OK,
This story takes place over several years, and is kinda long.

I am older and wiser now, and take full responsibility for letting bubba-tard-smith touch my rifle several years ago when i was naive in believing someone calling themselves a "gunsmith" and working at a gun shop would have some experience.....

so.
15ish years ago. i had outgrown my youth model .243 and was a couple years into toting my Pops 2nd favorite rifle, a '72 rem700 .30-06. me and the '06 accounted for many filled freezers over those years, and one afternoon we were still hunting through thick hardwoods after a rain when i took a fall and slammed the old girl in the mud. Took it home, took it apart for a thorough cleaning.

when i put her back together, the bolt was really really difficult to rotate down to the locked position. Now, some of you have already figured out the problem, but i had not...

Took er to a local gun store near my college in Huntsville, AL where there was a "gunsmith" working. he took the rifle and called me after some days and asked "what the hell kind of hot handloads are you shooting in this thing?" 'just factory ammo.' "i don't know whats wrong with it but i'll work on it."

however many days later he calls with a still not fixed rifle and i come get it...bolt still really sticky when you want to close/open it.

that year i was gifted my 7RM, and i retired the old '06...so the problem really just "went away".

fast forward a few years, out of grad school, and visiting a real smith in the northern VA area for some work on the 7mm and i asked him about the old '06. "was it a wood stock?"...'yessir'...."the wood shrank and your action screw is too long, your bolt is hitting it".

holy shit.

i'm a dumbass. the next time i was back home, dug into dad's safe, pulled the old girl out, backed the front screw off a couple turns, problem solved. how could i have not seen that? it never even crossed my mind to check....

fast forward another few years. The old girl is officially mine. She lives in my safe in my house in CO....and for sentimental reasons I'd like to hunt with her again this year. So i load up a few handloads to start testing, and every one of them has flattened primers. buy a box of factory ammo, flattened primers, and feels like a small bulge back near the base of the case. and she is shooting 3"+ groups at 100y, which is very atypical for this rifle.

Yesterday, i take the rifle to a local smith. using the hornady shoulder comparator gage, comparing the unfired factory ammo to the fired factory cases, there's a difference of about 24 thou. using the old trick of a straightened out paperclip with a 90* bend, there is clearly a thinning of the brass near the base on the inside of the case where it's stretching.

ok, we're discussing what he needs to check, when he looks at the bolt lugs....

apparently, my bubba-smith in alabama had taken a dremel/file/his teeth/something to the rear faces of my lugs on the bolt and ground the shit out of them. they are nearly dome shaped, not even close to flat. Something i never noticed or even thought to look for. i guess he thought the lugs were too big to fit in the action? i really wish he had known to check the action screw first, but since i didnt either, i can't be mad about it...

so now, it appears i have 3 options. set the barrel back for correct headspace; fireform custom cases to fit this rifle only; or get/fit a new bolt (provided the chamber wasn't monkeyed with by bubba-smith and is still ok).

in the end i'm sure there will be some solution to get the old girl back to her glory days once again. just a little time, and probably a lot more money than she's actually worth, but she has sentimental value that i cant' really put a price on.

lesson learned, do your homework and find a reputable smith to work on your toys....and try to have a tiny bit of common sense and realize where the dang action screws actually go in your rifle!

ok, rant over..hopefully there's a happy ending to this story in a few weeks.

Wow! That's a bummer. I love the arrogance he had when blaming your "hot hand loads".

Since he took a dremel to the lugs I would lean towards fitting a new bolt instead of setting the barrel back and still having a butchered bolt. But maybe it can be fixed. Thankfully it sounds like you have a good smith now.

I can fix that. Correctly. Issue will be, how much has to be faced off the bolt lugs, thereby rendering the extracting cam on the bolt handle, inoperative. So, then might have to get a new bolt. PTG sells them.
That is what I would do; get a new bolt.

i left the rifle with my smith...

if the chamber checks out OK, then a new bolt is the direction i'll go...

to reface the back of the lugs back to flat surfaces again i think it'd easily be at least 15thou, add that to the 24thou, subtract what is acceptable tolerances, and its still quite a bit...

since i am definitely no smith i'm not sure what all is involved in fitting a new bolt...i'd assume lapping the lugs to ensure good contact in the receiver, and checking headspace and adjusting as necessary?

i'd really love a factory style replacement (jeweled, factory handle). the ones i see on PTGs site are generally a threaded handle where i'd have to buy a bolt knob. but they may make direct factory style replacements, i'd have to do more digging. or i guess i could always just get a bolt body and have a factory style handle welded on...

i'll know more in a week or two how the chamber checks out...

quote:

PTG sells them. That is what I would do; get a new bolt.

+1

Too many memories to not save it.

That said if that is your only 06 fit the brass. However that does leave an issue for the next owner.

