Is there any part of the process of smoothing a new CZ 550 action that an ungifted amateur can accomplish at home?

quote:

Originally posted by Bill/Oregon:
Is there any part of the process of smoothing a new CZ 550 action that an ungifted amateur can accomplish at home?

Bill,

Look at your question again, and then ask yourself how many people do you know who would knowingly allow an “ungifted amateur†to work on any rifle of theirs, let alone a brand new one.

All of us are amateurs at some point, but it really helps if you have better than average skills with tools, and a good understanding of things mechanical in general, and the workings of rifles in particular, to start with. If you possess those skills then you are not “ungifted†in my mind.

You can buy cheapo Mauser actions from places like Sarco for less than $50 bucks and practice till your hearts content without any worry of ruining your brand new action.

Yes,

First start with a close inspection of the bolt on your CZ. Look carefully at the the locking lugs. The contact area of the lugs is a no touch leave it alone area, but while your looking you will see small burr and machining marks on the sides of the lugs. These are part of your problem, a simple way to correct this is a small jewelers file and a sharping stone. Hit the burrs very lightly with the file then take the stone and polish the surfaces. Your not removing very much materail with the file a small burr .03 to .060 is all your removing. If you have a buffing wheel polishing this with a buffing compound is the best way to finish it off, not neccesary but prefered. An item to pay close attention to is shiny or wear spots on your bolt, these are usually accompanied by a burr or machine marks. When done these need to be gone and polished. I will caution again about the locking area of the kugs leave these alone, and do NOT fiddle with these, these are not the problem and you can cause headspace and safety issues fiddling with these if you don't know what your doing.

Once your bolt is cleaned up, next look to the action. I use valve grinding compound, there is better compounds available from Brownells, but I have valve compound and it it works so its what I use.

Basically, plug the bore on your rifle with cotton or a patch. Apply valve grinding compound and work the bolt, this needs to be repeated, oh somewhere around 30 minutes worth, maybe more. Where your trying to polish is the inside of the action at this point. There is a slick flex shaft attachment that inside grinds this, but if you don't have one of these, polishing by hand works also.

Anyway after you have used the valve grinding compound, completely clean your rifle ( squeaky clean ) get all of the grinding compound out. Oil and check out how the action is working. It took me about 1 1/2 hours to clean mine up and get the sticky and bind out of my CZ.

Not really very difficult, just some labor. I would also state that although this could be done with a dremel tool, DONT. It isn't neccessary, your not working in a production environment, and the chances of hosing up your bolt are greatly increased, although you could use a polishing wheel on one if that all you have, but no grinding or sanding wheels.

A last caution get all the grinding compound out when your cleaning up your rifle, you don't want any left in your action, and it should have never gotten in your bore.

Bill,

Most factory guns are a little stiff and rough at first and then smooth out with some cycling. Now if something is really wrong with your action then remember that it's under warrantee for now so don't go changing it if you can get a fundimental problem fixed for free.

I would just lube it up good and work the action if it's just rough. I use a grease with EP, moly and made with synthetic oil for this purpose.

Savage99,

I tried that on my cz 550 and it really didn't do much, marginal improvement at best. As a matter of fact the I had bought the CZ for my youngest and the day before we were headed to the field my son asked me why his rifle was so sticky and why my G33/40 worked so much better than his CZ. I took a look and started polishing, as he was right and it needed some work.

I am a great fan of Molycoat, but it wasn't fixing the fundamental problem that CZ could do more finish work on these. A little sweat labor on these really improves them.

My little CZ 452 was a little sticky working the bolt. but after a couple of seasons at the range, it's getting slicker.

My 550 Varmint, well i shoot it slow and don't pull the bolt back fast so I can catch the round (reloads) and check it.

Tnaks guys. I don't have the CZ 550 yet, but plan to buy one in .375 or .416. I was looking at a new one yesterday in .375 and was surprised at how gritty the action felt when I worked the bolt. I know these have to be bedded and in .416 will need a cross pin or two, so it would have to go to the gunsmith anyway.

