I have recently bought a new savage 12fv in 308 winchester i am planning on changing out the factory stock with a bell & carlson does anyone have any incite on these stocks? Also I want to get set up to swap barrels on this rifle such as a 243Win and a 22-250. Is this project feasable for a novice to do easily? I know I should use guages but could you use a dummy cartridge instead for the headspace setting?

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I have done a few. I reccomend the head space guages for the switch.
Also order the thicker recoil lug.
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I have found that pinning the lock nut on each barrel works the best. Screw in the barrel and tighten the barrel and nut at the same time.

Question was, is it worth it?

I put together an old Savage 110 in a Millet survivor stock and a heavy barrel .22-250 AI, a medium barrel in .30-06 and a medium barrel in .35 Whelan thinking the combo would kill just about anything I wanted. I put a Leupold 3-9x on top and I always use a gauge to set headspace. After the first time taking the factory barrel out which was not easy, I use antiseize on the threads which makes life better. The three barrels are not even close to the same POI, so when I swap there is a usual sight-in to go thru.

Does it work....yes, very well. The .22-250 shoots under an inch, the .30-06 is under 2" and the Whelan is just about 2" groups....certainly adequate for a field gun.

Was it worth it...not to me. The action has been set up as the Whelan a couple years ago the other 2 barrels are oiled and stored. I'm glad I did it as an exercise, but unless you plan on only having one rifle (why would you do that on purpose?)...IMHO, it isn't worth the hassle. On the other hand, if you are tired of a particular caliber and want an new one, the Savage is pretty easy to deal with.

My solution to barrel swapping is the Contender/Encore. Set it up with a scope on each barrel and swap whenever you want with no change in POI with the same loads....couldn't be easier and you really only need one shot anyway...right?

I agree with lowrider. It's easy to swap the barrels but it's becoming too much bother for me.

If you have only one barrel nut and can't fix the nut to the barrel you end up with slightly different headspace every time you redo the setup. I have index marks on the barrel and nut to make the headspacing a little more consistent. An alternative to pinning the nut would be one of the non-permanent grades of loctite.

I got a little better accuracy by leaving less headspace than it came with from the factory. The down side is I have to full length size more often.

I strong recommend head space gauges.

My barrels don't shoot to the same POI either. I think if you got quick release scope mounts and had two scopes you might be able to pull it off that way.

I'd say it's fun the first few times, after that you start to wonder why. I'm going to sell one of my two savage barrels, I just can't decide which. I have a 243 win and a 260 rem.