I have a Remington 700 BDL w/detachable magazine in 300 Weatherby. What changes would have to be done to the action to convert it to the .308 Warbird?

Thanks for any imput.

The big thing is opening the bolt-face to 0.578" which is quite a lot. John started out doing this but quickly changed over to a custom McMillan action. There are many who think opening a Rem bolt-face this much is potentially dangerous (I'm one)because of increased bolt thrust but there are a lot of 'smiths who will do it. Mark Bansner will do it but much prefers to use the McMillan action.

Check out the Lilja barrel web-page for a discussion on bolt-thrust if you are interested.

Andrew,

The biggest [roblem I would have with a Rem 700 opened out for the Rigby case rim is that the metal around the bolt nose would be so thin you would want to mkae sure you never dropped the bolt or had a load that was a bit over the top.

Where in my opinion the Rem 700 isa problem is the long bolt counterbore protruding beyond the lugs. If it was a M70 push feed much of the counterbore is surrounded by locking lugs.

In the case of CRF actions with about the same bolt diamter as the Rem 700, the metal that sticks out to oppose the extractor does not stick out nearly as far as the depth of the Rem counterbore.

As to the safety issue, I think that is not a problem.

The Mark V wby is the same receiver size as Rem 700 and the same barrel thread. I have seen Varget loaded into a 378 Wby by mistake instead of 4350 and all was well, except of course for the case. The action did set back maybe a thou or so. That is based on the fact that cases that had been previously fired (but not resized)had about a thou or so headspace. But that was probably no more than a case of a few more locking lugs coming into contact.

On the other hand, some might argue that with the small Wby locking lugs the cut aways for the locking recesses in the received are much smaller than the 2 lug Remington.

By the way, if set back with the Rem 700 is a problem, then how does the CZ 550 and Ruger manage with the 416 Rigby.

In short, I think the safety issue is a myth but the rifle would not be good to own, in my opinion.

Mike

It's possible, I've seen 378's done on Remington actions. There's not much meat left around the bolt, though. One of the rifles I saw ended up a single shot, because they never could get it to feed right, the other two were two shooters. FWIW - Dan

Thanks for the information. I will need a different action to continue with this project.