One suggestion - before you put any valve grinding compound in your action, remove the trigger assembly to prevent any compound from
entering it. It is one place you don't want any abrasives. Be aware that there are many different grits or coarseness of value grinding compound. The higher the number the smaller the grit. Also be careful if you get any compound on a polished blued surface, you can ruin the finish easily with grinding compound. When you clean the action, disassemble the bolt and clean it troughly inside and out.

Bill I used Jim Brockman for my 416 and he did a great job. Slick and functions great. Good hunting.

quote:

remove the trigger assembly

This can be done without removing the trigger. But you need to be careful and not use a lot of compound and some masking tape. But for someone doing it for the first time removing the trigger isn't a bad idea, cause yes you don't want valve comound in your trigger. A piece of tape over the firing pin hole to keep the compound out of your bolt works well, I use a 3M doublesided tape, and stick a piece of paper on the top, I like it cause just a round piece over the bolt end, and the paper protect the parts I am not trying to get compoundd into.

If you can pick and chose, the best time to do this is when you have just a barreled action, not in the stock.

Any really the best way is to run one of those flex shaft attchments first and follow it off with very fine polishing paste. Then jewel the bolt. I usually go this whole route on a custom. but the last couple of actions I have built have been old, and didn't need much work on the actions, they had been worked and polished for 40-50 years, so just polishing was required.

what if the action screws are too tight and the action is tweaking itself, cause the bedding is less than perfect, check that first

The “best†way to polish the inside of an action is to have just the action with with trigger and barrel removed...and if you are going to use a grinding compound be sure to get a non-embedding type and use it very sparingly.

I guess the question I would respond with is "How much time do you have?"

If you are retired, I would suggest you work with no polishing compound at all. I know that sounds like an uneducated approach, but it has worked for me on several new rifles.

Basically, I kill two birds with one stone...I become familiar with the feel of the rifle AND I smooth the working of the action at the same time.

How? By spending half an hour to an hour a day for a couple of weeks with the rifle at my shoulder, working the bolt (and dry firing).

Enables me to practice putting the crosshairs on a small given aiming point out in the pasture, working the bolt without taking the rifle down from my shoulder, and repeat firing in 4 seconds or less per cycle. Also, it "wears in" the parts to a more or less perfect fit with each other, with absolutely no danger of going too far. Even improves the trigger pull.

The last rifle I did this on was a very rough Steyr Mannlicher "Professional". When I first got it, it was a sticky, jerky, spasmodic, non-intuitive thing to operate. After approximately 4,000 cycles (I WAS counting) , it had smoothed to the point where if I held the trigger back and pointed the rifle downward, the rifle bolt would close completely all by itself.

If you've got the time, try it. You can always risk using compound later if it doesn't work for you.

On my CZ 527 all the stickyness I incurred was rubbinig between the action and the side of the extracter.Starting with some fine stones and than rubberize abrasive rouge sticks .The extracter now has a nice even bright matt finish which I may some day polish out,Maybe not. The function has improved greatly and I suspect with normal ware all the stickyness will disappear. roger

NOTE BENE!
This was all done by hand. NO MOTORS.

Alberta Canuck,

I have no doubt that working your action like you described will work. I wouldn't have the time to do this though, I would end up with a problem rifle for a couple of years before I got it sorted out.

On the subject of risk using compound. If your careful and don't use to much, and keep tidy and clean with it, this is a non intrusive method. There is very little materail removed, literally thousands of an inch.

If your wanting to spend dollars, Brownells has a stone set, wHich is all the abrasive needed:

http://www.brownells.com/aspx/NS/store/ProductDetail.as...e=ARKANSAS+STONE+SET

For abrasives use:

http://www.brownells.com/aspx/NS/store/ProductDetail.as...le=LAPPING+COMPOUNDS

And I will repeat: DO NOT USE A DREMEl. This is the first indication to me that something is going to get screwed up.

