we have a barreled action. 



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