I have nothing but great respect for your considerable gunsmithing skills which are matched by your kindness in this matter. Your hard earned reputation and skill set are well known. I have sent you an e-mail which may help when certain types of “projects” are presented to you.

In short, there should be more smiths like you and yes, even more lawyers like me who care about and actually advise and protect the smiths and craftsmen we call our clients and friends.

Merry Christmas to you and yours,
Jim Hardy

This is very true Jim and I could not agree more. However, by luck the action was not fired in that condition. The customer was not happy with it and wanted it checked over.

“Second, if you do the math, the poor owner has much or more $$$ sunk into this 40X as a custom, and he will never get a return on his investment.”

If it would have been done correctly in the first place the $$$ bite would have been normal. Re barreling a 700 and not printing the action is almost a waste of time in my opinion.

“Third, if the owner were to put this action up for sale, would you be morally obligated to provide the gory history? You bet he would. And the value to a prospective purchaser for a custom build on this action after full disclosure would be — Zero, Nada, Zilch, not a cent.”

I respectfully disagree here in saying the action is worth- Zero.
#1. The action was bored in he raceway about .003. B/4 I got it. This does not effect the safety.
#2. Having done some bolt head work for Remington I have kept tract of dimensions and the Kiff bolt lugs are .475 on the average about .033 longer than a Remington bolt lug. We removed .022 only to square them up.
The integral lugs of the action measured .460 long which is about normal for length and we removed .020. I have found that most Remington actions are in that area and will vary about .015 right from the factory.
I then set the action up in my jig and re cut the threads with a single point cutter removing .012. Most Remington actions are egg shaped after heat treat and the most I have bored the thread area is .015.
The face was also trued which was .005 out of line.

“Fourth, you simply could never sell this action and sleep at night, and it does not matter who “fixed” it.”

Jim,
If the customer had a Rem. bolt in it with the same problem I would agree with you. Nothing was compromised here and the safety factor still exists. We take SAFETY serious here and all work was evaluated b/4 starting.
Dave sells bolt replacements to gunsmiths only I believe. He is doing the right thing here in my opinion because of the variation of dimensions. However, sometimes they land in the hands of some people who should be in another line of work.
We do want to thank you for you opinion and respect it as well. I personally would not be afraid of that action and I would not hesitate to use it for my personal action. I have checked the dimensions and all the critical ones are within Spec. Nothing is sloppy and all dimensions are tighter than the original Remington was b/4 any work had begun. I also think the Kiff bolt is as good or better then Remington’s in many respects.

Stan

The bolt handle was not installed by Dave Kiff. It was installed by the person that did the rest of the work on the reciever before it came to Stan’s shop.

Dave makes great products.

The fortunate part is that the safety of the basic reciever was not compromised in any way before it found itself in Stan’s hands. The bolt body, handle, etc. were the issues that posed the problems. Left uncorrected, they were certainly a safety issue as well as obvious functional issues.

Kudos to Stan Ware for the “fix” of the previous smith’s butcher job, if there is such a thing as a “fix” in this case. In fact, the “fix” becomes the issue, in more ways than one.

First, someone could have suffered serious personal injury or death on the first shot they broke with this pre-fixed action. No mystery there.

Second, if you do the math, the poor owner has much or more $$$ sunk into this 40X as a custom, and he will never get a return on his investment.

Third, if the owner were to put this action up for sale, would you be morally obligated to provide the gory history? You bet he would. And the value to a prospective purchaser for a custom build on this action after full disclosure would be — Zero, Nada, Zilch, not a cent.

Fourth, you simply could never sell this action and sleep at night, and it does not matter who “fixed” it.

Fifth, the bottom line is that this 40X has got to be the “tomato stake” of all actions. As far as I am concerned no smith can work a “bail out” on this one. Cut it in half and nail it to you loading room wall.

Sixth, can you spell “liability”?

Just my $.02,
Jim Hardy