I'm having a little argument with a friend gunsmith on BR.Com. He says the purpose of the C ring is to use it to set headspace. He says that is the only place the barrel touches the receiver other than the threads. He says it doesn't touch the face of the front ring. I was of the opinion that the C Ring was a safety device to keep the gases from going down the LH raceway. The few mausers that I have chambered, I left the tenon .001 long inorder for the end of the tenon to touch the C Ring and when torqued the face of the receiver was tight to the shoulder of the barrel also.
I did a search and didn't find it defined to my or his satisfaction.
Thanks Butch

quote:

Originally posted by butchlambert:
I'm having a little argument with a friend gunsmith on BR.Com. He says the purpose of the C ring is to use it to set headspace. He says that is the only place the barrel touches the receiver other than the threads. He says it doesn't touch the face of the front ring. I was of the opinion that the C Ring was a safety device to keep the gases from going down the LH raceway. The few mausers that I have chambered, I left the tenon .001 long inorder for the end of the tenon to touch the C Ring and when torqued the face of the receiver was tight to the shoulder of the barrel also.
I did a search and didn't find it defined to my or his satisfaction.
Thanks Butch

According to de Haas in "Bolt Action Rifles", the ring serves these functions:

1. Gas seal around bolt head
2. Strengthens receiver ring
3. Helps funnel rounds into the chamber
4. Primary torque shoulder

My thoughts FWIW:

It controls headspace in the sense that a pre-chambered barrel is limited to how close it can get to the boltface and hence sets the headspace. But the barrel shoulder on a rifle that has the receiver face as the primary torque shoulder does the same thing. Frankly, I think it is an irrelevant issue. It would only be an issue if you had no way to alter the chamber/barrel to correct headspace or it wasn't convenient/economical to do so. What matters is cutting the chamber so that correct headspace is achieved when the barrel is tightened to that point. That is unless you are shooting a barrel nut rifle that you can screw down on a go-gauge and tighten the nut. Perhaps in the day when Mausers were being mega mass-produced and fully chambered barrels were being screwed on, it did indeed set headspace. The armorer had to try different length bolts til he got it in spec. But that was just a time expedient. They didn't have time to remove barrels and do chamber and barrel work. I guess that might still be true with some firearms manufacturers today. With custom guns it is a non-issue.

Mr.deHaas also stated that the C-ring should be the only torque shoulder, but does not elaborate. I am inclined to believe that since the barrel shoulder on a M98 large ring is the same diameter as the major barrel shank thread diameter, there is no flat/square surface for it to seat against. Drawing it up tight against the threads would put uneven stresses on the barrel.

I've always understood it that the barrel seats on both the front shoulder and the compression ring possibly with equal force. And I don't have the number off the top of my head but what it does is it gives you a larger surface area to seat the barrel on. Only using the c ring or the front face reduces the amount of surface area the barrel seats on and can in some cases reduce the overall strength of the assembly.

But Me being German I say (jokingly) What?? You zank zyou know more zan zee Germans??

And just to add a FYI One time I re-barreled a FN semiauto rifle Don't remember the model but it looked like a scaled down version of a BAR.
But the cool thing was those damn germans built the barrels exactly the same. I unthreaded one barrel and threaded on the other check head space and holly crap it was perfect. and the gas system and sights lined up perfect as well. All this before the age of CNC.

Mauser brain TomBurgess, stated he had seen FN M98 H-rings peel all the way back to the bolt stop slot,
...and that steel selection is important when one alters the original mauser design.

kcstott, the same thing is usually true of Winchester 1885 single shots. Apparently most barrel, receiver and breechblock combinations picked at random from a pile of parts will headspace correctly. Like the famous British test of 1903 Cadillacs They took three cars apart, then put three together from the parts pile and they all ran fine.

Yes, burgess told me that he personally wouldn't use an h-ring for magnums. There must have been a good reason for it, since my understanding (I'm not a machinist, but Tom told me) is that it is more difficult to machine an action with a c-ring versus an h-ring.