I was reading another thread on a M70, that wasn't done by hand honing and 800 grit polishing compound. Somebody got carried away with grinding wheels.

I would also note that I haven't seen a mauser or a pre 64 Winchester that needs any polishing. Time has done exactly what you did with 4000 strokes.

A comment to the adventurous: Your not removing very much metal here small burrs and machining inperfections is all your trying to remove ( and remove isn't the best description really your polishing ). This is why you use the original bolt. The process isn't much different really from polishing up a 1911 after the frame to slide fit has been tightened. Just enough polish to get it to function freely.

I will say I had the benefit of being shown how to do my first action by a gunsmith friend, when I was hanging around his shop for coffee.

Schrompf -

Of course, you realize "slicking" my action wasn't the only reason I used the "no abrasive" method. My primary goal was developing handling skills with that exact rifle, particularly the ability to get aimed shots off at 4 seconds or less intervals. It "burns-in" the subconscious brain circuits (synapses) to enable one to operate the rifle just exactly the same way that driving a car over the years teaches one to stop smoothly without using the conscious mind to operate the foot pedals each time they have to stop the car.

You are certainly right that it can be done well and much quicker if the proper grits are used properly. However, in my years of owning gun shops and doing gun work, I discovered there are a lot of people out there who, despite the best of instruction, can still manage to accidentally break a hefty granite boulder with their bare hands.

Thus, for the person who doesn't have a time schedule to meet and is not experienced with gun metal work, I recommend the approach I described. Little or no danger of going overboard with it, either by accident or on purpose.

But, yes, I agree...if I was still doing it commercially, I sure wouldn't do it by hand without grit. Wouldn't earn enough money that way to pay for the calories consumed during the process. <G>

quote:

But, yes, I agree...if I was still doing it commercially, I sure wouldn't do it by hand without grit. Wouldn't earn enough money that way to pay for the calories consumed during the process. <G>

Yeah ain't that the truth. And maybe the compound isn't the best idea in a novices hands. I forgot the Murphy factor. But for someone who has basic mechanical ability and patience this isn't rocket science either.

And yes the dry working of your bolt is a excellent way to get proficient with a particular rifle. Your just putting 20 years of wear on the bolt assy in a couple of weeks.

Another option is just use the stones and skip the compound. It won't do quite as good of job, but it will get the worst offenders and 20 minutes of working the bolt will get the action well on its way to being smoothed up.

One last thought back on the original topic of this thread, the CZ action isn't ever going to be quite as smooth as an old mauser. My belief is the absence of the third safety lug on the bolt design prevents this. A CZ bolt when worked very hard and fast can get some bind, because the third lug isn't there as a guide. It doesn't mean they can't be cleaned up and work a lot better, but it would take a lot of work to get a CZ to work a smooth as a 1909 or G33/40 ( which is what I have and compare mine to)

quote:

There is a slick flex shaft attachment that inside grinds this, but if you don't have one of these, polishing by hand works also

Hi Schromf,
Could you give me a reference to the flex shaft attachment please? I have several CZ's, Winchesters (!) and Rugers that could benefit from this treatment. One of my Remingtons, on the other hand, is due for an replacement oversized bolt to decrease its slop.

Muchos Gracias Senor,
lawndart

Lawndart,

I will get in my Brownells catalog this evenng and see if I can find the part number. If that doesn't work I will call my smith friend and see about getting a model number, but that will be this weekend.

Anyway I will keep you posted.

No worries, no rush, thank you.

lawndart

Lawndart,

Been digging through the Brownells, and a I not seeing it ( and now its bugging me )

Its a attachment for a Fordham flex shaft, I just can't find it. I will call this weekend and see what brand it was.

I did find something almost as good in my search though.

Pull up item number 080-055-000 its a reciver way polisher. Will get the job done just as well.

Thanks,

Just the thing to while away a winter's night.

lawndart