Tennon fitting and chambering:

How's this for muzzle flush?

Sweet......Blake

Chambered up. Now to verify the H/S with the barrel torqued up on the receiver. As a std practice, I don't use N/GO gauges. Instead I prefer to use the GO gauge in conjunction with a little sliver of solder. The solder gets squished between the bolt face and the gauge when its all clammed up. This way I have a qualified dimension to document. Saves my bacon if a gun ever comes back with goofy headspace. It'll tell us if the cst had an oops at the reloading bench and gassed up a round too hot. On some cartridges like the big stuff for Africa the lugs will peen back over time. We saw this often at Dakota Arms. 20 year old guns with lots of notches under the belt that had actually set back the lugs. Not a deal breaker as it just takes fitting a new stick to it. Just nice to have the documentation from day one so a guy knows what's going on.

So you measure the thickness of the squished solder for your reference?

Yep. Goes something like this.

A GO and NO GO gauge typically has a range of about .006" for most cartridges.

With the solder I have "invented" a value system we use in the shop. Say the bolt drops on the GO and sticks on the NO GO. That's great, but where is it at inside that .006" window? The solder tells us exactly. A value of .0025" for instance would be documented as "GO +.0025" ". Meaning it's good on the GO with an additional .0025" of clearance.

If the rifle came back a week, month, year, etc later with a headspace of "GO+.007" we now have a true dimension to reference from. If it was GO+.0025 the headspace increased by .0045". Obviously something changed. Hot load, soft bolt/receiver, a barrel that came off and wasn't torqued back on to the original assembled level, etc.

Solder has virtually zero tensile strength. Meaning in its wire form if squished, it'll stay squished. This makes it a cheap/useful tool for gauging things like this. I do the same thing with breech clearance. leave the calculators and all the fancy math alone as this gives a "real world" value instead of a mathematical one.

Hope this helps.

C.

Just like Plastigage on an engine build.

Thought that we might like to see it by itself

Thanks Blake, here's the stock for starters! thinking about ordering a McMillan TAC-50 stock in GAP camo later this year!

No problem, can't wait to see the whole thing....Blake