Now I'm curious, since I've never seen any of these, are they all c-ring or h-ring?
1. montana
2. cz 550 (and the old 602 I guess, I saw one of those in the classifieds a week ago,900 bucks, man that looked cool)
3. satterlee
4. Hartmann and weiss

Red

The CZ 550 medium action is c-ring.

KB

the internal flange, C or H, is for seating/setting/torquing the barrel, BY DESIGN ..
48,000,000 military mausers made, setting the barrel on the flange, and every gunsmith knows that "cutting the barrel at the receiver" (like an enfield) doesn't do anything to help remove the barrel

there should be a 2-5thou gap at the receiver and barrel

I know lots of gunsmiths set it on the receiver face, and it works. its probably not realistic to assert that you can have equal torque on the flange and on the receiver face ..

however, if you set the barrel on the flange, there's also no need to square up the receiver face, as the flange is already concentric with the bolt.

a bit long winded, but the purpose is to set headspace, and while both methods work, military and acutal MAUSER commerical rifles use the flange to set headspace, not the front of the receiver .. he's correct, 48,000,000,000 timesto 200K ...

Hartmann and Weiss .... C-Ring

I agree with this from Bobster:

According to de Haas in "Bolt Action Rifles", the ring serves these functions:

1. Gas seal around bolt head
2. Strengthens receiver ring
3. Helps funnel rounds into the chamber
4. Primary torque shoulder

The proper way to fit a mauser barrel is .003"-.005" crush fit on the innewr collar (C or H ring) with a lighter contact on the front of the receiver ring. It is supposed to contact both.

Some gunsmiths try to to this, some just fit on the collar and some just fit to the front of the receiver with no contact on the ring. Not contacting the inner collar more or less cancels out one of the strengths of the 98 action. The "H" rings are a shortcut in manufacturing; Paul Mauser is turning in his grave over that.

What some folks fail to realize is that the internal C-ring on the Mauser 1898 was NOT the first use of this feature. The internal C-ring was used on military rifles LONG, LONG before the 1898 was even conceived! The much-vaunted Mauser internal C-ring is merely a holdover from earlier designs such as the 1888 Commission rifle and others.

For Frank de Haas or anyone else to say that they know the original reason(s) for the C-ring is a pretty big assumption, one that I personally don't believe is true.

What I DO believe is true, is that Mauser saw that their earlier redesigns such as the 1889 Belgians and 1893 Spanish and 1894 Swedes needed more strength and a larger ring, so they incorporated the old C-ring in the new larger-diameter front receiver ring of the 1898.

Does it help with strength? Yes (soft steel reinforcement).
Does it help with feeding? No, not IMO.
Does it help with gas handling? Yes (2 90-degree angles, NOT true with the H-ring).
Does it help with headspacing? No, not IMO.

IMO most of the rest is pure speculation but still interesting.
Regards, Joe

Butch, I can't see that the "C" ring could control escaping gas. The cartridge head on a Mauser is outside and behind the "C" ring so it would have no effect on gas handling. I also think Dennis is living in a dream world if he has never heard it called a "C" ring; although I do respect his judgement most of the time.

I have barreled a ton of Mausers and most were done with equal torque on the inner ring and action face.

Since a good portion of the bolt head protrudes into the C ring..I can';t see how there can be any doubt about gas handling advantages.

There is NO OTHER design that so fully encloses the cartridge head.

The barrel should be torqued against the C ring and not against the action face. "Gunsmithing 101"

Face off the action? of course,,,only to make sure there is no anomoly to contact the barrel shoulder up front

quote:

Originally posted by Duane Wiebe:
The barrel should be torqued against the C ring and not against the action face. "Gunsmithing 101"

amen

quote:

Originally posted by Dago Red:
Yes, burgess told me that he personally wouldn't use an h-ring for magnums. There must have been a good reason for it, since my understanding (I'm not a machinist, but Tom told me) is that it is more difficult to machine an action with a c-ring versus an h-ring.

