With the direction the Montana Rifleman Company has taken with the Professional Hunter Actions my 505 Gibbs project had been put on hold. I was stoked to build the 505 but not getting the action spoiled things for me until recently when I picked up a nice sporter on a P-14 Enfield action. Could some of the experienced tell me what I will be looking at to convert the P-14 to a 505. What work besides the barrel and feed rails will I be looking at? What trigger would be a good one to use and what about the magazine? Looks like I have a cut down version of the Enfield mag in the gun right now. Thanks for the response.---Pegleg

First, I'm no smith so don't know the finer details here, and am sure there is more, but am pretty sure you have to:

Move the bolt stop back
New magazine (probably floorplate also, I think Wisner used to make some for the enfield in 505)
Put a reinforcement on the bolt head for the wide case diameter.

do a search here on the 505 gibbs, look for something posted by systeme98, I seem to remember him doing a good writeup on comverting a cz550 to 505 and much would apply here.

Red

All right, needs to be done on the 550 but I don't know about the Enfield

systeme98 post on cz550 bolt mod for 505 Gibbs

just my opinion here:....the bolt body on the enfields and Mausers and almost every other common action is too small for the Gibbs..... The gibbs case leaves a very slim ring of steel around the bolt face and it looks poor and just has to be fragile. A drop on the floor should break off the rim almost anywhere.....look at the CZ rifles in 505 Gibbs to see what I mean.

If one wants a 505 Gibbs It's my personal feeling he should get a much larger bolt body. Something about 1/8" larger in diameter than the enfields!

What Vapo said is true but if money is a factor, the risk may not outweigh the cost benefit of using a CZ Magnum action. If you go the CZ route, the cheapest way to get one working in 505 is to buy AHR's single-stack magazine assembly and live with two down. Blackburn's 505 box can be modified to fit an Enfield but you only get 3 down at an extra cost of close to $1000 including action work.

There is a rumor circulating that AHR is deveopling a big-body bolt mod for the CZ in-house that solves the diameter issue on the CZ action. Don't know the cost, however.

If you can find a Remington 30S that is beat-up enough to justify dissassembly, you can shave a bunch of the cost off of tranforming a P-14 or Enfield Model 17 into something pretty but the box and follower still run close to $400.00.

Pegleg, read that post that I linked to for you. It's how it was done before, no problem doing it now. I don't think Hartmann and Weiss has an oversize bolt diameter and I know of a 505 being built on one of those.

Might want to shoot a note off to Jim Wisner, as him what is involved generally and what parts he still has for them.

See also this link, talks about the bolt stops and Jim Wisner mentions he made them at one point but not right now. read a post by Kitchen, mentions issues of Gunmaker that have Jim's information on how to modify the p-14's.

More good info.

Red