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This question would be for “working gunsmiths†out there. Based on your own personal shop experience, what types/brands of bolt action rifles come into your shop most frequently needing repairs, and is there one particular problem that shows up more than others? | ||
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That's an interesting question. At any given time, there are probably more Mausers and Winchesters in my shop than all the other brands of high powered bolt actions combined. For instance, today there are 40 high power bolt guns on the premises. They are: Winchester 12 ea. Remington 9 ea. Mauser 7 ea. Ruger 4 ea. Wby 3 ea. A-Bolts 2 ea. Sako 1 ea. Springfield 1 ea. Krag 1 ea. The day isn't over yet and 1 ea. Weatherby and 1 ea. A-bolt will be gone by closing time. The majority of these are in to be rebarreled or recrowned. For instance, 8 of the 9 Remingtons are here to be blue printed and rebarreled and 1 for a recrown. Of the Winchesters, 3 rebarrels and bedding, 5 for crowns, 1 needs the barrel straightened, 2 for trigger work and 1 with extraction/ejection problems. Of the Mausers, 3 for rebarrels, 2 for feeding related issues, 1 for bedding and crown, 1 extractor modification, 1 for scope base and bolt handle work. Of the Rugers, 2 are getting new stocks w/bedding, trigger work, muzzle brakes and recoil pads, 1 is getting sights, and 1 the jury is still out on what it needs. 2 WBY's are getting new barrels, the Krag is getting a new barrel, the Sako is getting rethroated and crowned, A-bolt and springfield are getting new barrels. I think... hmmm. Now should we talk about shotguns, pistols and .22's on the premises?  | |||
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FYJ, Were you specifically asking about repairs as opposed to "customization"...cause if that is the case...I could interpret Malm's response as saying the only rifles in for repair were Winchesters and Mauser's...Oh my god say it is not so... Now of course should we adjust this for the fact that more remington 700's have been sold that any other bolt action rifle... Mike Legistine actu quod scripsi? Never under estimate the internet community's ability to reply to your post with their personal rant about their tangentially related, single occurrence issue.  What I have learned on AR, since 2001: 1. The proper answer to: Where is the best place in town to get a steak dinner? is…You should go to Mel's Diner and get the fried chicken. 2. Big game animals can tell the difference between .015 of an inch in diameter, 15 grains of bullet weight, and 150 fps. 3. There is a difference in the performance of two identical projectiles launched at the same velocity if they came from different cartridges. 4. While a double rifle is the perfect DGR, every 375HH bolt gun needs to be modified to carry at least 5 down. 5. While a floor plate and detachable box magazine both use a mechanical latch, only the floor plate latch is reliable. Disregard the fact that every modern military rifle uses a detachable box magazine. 6. The Remington 700 is unreliable regardless of the fact it is the basis of the USMC M40 sniper rifle for 40+ years with no changes to the receiver or extractor and is the choice of more military and law enforcement sniper units than any other rifle. 7. PF actions are not suitable for a DGR and it is irrelevant that the M1, M14, M16, & AK47 which were designed for hunting men that can shoot back are all PF actions. 8. 95 deg F in Africa is different than 95 deg F in TX or CA and that is why you must worry about ammunition temperature in Africa (even though most safaris take place in winter) but not in TX or in CA. 9. The size of a ding in a gun's finish doesn't matter, what matters is whether it’s a safe ding or not. 10. 1 in a row is a trend, 2 in a row is statistically significant, and 3 in a row is an irrefutable fact. 11. Never buy a WSM or RCM cartridge for a safari rifle or your go to rifle in the USA because if they lose your ammo you can't find replacement ammo but don't worry 280 Rem, 338-06, 35 Whelen, and all Weatherby cartridges abound in Africa and back country stores. 12. A well hit animal can run 75 yds. in the open and suddenly drop with no initial blood trail, but the one I shot from 200 yds. away that ran 10 yds. and disappeared into a thicket and was not found was lost because the bullet penciled thru. I am 100% certain of this even though I have no physical evidence. 13. A 300 Win Mag is a 500 yard elk cartridge but a 308 Win is not a 300 yard elk cartridge even though the same bullet is travelling at the same velocity at those respective distances. | |||
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Mike, That was exactly what I was inquiring about. “Repairs†as opposed to upgrades and/or customization. There’s an article in the 2005 Gun Digest about an Australian PH (Bob Penfold) with a Remington 700 in .308 cal that has over 300,000 rounds through it with nothing but shot out barrels being replaced and he also replaced a worn out extractor after 250,000 rounds. It didn’t break, it was just worn out from extracting so many rounds. | |||