Now I'm curious, since I've never seen any of these, are they all c-ring or h-ring?
1. montana
2. cz 550 (and the old 602 I guess, I saw one of those in the classifieds a week ago,900 bucks, man that looked cool)
3. satterlee
4. Hartmann and weiss

Red

FN and Interarms seem to have used quite a few H rings for Magnums and I have seen very few, if any, reports of them having problems because of it.

Duane,
could you explain why you torque against the inner ring vs the front shoulder. I was taught in gunsmithing school to use both surfaces equally. I am interested in your view on the subject.
Steve

FWIW, our machine-shop instructor at Trinidad was a fellow called Bill Prator, one of P.O. Ackley's barrelmakers before he began teaching. Boots Obermeyer, in his interview article for Precision Shooting magazine, has called Bill Prator "a giant in the barrelmaking field" and that freely-expressed opinion by such a univerally-acclaimed practitioner(Boots) should establish Prator's barreling credentials to EVERYONE'S satisfaction!

Prator taught us to face off the front of the ring (using a THREAD mandrel) and to use the freshly-trued front face as the contact face, and to cut the rear face of the barrel so as to contact but not crush against the internal ring.(!) A secondary step is to remove the first thread behind the front face, especially on the small rings.

A moment's reflection will show almost anyone that there are several ways to accomplish the same thing as long as the machinist is competent, thoughtful and open-minded.
Regards, Joe

quote:

Originally posted by 22WRF:


FN and Interarms seem to have used quite a few H rings for Magnums and I have seen very few, if any, reports of them having problems because of it.

Just relating what Tom said after 60 years (really an amazing span, started at 14 and passed away at what, 78? wow) of gunsmithing, maybe it was being overcautious, maybe it was personal preference, and maybe it was that he had seen a number that had problems. I don't know the reasoning but since there's enough c-rings floating around I'm sure I'll be able to follow his advice without trouble.

Red

quote:

Originally posted by J.D.Steele:
FWIW, our machine-shop instructor at Trinidad was a fellow called Bill Prator, one of P.O. Ackley's barrelmakers before he began teaching. Boots Obermeyer, in his interview article for Precision Shooting magazine, has called Bill Prator "a giant in the barrelmaking field" and that freely-expressed opinion by such a univerally-acclaimed practitioner(Boots) should establish Prator's barreling credentials to EVERYONE'S satisfaction!

Prator taught us to face off the front of the ring (using a THREAD mandrel) and to use the freshly-trued front face as the contact face, and to cut the rear face of the barrel so as to contact but not crush against the internal ring.(!) A secondary step is to remove the first thread behind the front face, especially on the small rings.

A moment's reflection will show almost anyone that there are several ways to accomplish the same thing as long as the machinist is competent, thoughtful and open-minded.
Regards, Joe

Guess you must have misunderstood, Joe. I was frankly surprised when you inferred that Boots barreled or endorsed outer ring contact.

Haven't talked to Boots for a couple months, so called him today and asked how he did it. "Contact on C ring, not on face"

Teachers can be wrong!

quote:

Originally posted by Duane Wiebe:
Guess you must have misunderstood, Joe. I was frankly surprised when you inferred that Boots barreled or endorsed outer ring contact.

Haven't talked to Boots for a couple months, so called him today and asked how he did it. "Contact on C ring, not on face"

Teachers can be wrong!

Anyone can, Duane(G). Be wrong, I mean(G). I merely related Prator's (read TSJC's LONG-time) teaching method and Boots' opinion of Prator's expertise. Haven't told you my opinion yet.

So, Duane, what special 'rule' makes the 1898 absolutely REQUIRE the special treatment? SKB asked you this question before but I guess you didn't see it.

