I have a Pre64 win 70 Featherweight with excess head space. If it was a standard rifle I would set the barrel back one turn and recut the chamber. With the shoulder on the featherweight barrel I think one turn would look strange. Any suggestions on adjusting the head space without ruining the looks of this rifle?

Thank you for your help.

Face off the receiver to bring the head space into spec. You'll still need to relieve the barrel tenon to match of course.

Whoa!!! There are easier ways to fix this issue; first, what caliber is it and how did you check the headspace? Making ammo to fit the chamber is the easiest way to go.

quote:

Originally posted by pointblank:
Face off the receiver to bring the head space into spec. You'll still need to relieve the barrel tenon to match of course.

Being as though the threads on the m70 are 16tpi, and the headspace is off, say, .010" for instance, you would need to face off over .050" from the action, not a good idea. The barrel would still not fit the factory inletting either.

[quote]Making ammo to fit the chamber is the easiest way to go.
absolutely right - just like making wildcat brass to blowing out a piece to something else. you are just fireforming the brass to your chamber

You don't say how much headspace. If you can put a piece of .003 masking tape on the base of the NO-GO and it won't close. Don't worry about it. If it's beyond that, buy a set of neck sizing dies and pretend you have an improved case. Or just back off your sizing die the thickness of a dime. Headspace is not as important as some people think and it's not a bench rest gun. Minute of moose accuracy is all that's required.

What he said; headspace is widely misunderstood from a safety standpoint. It is most important for brass life, but excess headspace won't kill you with modern brass. Hell, SAAMI specs allows .017 excess headspace for Magnum cartridges. Most go to no go gauges allow for a .006 tolerance, but that is not the whole story; it ain't unsafe; it will just stretch your brass and might separate. Which still won't kill you.
Please come back and tell us what makes you concerned.

Buy, rent, or borrow a set of Headspace Gauges for the caliber, Go, No-Go, and Field.

If the bolt closes easily on the Field gauge there is possible cause for concern. Try the tape on the Field gauge and see how much it is over.

M70's after 1954 have bolts with the bolt faces sometimes recessed instead of deepening the chamber with a reamer. If yours does have excess headspace, to the point of concern, you can replace the recessed bolt with a flat faced bolt and pick up to .015". Key word was up to .015". Some bolt faces were only recessed .003", but if yours has a noticeable, and deep recess, you will gain more with a flat bolt face. There are other factors, i.e. lug wear etc which can add or subtract from success. The replacement bolt will need to be "Fit", safety first.

I just recently had a 257 Roberts that I assembled from parts and it had .008" over a Field gauge. It was marginally safe; you could not reload the brass as it would stretch and "ring" the brass to the verge of case separation with new factory ammunition.

If you want to shoot only factory ammo, then excessive head space is an issue.

Otherwise fire form brass and no more head space issue. Just make sure you neck size rather than full-length resize your fire formed brass and you're finished. You can always send a fire formed case to Redding if you want special dies. Lot cheaper than a bunch of gunsmithing.

[QUOTE]Originally posted by Opus1:
If you want to shoot only factory ammo, then excessive head space is an issue.

Actually if he's just using factory stuff it's even less of an issue. Who cares if the brass stretches. Kick it on the ground and forget about it. Unless of course we are talking .020 or .030 inch of headspace which could cause primers to vent and lead to bolt face flame cutting. But I doubt that's the case.

Ummmmm try a non-belted case with excessive head space and you either get a split case or a click and no bang. No Bueno.

Otherwise if it is a belated case and you don't care about the brass (or accuracy for that matter) then who cares about head space.

Speer is right.

You either have a no fire, or a stretched case. Split case? Never seen one with modern brass. I have fire many old military rifles with huge headspace; no problems. In all cases, it either won't fire or it won't hurt anything. Split cases are not caused by excessive headspace. See why I said there is much misinformation on the subject?

Belted cases generally wont split, non belted cases can and do. Don't ask how I know...

Not that I have ever seen, and I have fired rifles with so much excess headspace that the only thing holding the case was the extractor. You must have had some bad brass. I am talking about hundreds of rounds fired. 8mm and 308.

I have experienced split cases with Dakota 330, 416 Rigby, 404 Jeffery and Dakota 450 that had head space issues (due to brass issues and not chamber issues) during initial fire forming. But I found a very simple way to eliminate that problem.

I have never had a split case fire forming a belted case because the case indexes on the belt and not the shoulder (of course).