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Remington will not be in business long enough to sell as many rifles as Mauser did, period. DRSS(We Band of Bubba's Div.) N.R.A (Life) T.S.R.A (Life) D.S.C. | |||
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Yeah, they’ve only been in business since 1816 and I hear they’re days are numbered!  | |||
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i avoid gunsmith work like the Plague, but in my experience the overwhelming "winner" (loser?) of this contest would be the Remington semi-auto highpowered rifles. We hunted deer with dogs, so fast follow up shots were the norm, and autos were popular. Pick any of the Rems-742,740, 7400, whatever-and they routinely did not function. If kept clean enough to eat off of, then they may work slightly better than total garbage. But if they were that clean, then you were not out hunting with them. I would run dogs with a Ruger #1 before I carried any Remington auto. This is based on seeing in use and hunting with friends, and i have seen scores and scores of them. They all suck ass. BAR's in the magnum calibers always give problems when they get a goodly number of rounds through them. I have no idea why-just reporting what we all saw. Maybe the design was teetering on working when fresh and some wear caused stoppages??? If you did not run hundreds and hundreds of rounds through the belted mags, then they would perform as well as the BAR's in the standard calibers. But as a whole, the mags were not as accutrate as the standard calibers. If I had to deal with things like Malm posted above, I would go back to work in the sawmill. Different strokes for different folks!!! | |||
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oops, I forgot something FYJ- did it say how those .308 rounds were fired and by whom? was it all at game in culling, competition, or??? just curious. | |||
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Does not really matter if they are still in business 100 years from now, Kuhnhausen writes that experts say over 125 million mausers were made and that they (Experts)all say that is a conservative estimate! Unless Big Green gets really really popular in the rest of the world and they all quit resticting firearms ownership, there is not much chance of her catching up! I don't have any problems with Remington per se, just don't see their production ever surpassing the Mauser boys! Lee. DRSS(We Band of Bubba's Div.) N.R.A (Life) T.S.R.A (Life) D.S.C. | |||
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Hi Marc, Bob Penfold recently retired from taking folks out on Australian cull hunts. He also had a basket full of Leupold 3 x 9 scopes. When he had enough that had broken due to hard use, he would drop them off at Leupold when over in the US for winter sports shows. I certainly don't know, but imagine that Leupold was very interested in the type of data that only he could provide for them. That rifle likely saw 500 rounds per week during cull hunting for a number of years. I imagine that if I were in his position I would have used Remington(s) as well. Very simple to work on, and a small box of spare parts wouldn't cost much.  | |||
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It says the he used it for a bunch of years in Government sponsored culling operations on smaller game animals. This particular article was written by Layne Simpson who was down-under hunting Asiatic water bulls using a Remington 700 in .416 Remington Magnum caliber. Bob Penfold was his host and guide. From what I’ve been told and read Penfold is a very famous hunter/guide in Australia. | |||
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Well first of all, “Mauser†didn’t make all those rifles, and who ever said that Remington has or would make more rifles than some other company. Remington has been averaging around 1,600 to 2,000 model 700’s a week since 1962. | |||
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According to what he says in the article NOTHING ever broke on his rifle. He replaced the extractor because the claw was so worn from chambering and extracting 250,000 rounds that “once in awhile†it would slip off the rim of a case. It didn’t break, just wore out. | |||
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Could be true, but they ain’t “bolt action†rifles...which is what I asked about. | |||
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A man's gotta know his limitations. I can respect that.  | |||