Did you ask Boots exactly WHY he prefers the special treatment? I myself haven't had any contact with him in about 10 years now, sounds like it might be worth a call to get his specific reasoning, if he's even thought about it.

Unless someone can tell me a good logical reason, I'll continue to assume that it's just one of The Rules. That is, the rule itself makes little sense but folks follow it blindly simply because of the herd response and the fact that someone else did it that way before and had success. Kinda like the girlie rule about not wearing dark shoes to church after Easter or not wearing white shoes to church after sometime(Labor Day?) in the Fall.

Almost reminds me of the old joke about baking the ham. The young bride planned to bake a ham so she asked her new hubby to saw off the bony end before she baked it. He complied of course but wondered why she wanted it done. The next time she asked him to saw off the end of the ham, he asked her why she did it.

Her response was that her mother had always done it that way and that was The Way it should be done, she didn't know any other reason. Curious, the husband asked her to phone her mother and ask the reason. The mother's response was that it was The Rule, that her own mother(the grandmother) had always done it that way and so that was the end of it, by golly!

REALLY curious by this time, the husband himself called the grandmother to tell her the story and ask The Reason For The Rule.

The grandmother's response? "Well, I don't know what all the fuss is about, I don't care HOW anyone else does it but I always cut off the end 'cause otherwise it was too long for my little-bitty roasting pan!"

So, what's the reason?
Regards, Joe

quote:

Originally posted by butchlambert:
I'm having a little argument with a friend gunsmith on BR.Com. He says the purpose of the C ring is to use it to set headspace. He says that is the only place the barrel touches the receiver other than the threads. He says it doesn't touch the face of the front ring. I was of the opinion that the C Ring was a safety device to keep the gases from going down the LH raceway. The few mausers that I have chambered, I left the tenon .001 long inorder for the end of the tenon to touch the C Ring and when torqued the face of the receiver was tight to the shoulder of the barrel also.
I did a search and didn't find it defined to my or his satisfaction.
Thanks Butch

http://www.brownells.com/.aspx...roduct/CZ_550_ACTION

This action is a C-ring, as in the original 98 Mauser. The part in the description that I find interesting is "Machined breech is setup for .002" crush fit."

KB

Kabluey: Astute of you to notice that...Just to be absolutely 100% certain they were referring to .002 gap between action face and barrel abuttment i.e. C ring must contact first...the tech dept assured me that was exactly what was meant by the statement...they added that technical writing is a real challenge!!

quote:

Originally posted by J.D.Steele:
...Haven't told you my opinion yet...

Actually, I think you already did that in your earlier post. It just happened to be erroneous so you needed a quick smokescreen.

i heard (and even understood once) that it is to do with the load bearing characteristics of v form threads and headspace under battle conditions.

thus the reason that mauser did 48Million military rifles this way, and all Mauser (made) 98 based sporting rifles .. vs teh couple thou done a different way ...

Since a good portion of the bolt head protrudes into the C ring..I can';t see how there can be any doubt about gas handling advantages.

There is NO OTHER design that so fully encloses the cartridge head.

The barrel should be torqued against the C ring and not against the action face. "Gunsmithing 101"

Face off the action? of course,,,only to make sure there is no anomoly to contact the barrel shoulder up front
Ditto

does this mean the proprietary designed, fred wells consulted empire rifles 98S h ring action is inferior to say a c ring cz 550?

that's a headspace question...
it's only better between the ears

The H-ring design is a shortcut intended to cut costs and it also unfortunately eliminates one of the distinctly superior gas-handling advantages of the 1898 design. The presence of the left side of the ring is almost as good a gas block as in a Rem 700 or new M70 push-feed. DEFINITELY inferior to the C-ring design!

So far, no one has given any reason for using the C-ring for crush, except the opinions of others that 'we need to follow The Rule'.

