I am rebuilding a remington 510, bolt action, .22 rimfire rifle. I'll be installing a heavy barrel, making a weaver rail scope mount and refinishing everything. I have added a 2nd action screw to it and need to make pillars. I also plan to glass the first 2" or so of barrel and float the rest.

I have made pillars for several centerfire rifles with good success, but don't know how to best procede with this one because there is no recoil lug. With centerfire pillars, the action screws should not contact the inside surface of the pillars. If I bed the .22 this way, should I ensure there is glass at the rear and/or front of the action to prevent the whole thing moving, or should I leave the gaps and rely on screw tension alone? Any advice is appreciated. - John

BB,

If you're going to go to the trouble to pillar bed the receiver, then you should do the same to this, as you would for the centerfires. But then how do you bed a relatively featureless action, in order to maintain the relationship between the screws and the pillars, yet give the action something repeatable to index to, time after time... You could make yourself a barrel lug and bed to that. Then glass the sides as usual to keep the receiver from moving about.

Good luck,

Malm

Thanks for the responses.

Tom, I made a screw to fit the threaded hole in front of the trigger guard slot. Apparently this hole was intended for a trigger adjustment or magazine locking feature in one of the other models, but it seemed ideal for a rear screw. It is a 5/16ths-32, which are difficult, if not impossible to find. Looks like it will work out well. FYI, I'm installing a newly manufactured barrel sold by Gun Parts Corp. intended for the model 513T.

G. Malmborg, Jeez, COULD YOU FILL IN THE BLANKS A LITTLE?!?!?! (just kidding). I hadn't thought about making a barrel lug, but it seems like a good idea. Heck, if I did that I could float the whole action, which might be a good way to go. I seem to be spending as much time thinking about this project as I do working on it...

Please keep the ideas and opinions coming. - John

Oh, my. A new barrel for 513T? I'd like to know how that works out. Any idea what the land/groove measurements are like? It should fit, it's pinned the same way in a 513T as in a 510. Just watch the location of the pin/slot with respect to headspace. The headspace is important to the safety and accuracy of a rimfire. Some of the 513Ts and Winchester 52s were known to be prone to ADs from time to time when the bolt was closed on a thick rim, due to headspace on the thin side. Guys who had them were always very careful about muzzle direction when loading. If there's no collector value to the barrel, you can feel free about drill/tap for scope and use any mounts that fit the barrel contour. It's nice to have choices. When I put the scope on my 513T, I modified a mount to fit, and it always interfered with the receiver sight. One of these days I will revisit the scope mount question.

Some people have fabricated recoil lugs for .22 rifles that didn't have them, and then bedded the lug. It apparently doesn't take much; one such was not any bigger than the head of an Allen screw.

I have an old 40X stock saved up for a project like that, also a Winchester 75 heavy barrel I picked up at a gun show for cheap ( who knows if it's any good ).

I did some fiddling with a Marlin 60 awhile back, pillar-bedded it, floated all but the first three inches of the barrel, added a Burris scope mount with steel rings, and got the trigger lightened up just a little by a gunsmith who had done a few of them before. It shoots half-inch groups at 50 yards with one particular brand of ammunition ( it would have to be $12/box, eh? ). It's a fun gun to take to a silhouette shoot, an absolute sleeper. I wish I was a good enough offhand shot to take better advantage of it.

[ 07-25-2003, 19:49: Message edited by: TomP ]

Tom,

The barrel is no Lilja, and I have no practical way of measuring the lands and grooves, but its heavier and looks much better inside than the old one.

The rifle in question was my grandfather's "farm gun" from 1959 until one of my cousins broke it a few years ago. Somehow, he managed to get a round to fire with the action open, which broke the receiver-insert/floorplate. Over the years, this gun has killed a mountain of varmints and helped teach me and my cousins how to shoot. Even though the finish was nothing but scratches and rust, it seemed to never miss (even with its iron sights). Not bad for a gun that cost $7.00 new, was left outdoors most of the time, and was almost never cleaned. It deserves to be rebuilt and should be one of my favorites when done.

I reshaped the stock a bit to get rid of that "guppy belly" look, replaced the broken buttplate with a 1/2" brown recoil pad, have cut the heavy barrel to 21" and crowned it and am polishing the metal by hand. I still have to machine a new receiver insert, make and install oversized pins for the barrel/receiver-insert, make and install pillars, install sling swivels, refinish the stock, rust blue the metal and make a scope mount out of some weaver rail stock. Its going to stay a hunting rifle, but will hopefully be a real accurate one.

I'm still undecided about how I'll bed it, but will probably pillar bed it with glass under the first 3" of floated barrel and at the front and back bottom corners of the action to keep it from shifting. - John

It sounds like the receiver insert is the pot-metal one made for a single-shot. Gun Parts still sells them, and I might have one stashed from when I thought about making the 513T single-shot for some matches. We grew up with a 510P, and I still think of it as the quintessential .22 rifle: light, handy, and accurate.

One of my back-burner projects is a better scope mount for the 513T that doesn't interfere with the peep sight. One of these days.

My wife is from Island Falls, once in awhile we get up there to visit.

Tom,

Gunparts does not have any of the pot metal inserts in stock. Please e-mail me at the address in my profile if you're interested in selling yours. That would save me a lot of time and grief.

Island Falls is waaaaay up there (five or six hours from here). Consider yourself lucky though. When I visit the in-laws, I get to go to Maryland.