I think you mean split necks or shoulders; neither of which is relevant. If mean split webs/heads, that, I have never seen with modern brass, and that is dangerous, but is not caused by excess headspace; it is caused by brittle brass.

I have fire formed literally thousands of rounds making Ackley improved brass and other wildcat cartridges using only the extractor to hold the case long enough for the firing pin to ignite the primer. Some of these improved cases had nearly .100 inch of headspace. Admittedly 5 or so out of a hundred fail this extreme working but I don't suffer the horrible devastation that others seem to experience. As long as you haven't reloaded the cases so many times that they have gotten as hard as glass, .015 inch of headspace is not a big issue.

I believe it; I have fired many hundreds of 308 rounds through 30-06s and 7.65 Argentines. Held only by the extractor. Never a problem. If you don't think there is excessive headspace here, then, well, I can't help.
Others say that their rifles will blow up with a few thousandths excess headspace, but I have never seen any.

If headspace is truly excessive and one wants to fix it, there is a solution but you kinf of have to want to do it.
If you have .015" of headspace, you have to face the shoulder back that far and cut the cone and ectractor cut that much as well. Now, of course, your problem is that the barrel turns in too far and while the headspace is fine, the extractor cut doesn't line up and the sights are nicely located on the left side of the barrel so you have to get the threads timed to align the sights. To do this you turn the threads off the barrel and rethread to 7/8x 28 TPI. Then you thread a sleeve on to the barrel and thread the outside of the sleeve to 1 inchx 16 tpi. By adjusting the position of the sleeve you can orient the thread corectly to get the barrel to tighten up with the sights on top.
Like I said, you really have to want to do it because, if you do your own work, it's a lot of work and if you pay someone else to do it, it is expensive. I've done this a few times but it was always done to restore rifles which held some significance for the owner. Regards, Bill.

Why not send it back to Winchester?

Weld up the front of the chamber and re-chamber? No, I'm not a gunsmith.

NOOO; you can't weld up a chamber.
I asked the OP what the caliber was and how he determined he had excessive HS; seems he is no longer interested and we all are just pontificating among ourselves, as usual.
Send a pre 64 M70 back for a new barrel? Good luck with that too.

quote:

Originally posted by dpcd:
I think you mean split necks or shoulders; neither of which is relevant. If mean split webs/heads, that, I have never seen with modern brass, and that is dangerous, but is not caused by excess headspace; it is caused by brittle brass.

Nope, I mean longitudinal case body splits on virgin brass and it does happen due to poorly fitting brass to chamber dimensions and/or excessive head space on non-belted cases.

As the firing pin strikes the primer the case is thrust forward. As the powder ignites the primer is forced out of the pocket as the case balloons in the chamber. A split second later the bullet pushes the case backwards against the bolt face reseating the primer (most of the time) and causing more body expansion. As the case undergoes all this stress sometimes it splits for good measure.

A simple solution to keep the case snug against the bolt face is to slightly distort the case body below the shoulder and as the out of round case is pushed into the chamber the brass grabs and keeps the base/head/rim against the bolt face during primer strike. This is a hell of a lot safer than seating the bullet long into the lands. Not the best idea with something like a 416 Rigby or 450 Dakota as you can easily achieve some very high chamber pressures seating the bullet long into the lands.

I think you had some very brittle brass for it to split like that. As far as fire forming, I use the bullet jammed into the rifling method with light to medium loads; no issues. Another guy here on AR insists on oiling all his cases, which works, but you have to be careful not to get any in the bore.

Again, nope. After fire forming the brass life was good for 13-15 or so reloads with neck annealing every 4 to 5 reloads.

Longitudinal splits near the head are hard for me to grasp; a few thousandths of excess headspace would not cause that.
Maybe very large chambers or very small brass would... I believe you had it but I just can't wrap my brain around excessive headspace being the cause.
I will quit thinking about it.

Heads separating usually indicates hard brass or brass that has been reloaded so many times that it has work hardened. The forward part of the case expands and grips the chamber walls and the base is pushed back under pressure. It tries to stretch but because it's too hard it just pulls apart. Splits running up and down in the head area I have never seen in my life. I would say bad brass with faults made during the swaging process. I really don't know. That's a new one.

quote:

Originally posted by Duane Wiebe (CG&R):
Maybe I missed it...what caliber and how much excess and how was it measured

+1

The split occurs in the middle of the case body well above the web area and below the shoulder with the split oriented from the base to shoulder.