What, exactly, does "Machined breech is setup for .002" crush fit" really mean? How, exactly, is the receiver machining set up differently for a 'crush fit'? Most of Brownell's descriptions are drawn at least in part from the manufacturer's info and I'd like to know if that phrase is just their BS manufacturer's hype or do they actually have a logical explanation?
I'm still curious, regards, Joe

What the point of facing the action off if the C-ring is .005 out of square?


James

I suppose it depends if you want the barrel shank to be under tension or under compression. I think that loading the C ring results in a shorter load path during firing. The cyclic loads of firing are confined mainly to the first 2 or 3 threads of the shank and the last 2 or 3 threads in the receiver.

Joe
From what I understand. & I can be Off base here but the reason is pure an simple. Contact surface area And head space control.
You get nearly three times the contact area on the c ring as you do the front face.

The second reason is from a Machinist stand point. Head space control.
One: you are measuring off of the same engagement surfaces. C ring and breech face.

Two: There is no tolerance stacking doing it this way.

Every receiver is made with a C ring machined to a given depth and it is on feature that is held at close tolerances. Then all barrels are machined and chamber reamed to the same depth but again held to close tolerances. Now you only have to deal with two sets of tolerances and if held correctly they can be interchanged between them selves infinitely with no barreled action being out of spec.

If you add in the threaded tenon, and the barrel ring now you have a few more dimensions to deal with and you are correcting for error.

The C ring was and is the best way to mass produce barreled action with a limited amount of measuring and machining of critical surfaces.

The other thing is no one had the great metallurgical realm of steels to select from. So strength was a big concern And steel was cheep so over engineer the crap out of it.

Now None of this is FACT. It's just my opinion and way of thinking based on the tools of the time and the materials available to them.

These days we have certified steel, CNC machines, CAD/CAM etc.

These guys built tons of rifles on manual machines with vernear calipers.

quote:

Originally posted by jeffeosso:
i heard (and even understood once) that it is to do with the load bearing characteristics of v form threads and headspace under battle conditions.

thus the reason that mauser did 48Million military rifles this way, and all Mauser (made) 98 based sporting rifles .. vs teh couple thou done a different way ...

Interesting thought. I did a little Google-ing on Whitworth Thread forms and came up with excellent load bearing ability (due to the wider base vs height and rounded crests and roots), but a tendency to vibrate loose. Perhaps during sustained fire and barrel heating, barrels that torque on the shoulder could elongate and conceivably loosen. By using an inner torque shoulder, if the barrel/chamber elongated it would only become tighter. This also suggests that the C-ring would prevent headspace from changing due to chamber elongation from heating.

weaveman said:
"What the point of facing the action off if the C-ring is .005 out of square?"

I don't recall anyone in this thread raising that issue, but the answer is NONE (unless you are going to ignore the c ring and torque on the shoulder only). The objective would be to have everything square. It was mentioned that you should make sure it is square so imperfections don't contact the barrel shoulder.

Bob,
that's what was explained to me .. that it won't allow headspace to grow, as opposed to if it was only torqued on the front.

JD - Your call .. 48MILLION military mausers done correctly, some thousands done differently

quote:

Originally posted by jeffeosso:

48,000,000,000 military mausers made

quote:

Originally posted by jeffeosso:
48MILLION military mausers done correctly

When we locked horns on the 416 Rigby you took me to task for being off by something like 76 units. Jeffe you missed it by 47,952,000,000. That's 47 billion that you were off by!

quote:

Originally posted by kcstott:
Joe
From what I understand. & I can be Off base here but the reason is pure an simple. Contact surface area And head space control.
You get nearly three times the contact area on the c ring as you do the front face.

The second reason is from a Machinist stand point. Head space control.
One: you are measuring off of the same engagement surfaces. C ring and breech face.

Two: There is no tolerance stacking doing it this way.

Every receiver is made with a C ring machined to a given depth and it is on feature that is held at close tolerances. Then all barrels are machined and chamber reamed to the same depth but again held to close tolerances. Now you only have to deal with two sets of tolerances and if held correctly they can be interchanged between them selves infinitely with no barreled action being out of spec.

