griff
mattnorman@earthlink.net
Here are comments from Wisners web site:
Replacement Bolt Assemblies for Remington 788 rifles
Remington never made these units available to anyone outside the factory. They were factory
fitted to the existing rifle, if you lost or broke one.
When the factory installed the bolt in the rifle originally, they just screwed the barrel on until it stopped on the proper headspace gage, then they tightened it & then stamped the writing on & drilled the sight holes later. This was faster than the normal way of threading, chambering,indexing to a set-up sample, stamping the name & caliber, & then the final fitting to a bolt
unit.
It (the 788 method) however created problems if & when a new bolt had to be fitted to an
existing gun. When fitting new bolts to used guns, or used bolts to different used guns, there was considerable gunsmithing involved in fitting a bolt to the chamber if the headspace was long. As the barrel had to be taken off & set back exactly one thread to realign the sight holes, they deepen the chamber to match the headspace to the bolt face.
If yours just has the bolt handle pulled off, a GOOD gunsmith can reinstall this better than the original, IF IT HAS NOT ALREADY BEEN SCREWED UP TO BADLY BY SOMEONE. If this
is the case, contact me, I DO NOT DO THIS ANYMORE, but can put you in contact with a
retired gunsmith who possibly can help you.
I have been in the process of tooling up to make new bolt assemblies for these guns. Time
has slipped away faster than I had hoped & I have some parts made or partially completed,
but not enough to finalize.
THEY WILL ONLY BE SOLD TO GUNSMITHS WHO HAVE A FFL & SIGN RELEASE PAPERS. I WILL NOT INSTALL THEM MYSELF ON THE PUBLIC'S GUNS AS I DO NOT ANY LONGER POSSESS A VALID FFL (gunsmiths)LICENSE, AS I DO NOT NEED A
LICENSE TO MANUFACTURE PARTS.
I plan on making all 5 sizes in RH, plus the LH, so there will be 8 different ones.
Since Remington has discontinued making the "riveted" extractor, I plan on using their new "rivet-less" one that they use for the 700/7400, etc. I plan on making the bolt just like the original, except I will NOT silver solder the "bolt head" in place like they did. You will probably not realize that the front section is a separate piece. It
acts as the front of the bolt stop slot.
I will supply the bolt head as a separate piece that is .020 longer than needed. In fitting this bolt to your gun, your gunsmith will only have to place a headspace gage in the chamber, & using trial & error method, lathe turn off the rear of this head until he gets it to just close on the proper gage. At this point he will loctite the head to the rear section in the proper rotation sequence. The use of loctite can be used here since the locking lugs are behind the bolt head at the rear just in front of the bolt handle, and all that is needed is to keep the head from
rotating.