I have experienced this in three calibers and with MAST brass mostly. But I have seen it in other brass in other rifles.

The solution as I said above for either poorly fitting brass or excessive head space is simple. Sure beats the heck out of a bunch of expensive gunsmithing.

What your describing sounds like a pin split, but they mostly occur in the shoulder area. The case will carry a small grain of sand or other debris in with it and when the case is fired the brass flows around the object and creates a pin hole or a thin crater in the brass. The next time it's fired it will vent pressure and cause a split. They can be identified as they take on the appearance of an old fashioned thermometer with the ball on the bottom. Just much smaller.

Virgin clean brass.

I use a chamber brush and mop after cleaning to remove any solvents and/or debris that may have slipped past the bore guide.

The solution is don't use any more MAST brass. Whatever that is.

One of my customers buys their stuff dpcd. They are or have something to do with BELL. He told me they were DEMOBing surplus ammunition, breaking it down to base components, polishing it up and selling the kibbles and bits.

If you're interested - http://www.masttechnology.com/history.htm

Opus1,
All these years of forming wild cat brass, I've been lucky? I've blown shoulders forward .250" and reloaded them multiple times. The only time I worry about headspace problems is repeatedly pushing the shoulder back. I would be less worried about new factory loads as mentioned above, leave it on the ground.

Lengthwise splits near the case head are generally caused by brass which is brittle. This can be because the brass is old (structure changes with age) or the chamber and sizing dies are incompatible (big chamber, small die)and the brass is work hardened.
I saw this sort of failure with some old Winchester 30/40 Krag ammo I chronographed out of curiosity. (180 Silvertips did 2440 from the 22 inch barrel). About one of five would split as described.
Case head separations (circumferential splits) are always the result of excessive head clearance. This may be due to an excessive headspace measurement in the rifle or an insufficient headspace measurement in the die (rifle chamber too long or die too short).
When I was a kid, my grandfather had a case separate in his 270 Gibbs. He had been shooting 270 Winchester factory loads in his 270 Gibbs. I remember the lecture he got on headspace when he took the rifle over to Gibbs to get it fixed up (missing extractor and mag follower). Grandpa remembered it too; for as long as he lived! Regards, Bill.

What procedure was used to measure the headspace? Did you see if the bolt could be Closed on a no-go gauge? If so, it was done wrong.

The correct way is to strip the bolt, extractor too. Drop in the gauge. Then with no more than "pinkie pressure" feel for resistance. I mean ANY felt resistance, before you hit fully closed, means it is shorter than that gauge. IF you feel the gauge then it passes.

It is easy to fully close the bolt on a no-go gauge with a rifle that cams the bolt forward, like 1917 enfields etc. If you do it the gauge may be ruined too.

Steel gauge will stop that Enfield bolt solid before the handle hits bottom if the chamber is short. .001 of interference is enough to gall the lugs om most rifles; assuming the bolt can be forced over. If the bolt closes on the no-go gauge, headspace is on the long side. If it closes on the field gauge, it's excessive. If you can feel the field gauge, it's a judgement call. To say "Did you see if the bolt could be closed on a no-go gauge? If so, it was done wrong." is a to make a statement which borders on being stupid.
I doubt that most gunsmiths even use a no-go gauge in barrel fitting. I certainly don't. In fact, I threw my only no-go gauge away after inadvertently using it to measure chamber depth and wondering how I could have possibly cut a chamber .006 short. Luckily, I caught the mistake before I decided to put the reamer back in.
By the way, you CAN close the bolt on a no-go gauge in a tight Lee Enfield because there is enough stretch in the receiver and compression in the bolt to allow it. Not so in a P14. Regards, Bill.

I wrote "1917 Enfield, not Lee Enfield. 1917 Enfield, aka P-17 cams foreward, like the P-14, you mentioned. The cam on closing action can be misleading if you don't know what is going on. The rotation of the bolt has tremendous power and a person can close the bolt on gauges that are much longer than the true reading. Thus my recommendation to close carefully and watch for the feel.

The point is that some guys try to force the bolt closed on the gauge. Some think if it can be muscled closed then the gauge is too short. It is like tightening a micrometer with a pair of pliers before you take the reading.

Without more information I think there is a good chance his rifle is fine. The "long head space" might be because somebody did not know how to properly measure it.

All this discussion and the OP has never returned