If you add in the threaded tenon, and the barrel ring now you have a few more dimensions to deal with and you are correcting for error.

The C ring was and is the best way to mass produce barreled action with a limited amount of measuring and machining of critical surfaces.

I think you may be spot on.

If one is relatively adept at machining, it is little trouble to square up the front of the receiver, bolt lugs, bolt face, and the C-ring. It is also possible to get a nearly perfect fit on both the C-ring and face of the receiver by using the following procedure.

Turn and thread the tenon, leaving it long by roughly 0.010”. Then set the compound rest angle to +6 degrees off perpendicular to the work (either 96 degrees or 84 degrees depending on how your compound rest is marked), back the compound rest all the way out, and bring the carriage toward the headstock to where the tool is roughly 0.010” from the face of the work. Lock the carriage to prevent any movement and use the crossfeed to accomplish facing. To move the tool closer to the work (and face off incrementally small amounts), turn the compound rest screw (moving the compound rest toward the axis of the work.

If the compound rest is direct reading, each increment on the dial should be roughly 0.0001” taken off the face of the barrel. After each cut, hand tighten the receiver on the barrel and check for proper fit on both the shoulder and C-ring. Fit can be checked by the use of layout dye, or any other method that shows interference or wear marks.

When one has nearly 100 percent contact on both shoulders, stop facing and finish the job. If the operator is so inclined, they could go by the half increments on the compound rest, resulting in half of a ten-thousandth (0.00005”) removal at a time.


I agree that the C-ring was the primary torque bearing surface (other than the threads) but I also propose that a great many things have been altered on a great many factory made bolt action rifles to improve their performance, I see no harm in increasing the barrel bearing area if possible. I also see no harm in simply using the C-ring providing it has been appropriately trued and prepared. My preference is to use both surfaces since the machine work does not pose a difficulty for me.

As to accuracy concerns, I have seen rifles barreled both ways that shoot like a house afire so this is simply a preference on my part. I leave the rest of you to decide what you prefer.

I would encourage you to try this technique, I started using it to cut both shoulders on the barrel and can usually get the initial cut to within 0.002” longer which eliminates a lot of operations as opposed to leaving the barrel tenon long by 0.010”.


I did not come up with this method to make fine cuts, I learned it back in the late 1970’s when I was a beginning machinist and I read a booklet titled “How to Run a Lathe” ; I simply adapted it to barrel work. The book was published by South Bend and is still available from a variety of sources.


Happy Machining!

Imp

quote:

Originally posted by JBrown:

quote:

Originally posted by jeffeosso:

48,000,000 military mausers made

quote:

Originally posted by jeffeosso:
48MILLION military mausers done correctly

When we locked horns on the 416 Rigby you took me to task for being off by something like 76 units. Jeffe you missed it by 47,952,000,000. That's 47 billion that you were off by!

thank you, you are correct, i made an obvious mistake and i updated my post. my mistake ...

A moment's thought will confirm that, IF the C-ring is out-of-square, then the barrel fit-up against it will be faulty unless the out-of-square condition is corrected first. Kinda difficult to say the least but it's easy using the front ring compression method.

BTW I just finished barrelling a commercial Banner Oberndorf prewar action, BUG proofs and all matching numbers, that had its front receiver face, threads, and front face of the internal C-ring all misaligned with one another. I repeat, none of the 3 were in alignment with either of the other 2.

KC, I see what you're saying but I'm still not oonvinced that there's any advantage over any other method. Your analysis of the respective areas of contact/compression is a good one except that all 1898s I've ever seen had a noticeable shoulder/ledge on the front face of the internal ring, necessitating a corresponding shoulder/ledge on the butt end of the barrel to achieve full contact. LOTS of extra work, for nothing as far as I can see.