I have a bolt body if you want it.
PM sent.

J Wisner

I gotta show this thread to people who thought I was nuts for sending a rifle to North Carolina when there are local gunsmiths who could (possibly) do the same work for less money.

This story reminds me of a guy on another forum who was convinced beyond any willingness to listen to reason that the depth of the recess of a recessed bolt face determined the headspace of a rimmed cartridge. He insisted that you could check the headspace by simply measuring the depth the bolt face was recessed; and further, that milling metal off of the front of the bolt (the part forward of the bolt face) would reduce the headspace. Although several posters tried, no one could even start to convince him otherwise.

quote:

Originally posted by Stonecreek:
This story reminds me of a guy on another forum who was convinced beyond any willingness to listen to reason that the depth of the recess of a recessed bolt face determined the headspace of a rimmed cartridge. He insisted that you could check the headspace by simply measuring the depth the bolt face was recessed; and further, that milling metal off of the front of the bolt (the part forward of the bolt face) would reduce the headspace. Although several posters tried, no one could even start to convince him otherwise.

They say that really, really smart people, sound really, really stupid to stupid people.

With that in mind, I gave up arguing with people regarding headspacing and all barrel & chamber work in general. Some of these guys are so smart that they can defeat the common laws of physics, trigonometry and the limitations of $100 measuring instruments and bench lathes. Obviously, I'm to stupid to converse at their levels so I just shut-the-hell-up. I know I'm dumb. I don't need to prove it to anyone.

quote:

Originally posted by speerchucker30x378:

quote:

Originally posted by Stonecreek:
This story reminds me of a guy on another forum who was convinced beyond any willingness to listen to reason that the depth of the recess of a recessed bolt face determined the headspace of a rimmed cartridge. He insisted that you could check the headspace by simply measuring the depth the bolt face was recessed; and further, that milling metal off of the front of the bolt (the part forward of the bolt face) would reduce the headspace. Although several posters tried, no one could even start to convince him otherwise.

They say that really, really smart people, sound really, really stupid to stupid people.

With that in mind, I gave up arguing with people regarding headspacing and all barrel & chamber work in general. Some of these guys are so smart that they can defeat the common laws of physics, trigonometry and the limitations of $100 measuring instruments and bench lathes. Obviously, I'm to stupid to converse at their levels so I just shut-the-hell-up. I know I'm dumb. I don't need to prove it to anyone.

Just proves there are people who refuse to seek knowledge they don't possess. No matter what you can prove with logic you can't dumb yourself down enough to make them understand.
With anything I haven't done myself I try to find information from knowledgeable people like here or from the company techs themselves. And the scary thing is these people breed.

Get a new bolt as mentioned and order an over sized recoil lug.

Set the headspace with the new bolt and new lug grind the lug (on a surface grinder) to correct headspace

Bought a rifle from a poster here a while back, it had an "issue". Contacted him regarding the issue. First words out of his mouth was I was using the wrong/too hot ammo. Friggin' moron.

You longtime 'smith's will know what's available to inspect things. Only thing I'm aware of is a bore scope to inspect the internal areas of the lockup.

Coop: highly advised to have this done. Never know if the dremel jockey may have ground some off in there too. IF he did, I'd bet the action is shot.
Ok, you experts, let's here what you have to say on this part of it.

Good luck.

George

A real issue I would look over depends on how many rounds the rifle was fired with the dicked up bolt lugs. The messed up bolt may have messed up the action lugs if it was fired much.

More that a couple years ago when working on M60 machine guns the bolts would get beat to crap and many times start chipping/shearing parts of the lugs off (the top stripping lug). If you didn't inspect the barrel extension a replacement bolt would headspace fine, but fail a year later, all beat to hell again. The lugs in the barrel extension would be chipped out/worn and any new bolt fired with that barrel installed would soon be pretty chewed up.

I could imagine the 'modified' bolt lugs on your rifle possibly damaging the receiver, maybe minor, but could probably stand a minor lap with the new bolt or taking a skim cut to clean them up.

I would replace the bolt. If it is refaced then the primary extraction will have to be fixed. One problem begets another.

Depending on how many rounds the barrel has down it might be better to replace it while your at it.

If you want to keep it factory then I'd take the trigger off it (clean and save for later)and send it to a Remington repair facility and have a new factory bolt installed. Thoughtful prayer will be in order that it comes back with good primary extraction. If it doesn't Dan Armstrong in AK can fix that.

Joe

the '06 is still with my smith here in CO.

ordered a new bolt body from PTG.

It will be sent to Dan Armstrong in AK to put the handle on it.

Smith will fit the bolt properly, hopefully the action is OK...i only fired a handful of rounds through the gun after "bubba" worked on it.

I'm just waiting on PTG to build the bolt and ship it... probably another few weeks...