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Well...let's try to make this apples and apples. I am sure that more Mausers have been made given that they were standard issue for many militarys for many years. Of course we will never have the repair data on those military rifles. But we can do a reasonable comparison of sporting arms in the US market. I have no facts but my sense is there are probably more model 700s in use today than there are Win Mod 70s, FN Commercials, Zatsava, Interarms Mark Xs combined. Mike Legistine actu quod scripsi? Never under estimate the internet community's ability to reply to your post with their personal rant about their tangentially related, single occurrence issue. What I have learned on AR, since 2001: 1. The proper answer to: Where is the best place in town to get a steak dinner? is…You should go to Mel's Diner and get the fried chicken. 2. Big game animals can tell the difference between .015 of an inch in diameter, 15 grains of bullet weight, and 150 fps. 3. There is a difference in the performance of two identical projectiles launched at the same velocity if they came from different cartridges. 4. While a double rifle is the perfect DGR, every 375HH bolt gun needs to be modified to carry at least 5 down. 5. While a floor plate and detachable box magazine both use a mechanical latch, only the floor plate latch is reliable. Disregard the fact that every modern military rifle uses a detachable box magazine. 6. The Remington 700 is unreliable regardless of the fact it is the basis of the USMC M40 sniper rifle for 40+ years with no changes to the receiver or extractor and is the choice of more military and law enforcement sniper units than any other rifle. 7. PF actions are not suitable for a DGR and it is irrelevant that the M1, M14, M16, & AK47 which were designed for hunting men that can shoot back are all PF actions. 8. 95 deg F in Africa is different than 95 deg F in TX or CA and that is why you must worry about ammunition temperature in Africa (even though most safaris take place in winter) but not in TX or in CA. 9. The size of a ding in a gun's finish doesn't matter, what matters is whether it’s a safe ding or not. 10. 1 in a row is a trend, 2 in a row is statistically significant, and 3 in a row is an irrefutable fact. 11. Never buy a WSM or RCM cartridge for a safari rifle or your go to rifle in the USA because if they lose your ammo you can't find replacement ammo but don't worry 280 Rem, 338-06, 35 Whelen, and all Weatherby cartridges abound in Africa and back country stores. 12. A well hit animal can run 75 yds. in the open and suddenly drop with no initial blood trail, but the one I shot from 200 yds. away that ran 10 yds. and disappeared into a thicket and was not found was lost because the bullet penciled thru. I am 100% certain of this even though I have no physical evidence. 13. A 300 Win Mag is a 500 yard elk cartridge but a 308 Win is not a 300 yard elk cartridge even though the same bullet is travelling at the same velocity at those respective distances. | |||
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In my experience, other than barrels and bedding, trigger jobs, and custom stock work, gunsmiths would go broke waiting for a bolt gun of any make to break a part. I've had them all, am near 50, and have replaced, let's see exactly 0 parts on a bolt action. In the meantime I have shot out and replaced 6 barrels, did have a couple of the screws that hold the bolt stop on a Mauser and one on a Sako fall out and lost them after years of use and not paying attention to what I was doing. Stripped scope mount screws has been my most common repair, and you don't have that with a Ruger or Sako. A shot not taken is always a miss | |||
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Parts don’t need to break in order for a rifle to malfunction and be in need of repair. Just look at allot of the posts on this forum where guys have a rifle that won’t cycle rounds. | |||
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I don't claim to be a expert on much but with my limited experience most rifle malfunctions are caused operator abuse and i haven't seen that to be being restricted to certain brands | |||
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I wasn’t trying to start a “which is best†discussion. I just thought it might be interesting to see what working gunsmiths experienced in regards to what types of rifles and what problems came into their shops for repair most often. Any mechanical device is going to have something fail sooner or later no matter how well it was originally designed and built. | |||
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thanks for the info on the .308 Marathon Rifle. Sorry I missed the part about "bolt action"! | |||
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and somehting I have routinely seen, as have all the others I talk to, is M70 safeties getting out of whack. They will work for years and then get a little funky. This is why I try to tell people discussing difficulties with installing M70 safeties in Mausers that they really need to understand what exactly is happening and be able to draw it on paper. All brands of 3 position safeties are going to give you fits at times. given th etolerances in rifles and parts, there is no way to make them 100% "drop in." | |||
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I consider ANY gun, in the right hands, that can't hit the target with any consistencey at 100 yards as being in need of repair. To me, a gun that can't put it's bullets into a liberal, 1 and 1/2" circle at 100 yards is broke and needs fixing. That should cover about a gazillion guns. Perhaps the above should have read "To me, a gun that can't put it's bullets into a liberal, or, an inch and a half circle at 100 yards". | |||