Perhaps if you explained the specific mechanics and results of the different methods? So far at least you're almost the only one who has offered anything besides generalities and opinions.

If one method provides better headspace control, then how, exactly, is that done? What specific mechanical forces are different and what effect does this difference have? How come other rifles don't seem to suffer any negative headspace effects from using the other method?

Yeah, how come we don't see lots of loose barrels on other rifles? AAMOF the only 2 loose original barrels I've ever seen were 1 1903 Springfield and 1 1898 Mauser.

IMO either method will yield satisfactory results IF and only IF A)good machining practices are followed and B)the barrel threads/shoulders don't suffer some condition in the future that will lock them in place, thus preventing ready barrel removal.
Regards, Joe

Joe, I support of what Kerry said but with a little different explanation of how headspace is controlled during mass production without resorting to hand fitting each barrel or hand reaming each chamber.

If I understand what Kerry is saying correctly he is saying that from the perspective of a mass produced rifle, using the C-ring as the ONLY torque bearing surface makes a great deal of sense in that it means that the tolerances are then critical on 2 less dimensions.

If the C-ring is the only torque surface, the following dimensions are the only critical dimensions required to maintain headspace for every rifle produced:
1.) Receiver: Distance from the locking lug surface to the front of the c-ring
2.) Bolt: distance from the rear of the locking lugs to the boltface
3.) Barrel: Depth of the chamber

Maintaining these dimensions to within .001” should allow the headspace to vary by no more than .003” at the most; this is very achievable for any of the equipment used over 100 years ago.

If one uses the front of the receiver ring and the C-ring BOTH as torque shoulders, the number of critical dimensions increases as follows:
1.) Receiver: Distance from the locking lug surface to the front of the c-ring
2.) Receiver: Distance from the locking lug surface to the front of the receiver ring
3.) Bolt: Distance from the rear of the locking lugs to the boltface
4.) Barrel: Depth of the chamber
5.) Barrel: Distance from the rear face of the barrel to the shoulder.

As can be seen, the number of critical dimensions which could potentially affect headspace have increased by 40 percent.

In the interest of maintaining headspace while MASS Producing rifles, it is clear that reducing the chances for something to go wrong and create an out of headspace situation by 40 percent makes huge sense.

Using the C-ring as the only torque bearing surface allows the maker to increase the tolerance for the distance from the front of the C-ring to the front of the receiver as well as the same for the barrel shoulder.

If I understand Kerry correctly, his point is that the tolerances are easier to maintain that way and I agree. While he uses the critical distance from the face of the C-ring to the face of the breech, and I use the bolt lug faces in the receiver, it amounts to the same thing, the face of the bolt will always be the same distance from the face of the C-ring on every receiver and then the only other variable is how deep the chamber is reamed. Very good sense from the production point of view.

Kerry, Forgive me if I screwed up what you said but I think we both agree that a production point of view is far different than the view of someone doing aftermarket (or afterwar) modifications and that using only the C-ring (or H-Ring) to bear toque makes the most sense when mass producing rifles. If not, let me know and I will retract and perform penance.

Imp

How are ya'll setting up to face the c-ring off. I havent been able to come up with a easy of fast enough set up to do it. Since I am not set up to true the c-ring up I face the receiver off to true it up and then cut my tenion lenght aprox. .001 - .002 short of the c-ring's "highest" measurement. That way I am torquing the barrel up on a square surface and bumping up against the c-ring. I just barreled one that the c-ring from trued and face of reciever measured anywhere from .716 to .722 I used the above method to avoid torquing the barrel to one side or the other.

I see nothing wrong with either method but see no point torquing on the c-ring if it is not first trued. I have had a few that the c-ring was withing .002 and on those set the tenion and barrel shoulders to make contact at the same time.

I also agree with the statements about mass producing mausers and how torquing on the c-ring simplifys things.. but is military's acurracy standard the same as yours. If it was I dont think we would be rebarreling with Kreiger's and Lija's.

James