How NOT to Headspace a Barrel — Speedy’s Disturbing Discovery
This barrel’s shoulder was 0.025″ off the action because Red Locktite had been used on the threads.
Gunsmith Thomas ‘Speedy’ Gonzales offered this interesting report about how NOT to headspace a barrel. Hopefully you never discover something like this…
“A good friend and customer sent this rig in for repair after FedEx damaged the rifle during inbound transport from another smith. After repairing the stock and rebedding it, I decided to re-polish the barrel to make the repair perfect. Well this just added insult to injury as the barrel did not want to come off. After a few choice words, the barrel finally broke free only to reveal something very disturbing. It seems the barrel had been ‘headspaced’ by using RED Loctite to hold it in place.” [Editor: That’s definitely NOT how barrels should be fitted.]
Speedy was not happy: “I hope the smith that did this sees the photos and realized what jeopardy he put my customer in or anyone who shot the rifle for that matter. When cleaned up, the shoulder on the barrel was over 0.0250″ (25 thousandths) away from the face of the receiver.” [Editor: That’s a lot in this business]. Check out the images below to see how much the barrel rotated further inward when cleaned up. The barrel spun in nearly another eighth-turn or more. Not good.
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Tags: Bad Gunsmithing, Barrel Fitting, Gunsmithing, Headspace, Speedy Gonzalez
How much do you want to bet the offending ‘smith as an Army Armorer. Our Match Director is a retired Guard shooter and he ran into that kind of ‘smithing from an Army Armorer. Only they also used Red Loctite to hold the recoil lug in place on a Rem. 700 action as well.
Certainly NOT saying every Army Armorer would do that. Just saying there is at least one who is or was.
I have another theory. If you have been at this game for many years, you may very well have hundreds or even thousands of pieces of brass that you would like to use, from a number of different barrels, reamers and actions, but your bolt won’t close on them. I’d be curious if that chamber actually measured longer than spec, and if so, I’d suspect that the gunsmith in question declined the offer to make a “universal” deeper chamber, and this was actually a customer invented workaround. After all, who wouldn’t notice that?
That looks like pipe dope.
A little bit of knowledge will take you a very short way.
It’s easily to recognize a French action from Salva. Many friends of mine have got issue with this kind of gunsmith…unfortunately
That does not look like Red Locktite.
What color is locktite after extreme heating and broken free ?
So with 18tpi shouldn’t the barrel advance .055 in one complete revolution?
I got one of those actions imported from the very same gunsmith in Europe. Very few were made and the workmanship was excellent and I tend to agree with David Joe: The original customer must have tried to tamper with the original headspace on the shoulder of the barrel and made a mess. I don’t believe for a minute that the rifle was proofed with a defective headspace by a government board.
Hello everyone
sorry for my English
I already had this problem on my rifle is the same brand made in France, with a head space of 8/10 mm