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The usual cause with the Win M70, is wear between the cocking piece and sear resulting in a firing pin sitting a little too far forward to where the safety cam will just miss engaging the safety cam notch in the firing pin. The repair is a piece of cake but if you're not experienced with the problem it can be a real nail biter. Or so I hear. | |||
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I'd say a 1.5 in. group is being pretty liberal and I still have none in need of that kind of repair either. I still believe most of the feeding issues are in altered rifles, such as rechambered Mausers, wildcat rounds, etc. as I just can't believe my experience is that much of an exception. A shot not taken is always a miss | |||
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That’s exactly why Ed LaPour makes his safeties slightly oversized. You should HAVE to fit a safety if you want it to function properly on your rifle. If the fit is so loose that it will screw right onto any bolt and line up with any cocking piece you are going to have problems sooner or later. | |||
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No, you are not the exception. The clear majority of feeding problems are as a result of someone tampering with a gun and trying to make it do something it wasn't intended to do by design. But occasionally some problems show up because of wear or breakage. You just have to expose yourself to a high volume of guns to see it. They are there. | |||
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I think you are probably 99.9% correct in your observations, and the other 1/10th of one percent can be attributed to mass production, poor quality control, and/or faulty materials. Obviously, some designs are going to be more susceptible to wear and tear than others. A perfect example would be the ejectors on 1917 Enfields which were pretty notorious for having the integral (and very thin) flat spring break off. That one’s easily fixed by just installing a coil spring, but the design was not the best. | |||
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I visited the Nosler plant in Oregon last summer and observed their testing setup. They use New Ultra Light Arms actions with strain gauges. I understand they gave up on Remington 700 actions when they would go "only" 700,000 rounds before needing replacement, while the NULA was being replaced at, IIRC, 4.4 million rounds. There was more than just sheer fatigue life involved, however. Nosler test fires around the clock, and the design of the NULA meant that management had no calls at 3 AM for a gunsmith needed to unfreeze the firing pin spring after a pierced primer blasts molten copper back into the bolt. Other details lost to memory, sorry. Jaywalker | |||
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In the term of "broken" the number one in repairs are ANY auto-loader made by any firearm manufacturer. The only exception for me is that I don't see hardly any of the AR15/M16 types do to the fact most people that shoot them just change their own parts. In bolt action rifles most repairs deal with extractor/ejection problems, often rusty chambers etc. I will say I get just as many Savage rifles with lost extractors as I do 700 Rem. for replacement. The next cause is miss fires-DIRTY/WD 40 in everything- never been cleaned since new and then just about every dumb reason you cn think of that a person can abuse/miss use a firearm. Like breraking the butt stock on your 22 rifle because you didn't want to waste another .01 round to finish off the racoon! | |||
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Broken ones!  | |||
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That's an interesting comment about the Leopold scopes breaking down. Did he indicate that it was from a manufacturing failure by the company or that they were so common? I would also be interested in his opinion, due to his vast experience, on what scope he would or did recommend. | |||
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All these long answers and they all missed the right one: The broken ones...duh! John Farner If you haven't, please join the NRA! | |||
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Remington has been in business since before the Mauser boys were a gleam in their daddy's eye! And throughout the years, they furnished TONS and TONS of military rifles to countries all around the world before Mauser did! "Bitte, trinks du nicht das Wasser. Dahin haben die Kuhen gesheissen." | |||
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Just how many P14 and M1917 Enfields do you think Remington made just during WWI? And don't forget the Rolling Blocks Remington made for all those banana republics, and the .58-caliber ML rifles they made during the Civil War, not to mention revolvers! DuPont had just one of their ammo factories during WWI that produced 1,000,000 pounds of smokeless powder PER DAY! And that was one of several.... "Bitte, trinks du nicht das Wasser. Dahin haben die Kuhen gesheissen." | |||
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