Savage boltface

[John Kielly]

A friend had a bit of extraction trouble with a .223 Savage recently, but it turned out to be an issue of laziness on the part of the ammo loader (her spouse) who bet she could get one more load out of the brass before ditching it.....

That aside, I was initially concerned about the cratering on the primer, until I was shown the radical - to me anyway - countersink that Savage made on the firing pin hole during manufacture.

Is it normal for Savage to do this, or was it just manufacturing cleanup expediency gone a little wrong?

John

 

[Don]

A friend had a bit of extraction trouble with a .223 Savage recently, but it turned out to be an issue of laziness on the part of the ammo loader (her spouse) who bet she could get one more load out of the brass before ditching it.....

That aside, I was initially concerned about the cratering on the primer, until I was shown the radical - to me anyway - countersink that Savage made on the firing pin hole during manufacture.

Is it normal for Savage to do this, or was it just manufacturing cleanup expediency gone a little wrong?

John

Well, John, one thing nice about the Savage, if you are still using the "barrel nut", you can have a face cleaning cut taken to the bolt face to remove the countersink, and re-headspace the chamber to bolt face by re-setting the "barrel nut", without having to make any re-chamber cuts..............Don

 

[BillPa]

That aside, I was initially concerned about the cratering on the primer, until I was shown the radical - to me anyway - countersink that Savage made on the firing pin hole during manufacture.

Is it normal for Savage to do this, or was it just manufacturing cleanup expediency gone a little wrong?

John

John, the countersink you talk about is caused more by the bolt head polishing process than machining. You may also find the bolt faces are dished to some extent, the larger diameters being the worst for the same reason. A light cut, meaning virtually nothing but dust usually is all that needed to square them and remove the taper on the edge of the pin hole.
.
Also, if you look at the pin tip you'll see ground on a taper. When a round is fired the primer stops the pin forward travel or stops the protrusion at about about .020" +/-, the tapered portion of the tip is in the pin hole allowing a gap and may cause the cratering. By reshaping the pin tip to about a .020" radius will keep the full diameter of the pin in the hole and the cratering goes away provided its the cause. Remember to readjust the protrusion to .035"-.040" after reshaping the tip.

Bill