Hello Folks

Just pondering another idea here, hope you all can stand another brain fart !!

What might be the implications of converting a front locking bolt action (maybe one of the type where the bolt lugs don't stand proud of the bolt body i.e. they are recessed ) to "barrel locked", where the locking lugs engage recesses in the barrel rather than the receiver. The barrel could then be fitted to the receiver with a non-threaded sleeve fit - same as the Dakota, Sauer and others.

This might give one an interchangeable barrel system/takedown without the expense of a Dakota or Sauer.

Does anyone think this might be practical. What might be the most suitable donor action ?
What sort of machining operations would be involved. How difficult would it be to machine the locking recesses in the barrel, and what equipment would one use - could a normally equiped Gunsmith undertake it? Might it be easier to machine the locking rings and then fit the barrel to them ? I can see machining out the receiver would be a bear of a job unless it was annealed, and starting with a "beefy" reciever would help.

Cheers - Foster

It might be easier to just ask: “What does it take to design and build a new rifle?†I think the quick answer would be lots of time, money, talent.

Also, if you think that designing a building such a rifle would be cheaper than buying either of the ones you mentioned, I think you’re dreaming...
unless you have the design and machining skills to do all of the work yourself, which if you did you wouldn’t be on here asking others how to do it.

As Rick says, your barrels would costas much as a new gun.

How about making the front ring of the action part of the barrel instead. That's the way the Mauser 66 / 660 works. It's really a swap barrel not a takedown.

Rich

To put this in another light:

If it were such an excellent and economical idea, everyone would have been doing it for a while now. The Sauer and Dakota rifles you mentioned aren't rifles for the average joe. What you're thinking about has been down before, but it requires a great deal more expensive, specialized machine work than your average barrel installation.

As with most things, anything's possible. All it would take is time and money...