Awhile back, I bought one of the Howa barreled actions from Brownells, with the intent of turning it into a custom-barreled, lightweight hunting rifle chambered in 6mm Creedmoor. The cheapest action (with the right bolt face) at the time of my purchase was a 24" heavy barrel in .308 at $259. It has been sitting in my office/gun room waiting its turn in the lineup, and while I'm not ready to go full speed on the build, I decided about two weeks ago that it was time to start doing something on the project, and I decided that a good first step would be to remove the factory barrel.
After reading horror stories about removing Howa factory barrels, I figured that I would do some pre-work in an effort to make my life a little easier. So I hung the barreled action with the muzzle pointed at the floor (and a piece of cardboard under it), and began soaking the breech threads in Liquid Wrench (from inside the action) every couple of days. Yesterday, I took a heat gun (basically a hair drier on steroids) and heated the breech end of the action, then squirted more Liquid Wrench into the front of the action (with the muzzle still oriented towards the floor); I then let it air cool with the assistance of a pedestal fan that I keep in my office. I repeated the process, so it got a total of two heat/Liquid Wrench/air cool cycles. I left it over night, and decided that today was the day that I'd give it what-for.
Using a Savage action wrench (from Northland) with the cap flipped to accommodate the flat bottom of the Howa action (and some longer cap bolts), I was able to get a pretty damned solid bite on the action. Using a Farrell barrel vise C-clamped to my gun bench, I was able to get a decent bite on the barrel... and I began to wonder if I wasn't about to embark on a course of action that would take $259 of barreled action and turn it into $0.89 of scrap steel, but YOLO and all that good shit. So I ate my Wheaties, put on my jock strap, drank a 5-hour Energy while listening to Eye of the Tiger, called my mom to tell her that I love her, and got down to business... one half-decent whack on the handle of the action wrench with a 3-pound shop sledge, and she broke loose just as clean as you please. I had to double check to make sure that it wasn't the barrel rotating in the vise, but nope, it was the action... just like I knew what I was doing. Hmmm. I s'pose the next step is to order a barrel/barrel nut and decide what I'm going to do as far as a stock/chassis.
I don't know how much of my pre-work with the Liquid Wrench helped, but it certainly didn't hurt. I should note that as I removed the action from the barrel, it looked as though the Liquid Wrench had penetrated all the way to/past the barrel shoulder. I also don't know that all of that with the heating/cooling, etc... was necessary; all I can tell y'all is what I did, and what the results were.
Oh, and in case anyone is curious, a complete short action Howa M1500 action with the bolt inserted, the trigger and internal box mag installed, and factory hinged floor plate/bottom metal all bolted together weighs right at 2.5 pounds on my kitchen scale.
After reading horror stories about removing Howa factory barrels, I figured that I would do some pre-work in an effort to make my life a little easier. So I hung the barreled action with the muzzle pointed at the floor (and a piece of cardboard under it), and began soaking the breech threads in Liquid Wrench (from inside the action) every couple of days. Yesterday, I took a heat gun (basically a hair drier on steroids) and heated the breech end of the action, then squirted more Liquid Wrench into the front of the action (with the muzzle still oriented towards the floor); I then let it air cool with the assistance of a pedestal fan that I keep in my office. I repeated the process, so it got a total of two heat/Liquid Wrench/air cool cycles. I left it over night, and decided that today was the day that I'd give it what-for.
Using a Savage action wrench (from Northland) with the cap flipped to accommodate the flat bottom of the Howa action (and some longer cap bolts), I was able to get a pretty damned solid bite on the action. Using a Farrell barrel vise C-clamped to my gun bench, I was able to get a decent bite on the barrel... and I began to wonder if I wasn't about to embark on a course of action that would take $259 of barreled action and turn it into $0.89 of scrap steel, but YOLO and all that good shit. So I ate my Wheaties, put on my jock strap, drank a 5-hour Energy while listening to Eye of the Tiger, called my mom to tell her that I love her, and got down to business... one half-decent whack on the handle of the action wrench with a 3-pound shop sledge, and she broke loose just as clean as you please. I had to double check to make sure that it wasn't the barrel rotating in the vise, but nope, it was the action... just like I knew what I was doing. Hmmm. I s'pose the next step is to order a barrel/barrel nut and decide what I'm going to do as far as a stock/chassis.
I don't know how much of my pre-work with the Liquid Wrench helped, but it certainly didn't hurt. I should note that as I removed the action from the barrel, it looked as though the Liquid Wrench had penetrated all the way to/past the barrel shoulder. I also don't know that all of that with the heating/cooling, etc... was necessary; all I can tell y'all is what I did, and what the results were.
Oh, and in case anyone is curious, a complete short action Howa M1500 action with the bolt inserted, the trigger and internal box mag installed, and factory hinged floor plate/bottom metal all bolted together weighs right at 2.5 pounds on my kitchen scale.
