Gunsmithing Cryo Treating The Action?

[Ishallbie O'Cullkillin]

I've been researching Savage drop-in barrels for my 110Fcp-HS in .338LM, and came across a thread at Savage Shooters forum that described the actions of these rifles as being barely adequate to accommodate the beating that the .338LM can dish out over long term use. I ordered a Rock Creek 30" AMU/MTU for it today, but am wondering if there is anything I can do to strengthen the action. Besides loading light to moderate loads, would cryo-treating the action have any strengthening effect aside from just improving wear resistance?

 

[kortik]

I've been researching Savage drop-in barrels for my 110Fcp-HS in .338LM, and came across a thread at Savage Shooters forum that described the actions of these rifles as being barely adequate to accommodate the beating that the .338LM can dish out over long term use. I ordered a Rock Creek 30" AMU/MTU for it today, but am wondering if there is anything I can do to strengthen the action. Besides loading light to moderate loads, would cryo-treating the action have any strengthening effect aside from just improving wear resistance?

No. The essence of cryo is to speed up process of residual stress relief, and has little to do with directly improving material properties like tensile/yield stress limits, etc... I'm not even sure it works well for stress relief, what really works is a very long time... For wear resistance - there are some theories that correctly performed cryo may change something in structure of certain materials, however, I'm not aware of any real world manufacturing process based on use of cryo to improve wear resistance.