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Remington Bolt Mating Surfaces I have a Remington Model 700 chambered in .300 Winchester Magnum in my shop and have a question about bolt mating surfaces. My customer brought it in without a bolt and this is the first rifle I’ve had to replace the bolt on in all my years working.

My assumption is that factories doing this apply Dykem or similar marking fluid and proceed to close a bolt with a spring-loaded affair that puts some pressure to the flats on the front of the receiver and the back of the bolt to ensure contact on both lock lugs. With this in place it keeps the pair together for attaching a barrel to the receiver.

To accomplish this I thought of using a brass rod that slides in the barrel and apply some spring pressure, perhaps 10-20 pounds of resistance, to swipe Dykem when closing the bolt to mark if there is contact on the back of the bolt lock lugs and their mating surfaces on the receiver. If there is good contact I would check headspace. If good, I’d tell my customer he is good to go. However, no contact on one side or other insufficient contact when comparing lugs is unsatisfactory.

Same thing if the headspace is too large. My advice then would be to take the rifle to a gunsmith with a machine shop to perform the fix. If it’s just a headspace condition, I can manage that in my shop. And to think my customer bought this rifle without a bolt in it thinking it was a good deal. Some people’s kids, huh?

Robert Koweluk Dillingham, Alaska Since firearm manufacturers do not provide blueprints to anyone outside their production facility, there is no practical way we can determine receiver suitability regarding bolt interchangeability. "Some contact" in referring to the bolt lugs? No way. You need equal contact on all surfaces when the bolt is locked. Proper headspace is to be checked out with cartridge-specific Go, No Go, and possibly Field gauges.

That’s if the Browning/Winchester entity will even provide a bolt to you for the project, something which we seriously doubt. We’re pretty certain this "deal too good to pass up" will have to be returned to Browning/Winchester to be completed and deemed safe. Such deals frequently lose their dazzle whilst frazzling the nerves, good natures, and budgets of all unfortunates involved. A Follow Up Thank you for the advice!

This has moved my thinking from doing it myself and jury rigging something up to having a gunsmith with a machine shop do the work for me. I will email Remington and perhaps they will recommend a shop that can do a proper job. Money spent having someone with more experience do this job will make me feel much more safe and secure.

While I’ve successfully managed to always return firearms I’ve worked on in proper and safe working order and I take pride in that, my pride is nothing compared to my concern for the safety of the gun owners in owning and using their firearms. I have been trying to balance out the economics of a "good deal" of which we know there is generally not any and they often turn out more expensive in having to do work by ourselves to bring the firearm up.

This rifle was such a case and I followed proper work procedures to determine if it was structurally sound to even get it functional. Sadly, this will end up as one of the very few jobs where I do not make a profit. But I am stubborn sometimes and I want to bring it back to service after having been rescued after 15 years from the rubble heap of a house fire. If it turns out the receiver bolt lock mating surfaces are structurally unsound I will have the shop cut the receiver to scrap metal.

Then I will fit/bed the stock for use on my father’s Remington Model 700 ADL in 7mm Remington Magnum as Dad always wanted a BDL stock for it. Beautiful piece of wood, that stock. Robert Koweluk AG