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Retiming R700 Bolt handle

lennyo3034

Gunny Sergeant
Full Member
Minuteman
Apr 18, 2010
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I had a Remington 700 trued a while back and while the smith did an excellent job, he was not able to retime the bolt handle. Extraction is decent and work 95-98% of the time, but that's not good enough if I ever wanted to shoot a match with this gun.

I'm wondering if anyone is able to retime the handle without needing the entire gun or action. Since extraction is so close as is, I'm hoping moving the handle just .050" will be enough. Is this possible to just send the bolt and is anyone willing to do it? Or am I just going to have to pull the action and send it together?
 
Best to use the action the bolt will be used in. Otherwise it's kind of a guess as to where the handle should be, or hoping that the reference action is the same as yours.

ETA: Especially if it has been trued, the lugs and lug abutments have had material removed which changes the location of primary extraction cam on the handle relative to the receiver-- Impossible for someone to blindly know where that location is.
 
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Best to use the action the bolt will be used in. Otherwise it's kind of a guess as to where the handle should be, or hoping that the reference action is the same as yours.

ETA: Especially if it has been trued, the lugs and lug abutments have had material removed which changes the location of primary extraction cam on the handle relative to the receiver-- Impossible for someone to blindly know where that location is.
How close to nominal does it have to be? I'd imagine there is a range of distance between handle and receiver that would work? That may be something I can measure myself.
 
You could theoretically measure from the back of the lug to the front of the bolt handle, then feeler gauge the gap in front of the bolt handle to approximate how far forward to move the handle... I tend to think of that as a "just because you can doesn't mean you should". Then the guy doing the work gets to guess at what rotational point the handle needs to be (Often enough this requires filing of the left side of the handle to get things to time up right), hope his action(s) are the same as yours, TIG weld (!!! semi-permanent warning !!!) the handle on, solder it back, and hope everything is kosher...

Or you could just send in your action and nobody has heartburn or headaches. If I was a GS making money for a living, I would not attempt the former option.