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Gunsmithing 700 bolt lugs , weld and refit to action ?

 
Ok. There are good points on both sides.

However, if any of you naysayers can honestly tell me that you have read a thread from a decade ago where a guy did destructive testing on m93, m96, and m98 mauser actions, I'll be impressed.

He did hardness tests on those actions and the earlier ones were dead soft. He had to basically cram cases with pistol powder to get the actions to fail. Even ridiculously hot rifle loads only set the lugs back, which while not good, is not a catastrophic failure.

You can get away with using material in the annealed state if it's the right material and the geometry is designed according to the material characteristics and the loads. There's a few thousand years of successful ironworking using this concept, and even nowadays a number of automotive structural parts eschew fancy heat-treat schedules because doing so reduces cost and risk. Wanna weld new spring perches on a Dana 60 axle tube? Go for it.

What's not OK is taking a part that was designed with a particular set of material properties in mind, and then changing those properties without a full understanding of the effects. Doing such analysis requires actual engineering, and not the fertilizer spreading we've seen demonstrated in this thread. (Seriously, a fuse filament is thin, and so welding on a bolt lug with low current must therefore be OK?)
 
You can get away with using material in the annealed state if it's the right material and the geometry is designed according to the material characteristics and the loads. There's a few thousand years of successful ironworking using this concept, and even nowadays a number of automotive structural parts eschew fancy heat-treat schedules because doing so reduces cost and risk. Wanna weld new spring perches on a Dana 60 axle tube? Go for it.

What's not OK is taking a part that was designed with a particular set of material properties in mind, and then changing those properties without a full understanding of the effects. Doing such analysis requires actual engineering, and not the fertilizer spreading we've seen demonstrated in this thread. (Seriously, a fuse filament is thin, and so welding on a bolt lug with low current must therefore be OK?)
All in the name of "I wonder what will happen", or for the sake of saving a couple of hundred bucks.

No thanks, I like my nose, eyes, ears and fingers right where they are, thank you very much.

A few years ago, when I was buying 3 Bighorn TL-2's, they didn't offer any surface treatment on the bolts/actions. I called AJ and asked him about Meloniting them. He said he recommended against it. I asked him why and he cited concerns about the temperatures/metallurgy involved. I politely asked him if he knew for a fact that it would cause problems and he said "no". The more we talked, the more I was convinced that he was probably right. There might not have been any problems, but the risk/reward ratio just wasn't there.
 
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Because 5000psi muzzle pressure is the same as 60kpsi chamber pressure.

Im gonna do this jist to end this conversation, but i also realise there are aome people who are just way too invested.
 
Yeah I've noticed a trend as well. Nothing helpful to add=say some dumb shit.